frantic spasm, and she lifted huge, desperate eyes to Isana, her expression agonized, pleading. She reached toward the collar at her throat and spasmed again, more violently, thrashing and flailing and rolling dangerously close to the circle of coals.
Isana stared at the woman in horrified confusion for a breath, before she lurched forward, unsteady herself, and caught Odiana before she could convulse into the ring of coals. "Stop it," Isana cried. She looked back at Kord, knew that her face was pale and desperately afraid-and saw the glitter of satisfaction in his expression when she turned to him. "Stop it! You're killing her!"
"Might be kinder," Kord said. "She's been broken before." But to Odiana he said, voice smug, "Good girl. Stay here and you'll be a good girl. Do what you're told."
The frantic spasms eased out of the woman, very slowly. Isana drew her back away from the coals and kept her arms around her, her body between Odiana and Kord. The woman's eyes had lost focus again, and she shuddered in slow waves in Isana's arms.
"What did you do to her?" Isana asked quietly.
Kord turned and walked toward the door. "What you need to learn is that slaves are just animals. You train an animal by providing rewards and punishments. Rewarding good behavior. Punishing bad. That's how you turn a wild horse into an obedient mount. How you train a wolf into a hunting hound." He opened the door and said, casually, "Same with slaves. You're just more animals. To be used for labor, breeding, whatever. You just have to be trained." Kord left the smokehouse, but his words drifted back to them. "Aric. Build up the fire. Isana. You'll wear one tomorrow. Think about that."
Isana said nothing, stunned by what she had seen, by Odiana's reaction to the sight of the collar, to her condition now. Isana looked down at her and brushed some of the dark, tangled hair from her eyes. "Are you all right?"
The woman looked up at her, eyes heavy and languid, and shivered. "It's good now. It's good. I'm good now."
Isana swallowed. "He hurt you, before. When he called you..." She didn't say the words.
"Hurts," Odiana whispered. "Yes. Oh crows and furies, so much hurt. I'd forgotten. Forgotten how bad it was." She shivered again. "H-how good it
was." She opened her eyes, and again they were wet with tears. "They can change you. You can fight and fight, but they change you. Make you happy to be what they want. Make it hurt when you try to resist. You change, holdgirl. He can do it to you. He can make you beg him to take you. To touch you. Make you." She turned her face away, though her body was still wracked with the long, shivering shudders of pleasure, and turned her face from Isana. "Please. Please kill me before he comes back. I can't be that again. I can't go back."
"Shhhh," Isana said, rocking the woman gently. "Shhhh. Rest. You should sleep."
"Please," she whispered, but her face had already gone slack, her body begun to sag. "Please." She shuddered once more and then went completely limp, her head falling to one side.
Isana laid the woman down as gently as she could. She knelt over her, testing her pulse, putting a hand to her forehead. Her heart still beat too quickly, and her skin felt fevered, dry.
Isana looked up, to where Aric stood next to a hod for coal, watching her. When she looked up at him, he ducked his head, turning to the hod, and began to dump coals into a bucket beside it.
"She needs water," Isana said, quietly. "After all of that. She needs water, or she'll die in this heat."
Aric looked at her again. He picked up the bucket and, without speaking, walked to one side of the ring and started shaking fresh coals out of it and into the fire.
Isana ground her teeth with frustration. If she was only able to Listen, she might be able to gain important insight. The boy seemed reluctant to follow his father's commands. He might be convinced to help them, if only she could find the right words to say. She felt blind, crippled.
"Aric, listen to me," Isana said. "You can't possibly think he's going to get away with this. You can't possibly think that he will escape justice for what happened tonight?"
He finished dumping out the bucket. He walked back to the hod, his voice toneless. "He's escaped it for years. What do