Felamo Panaki looked up from a document he was working on when Saul entered. Fel was a short, slender man with a perpetually dour expression, and that expression did not change when he saw who his visitor was.

"Well?" he asked shortly.

Saul untied the satchel and dumped the box out onto the man's desk. Fel examined it briefly and then set it down. "And the woman?"

Saul went back to the door and waved them up, and Rhodos and Vidon brought their two captives up the stairs and dropped them unceremoniously on the floor. The noblewoman was spitting curses at him. Fel looked them over as critically as he had examined the box and then nodded.

"Excellent," he said without enthusiasm and rose from his desk to disappear into the back room. When he returned he had three large pouches and he placed these on the desk next to the box. "Half now," he said. "Where are you staying?"

"The Signet."

Two of the men dumped them on the floor in the agent's office, and she was busy glaring at him when she noticed the box on his desk. It took a moment before she realized what it was, and then her eyes grew wide. It was her box; at least, it looked exactly like the one Varn had given her to run, but that didn't make any sense at all. The battle had been too brief for the mercenaries to search through everything on the caravan, and even then they probably wouldn't have found it. She had hidden it too well. Then she remembered the long period of time before the fighting had begun, when Cale retreated to his camel before returning to the mercenaries, and--

The captain's voice interrupted her train of thought, and her attention snapped back to him. He took the pouches of money from off the agent's desk, and walked out without even so much as a glance at her. She forgot about the box in her renewed tirade, but he did not notice, and soon she was left with Devona and the agent.

Devona said nothing, and the agent seemed wholy uninterested in them. It wasn't more than a few minutes before two men entered the office, and the agent directed them to carry her and the other woman into a back room. She fought them too, cursing even louder, but they just put them in a wicker cage and locked it before leaving.

"Malorik, please," she said urgently. "You must be silent or they will know you by your speech. Let me speak for you." Malorik lapsed into an angry silence, and Devona squeezed her hand briefly. "We are almost free," she whispered. "Trust me, say nothing and all will be well."

There were footsteps on the wooden floor in the other room and then the scrape of a key in the lock. The door swung open and Devona craned her neck to see. The first person to enter was the agent, and the second was a man she did not recognize. The third was a woman, and one look at her face and Devona dropped her eyes to the floor. The response was too ingrained not to obey, and she watched their feet approach, the agent's cloth shoes and the woman's boots of soft grey leather. The other man stayed near the door.

Devona knew this woman, and when the agent unlocked her cage she crawled out of her own accord and knelt on the floor in front of the woman's boots, her body folded at the waist and her hands on either side of her head.

The man hit her across the back of the head, and her eyes narrowed, but she didn't make a sound. She glared up at the woman, and knew she was facing a real noble, a Suna noble. If anything, it only made her angrier that it had been necessary for her to pretend to be such a thing, and her gaze never wavered as the noblewoman looked down at her.

She was being sized up, like something on display, looked over for flaws and critiqued on its appearance. Finally the noblewoman spoke. "You are not my sister's daughter," she said, and Mal said nothing. She wished to look to Devona, at least for some sign of what she should do, but then the woman stepped closer and took the necklace that Devona had given her into her fingertips.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, in that accent Mal had learned since childhood to hate, and she did not hold her tongue this time. Instead, she gave a challenging smile.

"She's a Southland brat and she knows nothing," the woman said to her servant in Suna. "Sell her." The man relayed this information to the agent, and Devona listened to them put Malorik into another cage. She was too alarmed to give more than cursory concern to Malorik's fate.

"My man brought you the women you asked for," the agent said without emotion in Brindian. "He will be paid."

"Your man is blind and stupid," she replied in kind directly to the agent, "but perhaps this slave will be enough." The grey boots came to stand in front of her. "Sit up, slave," said the woman in Suna.

Devona brought herself up to sit on her heels but kept her head bowed. The woman put a gloved hand under her chin and pulled it up, and Devona kept her eyes downcast but it did no good.

"I know this one," she said curiously to her companion. "One of Imaret's. What are you called, slave?"

"This one is called Devona, mistress," she replied obsequiously.

"Look at me, Devona," the woman commanded, and Devona met her eyes. The woman looked painfully like Imaret, but her features were sharper and her eyes had more of a tilt, and Devona did not like looking into them. "Where is the girl Raspeth?"

Devona did not have to feign her frightened look. "The girl is dead, mistress," she said as evenly as possible.

The woman was unmoved. "Of course she is," she said without inflection and released Devona's chin. Devona dropped her head and the woman switched back to Brindian to speak with the agent. "We will take this one. Dispose of the other one and deliver the gold she brings."

"That will take time, Lady Tilume," the agent said in a warning tone. "This is not Sunan. Slaving is not encouraged here."

"That is your concern, not mine," she replied. "I will take this one now. You may pay your man as we agreed." The woman's companion knelt and cut the ropes from Devona's ankles and hauled her to her feet. The circulation returning made it painful but Devona stood without complaint. She spared a quick glance to Malorik's slumped-over form. The woman was conscious but seemed stunned, her eyelids fluttering weakly.

The noblewoman snapped the chain of the necklace, and Malorik had time to do little more than blink before the man hit her again. It was hard enough that she pitched forward, and when her temple impacted with the floor, everything went black.

It was dark and then light and then somewhere in between, and the world swam in and out of focus behind her eyes. She could hear talking, some she understood and some she didn't, and the combination of words made her confused. It wasn't until after they had all gone, leaving her alone, that she realized she was back in the cage. Her hands and feet had long since gone numb, but she managed to sit up despite the pain in her head, and tried to take stock of what was happening.

