Xantcha sniffed loudly; when it came to contempt, she'd learned all the tricks before the first boatload of refugees struck the Efuan Pincar shore. She'd also yawned out her armor before she'd ridden up to the gate. The Red- Stripes were in for a surprise if they drew their swords against her.

Good sense prevailed. They let her pass, though Xantcha figured to keep an eye for her back. Even with a sword, a slight, beardless youth in too-fine clothes was a tempting target, especially when the nearest protectors were also the likeliest predators.

Xantcha followed the widening streets until they brought her to a plaza, where artisans and farmers hawked produce from wagons. She gave the horse to the farmer with the largest wagon in exchange for black bread and dried fruit. He asked how an unbearded swordsman came to be peddling a nag in Medran-town. Xantcha recited her made-up tale. The farmer wasn't surprised that Shratta would have slain her purported companions.

"The more wealth a man has, the less the Shratta believe him when he says he abides by the book. Strange, though, that they'd risk a party as large as the one your uncle had assembled. Were me, I'd suspect the men he'd hired weren't what they'd said they were."

Xantcha shrugged cautiously. "I'm sure my uncle thought the same ... before they killed him." Then, because the

farmer seemed more world-wise than the villagers, she tempted him with a thought that had nagged her from the beginning. "He'd hired Red-Stripes. Thought it would keep us safe. Shratta never attack men with Red Stripes on their tunics."

The farmer took her bait, but not quite the way she expected. "The Red-Stripes don't bother the Shratta where they live, and the Shratta usually return the favor. But where there's wealth to be taken, every man's a target, especially to the ..." He fingered the hem of his own tunic. "I won't speak ill of your dead, but it's a fool who trusts in stripes or colors."

Xantcha walked away from the wagon, thinking that it might be better to get out of Medran immediately. She was headed toward a different gate than the one she'd entered when she spotted a knot of men and women, huddled in the shade of a tavern. With a second glance Xantcha saw the bonds at their necks, wrists, and ankles. Prisoners, she thought, then corrected herself, slaves.

She hadn't seen slaves the last time she visited Efuan Pincar, nor had she seen any in the beleaguered villages, but it was a rare realm, a rarer world that didn't cultivate slavery in one of its many forms. Xantcha took a breath and kept walking. She could see that a swaybacked horse found a good home, but there was nothing she could do for the slaves.

Xantcha continued walking, one step, another ... misery stopped her before she took a third. Looking back over her shoulder, she caught the eyes of a slave who stared at her as if his condition were indeed her responsibility. Though they were at least a hundred paces apart, Xantcha saw that the slave was a dark-haired young man.

I asked my husband's brother how he'd come to lead the Fallaji horde, Kayla had written in The Antiquity Wars. Mishra replied that he was their slave, not their leader. He laughed and added that I, too, was a slave to my people, but his eyes were haunted as he laughed, and there were scars around his wrists.

In all the times Xantcha had read that passage, she'd followed Una's lead and blamed Phyrexia for Mishra's scars and bitterness. But the Fallaji had been a slave-keeping folk, and looking across the Medran plaza, Xantcha suddenly believed that Mishra had told Kayla a simple, unvarnished truth.

Xantcha believed as well that she'd found her Mishra. With Urza's armor still around her, she strode over to the tavern.

"Are they spoken for?" she asked the only unchained man she saw, a balding man with a eunuch's unfinished face.

He wasn't in charge, but after a bow he scurried into the tavern to fetch his master, who proved to be a giant of a woman, garbed, like Xantcha, in men's clothing, though in the slave master's case, the effect was intimidation rather than disguise.

"They're bound for Almaaz," the slave master said. Her breath was thick with beer, but she wasn't nearly drunk. "You know it's against the law to sell flesh here."

By her posture, the slaver was right about the law and ripe for negotiation.

"I have Morvern gold," Xantcha said, which was true enough; money was never a problem for a planeswalker or his companion.

The slave master hawked and spat. "Mug's getting warm."

Xantcha thought fast. "For ransom, then. I recognize a distant cousin in your coffle. You've kept him safe, no doubt. I'll pay you for your trouble and take him off your hands."

"Him!" The slaver laughed until she belched.

There were women in the slave string, and Xantcha was disguised as a young and presumably curious man.

"A cousin," Xantcha repeated, showing more anxiety than she felt. Let the slaver laugh and think what she wanted. Xantcha had the other woman's attention, and she'd have the slave, too. "For ransom." She unslung her purse and fished out a gold coin as big as her nose.

"Five of those," the slaver said, smashing her open hand between Xantcha's shoulder blades. "For ransom!"

If she were truly in the market for a slave, Xantcha would have protested that no one was worth five golden nari, but she'd been prepared to split twelve of the heavy Morvern coins between a likely youth and his family. She dug out another four and handed them over to the slaver, who bit each one. Xantcha knew the coins were true but was relieved when they passed the slaver's test.

"Which one's your cousin?"

Xantcha pointed to the dark-haired youth, who didn't blink under scrutiny. The slaver, whose eyebrows remained resolutely skeptical, shook her head.

"Pick another relative, boy. That one will eat you alive."

"Blood's blood," Xantcha insisted, "and ours is the same. I won't leave with another."

"Garve!" the slaver shouted the eunuch to her side. She held out her hand, and Garve surrendered a slender black rod. The slaver took it and turned back to Xantcha. "Another nari. You're going to need this."

Would ancient Ashnod be pleased by the all the improvements Dominarian slavers and torturers had brought to her pain-inflicting artifacts in the centuries since her death? Xantcha bought the thing, if only to keep the slaver or Garve from ever using it again.

"Cut him out," the slaver told Garve and added, while Garve walked among the slaves, "Have fun, boy."

"I intend to," Xantcha assured her, then watched as Garve seized the leather band around the youth's neck and jerked him roughly to his feet.

Garve gave the band a vicious twist, so it choked the youth and kept him quiet while the eunuch snapped the rivets that bound

Xantcha's new slave to the others. The youth's face became red. His eyes rolled.

"I want him alive," Xantcha warned in a low voice, that promised her threats were as good as her gold.

Her new slave dropped to one knee when Garve suddenly released him. Hacking spittle, he got himself upright before the eunuch touched him again. Riveted leather manacles bound his wrists close behind his back; he couldn't clean his lightly bearded chin. A short iron chain ran between his ankles. He could walk, barely, but not run.

As he came closer, watching his feet, Xantcha counted the sores and bruises she hadn't noticed while he was staring.

Xantcha hadn't been comfortable owning a horse; she didn't know what she'd do with a slave. The thought of grabbing the arm's length of leather hanging from the band around his neck repelled her, though that was what everyone, including the youth, expected her to do.