Simon's nose ran relentlessly as he followed the wizard up a set of stairs. He wiped the snot away with the back of his hand, like a small child; his dignity was utterly gone anyway.

  The wizard’s words held power, and he had said, Don't hurt anyone. He would not be able to fight his way to freedom. Unfortunately, Casey had also said, Believe me. Simon fought that compulsion with everything in him, but it might be a losing battle. The geas was potent and dangerous, twisting the very thoughts in his head.

  Casey led the way through what appeared to be a well-stocked shop full of an eclectic array of merchandise. Despite Simon's request to visit the privy, the man headed for a flight of stairs. Simon hoped he wasn't going to embarrass himself. His bladder was painfully full.

  Despite the discomfort and a growing degree of exhaustion clouding his thoughts, he couldn't help but look about. Odd clothes made of finely woven and often colorful fabric filled rack after rack, and then they passed through an incredible library of books. So many! He’d have given much to be allowed to explore that collection.

  Everywhere, brightly lit globes and long tubes cast brilliant white light. Though they hurt his watering eyes, he kept staring up at them. Casey casually flipped switches as they passed, and the lights extinguished.

  To say he was impressed was an understatement. If it turned out those spells were long-lasting and stable enough to function without direct input from the casting mage, they’d be worth an absolute fortune. Inevitably, the Temple would condemn them as the work of demons, and the wealthy would ignore that edict and purchase them in vast numbers. The lights were beautiful, but they also seemed incredibly practical if they could be turned on and off with the flick of a finger.

  How had he never heard of this type of light before?

  Where was he? How far from home had he been transported?

  On the third floor, the wizard led him through a door. A round knob somehow operated the inner workings of a door latch, and he wished he could stop and check it out. How did that function?

  This room seemed to be the wizard’s personal quarters since a bed was visible through a doorway, and his previous concerns about what the wizard intended to use him for resurfaced. Casey’s protestations that he hadn’t meant to open a portal and bind Simon could all be a lie, though to what end, Simon didn’t quite understand.

  “The bathroom’s in there." The wizard pointed at a closed door.

  "I need to piss," he reminded the man, even as Casey reached out to twist the knob on the door. It operated smoothly, and the door swung open on finely wrought hinges. It was far lighter than he’d expected — the door’s panels were hollow.

  The geas twisted around in his mind unhappily. If the wizard wanted him to bathe first, he should, but Simon’s bladder was so full he worried he’d foul the water. The wizard would probably not appreciate that, so Simon was in a quandary.

  "Just use the toilet, then bathe.”

  The words made no sense.

  Something of his confusion must have shown on his face, for the wizard made a noise that was almost a laugh. "Your people don't have indoor plumbing, I'm guessing. Here. I'll show you."

  What was plumbing? The word had no context beyond plumb, which meant a straight line, and a plumb bob, a weight on a string.

  Abruptly, he realized that there was likely magic at play, allowing them to speak to one another. The man’s voice didn’t even have a trace of a regional accent. That was one of the tells, his tutors had explained, for enchanted translation. Such spells were never perfect, and the most common and by far the most effective form was tied to a geas. If Casey used words that had no equivalent in any of the several languages Simon spoke, he would not understand.

  The small room beyond the door held a recognizable tub and what appeared to be a basin inset in a counter, as well as what he first took to be a second, deeper bowl, on a pedestal, at knee height. The latter was already full of clear water. Was it for washing feet?

  Casey gestured at the odd, low bowl. "Pee in there, crap if you need to, throw the toilet paper into the water, then press the lever. The paper's for cleaning your backside."

  He would have had more questions, for the instructions were very odd, but he was in a hurry. Using paper to clean himself seemed like a waste of expensive materials. That was what leaves were for, or straw in winter. He’d used round, smooth rocks, leaves, moss, or handfuls of snow for the last six months.

  Casey withdrew, leaving him alone.

  The paper was certainly more pleasant than wiping his ass with snowballs in the midst of winter. When he’d completed his business and pressed the lever, the water, paper, and his waste swirled away with a rushing noise. The bowl was refilled automatically. Fascinated, he lifted the cover on the back to have a better look at the inner workings. He'd just about puzzled them out when Casey rapped on the door. "You done in there?"