There was not much to understand. She was captured, and soon they would do something with her, and Malorik would not like whatever it was. That, at least, was simple enough.

The agent's men returned some time later, and she was too despondent to do more than curse half-heartedly at them. They took her from the cage, slung her over a horse, and took her to another place. This one had cages, too. She kicked a little when they tried to lock her up, mostly out of habit, but one of the men slapped her and shut the door in her face anyway.

Now another man came, and Malorik was tired of this constant stream of new people to hate. He asked her to put her hands and feet near the cage doors, and she did so obediently, without a word. Surprisingly, he cut the bonds around her ankles, and retied the ones on her wrists more comfortably, so that she could actually feel her fingers again. Then he slid a small bowl with rations through the bars, and left her alone.

It was boring in this new place. There were other cages, and other people, but no one was much in a mood to talk with her. She finally managed to pry the information out of one woman that they were here to be sold, and then she stopped asking questions. Sometimes, Malorik decided, it was better to stay silent and not know the answers.

A day passed, then two, though it was difficult to tell. Mostly she counted time by the rotation of men who came to bring meals, but it was often irregular and made it hard to determine day or night. All she could rely on was that time was passing, and that held little comfort.

Sometime during that second day they brought Devona in. Mal didn't recognize her at first; her head was bowed and she was wearing something new, a long-sleeved shift that covered everything but her face and hands. She was at the door to her cage in an instant, calling Devona's name urgently, but even after the woman was placed in her own cell, she did not look up at her.

The knock came again and he sat up. His head was full of some vile semi-liquid substance that burned as it tried to escape, and he groaned and tried to remember where and who he was. The infernal knock sounded a third time and Saul lurched to his feet and stumbled to the door so he could open it a crack. Through it he could see Rhodos, looking annoyingly sober and collected.

"What?"

"The runner came by this morning, Saul. He says Fel wants to see you today."

Saul shut the door without saying anything and rested his forehead on the rough wood. There was a nasty taste in his mouth, and he made for the pitcher of water and bowl that stood next to his bed and poured water, drank a little and washed his face.

He had agreed with Rhodos and Vidon to pay Tatchi and Wexx their full share of the profits immediately and wait for their own in order to be rid of the plainsmen, but even so had found themselves with more money than they could easily spend. Vidon's despondency had returned once they were settled in, and Saul had taken the younger man under his wing, gotten him thoroughly drunk and put him to bed with a proper woman, a young, pretty girl who nevertheless knew enough to pretend a little innocence. Saul paid her well out of his own share and then set about following Vidon's example.

He'd gotten as far as the drink and found he wanted nothing else. It had been a bad journey, and he drank until Rhodos intervened. He hazily remembered making it back to his room with the other man's help and calling Rhodos by Laro's name when he thanked him. He remembered fumbling through an apology and shutting the door, and then the knocking.

He braced himself and poured the rest of the water over his head. Saul was still warm from the bed, and the water felt colder than it really was and helped to wake him up. The burning mess inside his head cooled a bit, and Saul felt alive enough to locate and pull on his clothing. It was clean now, and it went a good way toward compensating for the state of his head.

Rhodos and Vidon were waiting downstairs, and Vidon was in a peaceably foul mood that made Saul forget his head. If Vidon could complain so about his head and still smile to himself when he thought no one was looking then he was doing well.

Thanks to Rhodos, their horses were already saddled and waiting. They rode at an easy pace to Fel's, and by the time they got there Saul was feeling considerably better. The others waited by the horses while Saul went inside to collect the rest of their pay.

His transient good mood soured abruptly when he saw that they were not alone. Standing next to Fel was a tall, thin man wearing dark green robes and a scowl. Fel himself looked irritated, but not with Saul. The box Saul had brought lay open and empty on the desk.

The man in the robes wasted no time. "This is not the box we sent you for," he said angrily. Saul's face darkened, and Fel interceded. "You sent him for a puzzle box you believed to be on Alaran Cale's caravan," he said impassively. "That is what he brought you, and that is what you paid for." Saul noted the past tense of the word paid and relaxed a little when the man did not argue the point.

Fel turned to Saul and Saul stiffened again. There was a fiscal gleam in Fel's eye, and Saul grimaced. "Naturally, we would like to assist him in collecting the correct box, provided that he can offer more explicit information," said Fel smoothly. "This box is apparently exactly identical - except for its contents, of course. It appears that it left Guildsport around the same time the caravan did, but in the hands of a pair of foreign couriers - a woman and a man."

Saul did not particularly like the way this was going. His last trip out had been less than favorable and he was not eager to get back to the road so quickly. Gold was well and good, but there was something to be said for spending it.

"No," he said at last. "Get someone else. We had trouble getting this box. Get someone else to find the other one. I've come for our pay, Fel," he added. The robed man glowered at Saul and then headed for the door, presumably so he would not see his gold handed over for no reward. Fel shrugged and headed for the back room, but he was still unlocking the door when the robed man came back through the entryway with an expression of angry astonishment.

"Are those your two men outside?" he asked hoarsely, and Saul went and looked. Rhodos and Vidon had taken note of the man but were still standing by their horses. "Yes," said Saul shortly. "Why?"

"Because that one on the left is standing next to one of the courier's horses!" the man choked out. "The one with the foreign bridle and rein! Where did you get it?"