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‘You know, if you stick your ear up to your ass, you can hear the ocean.’ Everyone laughed, but your father slapped you. Now that I think about it, I’ve always enjoyed watching you. You can say the most amazing things.”
    Darrissea raised an eyebrow. “Which entertained more, the remark or the beating?”
    “The fight was fun at the time, but I still laugh at your joke all these years later.”
    “I remember getting hit, but I’d forgotten why my father hit me. You know, you remember those words simply because it is something you wanted to say to your own father. You were always a quiet rebel, full of anger. I could see it in your eyes. I was always a noisy rebel, a dumb one with a bloody nose.”
    “You had the courage to speak the truth,” Tull said.
    “And you had the wisdom to keep your mouth shut.”
    A log broke in the fire, and a shower of cinders spiraled upward. Tull raised his mug. “To rebellion, and truth, and martyrdom.”
    Darrissea raised her mug in return and shook her head, “To all but the last.”
    The old Neanderthal, Uknai, suddenly stirred in his coat of rags. He grunted softly, got up, and went to the keg of beer where a lantern lay, then set the lantern next to the fire and grunted, gesturing for everyone to come near.
    Uknai carefully unscrewed the lid to his map case and all around the fire, people drew close. He pulled out a thin piece of cloth, unrolling it gently on the ground.
    Tull wondered what would be on the map, but as the crowd of Neanderthals drew in close, he could see little over their backs except a flash of color, while those nearby gasped.
    Tull pushed his way forward; the cloth did not have a map drawn on it, but a painting, and something in it took his breath.
    It was a large painting—a landscape of a bleak plain. In a junkyard littered with broken guns and swords was a pale green swath of land with some tired daisies where a young Pwi man and a Pwi woman made love. But above them mountains towered, and carved in the purple-gray stone were the greedy faces of the Slave Lords of Bashevgo: ruined old men slavering and leering, as if they would eat the young lovers, or as if they pondered something more evil.
    An ingenious use of contrasting colors, a grandeur in design, made the portrait stunning. Tull could feel the kwea of the art, as if the painting itself were vibrating and causing movements throughout the crowd. He seldom got that feeling from mere objects—yet some pieces of art carried it, held more power than they should. Uknai’s painting was that way—an icon of power.
    The crowd around Uknai quieted, and the Pwi became solemn. Tull realized that there was little beauty in the picture. Only horror. Pain and suffering.
    And the beauty that existed in the lovers upon the green swath of lawn was all overshadowed by the horror of the Slave Lords. The picture was a story Tull did not want to hear, yet he could not take his eyes from the painting.
    Uknai pulled out a second canvas, spread it before them and once again the Neanderthals breathed in awe.
    The young Pwi woman lay tied to a beautiful bed carved of ivory, gazing out of the picture, and tiny crows flew from her mouth. A handsome human straddled her voluptuous naked body, smiling curiously. The human seemed intent on the pain and terror etched in his victim’s face. He wore a shirt of golden butterfly wings, and golden rings adorned his ears, and everything about him spoke of wealth and grace. Behind him a string of other beds lay, each holding a dead woman.
    In his right hand he tenderly fingered the Pwi woman’s throat, but everywhere there were crows flying in the background, so that the background became only a mass of black crows, and on a distant hill, Uknai sat by a wall of stone while a crow perched above him, speaking into his ear.
    Tull wondered if the picture represented a real rape, or if it represented the rape of Uknai’s people in Bashevgo. He listened to the murmurs of the