The Small Masters' council met in a spacious, pleasantly-breezy tower thrusting above the cracked canyon lands that dominated Berujat's geography. Crying birds, cracking whips, creaking carts, and the cacophony of a thousand shouting throats echoed from the Fleshmarket below. Its maze of cages and bazaars, merchant stalls and guard barracks, bankers guild houses and Master's estates filled every available scrap of space atop the nearest dozen plateaus. Chain hoists, cranes, and rope bridges jutted into and across dozens of chasms, canyons, and fissures.

Around the tower, ten royal striders knelt in a plaza, napping, groaning at one another, or chewing massive cuds rolled out from a small barn attached to the tower's base. Dozens of guards, servants, slaves, and attendants argued, lounged, complained, traded gossip or small items, or played at picking out the finest specimen out of each passing slave chain or wagon and betting on the price they'd fetch at auction.

Inside the tower, dozens of male and female slaves wearing only elaborate jewelry and wisps of silk poured gleaming pitchers of chilled wine or held woven baskets of fruits, fresh bread, and cakes. Others carried jars of oil or worked at rubbing it into the hair, shoulders, or necks of the Small Masters. Several bodyguards for each master lounged on benches or couches placed against every wall, a few even expensive Ferals and more-than-likely a few freemancers among them. Their silver- and gold-traced panoplies gleamed. Several hosted drifting skin-life, the living inklings weaving around patches of scar.

Fatma sneered at them as she entered, pulling a sheer silken cowl away. Fine silver chains ran from her nose to her ear. Scarlet and gold silks matched the fine golden chains, thick arm bands, and ruby-studded rings glittering against her deeply-tanned skin. A slender, cowled figure followed her, but settled into the shadows of the chamber's periphery before reaching the room's well-lit central area.

At the table's head, a corpulent man wearing an open, toga-like garment snapped his fingers at Fatma, annoyance writ across his dark features. Brailled bumps ran down his left arm, as they did those of every Master present. His, however, ran all the way onto his shoulder and across his flabby peck so wide and long did the count of his fleshswaps run.

"Small Master Fatma," he said, his voice surprisingly high-pitched coming out of so much mass. "So nice of you to finally arrive."

"Small Master Godge, so nice of you to never leave." Fatma's deep, melodious voice sounded more like that of a singer than the holder of a thousand chains. "I trust I've missed nothing of import?"

"Nothing of import?" Godge cried, waiving his hands. The motion knocked over the gorgeous slave woman massaging his shoulder.

"You stupid Wretch," he screamed at her as she scrambled back to her feet, half-cowering. He turned to the other masters and sighed. "Slaves these days. Nothing like the quality we could find when I was younger."

A woman nearly his size sprawling across a divan on the far side of the table laughed, patting a handsome slave on the head as he powdered ponderous breasts barely contained in her layered-silk gown. "Whatever the quality, with so many selling their children now, can't complain about the quantity. Grow a nice crop a decade from now if the Dynasts don't destroy everything before then."

Godge grunted and gestured out the window in the vague direction of the nearest Thorn. "If the Rags insist on this idiotic plan to steal all our slaves and turn them into some form of doomed Legion, those kids will be all we have, Ardina."

"Surely they wouldn't be so foolish," Fatma said, laughing as she accepted a gilded goblet from an attractive, redheaded slave. "Arming slaves? Preposterous. At best they'll get slaughtered and all our hard work will be thrown away. At worst, they'll revolt the moment they're handed weapons and we'll be blamed for it."

"They're proposing to offer freedom to any slave who kills a Legionnaire or any of their other innumerable enemies," Ardina said, her piggish, shrewd eyes sizing Fatma up. "An idea with some merit, perhaps, if you believe the slaves could or would ever stand up to the approach of a Legion, much less a ten-rank-deep phalanx marching towards them under the thunderous beat of war drums."

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"They will try. They will fail. We'll be bereft of slaves regardless," Ijran said. The lean, black-bearded, olive-skinned Small Master exhaled a cloud of smoke from their long, lacquered pipe. One of their eyes regarded Fatma while the other stared at Godge. While they tapped ash from their pipe with one hand, they jotted notes on a wax tablet with the other. "The slaves will be slaughtered if used poorly, be all set free if used well, and desert the Rag ranks in countless numbers every Verse they enter either way. And we all bicker and strive to create separate deals with the Dynasts all the while knowing they hold every advantage over us."

