There was a knock at the door. “What?” Kennit demanded.

Sorcor's voice sounded surprised. “I've brought you the prisoner, sir.”

It was all too much trouble. “Never mind,” he said faintly. “Etta already questioned him. I've no need of him anymore.”

Her clothing fell to the floor around her. She climbed into the bed carefully, easing her warmth up against him. He was suddenly so tired. Her skin was soft and warm, a balm.

“Captain Kennit?” Sorcor's voice was insistent, worried.

“Yes,” he acknowledged.

Sorcor jerked the door open. Behind him two sailors held up what remained of the captain of the Sicerna. They met their captain's eyes, then both gaped at him in amazement. Kennit turned his head to follow their gaze. Beside him in the bed, Etta held the blanket firmly below her naked shoulders and just above the slight curve of her breasts. The music from the deck came more loudly into the room. He turned his head back to the prisoner. Etta had more than blinded him. She had dismantled the man a bit at a time. Disgusting. He didn't want to look at that just now. But he had to keep up appearances. He cleared his throat. Get it over with.

“Prisoner. Did you tell my woman the truth?”

The wreckage between the two sailors lifted a ruined face towards his voice. “I swear I did. Over and over again. Why would I lie?” The man began to weep noisily. He snuffled oddly with his nostrils slit. “Please, good sir, don't let her at me no more. I told her the truth. I told her everything I knew.”

It suddenly seemed like too much trouble. The man had obviously lied to Etta and now he was lying to Kennit as well. The prisoner was useless. The pain from his leg was banging against the inside of Ken-nit's skull. “I'm . . . occupied.” He did not want to admit how exhausted he was simply from taking a bath and getting dressed. “Take care of him, Sorcor. However you see fit.” The meaning of his words was plain and the prisoner's voice rose in a howl of denial. “Oh. And shut the door on your way out,” Kennit further instructed him.

“Sar,” he heard a deckhand sigh as the door closed behind them and the wailing prisoner. “He's going at her already. Guess nothing keeps Captain Kennit down.”

Kennit turned very slightly toward the warmth of Etta's body. His eyes closed and he sank into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - VICISSITUDES

IT DIDN'T QUITE SEEM REAL UNTIL THEY LAID HANDS ON HIM. THE OLD KEEPER HE COULD PROBABLY HAVE fought off rather easily, but these were heavy middle-aged men, stolid and muscled and experienced in their work. “Let go of me!” Wintrow cried angrily. “My father is coming to get me. Let go!” Stupidly, he reflected later. As if simply telling them to let go would make them do it. It was one of the things he was to learn. Words from a slave's mouth meant nothing. His angry cries were no more intelligible to them than the braying of an ass.

They did things with his arm joints, twisting them so that he stumbled angrily in the direction they wished him to go. He had not quite got over his surprise at being seized when he found himself already pressed firmly up against the tattooist's block. “Be easy,” one of the men bid him gruffly as he jerked Wintrow's wrist shackles tight against a staple. Wintrow jerked back, hoping to pull free before the pin could be set, but he only took skin off his wrists. The pin was already set. As quickly as that they had him, hunched over, wrists chained close to his ankles. One of the men gave him a slight push and he nudged his own head into a leather collar set vertically on the block. The other man gave a quick tug on the leather strap that secured it a hair's-breadth short of choking him. As long as he didn't struggle, he could get enough air to breathe. Fettered as he was, it would have been hard to draw a deep breath. The collar about his neck made even his short panting breaths an effort that required attention. They had done it as efficiently as farmhands castrating calves, Wintrow thought foggily. The same expert callousness, the precise use of force. He doubted they were even sweating. “Satrap's sigil,” one said to the tattooist, and the man nodded and moved a wad of cindin in his cheek.

“My flesh was not made by me. I will not puncture it to bear jewelry, nor stain my skin, nor embed decoration into my visage. For I am a creation of Sa, made as I am intended to be. My flesh is not mine to write upon.” He had scarce breath enough to quote the holy writ as a whisper. But he spoke the words and prayed the man would hear them.

The tattooist spat to one side, spittle stained with blood. A hard addict, then, one who would indulge in the drug even when his mouth was raw with ulcers. “T'ain't my flesh to mark either,” he exclaimed with dim humor. “It's the Satrap's. Now, his sigil I could do blindfolded. You hold still, it goes faster and smarts less.”