That night we ate together. Sir Demetrios insisted. Why, he said, it was unseemly for brothers to not dine at the same table. While, yes, while the circumstances of my birth were peculiar, and certainly father ought not have done what he had done, I was still an Skantarii. An Skantarii! He said the word with his lips so wide and spread that I wondered if they would run off the edges of his face.

  So dinner it was. I asked All-Seeing-Eye if Sir Demetrios was planning to kill me at dinner, or before dinner, or shortly afterwards, or if he'd ordered someone else to do it, like a soldier, or, perhaps, a whore. All-Seeing-Eye said no. Maybe arsenic was more his style. Maybe I was being too paranoid. 

  I had half-expected Lady Skantarii to object, but she took it with surprising grace. Maybe she didn't want to cloud her son's triumphant return with our petty quarrels. I could understand that. If Ada came back from something arduous and dangerous, I too would be too happy to bother.

  The sun set. We sat there. Long dinner table, meant for fifty, now filled by five. At the head was the conquering hero himself, Sir Demetrios, and to his left Ada, and to his right the Lady Skantarii. To Ada's right, though, sat the messenger boy. He was here at Lady Skantarii's insistence. Something about being an exemplary servant and worthy of reward, and Sir Demetrios bought it. I couldn't decide if he was truly that thick or just good at pretending to be.

  I was seated to the messenger boy's right, even further from the head of the table. So this was her ploy? Why did I ever give her the benefit of the doubt? As I sat down, someone giggled. One of the maids. Bitch.

  At that moment, Lady Skantarii swept her eyes towards mine and smiled. She raised her spoon to her glass and tapped it. Once, twice. The room fell silent.

  "Who laughed?" She said.

  I could hear skirts rustle behind me. A few whispers. No-one came forward.

  "Who laughed?" Again silence. Then a yelp. I turned and looked behind me. Two maids pushed out a third, a chubby girl. Her eyes darted from face to face to face.

  "My lady, I--"

  Lady Skantarii clapped. An older maid emerged from behind the red drapes to our left, and pushed them apart revealing a storeroom. Large metal cans heaped, no doubt, full of spices, sugars, dried herbs and other things that the Skantarii family absolutely couldn't afford. I let myself breathe, and took my hand off the dagger tied to the inside of my shirt. Within expectations. Everything was proceeding within expectations. Of course then the older maid strode up to three large cans, pulled up her skirt to her ankles, and kicked the cans with her foot. Silence. Then the lids rose, rose, then fell off, revealing three helmeted heads. The soldiers clambered out, their chain-mail jingling and clanging against the inside of the cans, and then assembled. To a man they were stunted, short, and the one in the middle, their apparent leader, was shorter still.

  The lady bade him to approach. He did, removing his helmet and passing it off to his subordinates. His white hair and eyebrows, his pale skin so unlike our own, marked him an albino, or else a serious eccentric.

  I felt a pain coming on. Sure, whatever, an albino dwarf, why not. What was this, Snow White? Not that I watched old children's movies.

  "Deal with this" Said the Lady, sweeping her hands. Her eyes were staring at me. And here I thought only men engaged in dominance displays.

  "As you command, my lady," said the albino. "You two, take this disobedient wretch out and cane her. I will have Sabida examine the wretch. If her buttocks do not resemble an overripe persimmon--"

  "Milady, please, milady--"

  The soldiers dragged the shaking girl-child out, dragging her by her clothes, arms, and hair. Ada stared at his plate. I stared at Demetrios. He was staring at the albino dwarf with a queer look on his face, as if he'd seen his father, gored belly and all, come scratching out his grave.

  "Balthazar." said the Lady Skantarii, smiling. "Did I not give you justice?"

  What was her game here? Maybe I should push a little. I smiled. "Oh, this was wonderful justice...mother."

  The word hit her like a glob of thick, wet spit, dredged up from the hate bubbling at the bottom of my lungs. She stiffened, her smile looking dead and stapled to her face. You could see the wrinkles pile up around her eyes. Then she glanced at Sir Demetrios, dug up that stapled corpse-smile, and stretched it across her skin. "Quite. I'm glad."

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  Stranger and stranger. Something was afoot, but I might as well push this as far I could. Pushing off the chair, I stood up. "This was such wonderful justice, mother, that I can't help but ask you to rectify another injustice."

  "Another injustice?"

  "This seating...it snubs me."

  Sir Demetrios decided to remind us that he did in fact exist. Clearing his throat, he said, "Yes, mother, I've been meaning to ask, but why is that messenger boy here? Shouldn't Balthazar be seated closer to the head of the table?"

  Lady Skantarii stared at me, then turned to her eldest son. "Ah, my dearest Dmitry, I was meaning to raise the same point." The Lady called out the older maid, the one who'd pulled apart the curtains. "You were in charge of the seating arrangements, were you not?"