  "Yes." He was too curious to remember to be angry or frightened in that instant.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I wanted to see how it worked." Simon tugged at a chain. The flapper popped up, and the toilet flushed. There was no magic involved, though he did wonder where the water was coming from. Had a servant laboriously hauled it up to a rooftop tank?

  "You're going to love the shower. Here ..." The wizard fiddled with a couple of knobs in the bathing tub’s enclosure. Water streamed from a pipe high on the wall and then, to Simon's surprise, swiftly became steaming hot.

  "You have a hot spring?"

  "We have a boiler in the basement, which I highly doubt you know anything about. Enjoy the shower." Casey handed him a leaf-green bar of scented soap, a ‘wash rag,’ and a bottle made of some sort of strange, pliable substance. The latter Casey identified as, "This is shampoo. It’s soap for your hair."

  Then he opened a cabinet and pulled out two lengths of the thickest, softest fabric that Simon had ever seen. "Here. Use the guest towels."

  ~~*~~

  A half-hour later, Simon was the cleanest he'd been in what felt like a lifetime. The ‘shower’ had been absolute, utter bliss. He could have stood under that hard spray of decadently hot water forever, nearly nodding off from exhaustion, but the warmth had finally run out.

  The tub was distinctly the worst for wear, with a black dirt ring around the bottom. He shut off the water, ignored a pang of physical pain at the thought of leaving Casey’s tub filthy, and dried himself as ordered.

  The towels were every bit as remarkable as he'd thought when he had first seen them. He marveled at the time it must have taken someone to weave them and felt guilty using one to dry himself. However, his master had said to do so, and the compulsion forced him to obey. It wasn't something he found worthy of fighting. With a regretful and apologetic pat of the now-damp fabric, which did seem none-the-worse for the wear, he hung one towel back up and wrapped the other about his waist. He was not about to venture out without something to protect his modesty, but his tunic and trousers, neatly folded on the bathroom counter, were so filthy that they were stiff. Hopefully, the man would allow him to wash them before he had to put them back on.

  Simon left his mail shirt piled on top of the clothes. It was rusty enough to stain anything it touched. He needed to soak it in vinegar and then oil it soon, before it was completely eaten away. It was a Halvers family heirloom that Yienry had gifted him, over Lady Ellia’s strident objections. Yienry’s sons were all large men, despite a Halvers tendency to be small and wiry; the mail had fit Simon perfectly before the last six months of starvation.

  He wasn't sure what to do about his boots. There were holes clean through what was left of the soles. The building, however, was as warm as a summer day, so he decided that walking about barefoot would be fine.

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  Casey looked up from his kitchen table and did a clear double-take when he saw Simon.

  He froze. The man’s shock was obvious. "Was I to wait in the bathing room?"

  "No, uh, well, I didn’t realize how badly you were hurt.”

  He glanced down at himself. After his time on the run, he had a remarkable array of scars, plus many new bruises, raw spots on the insides of his legs from yesterday’s ride, and a vast assortment of deep scratches and abrasions of various ages.

  Casey grabbed an armful of fabric from the back of a chair and tossed it to Simon. The bundle included trousers made of canvas-like blue fabric, a shirt, a belt, and small clothes.

  "I guessed at your size. Go try them on."

  Casey sucked in a sharp breath as he turned.

  Ah, he'd seen those scars. The Hunter’s Mark itself was invisible to all those without Sight, but the spell had physically seared his skin like acid when it had been applied, causing actual burns. He could not see the damage very well himself, but from what he could feel with his hands, his entire back was a gnarled mass of new scar tissue layered over older stripes from a childhood caning.

  Well, Simon told himself, if the man had not desired a slave who had been branded, he shouldn't have summoned one.

  Any half-wit wizard with a trace of talent could track that enchanted sigil from a great distance. Any man so marked was fair game for the Hunters, slavers, and anyone else who fancied a bit of sport or profit. Surely, Casey had sensed the spell as soon as Simon had come through the portal.

  He walked with as much dignity as he could muster back into the bathing room, even as his shoulder blades crawled with the awareness of the man's gaze.

