"What's this about Adam's Successor calling me a damn cheat!" A voice roared through the auction hall. 

I chuckled quietly and kept my attention ahead to the spectacle. The first several members of the auction had been slaves, mostly singles but also including one poor Ire family that was thankfully kept intact. The announcer said they had fallen on tough times and sold themselves, but were hard workers. I nearly put my name in the ring on them. But the final auction, to which the voice had so rudely interrupted, was a captured live Night-Blood trapped in a glass case. Already the price had been in the millions.

The auctioneer stopped speaking to  see what was the matter and many in the room whispered and stared as the intruder stomped down the steps towards me.

"Why don't you try yelling this time, someone might not have heard that," I jested.

He glared at me. Flanked on four sides, his bodyguards also glared. If his eyes could change color it would be as white as the pale fury in his clenched fists.

"I'm not a cheat!" He seethed. I turned to look at him in response, but he spoke first, his eyes going wide. He gasped, "You!"

"Yes, me." I briefly glanced between the squad he took with him. If he was going to break my legs or kill me, I might as well go all in. I bluffed, "And I remember the remarks. Pidgeon-King, I think it was. Not the most imaginative insult I've heard, but I let it be. Adam, though, was less than enthused."

"Adam? You couldn't settle this like a man? You had to go to him!"

"Oh, no. I didn't have to. He witnessed the whole thing. You didn't see him?" I pressed. With the crowd of a hundred-thousand, and no one knowing what Adam looked like, there was no way he could say he did, but also with many of them being the noblest from around the world, he couldn't say he didn't either without losing face. "He saw how you cheated. Why do you think the Emperor was angry with you? How many people did you have to bribe to get so far?"

The words were barely out of my mouth before the whispering and shocked gasps reached new heights, and his fury rose with it. How did his head not pop?

I stared at him in silence, letting him stew in his own frustration and visible confusion for a moment. A good portion of what I said was a lie, but then he wouldn't know that, nor could prove it. The only thing I was sure of was he had bribed people, and if that one bit of truth could sit in him, then the rest would fall into place.

Surprisingly he calmed down through sheer will, and remembered his position. He had already done damage reacting rashly, validating the accusation in the people's eyes. He needed to recover or there might be economic or reputable losses.

"What do you want?" He whispered.

"A rematch," I answered. "Prove to everyone you didn't cheat, because you don't have to. If you win, I will publicly apologize for the accusation and pay you double what you spent on this entire night as recompense." Immediately his composure calmed, and his eyes jumped about calculating how many digits that price would be. I didn't dare think what it would be. The Aeterna may be paying my regular expenses, but this would stretch it beyond acceptance. I'll probably be working this off the rest of my life.

"And if I lose." He asked.

I pulled a page out of my father's book. I stepped out of my chair, took him into a one-armed hug, and, with all the dark intent and quiet, cold, seething I had been holding in my heart for a year quietly, I whispered, "Give me one of your slaves as a token, so I can go to sleep on this memory every night." I completed it with a bite to the ear, not enough to hurt, but to send him reeling back in shock.

He stumbled back, clutching his ear. "You are sick!"

"Oh, come now." I motioned to my own face. "Who doesn't like a bit of masochism? You're already a sadist, its not that big of a leap."

I took a step towards him and he stepped back in turn, falling into another chair and auctioneer. I grinned maliciously. Father came out of my soul like a festering tumor fueled by the quiet, cold, seething I had been holding in my heart for a long year towards this beacon of suffering and the bloody engine he ran. I was sure my composure had changed to something unrecognizable in the moment, the dark side of a quiet man unchained so terrible to bring fear to monsters, but I did not care. I started this for another sake, but in this moment, I couldn't deny a certain selfish pleasure in finally revealing myself.

"Delicious," I whispered.

xxxxxxx

Koj'Ineh'Mirrad plucked up the window lock and glanced in. No one was there. He had been watching from nearby, and though he had seen the man leave, he still needed to be sure. He snuffed out the candle. Unbeknown to others, if only out of willful ignorance, Mirrad-Blood could see in the dark similarly to the Numerenai deviants. He removed his sabatons and let his bare feet touch the floor. Quietly he walked to the door and, removing his helmet, pressed his ears to the door.

"The Kes-Blood did it," He whispered in his own tongue. 

He put the helmet and metal shoes near the window and set to work. He inspected the room thoroughly. There were several locked drawers and chests, and for each one he took the time to pick the lock and inspect the contents. Many had papers in similar writings to the other languages he had come across. He did not know any written language, with Mirrad being entirely verbal, but Caius had shown him a picture of an emblem he should look for.

