Rerdas lay cold and awake in his bed. It was nearly dawn, and he had yet to snatch a moment of sleep. He had left Etiana in her mother's room the night before, after he had given up on offering her any words of comfort.

He was strangely numb. Anger at the battleboxer for his dogged obstinacy, anger at the Duke of Wester for selling them a useless fighter, anger at Etiana for risking everything, anger at himself for his helplessness...it had wrung him out. His knuckles ached where he had rammed them against Imalroc's cheekbone.

An image of Uralta flickered into his mind unbidden. She sat across from him at the enormous table in the grand dining hall of the manor house. His aunt said nothing. Her lips were thin with disapproval and in the mirror-glass glint of her eyes, he read disappointment. Nothing else, no gaze nor words, had ever managed to make him boil with such shame.

Rerdas scrubbed at his eyelids, as though he could erase the vision. His pulse stung in his throbbing knuckles.

"We did it for you, Aunt Uralta. You must understand that," he murmured to the silent room.

The steel spined vision of what his aunt had once been shook her head at him.

There is no excuse for such dehumanization. I raised both of you better than this.

"We're trying to save you! To save all of us!"

Find another way. She had ended plenty of conversations with him like that. Left him with frustration welling up over his tongue, choking on bitter retorts. It had especially been like that when he had first come to live with her.

He had been an angry young man, betrayed and abandoned. His way had never been good enough for her. Always, it was find another way.

Rerdas rolled onto his side. He watched the occasional drop of rain splatter against the windowpane. Another way. He tried to sort through their options, but he could think of nothing. They had no money, a former spy dying of the Sleeping Sickness, a dire need to get beyond the Queen's wrath, and a battleboxer who had chosen to lose on purpose. Who had also cost them a fortune. Losing on fucking purpose. Just because that stupid duke—

The huntmaster sat up, his pulse pounding through his limbs. He flicked the heavy blankets aside and climbed out of the bed. At the small desk on the opposite wall of his room, he fumbled through a stack of paperwork, and found a blank sheet. Rerdas scribbled out words in barely legible handwriting. He blew on the ink for a moment, and then dragged his boots on over bare feet.

He gave a cursory rap against Etiana's door and winced as he struck his bruised knuckles.

Etiana sat up as he entered, her eyes red-rimmed and her face pale. Sleep had not come to her either. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Rerdas knelt down next to her side table and shuffled through the papers in the top drawer. "I'm trying to come up with something. If we sell Imalroc, we won't get anywhere close to what we could get if he were winning fights, right?"

"That's true, but Rerdas, I...I don't know if he's going to win anymore. It seems like the rumors were right. He's lost his nerve."

"He hasn't. He's got more nerve than is good for him. We've just got to get him to use it in our favor."

"What are you talking about?"

"Imalroc lost his last six...now seven...battles because he wanted to. Because the Duke of Wester did not give him his promised freedom. Where's his contract?"

"That's impossible! He lost because of his injuries—"

"Etiana, he doesn't have a fucking shoulder problem. He's clever, and he's angry. I've seen it. I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier. Why would a man with absolutely no loyalty to us win on our behalf? What does he stand to gain?"

"He fights because if he doesn't he'll die!"

"Well, he looked pretty damn well prepared to die. He was cut, bleeding, and still not taking the openings Hanover was giving him. You saw it. He missed every exposed moment, every mistake that young fighter made. At least I thought he was missing them, but that wasn't it. He chose not to take them, even though he was losing. He's ready to die rather than win for us, Eti."

"That's insane."

"Yes. But I don't know if you make it through ten cycles in battleboxes without losing your mind a bit. Where'd you put his contract?"

"It's...it's in that box over there. On the second shelf. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try and convince him to fight for us."

"How?" Etiana was out of her bed now, shivering as her feet touched the cold floor.

Rerdas found the smooth, thick parchment of Imalroc's contract. He looked down at the intricately decorated certificate and ran his fingers across it. "We have to show him that there's another way to do this. One that benefits all of us."

"Rerdas—"

"Your turn to trust me, Eti," Rerdas said firmly. He ducked from the room, flitting through the darkened main room and out into the chilly embrace of the night. Etiana followed after him, hurrying to light a lantern.

Rerdas kicked the door of the cellar open without ceremony and thrust the lantern out ahead of him as he took two rapid steps inside. The sight of Imalroc rising from his mattress like a wraith from a pyre brought him to a faltering halt in the middle of the cellar.

The battleboxer was clearly expecting a fight. In one hand, he held one sharp fragment of the wooden practice stick Rerdas had given him.

"Sit down," Etiana said, her voice rippling out behind Rerdas with lazy confidence. Gods, he needed his cousin's ability to mask fear. "And get rid of that stick. You don't need it."

"I do not intend to take my punishment without resistance, milady," Imalroc whispered, his fingers tightening about the fragment.