Godge frowned at Ijran. "You speak as though you are any different, my multi-minded friend. I don't see you volunteering to turn your slaves over to the combined wisdom of the Small Masters or trying to compose some deal on all of our behalves. Perhaps you're in as much disagreement with yourselves as we've been these last weeks since Wake and Ruja announced the Slave Legions?"

"We know enough to realize that any deal we make as a single council will instantly be betrayed and undercut by half our dozen." Ijran looked about the room, the black and the green eye each sizing a different Master at its own pace. "No. Another more decisive action must be taken, we've agreed."

Ardina laughed. "Your 'we' may have agreed, but the rest of us remain unconvinced as to the best course of action. Last I checked, you all weren't in charge of this council any more than any one of the rest of us."

"There is no more time," Ijran said, both eyes aligning on the obese woman. "Ruja said we had until the next Calm to decide how to best lay our resources at his feet. We've since decided nothing, as I'm sure he expected. He'll indignantly assume our truculence is resistance and use it as an excuse to simply seize all of them without recompense."

"I'll kill all my slaves before letting that entitled Dynast take them from me," Godge shouted, pounding his wide fist on the table so hard he set his rolls jiggling. Many of the others in the council echoed the sentiment from their divan chairs and palanquins. "It sounds like we're in agreement on that sentiment at least."

"Wasteful and stupid," Ijran said.

Fatma leaned forward, playing with her goblet and smiling. "We have another idea."

Ardina shook her head, eyes narrowing on Fatma. "You've barely half the slave count of the least of us here, Fatma. Were it not for Ijran's insistence that we hold our count at twelve, you'd never hope to find even the most meager seat at this table. You should be grateful we allow you even a single bodyguard here as most of us feel you're stature shouldn't even allow for that mark of eminence. All that, and now you propose to decide what course all the Small Masters should take on important affairs?"

"Ijran and I have already decided," Fatma said, staring at Ardina over the lip of her cup. "Ruja's Versers gather slaves from your pens and cages as we speak while their brass Jars flow into mine and Ijran's vaults."

"What? You'd never!" Godge shouted, trying to heft himself to his feet. The table creaked. He fell back onto his cushions, attendants rushing forward and his half-dozen bodyguards all peeling away from the walls with hands on weapons.

"We've been looking for an excuse to purge you from the council, Fatma," Ardina said, actually managing to heave herself to standing. She leaned menacingly over the table. "Even if your words are true, you and Ijran won't live to count a single coin. You haven't signed a deal here, but your own death warrant."

Ijran moved beside Fatma, his three wary bodyguards drawing curved blades and sliding small shields onto their arms. Each Small Master was only allowed a handful of bodyguards, according to their seniority, and Ijran's three stood outnumbered more than ten-to-one.

"Foolish Fatma." Ardina grinned, crossing her bracelet-thick arms. "More foolish Ijran for letting her impulsiveness doom all of you too. What use is a multi-minded Wiz if they let a single-minded, Pale upstart guide him?"

"Since she acquired a unique slave whose weight shifted the scales of our calculus considerably," Ijran said, one eye glancing at the plain-robed figure striding from the shadows and pulling back their cowl. A tan, blond-haired woman emerged from its depths, her face pocked with innumerable sliver-scars. As she shed the robe, a shirt of bronze maille, thick leather bracers and greaves, and a heavy-scabbarded sword comprised her entire armory.

"A Pale, emaciated woman with a sword is your edge? And you think you're somehow getting out of this alive?" Godge sneered as slaves struggled to drag his divan away from the table. The doors shuddered shut as his bodyguards levered a bracing bar across it. "No escaping now."

"Unfortunate for you," Fatma said with a glance at the swordswoman. "Hassani, kill them all."

Hassani couldn't have cared less about the politics of slavers, but she couldn't agree more that the Book could do with a few less of them. The sword slid from its grease-packed home, seemingly no more than a leg-long, hand-width span of back-lit ice.

"Aze blade," Ardina hissed, eyes widening as she staggered back.

Godge looked at it and Hassani without recognition. "Whatever the weapon, all I see is another dead woman with a fancy sword. Kill them."