“Ho,” said the leader of the men hunting us. “What have we here, a slave and his friend thinking they could run off?”

Only then did it occur to me that he could very well mention the death of my master. I was completely unprepared to have that revealed. Panicked, I began to babble. I blurted out an invented name for our mistress and the farm outside of Koadester where we had come from, explaining that our disastrous mistake was entirely the stupid field hand’s fault. He’d been brought into the house as the mistress’s pet and it had led him to ideas about his own importance and I was terribly, terribly sorry to have been misled by him and was prepared to be taken home and would be a very good slave in the future.

I was so frantic and so stupid that I think this alone convinced them I could not be the murderous, conniving slave described on the bills posted in Koadester. The slavers looked shocked as I rattled on, at first merely skeptical that the hulking Attolian could be the mastermind of our escape and then disappointed.

The leader of them, to my surprise, swore in Setran, and I wondered if all of the men were Setran. Their features were indistinct, but they may have been from the Goli tribes, who’d scattered after being put down by the empire. The Attolian looked at me, but I ignored him, praying that if the Setrans talked of my master and his death, they might do it in a language the Attolian couldn’t understand.

Behind us, we heard clattering rocks as the slavers who’d been on the heights above us finished making their way down.

“This isn’t them,” said the disgusted leader in Setran.

The men cursed, casting their hate at us, their disappointment dangerous.

“Two of us could have collected these,” said one burly slaver. “We’ve left the rest with Kepet, and he’s probably asleep again.” He reached for his sword, and the Attolian tensed. He didn’t need to understand the language to know that the slaver meant to kill us outright. I turned a little to lay a warning hand on his arm and leaned against him, retreating from the slaver and discreetly nudging the Attolian back as well.

I licked my lips and said, “I am my mistress’s majordomo and amanuensis. Q-quite valuable.”

“Put up, Shef,” another of the slavers said.

“They’re still worth more than the others put together,” added another.

Shef lowered his sword back into its sheath, but then he punched me so hard that I fell straight to the ground, leaving the Attolian without any guide. I could only cover my head and pray that he would follow my example and take the blows he had coming to him.

Evidently he did. I heard him grunt as he hit the ground. We might have suffered longer from Shef’s disappointment, but someone above spoke after only a few more blows. “Let’s go. We still have to catch up to Kepet, and you’re right that he is probably asleep by now.”

The slavers pulled us to our feet and efficiently tied our hands, looping a rope around our necks to make a leash to lead us back down the ravine and from there back to the trail we had been following. Even in the dark, they seemed familiar with the terrain. I fell several times and heard the Attolian go down as well. I winced as one of the slavers said, “Oh, you don’t like that, do you?”

We followed our previous trail only a little while and then left it to travel overland. The slavers led the way to a much wider path, a clearly well-used cart track we would have come to if we had continued along the road skirting the hills just a little farther. We walked uphill until we reached their camp on a patch of flat ground just off the road with a curving rock face behind it, like an outdoor room, made by chance. It was obviously a regular stopping place, with iron staples sunk into the rock at head height to tether the mules. There was a mortared fire ring in the center and a stack of firewood next to it. A lively fire was burning, and as predicted, a man was asleep beside it.

The slaves they were transporting were chained together, as close to the fire as they dared get, close enough to attack the man in his sleep, but he was hardly in any danger. When I saw the slaves, my heart constricted, and I squeezed my eyes momentarily closed.

There were perhaps twelve or fifteen of them. They were skeleton thin and covered in filth and sores, their clothes only rags. These were not the slaves of the imperial city or even of the outlying farms. They were the cheapest of slaves, the most miserable souls of the human race, bound for hard labor in the mines. They could have been anchored to the staples in the rocks, but weren’t. Even with surprise on their side, all of them together would not have been a match for the healthy and well-fed Kepet. They sat or lay, indifferent, as the Attolian and I were brought into the circle of the firelight and chained at the end of their row.

One of the slavers cursed and lifted an empty ankle cuff. A slave had slipped away, and not for the first time evidently. The slavers kicked Kepet awake and swore he would pay for the missing slave from his share. Kepet argued that the man wasn’t worth any money anyway, but the other slavers drove him off into the dark to fetch the missing slave back. Then they argued about who would make food.

One man was finally bullied into the task. He put a pot onto the fire, pouring in water and dried meat and a few vegetables to make a thin soup and then adding a scoop of grain. When it was obvious that nothing was coming to either of us from that pot, I told myself that the meat in it was probably caggi.

I heard the Attolian whisper under his breath, “Not nearly as tasty as grilled rodent,” and essayed a weak smile.

The other slavers’ dinner had been cooked and eaten before Kepet came back. He was alone, but carried something in his hand. He walked along the group of slaves, kicking each awake and showing it to him, and then moving on to the next. When he reached me, I saw that what he held was a severed hand. He walked to the fire and threw it in.

“Gods all damn you,” the other slavers shouted. “Why did you do that?”

“You said you’d keep his price from my share, so keep it. I told you he wasn’t worth the trouble he makes.”

“You didn’t need to throw it in the fire,” snarled the man who’d been doing the cooking. He fished the hand out and threw it onto the road.

Then Kepet sat and ate what was in the pot, complaining that the other slavers hadn’t left much. Only when he was finished did they feed the slaves. I saw there was another pot, not in the fire, where they had put grain to soak. Shef carried it along the row of chained men, scooping out a handful of grain, then squishing it into a cake and dropping it into the outstretched hands of the slaves. Each time he held it in the air first as the slave begged for it. He was followed by a man with a water sack and a cup who did the same.

“Please, please, master, please”—the whispered supplications like the voices of those already in the gray lands.

The Attolian wouldn’t beg and got neither the grain nor the water. I took the wet lump the slaver had given me and divided it, handing one half to the Attolian. Then I picked out the grains from the cake and ate them one at a time to make them last. The slavers meanwhile passed a wineskin among themselves. As the drink loosened their tongues, they talked about their new slaves and where the best place to sell us would be. Dishonest to the core, they would make no attempt to return us to our supposed owner. They were on their way into the hills to take the slaves to a tin mine, but that wasn’t the place to sell a trained slave and a healthy field hand. They would take us with them to the plains below. One suggested that our invented owner might have posted a reward, but none of his colleagues thought it worth the time to go back to Koadester to see. Better, they thought, to see us as a windfall, take us west to the first market, and sell us there. As we had no slave chains, they could plead ignorance of our owner’s identity if they had to. Unethical but predictable. After a while the talk turned to the Attolian’s good looks, and I grew more concerned. I had been too successful perhaps in casting him as the pampered lover of our imaginary owner. Swigging from a flask of wine, one of the slavers stood up and strolled over. He passed me and squatted next to the Attolian.