Etiana stepped a little closer to Imalroc. "We have no intention of punishing you," she said. "We have...something else in mind." She turned back toward Rerdas, questions hovering in her eyes despite her assured tone.

Imalroc's gaze darted between the two of them.

"Sit down," Rerdas echoed his cousin's command.

Imalroc inched back down to the mattress and laid the wood fragment near his foot, curling his spine protectively forward over his wounded torso.

Rerdas edged closer. "Look...can you still fight? The way you used to?"

"I tried, Master," the fighter responded tonelessly.

Rerdas made an impatient noise and knelt down so that he could hold the lantern closer to Imalroc's face. "We don't need the obedient slave act. We all know that it's not what you are.. So stop it. Now...can you still fight?"

"I do not know what you mean, Master." Imalroc's eyes gleamed in the wan light.

"The battlebox clearer, Warwick, he told me about Wester's promise to you. And he told me that he broke it," Rerdas said cautiously, watching Imalroc's immobile expression. He got no reaction. "I mean...you really should have seen that coming. The Duke of Wester isn't exactly a pillar of honesty. It would take a real fool to trust him so wholeheartedly," he continued recklessly.

Imalroc's nostrils flared.

"And then to stop fighting...as though that's any way to avenge yourself...all you're doing is giving him the pleasure of watching the shit get kicked out of you. And wouldn't you rather just live? Fight a little, win a little, everyone's happy and you can just—" He lost the rest of his sentence when Imalroc leapt to his feet, lunging toward him.

"Just live? Just live?" he thundered "What scraps of life are left to me? What can I possibly have if I do not even own myself?"

Rerdas backed away as Imalroc stalked toward him. The battleboxer's fingers were arched and crooked like they were about to transform into claws. Somewhere behind Rerdas, Etiana let out a terrified squeak.

"He knew...he knew...all I wanted was my freedom," Imalroc panted. "I fought, I paid in sweat and blood and pain, I killed for him. I won in every battlebox he put me in, and I thought...how could that mean nothing? And now...you ask me to do the same so that you can be happy? So that you can parade around among your arrogant fucking friends and talk about how well you trained me? I would rather die than give you that. I hate you with every drop of blood, water and fire within me. I will die hating you. All of you. You soulless, insatiable sacks of shit and bone! I will die cursing you and your earthbound gods and still I will die a slave, in one of your fucking boxes!"

The silence that followed Imalroc's tirade rang like a bell.

Rerdas waited until some of the tremors in the battleboxer's torso had calmed before he looked across the room at Etiana, who had backed up against the wall, her eyes the size of dinner plates.

"Lost his nerve, my ass," Rerdas said loudly. He turned his attention back to Imalroc, raising his free hand, palm up, in what he hoped was a peaceful gesture. "Look...we're not like the rest of them. Your other masters," he said.

Imalroc's shoulders dropped, and he let out his harsh, inhuman laugh again.

Rerdas forged ahead. "We need you to win."

"Yes, that does sound very different from my other masters. Most of them were just concerned with me having fun. They didn't care about winning at all." Imalroc's lip curled.

"They wanted you to win. We need it. Which means that you have power here that you did not have with any of your other masters," he said.

The sneer on Imalroc's face slowly shrank, and his eyes narrowed. "Explain," he muttered finally.

"You choose whether or not you really fight. We need you to fight. We are willing to...bargain to get what we need from you."

"Bargain with what?"

"What you want. Freedom," said Rerdas. He ignored Etiana's startled jerk.

Imalroc's eyes were boring into his own. The battleboxer let out another cackle."You expect me to believe that again? Did you not just get through telling me what a fool I was for believing such lies the first time? You are just like him," Imalroc snarled.

Rerdas couldn't stop the blood rushing into his cheeks. "I am nothing like the Duke of Wester," he snapped.

Imalroc's face remained grim and unmoving.

Rerdas took a deep breath, and tried again. "This...what I'm offering you...it is not like the Duke of Wester's empty promise."

"What's the difference then, hunter?"

"The difference is that Wester wanted to you to win, and he had all the onyx, power and time he needed to compel you to do so. I have none of that. I have no fortune left, I have an Ambassador who is threatening my family, I have an aunt dying—"

"Rerdas!" Etiana cried, jumping forward off the wall. "Don't—"

"I have an aunt dying of the Sleeping Sickness and no onyx to pay for her medicine, and precious little time to get my hands on any. I need to get my family out of Kirinoll to protect them. I need you to win, and I will trade your freedom for it. It is all I have to trade."

He held up the parchment sheet Wester had given Etiana. "I will amend your contract to reflect a deal. If you'll agree to it."

"I...do not believe you," Imalroc repeated. But this time, he sounded uncertain.

Rerdas swung around, holding the lantern aloft. "Come on then," he said, and led the way out of the cellar.

Etiana rushed into the courtyard after him. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her breath a stuttering stream that clouded in the night air. Her grip bit into his arm.

