A big, burly slave named Xeno taught me hand combat. He was patient and coaxed me along when I was so black and blue that it hurt even to clench my fist. He said he wouldn’t go easy just because I was inexperienced. But I knew he could have snapped me like a twig, and that he truly did hold back when things got too hard. He wore one of the iron collars, too-all the slaves had to wear them. I wanted to ask Xeno how he got to be a slave, but like all the slaves he was not allowed to speak beyond our business. All the slaves were afraid all of the time, even one so strong as Xeno.

My riding master was called Murn, and he was like Calador-not a slave. Like Calador he wore a gold earring and had eyes that prickled your skin when you looked at them. He wasn’t quite so nasty as the swordmaster, but then I was a better rider than I was a swordsman. The problem with Murn was that I always came to him last in the day, and it didn’t matter if I was bleeding from sword fighting or bruised from hand combat, he never changed his lesson at all. Some days I was so tired I couldn’t stay on the horse when we were practicing jumps, or even control the beasts, they were so wild. It seemed like I spent half the riding time sprawled out on the ground. Murn shook his head and said that was just too bad. My technique needed to improve.

It felt good to fight and train, though. After only two weeks I had grown stronger and faster than I ever had been in my life. And no one bothered me about dressing properly or dancing lessons or being polite. This was just what I had always wanted.

Thousands of soldiers were camped around the fortress. At night you could see their fires dotted all over the plains like stars that had fallen out of the sky. In the daytime they marched and drilled and fought with each other, looking like ants there were so many. They were allowed to fight to the death in their training, which was never done in Leire. Sometimes they marched crowds of people-slaves and servants-out onto the plains and made them play the part of the enemy. They killed lots of them. On almost every day I saw bodies thrown onto piles and burned. Some days I just saw and smelled the nasty smoke that hung over the desert. You didn’t have to be in Ce Uroth very long before you knew that the Lords of Zhev’Na were at war with somebody.

One day after I had lived in Zhev’Na for several weeks, my swordmaster Calador came to watch my hand-combat training. Xeno was teaching me how to disable an opponent without damaging him permanently. As our practice progressed, Calador’s face turned red and angry. After a while, he called Xeno over and commanded him to kneel down. Xeno did so, which looked strange since Xeno was about twice Calador’s size. “What are you are doing here, slave?”

“I’m teaching the young master hand combat as I was commanded, Swordmaster.”

“You are teaching him to be killed.”

“No, begging your pardon, Swordmaster. I am teaching him how to survive, how to deal with attackers that are larger or stronger or quicker, how to disarm them with guile.”

“Leaving an opponent undamaged will allow the opponent an opportunity to take revenge on the young Lord. His enemies are unmatched in their wiles and cannot be dealt with in such a fashion. You are implanting weakness, setting him up to be killed.”

“Swordmaster, it was never my intent to-”

“Tell me, slave, who is your master?”

Sweat dripped down Xeno’s wide face. It was not from fighting with me. “Who but the Lords of Zhev’Na, Swordmaster?”

Calador curled his lip and laid his hand on Xeno’s slave collar. Xeno suddenly looked pale and sick, and began shaking like he was horribly cold or afraid. Calador stuck his face right up to Xeno’s, still pressing on the collar. “I do not think you answer me, slave. Can we be a little more clear?”

“No other answer is possible, Swordmaster.” Xeno was gasping and choking, his face almost purple, as if the collar were choking him.

“Tell me again, slave, and this time we shall be precise. Speak the name of your master.”

Xeno straightened his back, and even though he was still shaking, sweating, and purple, his voice was loud and clear. “I call no man my master save the true Lord of Avonar, the Heir of mighty D’Arnath, the Prince D’Natheil, may he reign in peace and glory until the Wastes are restored and the Darkness is forever banished from the worlds.”

Xeno did not scream until the last word was out, even though Calador opened his belly so wide that the slave had to hold in his entrails with his huge hands. Then they all spilled out, and he toppled into the dirt. Dead.

Calador put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me back a few steps. “I knew it! This stinking dog was assuredly planning to kill you.”

Though it was a bit frightening to know how close I had come to death, I had a difficult time thinking of Xeno as a servant of the evil Prince. He certainly didn’t look dangerous, all spread out in the pool of blood and entrails. Calador sent me in for an early supper while slaves were summoned to clean up the mess. But in truth, I couldn’t eat for the rest of that day.