He found nothing in any of the drawers, but running his fingers across and around the desk, he found there was a slight gap in the wood underneath. He looked beneath and found a slight hole, just big enough for a tiny rod. He broke off a splinter from the desk, thinned it down, and drove it in. The top of the desk popped up revealing more documents and a few solid gold bricks. The documents bore the emblem on a leather sleeve.

He took it and leafed through it. He was illiterate, but he still knew what many entries looked like. Judging from the number of entries, and how the pages kept going and going, this was a great source of intel on the slave purchases in the city as well as how many were there.

Noise outside the door drew his attention. It was coming closer!

Quickly, quietly, he shut the desk and put his helmet on. However, there was no time to put his sabaton's on before shadows appeared from beneath the door.

The door opened and the host entered.

"Bastard Kes-Bloods, shoulda killed all of them in the war." He hissed, stomping across the room. "Absolutely sick! No matter. At this rate, their days are numbered! Dyson won't miss a single one of them! Then I'll be rid of these freaks."

He shoved open his chest, pulled out a wooden board and a  bag of pieces. He closed the chest, looked up, and blinked in confusion. In front of him were two sets of armor. Odd, he only remembered one. He stepped closer and looked at them closely. Even in the dark, he wasn't fooled.

"Clean up my armor better next time!" He barked on his way out the door. "One is so scuffed up I can see it in the dark!" He slammed the door.

Koj slumped over and sighed in relief.

xxxxxxx

The host returned down the steps into the main lobby where I sat waiting at a long table. Nearby stood a Soran-Blood who would witness the transaction, and a few others came to see what the noise was about. 

My opponent approached the table and started setting it up. "I see you were unprepared, so I brought enough for both of us."

"Not completely," I replied. I pulled the broken king piece out of my pocket, and briefly examined it. 

"Declaration: This is highly irregular. It may be grounds for cheating to use unregulated pieces." The Soran-Blood chirped. 

"It will be fine," The banquet host rebuttled. "But why use something broken?"

I could tell him how the Aeterna gave it to me when he gently scolded me for my assumptions, how the piece had been scattered by his anger, and of my wasted time this last year looking on and doing nothing. Assumptions are made by people who don't listen attentively with a still mind, something to which I also earned a mimento of in my right ear. It no longer hurt, but it itched at times, and each time it brings me back to the throne room with my father. Funny, now that I thought about it, I had gone to him over a loose inference of the Aeterna to begin with.

Not that I was entirely wrong, but I failed to grasp that the man was more neuanced than an inhuman warmongerer. He was a terror because I did not understand him, and therefore could not reason with him, but slowly, piece by piece, I've gained some understanding of my enemy.   He was fearsome, and extremely unusual, but also can be reasoned with; and if someone can be reasoned with, then a victory, a compromise, or even a covanent can be made towards something better.

But then he wouldn't care about any of that.

"Its a reminder," I said simply. I placed it on the board where the regular king goes. 

When the rest of the pieces were set up on the board, the Soran-Blood declared, "I shall supervise this match between Barjol'Klee'Ne and Valspear'Ronlin'Kes." 

The slave master, Barjol, apparently, made the first move. I beat him in three turns. It was a basic move sequence meant to trap inexperienced players.

"Declaration: Valspear has won the challenge," The Soran-Blood said.

"How." Barjol looked at the pieces in confusion. "We only just started."

"Rematch?" I asked.

"Yes, and none of that trickery. Play for real." He insisted, disgruntled.

So I beat him in four turns.

"You did slightly better," I admitted. He growled. We played again.

Then, for good measure, I stopped exploiting his incompetency in finishing it quickly, and instead turned my formation into a veritable fortress, never extending beyond the protecting of other pieces, and forcing him to overreach time and time again. This time lasted a good forty turns.

The slavemaster grew increasingly more frustrated with each loss of a piece and with each turn to pass with no achievements. I was playing with him, batting him around, and he must have felt it. His tactics did improve quickly with the realization this would take effort on his part, but it was too little too late. If anything, he might have stood better odds not trying. Its far harder to fight someone who doesn't know what they are doing because you cannot predict them. A bit of my father came out of my malicious grin, enjoying his torment. 

The crowd quickly dissipated after the second loss, and at this point it was just buying time for my ally to do what he needed to do.

A man entered, asked questions around, and approached. He said he had a message for me. 

"For me?" I asked. 

The man nodded. He handed me a folded scrap of paper.  Its contents was complete scribbles, like an infant had gone nuts on it. "It is a message from the Koj'Ineh'Mirrad."

"It's rude to interrupt our game." Barjol chastised him, but I waved it aside. 

"The game is over. Its all a charade at this point. The victory is mine." Barjol growled at my words, so I placated him. "I will not disclose this, as I care little for the reputable gain, so take care and know your reputation is largely preserved. This was a matter of personal honor."