"We have to try, Eti," Rerdas whispered. "This is the only other way I could think of."

He eyed the open doorway behind them. From the inky gloom of the cellar, the battleboxer slowly stepped out into the courtyard. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest, and he shuffled forward as though waiting for a cage to drop down on him at any moment.

Rerdas took his cousin's hand and moved around the side of the manor house, up the wide steps of the entrance and pushed one heavy door open.

It was darker inside the house's ancient walls. The lantern bobbed ahead of the three of them as they moved into the tomb-like interior. Rerdas turned slowly, pain pooling in his chest as the light spilled across the place he had once called home. The paintings, tapestries, sculptures, everything beautiful and fine that his aunt and her forbearers had collected had vanished. Even most of the furniture was gone. The carvings on the staircase banisters were obscured by a thick coat of dust. Overhead, the chandelier had been picked clean of its strands of pearls and precious stones. They had taken all the candles out of it during the last winter. What was left looked the way the whole house looked. Skeletal, and forbidding. Nothing but memory lived here.

Imalroc stood in the middle of the enormous foyer. His eyes moved solemnly over the abandoned house. He crossed to the set of double doors that led into the grand ballroom, tentatively passing one finger through the open space in the doors where stained glass had once been inlaid.

Rerdas followed him with the lantern. He watched as the fighter drifted through the room. When Imalroc finally circled back toward him, the battleboxer's face was set in an emotionless mold, but his eyes burned with an almost feverish craving.

"Believe me now?" Rerdas asked.

"I want to see the woman."

Rerdas stared at him.

"No," Etiana said. "Absolutely not."

Rerdas swallowed heavily and turned toward his cousin. "Etiana..."

"Rerdas, you go too far. You want me to let this thing into the same room as my mother? No. I will not do it."

Rerdas moved to stand directly beside her, stretching out a beseeching hand.

"What more can we possibly lose?" he whispered.

"Everything! We can still lose everything that matters!"

"We are already at the edge of that. I can think of no other way. We need him to fight, Eti. What do you think she would do, if she were in our shoes? Beat him? Sell him to the lower boxes?"

Etiana glared back at him, blinking fiercely as angry tears spilled over her reddened cheeks. But she knew the answer as well as he did.

She turned stiffly back toward Imalroc, and when she spoke her voice was unsteady. "If you hurt my mother, I will find the most painful, most long-lasting punishment possible, and I will make sure it is all you feel, all you think about, all you remember before you die," she hissed.

Imalroc's lips curled, but he held his silence.

Rerdas took his cousin's hand again and they walked slowly out of the house as though they were in procession at a funeral.

In spite of his plan, nerves sloshed in Rerdas' stomach as they neared the door of the grounds house. He could not believe he was about to bring Imalroc into their last safe haven. Exchanging a glance with Etiana, he opened the door.

He kept his eyes on the battleboxer where he was poised on the threshold. Imalroc's gaze flickered over everything in the main room, taking in the bare kitchen table, a few pots hanging over a washbasin, the big fireplace empty but for a pile of twigs and ash, and the sword, propped up against the wall next to a broomstick.

The battleboxer padded across the room without making a sound, and a sickening prickle of unease swept over Rerdas' skin as they moved into the hall that led to Uralta's room.

Etiana took the lantern from him and went ahead. She passed into the room and left the door ajar.

Rerdas hesitated, looking back to find Imalroc directly behind him. They were as close as they had ever been to each other unarmed. Rerdas met the battleboxer's ice-water gaze and flung up a prayer to the Eternals. If this didn't work he had no idea what would happen in the days ahead. Rerdas pushed the door all the way open, and left Imalroc in the doorway.

Uralta Toriem lay before them all, withered. Even in the golden lantern light, her skin was tinted with grey shadow. Her hands hung at her sides, ropey veins standing over tendons as fragile as a sparrow's wing. In their sunken sockets, her eyes jumped and twitched beneath closed lids. It was the only movement she made besides the too-slow rise and fall of her ribcage. Imalroc was not the only being on the threshold of this room. Death too stood there. Looking down at her, all three of them knew it.

Imalroc stepped deliberately into the room and stood over the bed, gazing down at his aunt's hollow face. Rerdas examined him from the other side of the bed.

"What are you offering?" Imalroc murmured. He did not lift his eyes from Uralta.

Rerdas swallowed and spoke past the painful tightness in his throat. "We need enough onyx to buy her medicine, and to purchase one of the Eastern felds. I don't know an exact amount. But when we've bought one, and are safely out of Kirinoll...you will own your contract. You will be free."

He and Etiana waited in silence.

When Imalroc finally lifted his eyes and met Rerdas' gaze, the fighter's stoic expression was shattered. His whole face was full of the same desperate, clawing hunger that Rerdas felt in his own chest.

"Then," Imalroc said hoarsely, "I will need a better sword."