Harres, my new hand-combat master, was not a slave, but a warrior like Calador and Mum. He was very strict and came near twisting me in knots. One day I was slow to get up after he had pinned me to the sand for the twentieth time in an hour. My arm felt like it was half torn off. My face was scraped and raw from the hot sand. And my side had a cramp that kept me from getting a full breath, even if I could have done so in the afternoon heat.

“I said, repeat the move,” screamed Harres. “You’ll never get it right if you don’t work at it.”

“I can’t,” I said, barely able to get up on my hands and knees.

“Do you want me to coddle you like the slave did?”

“No, of course not.” But I didn’t understand why Harres couldn’t go just a little slower like Xeno had. Truly I was making progress.

Harres grabbed my sore arm and yanked me to my feet. “Let me show you what your ‘easy’ master wanted to do to you, what your enemies want to do to you.”

He marched me through the fortress, past the barracks, the servants’ courtyard, and the slave pens, to a long low building made of sand blocks. If I hadn’t already vomited up my breakfast that morning during sword practice, the stink in that building would have made me do so. Harres dragged me through the open doorway, past a line of empty wooden carts, each with a slave chained to the handles. The slaves were just sitting there, hot and dirty and scared-looking, waiting for something to be put in the carts. Beyond the carts were several wooden platforms and some big crates, with more slaves working busily around them. At first I thought other people were sleeping on the platforms, but when I saw one of the workers cutting the hair off of the body on the platform, I realized that the body was dead.

At another platform, a slave was tugging a boot off of another dead person. He dropped the boot in one of the crates and pulled off the next boot. He was starting to pull off the dead man’s breeches, when Harres kicked him. “Here, slave,” said Harres, “look here.”

The slave waved his arms around his head, as if Harres was hitting him in the head. Harres had to yell at him again and kick him several more times before the man dropped to his knees and spread his arms out as slaves were supposed to do. The slave was a young man who looked very fit and strong, but one look at his face told me that only his body was fit. His mouth hung open and strings of spit dribbled onto his filthy tunic. His tongue seemed too big for his mouth and kept sliding this way and that. And his eyes… they were terrible. Empty in a way much worse than the warriors. And wickedly scared. He wasn’t thinking about being scared like other slaves. He was scared as if he was going to be scared forever.

Harres yanked at the slave’s short hair, slapped his cheek, and poked at his shoulder. The slave flinched and moaned, drooling and trying to shrink up into a ball. “This man was chosen to be your hand-combat trainer, young Lord. He was intelligent and obedient, his body superbly qualified as you can see. We thought him well suited to teaching-a good use of a slave. But we have discovered that this Xeno befriended him in secret, promising to help this fellow escape. When this young slave tried to report Xeno, as was proper, your kind tutor tortured him and left him hike this, leaving himself in the position to be appointed your tutor instead.” Harres pushed the slave with his foot until the man fell over in the sand at my feet. A big wave of stink made me step back; the slave had fouled himself. “Was this the fate Xeno had in mind for you? If you are like this, then his master, the Dar’Nethi prince, has nothing to fear from your revenge. Remember, young Lord. You can trust no one in the worlds. No one.”

I shivered, even though it was blazing hot.

“Back to work now.”

After a few more kicks, the slave, covered in spit and sand and filth, crawled over to the dead body and started tugging at its breeches again.

Even with the hard training and the ugly and unpleasant things, I liked living in Zhev’Na. My house was fine. I had my own things to use as I pleased and could eat only the food I wanted. The Lords and their warriors protected me from D’Natheil and the other Dar’Nethi who wished to make me like that awful drooling slave. And they treated me like a man and not a baby. I knew that the taunting was only to make me harder and better, and outside of my lessons, everyone left me alone. Best of all, I was too busy and too tired to think about sorcery.

The slave Sefaro ran my house-they called it the “Gray House.” He laid out whatever clothes I needed and had my meals brought to my sitting room when I said I wanted it that way. The dining room downstairs seemed awfully big just for me. Every moment I was not training or eating, I slept. I dreamed a lot about Papa and Lucy. Xeno was in my dreams, too, holding his belly together so his entrails wouldn’t leak out, along with that drooling slave that could have been me. And I kept dreaming those things about Comigor that were more real than life. Every morning when I woke up, I wanted to go right back to training. I was determined to be as good as Papa-better-because then I could kill the prince that murdered him and caused all this trouble.