I stood and fixed my clothes since we had been sitting for some time. To his credit, Barjol brought up the subject before me, "Then I guess the slave is yours. I shall have one brought to you from amongs my harem girls. Boys?"

"I have one in mind. I saw one in your possession that intrigued me." I replied. "He was one of your 'youth'."

He nodded, understanding my tone. "Then I shall have them brought out so you can make your selection."

A little while later I stood in the grass out front of the building as an assembly of shivering, dirty, bruised, malnourished, and downright wounded slaves were presented. Their degree of suffering varied between those freshly siphoned and half-way conscious to those awaiting the next session with full dreadful awareness. All of them showed signs have having been whipped numberless times in the past, whether a child or adult.

"You whip them?" I asked. "Wouldn't that bleed them unnecessarily?"

"The discipline is necessary. A good thousand lashings and they learn quickly."

I could not tell from his tone if that was an exaggeration. I clenched my fists tightly behind my back as I stepped forward and inspected them. In the darkness I had to peer closely at their faces to be sure, especially as it had been a year since I had seen Aelius, and it was just that one time. Among their faces I saw these were people from several bloods, but easily half were my own.

I neared the end of the line, looked up to their master, and shook my head.

"Is that all of them?" Barjol inquired.

"No, my lord." An obedient servant (slave?) replied. "There were three that were too sickly to be assembled in the cold like this. The Soran-Blood manager said they could die if touched."

Barjol sighed, looked at me, and saw from my face I was not satisfied. "Lets see them. Come." He motioned to me.

Barjol lead me into the building. He covered his nose and mouth immediately, and I followed suit. Immediately I gagged on the overpowering, dizzying smell of urine, feces, and rot. Rats peered down at us from the rafters and I'm pretty sure there was a dead body shoved into the corner. The only movement came from a few Soran-Blood who either were unbothered by the conditions or blessed with mute senses. The attendants guided us to the slaves left behind. 

Among them was Aelius.

I entered the room, leaned down on a knee, and looked at him. He was deathly pale, even in the limited light, and his breathing was as still as a corpse. His skin was cold to the touch and his eyes had lost all color. If the heartbeat was any weaker I might have missed it, but it was there, rapidly whimpering that there was still something here to save.

"This is him, I take it?" Barjol asked. He stayed outside of the room, refusing to come any closer to the smell. "I will have him taken to your residence. I trust my honor is intact?"

"I will speak nothing of it, if you won't," I agreed. "But leave him to me."

Slowly, I took my sun-child's arms and legs and rolled him onto my back. Faint sounds escaped him, but he was not lucid enough to say anything discernable. I walked out. Barjol gagged, but said nothing about what I was doing.

I left the compound and the banquet and didn't look back.

Chuckling came out of the shadows and with it followed the Mirrad-Blood. "Kes [looks] like cub."

"He is weak, lost a great deal of blood from the torture these monsters did to him," I replied, my anger barely withheld by my teeth.

"Ah." He stepped into stride with me. "This be Caius-brother ask?"

"Yes."

"Kes-Blood know Caius buy?"

"Yes, but I wanted to do this myself. I don't trust Caius to handle something like this without hanging it over my head." I turned to look at him. "So, Koj'Ineh was it? Did you succeed?"

"Check [for] yourself." He answered. Koj'Ineh pulled the book out of his bag he had slung across his shoulders. He handed it to me and I perused the papers briefly after stopping a moment to sit, Aelius still slung over my back.

On its pages were the number of slaves bought, number of slaves sold, the names and locations of the orders categorized by name and the 'merchandise' category which mostly was apprised of 'pleasures', 'workers', and toward the final transactions from today included 'youth'.

I shut the book and passed it back. "This is a wealth of information. It should help our cause."

"Our?" Koj'Ineh asked.

I nodded. The pieces were in place. Our people were here in need of rescue, and the rescuers were on the way. I adjusted my sleeping nephew and rose again. "Be in touch for the next phase. I'll be waiting."

I walked into the night, but my steps were firm and guided with purpose for the first time in a while. 

 I entered my home and made sure Aelius was comfortable. The movements stirred him enough to speech, but not lucidity. And so with every apology he made, every promise to be a good little slave to leave his lips, the burning embers of my fury ignited with another splash of fuel. By the time he passed out I was left wide awake and sitting on my bed staring down at him, observing and counting the visible scars and bruises. 

My eyes briefly glanced up to the broken game piece I had dropped onto my desk haphazardly and unconsciously. My eyes flashed with images and flame from the painting my brother had made, and I saw the broken state of all these pieces in the long game the Aeterna played. 

"I'm coming for you," I promised.