  The small clothes were too big, hanging loosely around his near-skeletal buttocks. So were the trousers, but the belt fixed that problem. The shirt was very loose, dyed a true black, and oddly silken and stretchy, made of thread so fine that he had to squint to see it. He wondered at the wealth of a man who could afford such remarkable cloth even for a slave.

  Perhaps the man intended to show him off, to brag about him, and that was why he was dressing him so well.

  Casey had said, I'll figure out how to send you home as soon as I can. I promise. In the moment, he’d believed it. However, Simon had seen geasbound servants believe even the most transparent lies from their masters. He didn't trust his own mind.

  In a moment of lucidity, he remembered he had nowhere to go. The Dawnsilver had no doubt already left port. The silver Yienry had given him was in Elynal’s saddlebags. He had no funds to buy passage on a different ship. Casey wanted to send him back, and that felt like a good solution in the moment. But was it really?

  Even if, perhaps, this world would be a safer place than home, he should do what Casey wanted. He should not even think to countermand one of his master’s ideas.

  Rage rose. Not even the Hunter’s Mark had taken his freedom of thought away. Matching his sudden fury was an equal level of pain. He was not allowed to become angry at his master.

  Simon sank to one knee in the privacy of the bathing room. His damp hair fell around his face, and he gritted his teeth against the agony until it seemed as if they'd shatter.

  "You okay in there?" the wizard asked, from just outside the door. "Do the clothes fit?"

  The geas would not allow him to maintain a furious silence. He snarled, "I'm fine."

  His tone of voice and defiant mood earned him pain, but Casey responded calmly. "When you're ready, come on out. We need to talk.”

  Immediately, his mood shifted. Almost eagerly, he stood up and opened the door. Only after he’d emerged from the bathroom did he realize the spell had acted again. It felt natural to joyfully respond to a mere suggestion of Casey’s desires.

  The man looked at him critically. "I think we need to go down a size or two. God knows we've got plenty of boys' sizes in the shop's inventory. We bought an entire kids’ clothing store out when a mall closed."

  "I am not a child!" His quick rejoinder earned him a stab of pain as well as fierce guilt. However, he could only picture the kind of short pants that the nobility dressed their children in. The thought was humiliating.

  Casey shook his head, however, and didn’t seem the slightest bit offended by Simon’s quick objection. His calm reaction settled the geas. “I’m certain we can find something that won’t be childish. We can make you look good.”

  Look good. Again, his concerns rose. Simon was nobody's fool. He knew how spellbound slaves were very often treated. On a surface level, they even enjoyed it, regardless of their own preferences, because that, too, was a way of fulfilling their master’s wishes.

  He'd kill himself first before he allowed himself to become that sort of victim, and he'd take the wizard out with him, spell be damned. Pain rose at the defiance in his heart.

  Pain.

  It was all he could feel.

  His heart raced in response.

  Pain was his world.

  He could not draw in breath.

  Pressure rose in his head.

  His muscles cramped, then went lax.

  He wasn't even aware when he hit the ground.

  Consciousness came slowly at first, then in a sudden rush as he remembered he was not safe. He jerked to awareness and found the wizard’s fingers resting on his throat.

  Reflexively, Simon threw a fist in self-defense, putting a lifetime of training backed by terror into the blow — then at the very last instant, without even conscious thought, he shifted the trajectory of his strike from Casey’s throat to his chest. His knuckles connected solidly with Casey’s sternum, the thud audible, and the man stumbled backward and then landed on his rump in an ungainly heap. Striking one’s master was definitely not allowed, and for a second time, overwhelming, searing, shattering pain sent him to oblivion.

  When he next woke, there was soft fabric under his back. Casey was only feet away, crouched down on one knee, watching him. He rubbed his chest with one hand.

  Anger rose.

  Pain followed.

  He wondered if Casey realized how close he’d come to having his larynx punched into his spine, shattering his windpipe. The influence of the geas, combined with the awareness that he, too, would have died, had prompted a last-second decision to abort a deadly strike.

  Casey said, "You're not well. Do you need to see a doctor? I don't know what they'd think of you, but ... well. We could figure something out."

  The man had no clue what was going on. Simon enlightened him. "Your spell does that to me whenever I even think of defying you. You idiot."

