Twenty-Nine looked over to the left shoulder of his friend, at the word that had been branded into his skin. Talis. He had no idea what it meant, but he believed it to be from a long-lost language his father had told him of, something he had called "Old Eutracian." His father and his father's father had all handed down tales of a mysterious, beautiful language, now long since abandoned.

The same word had been branded into the left shoulder of almost every oarsman just before they were forced to board the vessel at the coastal city of Farpoint. The rest were marked with a slightly different word: R'talis. He had no idea what either word meant.

Pulling on his oar, he glanced down at the aisle dividing the rows of slaves. Latticed gates lay flush in the floor, held fast with huge iron padlocks. They led to the lower decks, where still more slaves-men as well as women-were held.

At the docks, the women and the men had been herded together. Twenty-Nine had been puzzled to see that they were all about the same age: somewhere between thirty and thirty-five Seasons of New Life. Then, after a small quantity of their blood had been taken, they had been branded. Those given the designation R'talis had been carefully boarded first and were treated marginally better. For example, he had never seen an R'talis forced to toil at the oars.

Lost in thought, he let his mind drift just a bit too long. Before he realized that his pull on the oar had slackened slightly, the knotted nine-tails came whistling out of nowhere.

Snapping loudly, its leather straps seared their way into the naked skin of Twenty-Nine's back, making him scream. Trying to regain his focus, he screamed again, perhaps more loudly than was truly warranted.

It was good enough for the bleeder with the whip. Apparently satisfied, the creature turned his white, opaque eyes to someone else, weapon arm raised.