Elvenbane

'I think she needs to learn about authority, Ran,' the dark one said. 'I think they all need a lesson.'

The blonde shrugged, and waved a hand at him. 'Go ahead,' he said. 'Give her the lesson. I can wait.'

The dark-haired man shoved Shana into the blond man's strong, cold hands, and his two nondescript companions hauled Meg to her feet. The two subordinates held her erect between them, while the dark-haired man looked her in the eyes.

'This is the difference between me and you, slave,' he said, and slapped her as the blond man had. Her head snapped back, but this time she couldn't drop to the floor.

'And this.' Crack. 'And this'

He beat her coldly and systematically, starting with her face, and working downwards from there, delivering horrible blows to her body that left her breathless, trying to suck in air.

Meg screamed and fought at first, but it did her no more good than it had Shana. When the blonde dropped Shana, she hid her head in her arms, unable to watch, curled in a fetal ball at his feet. Soon Meg's screaming died down to whimpers, and then to moans, as the thick sounds of blows continued to ring dully across the otherwise silent room.

The creaking of the door was loud enough in that silence to make even the dark-haired man stop what he was doing. Shana looked up...

She wished she hadn't, for she was looking straight at Meg. Meg was a battered, bloody thing, hanging limply in the arms of her tormentors, her eyes swollen shut, and blood dripping from dozens of cuts on her face and oozing from the corner of her mouth.

Footsteps from the door made Shana turn to see who was there, and for a moment, she hoped Meg was saved, for it was one of Berenel's red-clad overseers.

But the overseer only cast a perfunctory look at Meg, and turned to the hard-faced man. 'Do you want to talk to this one, or don't you?' he asked, poking Shana with a toe.

'I do,' the blonde said. 'I just got distracted by this woman. Bad training, boy. Doesn't know her place.'

The overseer took another look at Meg, then waved at the door. 'I'll take care of that,' he said. Two more red-tunicked men came through it; they took Meg away from the men who were holding her, and dragged her off between them, hauling her as if she were nothing more than a bag of worthless garbage.

By then, Meg had revived enough to be aware of what was happening. Shana's last sight and sound of her was seeing her pulled through the doorway, wailing, leaving a trail of blood smeared on the floor.

Shana looked up at the hard-faced blonde, then dropped her eyes quickly, as he looked down at her. She didn't even try to resist when he grabbed the back of her tunic and pulled her to her feet.

But there was one thing certain, as he shoved her ahead of him, so that her foot slipped in one of the bloodstains on the floor. She wasn't going to have to pretend to be unable to answer his questions.

She was too terrified to speak.

In the tiny anteroom, Kel confronted Lord Revenel's agent, seething with anger and ready to take the slightest excuse to order the man flogged out of the building. It was bad enough that this Ran character had frightened the wild girl right out of what few wits she had, but he'd walked into the slave barracks as if he owned them, beat a former concubine to death, and put the rest of the slaves into such a panic that now none of them would have anything to do with Shana.

That pretty much put an end to Kel's own hope that the girl would confide some clue to one of the other slaves. He had been hopeful that the concubine could get something out of her...and he knew Megwyn's type well. The promise of being taken out of the pens would be enough to make her willing to talk to him. The pledge of becoming his permanent mate...and he'd been promised one...would have pried out of her-everything she had heard from the girl's lips.

And she'd been a pretty thing too...more than that, she was trained. It wasn't often a bondling like Kel got a chance at a trained concubine, at least not as a mate.

But this fool had ruined the entire plan.

'I'd like to hear what you have to say for yourself,' he told the stone-faced blonde belligerently. 'You've killed a good piece of property, and you've ruined another. Lord Berenel told us to keep that girl safe, you fool! He didn't tell us to frighten her into feeblemindedness! You had the right to question her...question her, and no more than that. If your Lord's agent gets her at auction, then you can do what you like with her...but until then, she's the Lord's, dammit!'

The man shrugged, his blue tunic straining against muscles that rivaled Ardan's. 'The girl knows something,' he said, his jaw hardening. 'I tell you, she knows something. This idiot act of hers is just that...an act.'

Kel thought quickly. He wasn't certain what the man's rank was...but it was probably higher than his own. A confrontation would do no good.

But there still might be a way to turn disaster into some profit. As long as the man was convinced that the child was withholding information, he might well convince others. And that would drive up the girl's price, part of which would come to him. 'That may be true,' he growled. 'But you still had no right to even lay a hand on her. And you killed a skilled slave, a concubine! What do you intend to do about that?'

Ran raised a skeptical eyebrow. 'And just what was a trained concubine doing in the pens?' he drawled, plainly disbelieving Kel's words.

'She was a thief,' Kel said crisply, as he shoved the roster into the other man's hands. 'Look for yourself. Megwyn Karan, trained concubine, the property of Lord Berenel himself and given to Lord Jondar...sent here for theft. But that charge of theft doesn't negate the woman's training or her value. I had my eye on her, as a matter of fact.'

As he'd guessed, the man didn't know how to read. The blonde glanced at the list...which he held upside down...and shrugged again, but this time apologetically. 'I didn't know,' he said shortly. 'She acted like one of those house-slaves you get sometimes, who think they're bondlings. How much was she worth?'

Kel baldly quoted a figure that was double Megwyn's real price.

'I'll tell you what. I'll give you twice that,' Ran said, dropping his voice, and delivering the words in a confidential tone. 'That ought to make up for everything. You ought to be able to get another trained girl somewhere, maybe over across town at Lord Dyran's auctions. Tell her that her name's been changed to Megwyn Karan, and your Lord won't know the difference.'

Kel's head swam for a moment...and, for a moment, he was tempted to pocket the money...

But Lord Berenel was a decent master. And if he told the Lord about the payoff, Berenel's overseer would see to it that he didn't lose by the transaction.

'I'll do that,' he said, relaxing his stance just a little. Ran stretched his lips in what was probably supposed to be a smile, and slipped him a heavy little pouch.

'Thanks, friend,' he said. 'Glad you understand how it is.'

'Well, I hope you understand why I can't let you at the girl again,' Kel told him. 'I'm not supposed to let anyone talk to her more than twice, but after you scared the life out of her...'

'Aye, I understand,' the blonde said, albeit reluctantly. 'It'd be your skin. Guess that means I've got no second interview.'

'That's about it. Cheer up, there's always the auction.' Now that everything had been settled, Kel wanted the man to leave, badly. Those water-pale eyes gave him chills, and the cold, expressionless cast of the man's face didn't inspire much confidence either. He had the uneasy suspicion he was harboring a killer. A killer who enjoyed killing.

But it seemed that Ran was going to accept this particular defeat philosophically.

'True enough,' he said, with no inflection. The man turned away, and the slave at the door opened it quickly for him, the boy's eyes wide with terror. Ran smiled, and the boy nearly fainted.

The boy must have heard what happened to the woman. With an effort, Kel kept himself from shoving Ran out the door.

Ran looked back over his shoulder. 'My thanks,' he said curtly.

'Profit to your Lord.' Kel couldn't bring himself to wish the man himself well.

But Ran didn't seem to notice the lapse. 'And to yours.' And he walked out of the door, and hopefully, out of Kel's life.

Kel waited a few moments for Ran to clear the hallway, then headed straight for his own overseer.