  The maid's eyes could have come popping out her skull. She looked left and right and down and the wild motions tugged clumps of her hair out of its tie. "My lady, I-- you--" she began, then realizing something, bowed. "My wretched self has displeased you, my lady." This maid knew how the game was played.

  "Ten lashes," said the Lady, and wow, wasn't it raining lashes today? Ada was staring at me but I ignored him. Self-defense was a valid legal defense in much of the world, be they capitalist or no. He needed to do a little growing up.

  The messenger boy went away. I sat in my new seat and watched the remaining maids troop about.

Food came. Duck noodle soup from our new Sinian chef. We ate in silence; silence that ran on, amok, unhindered by anything but slurping, and the cane's crack, and the miserable shrieks that came from the outside courtyard. Between the duck soup-- delicious, of course-- and the constant screaming, it would be a wonder if the estate had any birds left! I said as much. No-one laughed.

  Then came the second course, the main meal. Something more traditional. Imagine a giant turnip, all red and white and the size of a man's head, but hollowed-out and filled with soup. And not a thin watery soup, no, but something thickened with flour and served alongside a soft flatbread. Somehow I liked it better than the noodles even if it was simple fare lacking the pizzazz and sophistication of Sinian cooking.

  Ada was too young to remember, but I was two when our family left Iran. Father was a veteran of the war against Saddam; during the war, he picked up a bit about computers and then got a degree. It was the Nineties and American companies were taking on anyone who knew anything about computers.

  Life was still hard. We lived in an apartment, me, mother, father, my uncles (including Ada's father), and all sundry. We had one bathroom, one kitchen. We washed and put up our clothes on the patio to dry them and the one time I got a bike it got stolen. I used to look across the street at the big brown houses where the rich kids lived. The kids with clothes that weren't bought at Goodwill, who could pay to go to the fancy soccer camps with their brand new cleats. I know, I know, forgive and forget. Let the past be the past.

  I swished the turnip soup around my mouth. The screaming was dying down. Mother made soup like this. Not Lady Arianites, but my real mother. I could almost hear the chop-chop-chop of her cutting tomatoes. She had a bad habit: she would drag the knife across the chopping board once she finished chopping a tomato. We'd lost three flea market knives that way.

  No, who was I kidding? I couldn't forget. Money...the things it could bring-- the things it cost us-- there was no greater sin than to be poor, powerless. I knew this the way those tomatoes knew the knife. Better to cut then to be cut, better to lie, cheat, steal, than to be lied to, cheated, or stolen from. Better to kill than be killed.

  A distant part of me smiled. Working up your nerve, eh? Promised Ada you'd do the right thing the right way but secretly you're hoping that it all falls through, aren't you?

  I told that part of me to shut up. Lady Arianites had lent me fifty cavalrymen, even now hidden at a nearby farmstead. Their captain had given me the command whistle when we met. I need only blow on it, and they would come, ready to burn and loot and kill.

  But I wouldn't do it, not if I wasn't forced. I wasn't that kind of person. If I let them loose, they would kill anyone they liked, would ride high and free, halfway out their saddles. Besides Ada and I, no-one would be safe. Not Basina, not Humboldt.

  I was being too pessimistic. Demetrios hadn't impressed me with his intelligence, but he seemed kind and reasonable. And Lady Skantarii, she knew where the line was. She wouldn't cross it. And, of course, Ada was there to keep things from getting out of hand. Yeah.

  A door opened. The jingle of chain-mail. Muffled sobs. Startled, I looked up from my plate. Basina lay on her knees, yanked forwards by a hand clutching her thin grey hair. A hand covered in steel; a soldier stood there, clad in conical helm and at the table Lady Skantarii's thin lips looked ready to take flight and my head was pounding and pounding.

  "My lady, I've captured the villain Basina," said the soldier, puffing out his chest. "She's a real cheat, this old coot, though she acts so harmless. Caught her pilfering from the vaults, me and Jordy did."

  Lies. Lies! I paid her so much. Why would she couldn't stoop to scooping up a few silvers? This was all lies.

  "Is that so?" said the Lady. "Shame. My dearest, hmm...my dearest son Balthazar, what is the penalty for stealing from the vaults?"

  Death. I stared at her. The pounding was beginning to coalesce, beginning to form bands of concentric pressure running round my head.

  "Death." She said. "The penalty for stealing silver is death. How tragic. I suppose we'll have to execute her, won't we?"

  "Legally, that is the penalty, mother." Demetrios said. "But Basina has served our family for so long. Wouldn't clemency be in order?"

  "You've seen how shamelessly the maids behave," she said. "Mockery, mischief, and now even theft. Something must be done."

  "Tomorrow morning," Demetrios said, and Adashir turned his distraught face to mine, but for once that failed him.

  So that was why. Everything strange about the night-- she'd been planning this! Her eyes met mine for the final time this night. I knew she knew and she knew I knew. Her smile grew impossibly wide. Everywhere in my head was an incredible droning, a locust's symphony, and the crooked part of me shook his head.

  There would be blood.