Shadows Return

you, both you and he are mine to do with as I choose?”
    “No, Ilban!” Ilar replied, obsequious again. “Kheron, take him up at once!”
    “Wait.” The man in black, who’d remained silent until now, looked more closely at Seregil. Nudging him with the toe of his boot, he asked, “This is the one who killed Duke Mardus?”
    “So I’m told.”
    “He should be executed, though I suppose he did us all a favor in the end. Ambitious fools like Mardus always end up as liabilities. He did have his uses, though.”
    “I assure you, Your Grace, the fate of this ’faie will not be an easy one.”
    “See that it isn’t.”
    “Take him up!” the master ordered, and one of the guards hoisted Seregil in his arms and carried him upstairs to the workshop. Seregil cast a last desperate look back at Alec, cursing his own helplessness.
    Once upstairs, he was placed facedown on a slate-topped table, with his left arm over the side. The guards held him, and the alchemist nicked a vein in Seregil’s wrist and held his hand over a bowl, collecting his blood. While this was going on, he and Ilar talked casually over Seregil, as if he weren’t there, still speaking Plenimaran.
    “He stinks, Khenir.” Apparently Ilar’s master didn’t know his real name. “I thought you’d been taking better care of him.”
    “It’s part of his punishment, Master, for attacking me.”
    “Ah, I see. Well, I suppose it’s more humane than the prescribed flogging.”
    “I hate to mark him, Master.”
    “He is a particularly fine-looking specimen, even for a ’faie. You could set yourself up quite nicely, contracting him to the breeders.”
    “Perhaps when I’m done with him, Master.”
    The master bent to look at the back of Seregil’s hand. “Hm. Another simple tattoo. The boy has one as well. What do you know of these?”
    To Seregil’s surprise, Ilar replied, “Nothing, Ilban. My clan didn’t use such marks. How fares the rhekaro?”
    You lying bastard!
Seregil nearly laughed. As usual, Ilar was playing his own game, even against the master he professed to worship. And he’d changed the subject nicely, too.
He’d probably have made a good nightrunner.
    “As you saw, it quickens nicely,” the master replied, none the wiser. “I expect it will be complete by tomorrow. The moon phases have been more of a factor than the treatises led me to believe. Or perhaps it’s the boy’s mixed blood. Whatever the case, I’m glad, for he isn’t as strong as I’d hoped. He’s not stirred in over a day.”
    Seregil closed his eyes, feeling more desperate than ever. They were killing Alec, and for what? He’d never heard the word “rhekaro” and had no idea what it meant, except that it was probably whatever unclean thing was moving about under the dirt, fed with his talimenios’s blood. Given the presence of the nobleman here, this wasn’t just some minor experiment and yet the bastard spoke as calmly of it as Nysander might of some interesting spell he was working on.
    “Do you know yet if the rhekaro will yield what you hope, Master?”
    The alchemist chuckled at that. “Are you really in such a hurry to leave me?” When Ilar said nothing the man patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Something has quickened, and I will keep my word. If all goes as we hope, I will emancipate you.”
    Ilar stroked Seregil’s hair. “And this one will truly be mine, Master?”
    “Yes, though why you should want such a wild and dangerous creature as that is beyond me, especially one that has betrayed you in the past.”
    “I look forward to breaking him, Master.”
    Seregil bit the inside of his lip.
Oh, I will kill you slowly!
    “Hmm. You know, Khenir, some wild things are meant to be tamed, rather than broken.”
    The alchemist wrapped a bandage around Seregil’s wrist, then sniffed the blood in the bowl and dipped his finger in it. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, like he was testing silk, then the smear burst into a bright blue flame. “Yes, that’s good strong western blood in those veins. A Bôkthersan, you say? They make very strong dra’gorgos, I hear. I know of several necromancers who’d pay well for a flask of this. You might make a bit of a profit on him that way, until he’s manageable. I will give you letters of introduction.”
    “Of course. You are the kindest of masters, and the greatest of alchemists.”
    So I was right!
thought Seregil. That explained the tidy workshop. He’d always