  The insult caused more pain, but it was worth it to see the man recoil.

  “I'm sorry." Casey sat down on the ground at Simon's feet and wrapped his arms around his knees. Simon realized he'd been placed on the fine upholstered settee in the man's quarters. "This has been such a colossal fuck up, and it's all my fault."

  "You think this is a fuck up?" Simon demanded, then winced. Ow. He ground his teeth together. He was really, really starting to hate that geas. The pain that lanced through his head was worse than that caused by even broken bones, and he’d had enough of those in his life to make a fair assessment.

  Casey ran a hand over his face. "I'm sorry. Look, if I tell you that you're allowed to be mad and argue with me, does that help?"

  Simon stared at him. "It hurts to even think defiant thoughts."

  "I want you to be allowed to think whatever you want." Casey had the biggest brown eyes that Simon had ever seen on a human, and right now, they had a look akin to that of a begging hound. "Will telling you that work?"

  Simon refused to like the man. He refused to think the man was honest. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to see the wizard dead ... but he absolutely believed that Casey was sincere.

  No pain accompanied his thoughts. He could think clearly for the first time since arriving here.

  "Did it work?" Casey said, urgently, and Simon realized that the man's choice of words was deliberate. He had meant to lessen the spell's effects when the common wisdom was that, in the early days of such magic, it needed to be harshly reinforced.

  "... yes," Simon said grudgingly. He couldn't help but think that Casey would retract his words at any minute. Wary of a negative reaction from the man who had so much power over him, Simon asked, "So, how did you manage to bring me here, anyway?”

  Casey ran a hand over his face. He had faint freckles on his nose and cheeks, and the gesture drew Simon's attention to them. He had no idea if it was the influence of the geas or the fact that he was an invert, but some treacherous part of his mind noticed and liked them. He asked, "Are you hungry? I need a bucket of coffee and breakfast."

  "I haven't eaten anything in days," Simon replied. "And that meal was my belt, boiled."

  What he really needed was sleep, but the wizard hadn’t offered that as an option. Suggesting that he was exhausted would probably trigger the geas. Plus, he wasn’t even sure he would be able to take advantage of rest if it was offered. He never slept well, even under the best of circumstances, and after the events of the last two days, it wouldn’t matter how exhausted he was — he’d find himself jerking awake at even the slightest noise.

  "You ate your belt? ... Food, first. Coffee. Then we can talk."

  Only after the wizard opened a large vertical chest and retrieved strangely packaged eggs and sausages from within did Simon realize he'd briefly forgotten about his question to Casey. How did one accidentally open a powerful portal and simultaneously cast a geas? Either spell should have required significant preparation, skill, and a magical artifact; the latter was usually a shiny bauble, a staff, or a wand. It wasn't like him, to disregard an important detail, even when frankly exhausted.

  If the young man currently scrambling eggs had managed to do both spells at the same time without clear intent and formidable skill, Simon had questions.

  The geas kept him silent for several minutes. He pressed his lips together in frustration and gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. He might not be a mage, but he'd been educated with the expectation that he would manifest a potent gift. Simon understood magic, including truths not widely known, for fear they would frighten the masses.

  "What's your school of magic?" Simon managed to ask. It was not a question about yesterday's events, but it might lead to explanations.

  Casey glanced at him. "I'd never seen real magic until yesterday."

  "But, it was you who cast the spells?"

  A nod. "I guess that's what happened. I read words out of a book, and shit happened. Coffee first, man. Then I'll tell you what I know. I'm so tired my brain hurts."

  The geas twisted in Simon's soul. It was unhappy that he'd tried to manipulate his master into explanations before he was ready. Simon, irritated, thought that Casey wasn’t the only one who was tired. He hadn’t slept for almost forty-eight hours. He’d been running for his life for most of that time.

  Fine. He'd just have to wait, despite the ominous knowledge that this young mage had no training and had acquired a potent magical object of one kind or another.

  He watched Casey prepare food using a strange but marvelous glass and metal cabinet that sprouted flames from burners on the top. The eggs and sausage smelled incredible, and, for a time, they were all that he could think about, no matter his emergent concerns about Casey’s power.