“I’m glad somebody will be enjoying the day,” Jake muttered as he rubbed at his neck with one hand, not in the least pleased to find that they wouldn’t be leaving as soon as he’d hoped they would. “So what are we supposed to do while we wait? Sit and watch the rain come down like Gordi?”

“I don’t know about you, but I could use some exercise,” Tandro responded as he got to his feet. “I don’t usually mind having nothing to do, but something tells me we’d be fools to sit around with our feet up.”

“Because until we speak to Gordi we’ll still be targets,” Jake agreed with a nod. “That’s a good point, so I’ll definitely be joining you in getting that exercise. And before I forget, how’s the girl doing? Has her stomach settled down, or is she still feeling shaky?”

“I’m not really sure how she’s feeling,” Tandro answered, disturbance flickering briefly in his eyes. “I made her eat something before she slept last night, and she didn’t seem to have any trouble holding it down. When she woke up this morning I asked her how she was doing, and she assured me she was fine. She also ate all the cereal in the bowl while I had breakfast, but there’s something … different about her now. She didn’t say a word until I spoke to her, then she answered briefly and to the point. All without looking at me even once.”

“She’s probably still frightened about what she saw yesterday,” Jake told the other man with a clap to his shoulder, for some reason getting the impression that Tandro needed reassuring. “Once the memory fades a little more she’ll most likely be back to the way she was, so my advice would be to enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts.”

“Most likely you’re right,” Tandro said after taking a deep breath to help him shake off the dark mood he’d almost fallen into. “By the time lunch is served she’ll be all ready to tell me how I ought to share my food with her, so let’s go and find that exercise. Even if we aren’t attacked again, the effort won’t be a waste.”

Jake agreed with a chuckle, and the two of them left the common room, Tandro locking the door behind them. If they’d been on another world they probably would have had to go downstairs to find what they were looking for, but on Oliven the men didn’t want to be constantly trudging up and down stairways. For that reason the only things to be found on the ground floor were the entrance lobby with its registration desk, and the stable.

The rooms on the second floor, most of them suites rather than single rooms, were arranged around the outside of the wide half circle the hostel had been formed into. That left the center of the floor and the front part of the hostel for other things, latticed walls separating the different sections. Jake knew that the third floor had mostly single rooms, with a couple of doubled suites in case a really large party came in that didn’t want to have separate accommodations. There were guest-convenient arrangements up there as well, so the only people on the second floor were those who had rooms here.

“As you can see, the kitchens are over there,” Tandro said as they walked, nodding toward what would be the front of the hostel. “The lattice lets guests see the food being prepared, so they don’t have to guess about what they’re being given.”

Jake nodded to acknowledge the information, at the same time seeing something besides food being prepared. One of the female slaves was bent over holding to a low wooden frame of some kind while a woman who, by the clothing she wore showing she was free, used a switch on the slave’s backside. The slave danced and writhed and squirmed every time the switch struck her, but she made no noise Jake could hear and also made no effort to let go of the wooden frame.

“Now, that’s a sight you don’t often see,” Tandro said, obviously looking at the same thing Jake was. “The slaves who work in this hostel tend to go out of their way not to do something that will get them switched, so that slave must be either very clumsy, very stupid, or very unlucky.”

“I can understand their not wanting to be switched,” Jake said, having no trouble seeing the red lines left by the switch strokes on the girl’s bottom. “After that she won’t want to do a lot of moving around, but I can’t picture the ones in charge of her letting her lie around until the pain eases up.”

“The situation is a bit worse for the girl than that,” Tandro responded, his voice as calm and even as ever. “All the slaves in this place are kept under strict discipline, which means they get three strokes of the switch in the morning before breakfast, in the afternoon before lunch, and in the evening before supper. They’re also made to sit down to those meals, which gives them even more of a reason to avoid doing anything that will get them punished. A full switching on top of the discipline is more painful than it would otherwise be, and getting switched for something during the day doesn’t excuse the slave from being given any of the strokes of discipline that come afterward.”

“Ouch,” Jake couldn’t help saying softly, flinching inwardly as the switch kept landing on the poor girl’s behind. “It takes a real sadist to make an arrangement like that, and I can’t help wondering if the sadism was there before slavery became so widespread.”

“You think having slaves encourages sadism?” Tandro asked, clearly seeing Jake’s point. “What makes you believe that?”

“The fact that the paddling I gave my own slave last night was harder and lasted longer than I’d intended it to when I started,” Jake answered, needing to mention aloud what had been eating at the back of his mind. “When you can do anything you like to the girl you bought, the unusual freedom seems to encourage … excess.”

“Right now that’s probably a good thing rather than a bad one,” Tandro said, his voice lower than it had been. “If our enemies find out about what you did they’ll be confused, and confusing him is the best thing you can do to an enemy aside from killing him. If we don’t have any more attackers sent after us, you won’t find me complaining.”

Jake lost no time agreeing with that sentiment, and as he and Tandro turned away from the lattice wall they saw the guard captain they’d spoken to the day before, coming up the stairs. The captain saw them at the same time and headed for them without hesitation.

Captain Sovri joined Jake and Tandro in walking to a couch, then he took off the hooded rain cape he wore before sitting down. Under the cape he had a map tucked into his knife belt, and once the map was spread out on the low table near the couch he had Tandro point out the area where the four bodies had been left. Once that was done to his satisfaction, Sovri refolded the map and tucked it away again.

“Thank you for your help, men,” he said as he stood up and started to get back into the rain cape. “Now once the rain stops I’ll be able to send out some men to retrieve what’s left of those attackers. If we can identify any of them, we might be able to figure out who sent them. In the meantime three of the horses showed up this morning when the gate was opened. Since there was nothing on any of the horses to identify their owners, the horses were sold to one of the town’s merchants. Half the proceeds of the sale goes to the town, and the other half will be sent here this afternoon for you two. In case you didn’t know, there’s a bounty on assassins around here.”

Jake joined Tandro in thanking the captain, then the two stood and watched the guard leader leave. Once the man was gone, Jake chuckled.

“Now I’m even more glad we killed those assassins,” Jake said softly to a pleased-looking Tandro. “Putting a bounty on assassins is a good idea to discourage men from taking up the trade, but how do they know that the body they’re being offered really is an assassin?”

“When it’s a matter of four against two and the two report the incident as soon as they get to town, there are probably very few doubts,” Tandro answered. “In other cases they might have had to execute a claimant or two for murder before the false reports stopped coming in, or maybe they just question the claimants very thoroughly before allowing the claim. Whatever they do, they seem satisfied with the results.”