The Spehari crossed the room and picked up the book.
“Ah. A History of the Spehari Unification,” he read off the title. “I have read it, boy. The author downplays even more than you think.”
“What, you were there?” Teer snapped.
“About half of all living Spehari were,” Karn confirmed. “They don’t die of old age, boy.”
“My name is Teer,” the young Merik snapped. “And you’re not helping your people’s case here.”
Karn spread his hands wide in apology.
“That’s fair, Teer,” he allowed. “Now, if I call you by your name, will you tell me why you hate the Spehari so much?”
“Because the Unity is lying, betraying garbage and it is the child of your people,” Teer growled.
“That sounds like it has a very specific source, Teer,” the Spehari told him. “Tell me.”
Teer felt a moment of pressure on his mind, purple light swirling around the book in Karn’s hands as he spoke. He glared back at the man, almost biting his tongue to remain silent despite a sudden urge to speak.
The purple light faded and Karn put the book down as he studied Teer with an odd look.
“What are you, Teer?” he asked softly. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose, beyond that you’re a stubborn young man who doesn’t seem to want help.”
“You can’t help me,” Teer muttered. “No one can. Fifty days in a cell, then the Magistrate hangs me.”
“Tell me,” Karn repeated. There was no magic this time, no attempt to force Teer to reveal his secrets. Just the soft urging of a man who apparently truly wanted to know.
“My da was drafted for the war against the Sunset Rebellion,” Teer said numbly, staring at the wall again. “He died. My ma got the pension from the local offices for about two seasons, then a Spehari auditor said there was no proof her husband had ever been a soldier for the Unity. Something had happened to the paperwork, and without the paperwork, the office couldn’t pay the pension.”
The cell was silent. For the first time since Karn had cast his spell, Teer realized it went both ways. He couldn’t hear anything from outside the cell, either—some of the motes of orange light covered the window too when he looked up.
“May the Pillars curse them,” Karn muttered. “They couldn’t keep faith with us, but they should have kept faith with you.”
Teer was confused again—and this time, he understood the words Karn was using.
“Few fates are set in iron until they’re done,” the Spehari finally told him. “Yours is not one of them. Do you understand me, Teer?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Your name is not carved on tablets of prophecy. Your death is not foreordained. There is a way out of the trap you have created for yourself. You have a choice, but I will not lie to you. The life I can offer you is not an easy one or a free one.
“I can offer you life, Teer, but it is a Spehari’s bargain,” Karn concluded. He gestured to the book he’d put back on the bed. “From how far you’ve made it in that book, you know what that means.”
A Spehari’s bargain. A bargain that had traps that weren’t clear, that favored one side over the other…a bargain that would give you what you wanted but would never tell you the price.
Many of the Merik tribes had made bargains with the Spehari invaders. They’d accepted Spehari rule and become the first members of the Unity, gaining gunpowder and machinery and the power to defeat their foes.
In exchange, they had become merely the best-treated class of slaves. It was Merik soldiers and Merik blood who had forged the Unity for the Spehari, always a second class, always followers. Richer and in better health than ever before, both conquered and conqueror…but never free.
A Spehari’s bargain.
“Why would you even care?” Teer demanded. “Why should I trust you?”
“If you trust me at all, Teer, let it be because I have no reason to care,” the Spehari said with a chuckle. “You are a curiosity to me, nothing more. If I leave you to hang, I will have pangs of guilt for a tenday or two, and then I will mostly forget you ever existed.
“But it is not my way to embrace unnecessary death. A wise man once told me to do what needs to be done and no more. Hanging you is far more than needs to be done.” He shrugged. “So, I offer a bargain that cannot be fully explained but will save your life.”
“My other choice is to be hung over a wardstone,” Teer whispered in defeat. “My death would fuel the ward for, what, a turning?”
“Give or take,” Karn told him. “I cannot tell you all of the prices of what I am offering you. Not yet. Some, not ever. But…”
Red and purple light flickered above the Spehari’s hand.
“There is a class of individual that Wardkeeper Komo cannot hold prisoner without the direct order of a Spehari Magistrate,” the Spehari continued. “A Bondservant of House Morais is outside his authority, answerable only to myself or the Master of my House.
“Such a bond cannot be undone,” Karn warned him. “I would claim your life as my own, as the Right of Retribution allows, and you would be as much my slave as my servant. I will not do it without your permission.”
He shook his head.
“From what I have sensed of your mind already, I could not do it without your willing submission. I do not know what I will do with a Bondservant,” he concluded with a chuckle, “but that strikes me as a better problem for you than this one.
“So, answer me this, Teer: are you prepared to become my Bondservant, bound to me by magic and oath until the day you die?”
“I have no choice,” Teer said, repeating his earlier thought. He rose from the bed for the first time since Karn had come in and studied the other man. “I won’t say I’m eager to be a slave, but I am even
