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Neanderthals, heard their unspoken outrage. Uknai was a master artist, playing his audience carefully, a man of wit and passion and skill, and his works stunned the Pwi.
    A third picture showed Uknai running down a city street, a small and insignificant creature charging full tilt between tall buildings of stone that opened like a dark throat, a bloody knife in one hand, a child’s doll made of reeds in another.
    From every window, from every darkened passageway, eyes looked out, and from above, one could see that the world was a maze of dark passages with no escape. Tull knew then that this was Uknai’s story, his personal story, and not a symbolic retelling of the horrors of all the slaves in Bashevgo. Some of the Neanderthals looked at the bloody knife, grunted, “Well done!” for they were happy to see that Uknai had killed a Slave Lord.
    Uknai reached into his case and pulled out a final painting, and the crowd moved forward. Before Tull could see it, he heard snarls from those in close. The picture was painted in blacks and purples, and showed Uknai, broken, bruised and frightened, sitting on a hill of skulls, clutching the child’s doll; above him was a cage of bones, without a key or lock. Dancing through the sky, ghouls with grave clothes leered down, and floating in the sky among them were men in red armor, men without faces, and two of them stooped, as if having just set Uknai in the cage.
    The hill, the ghouls, the cage of bones, Uknai’s vacant and hopeless eyes staring out. Anorath drew the lantern nearer, so that everyone could see, and all the young Neanderthals frowned. Tull had heard rumors of the Cage of Bones, where Neanderthals sentenced to death for murdering a Slave Lord were sent. Rumor said there was no escape, no exit.
    Tull’s heart pounded, and all his world narrowed to Uknai’s eyes, staring out.
    Uknai pointed at the man in the cage and groaned tonguelessly, pointed to himself. “That is me in that cage,” he was saying, and pointed helplessly at the men in red armor.
    “Those are Palace Guards of the Blade Kin,” Fava said, pointing at the men dancing through the sky in red. “Like the men who were chasing Uknai.”
    The dark-purple nighttime, the yellow bones, the flying Slave Lords and their demonic servants.
    Yet the pain in Uknai’s eyes is what captivated Tull. The painting was beautiful, yet it horrified Tull to the very depth of his soul. Here was a man who had lived in a chasm so fast and deep that Tull could not fathom it, while Tull and his friends stayed here in the relative freedom and safety of the Rough.
    Tull thought idly, For every one of us Pwi living here in the wild, a thousand live in slavery in Craal or Bashevgo. All my life, I’ve enjoyed my freedom, never considering how the vast hordes live.
    It shamed him. Darrissea leaned in among the crowd and touched the last canvas, caressed a corner as if judging the worth of it, and she looked up at Tull, rage in her dark eyes.
    She held it up for all to see, then whistled for attention. “This is Bashevgo!” she said. “This is our future. All our lives we’ve been hiding out here in the Rough, living in this wilderness of sleep. We all know that someday the slavers will come, and some of you talk of escaping to Hotland. But I don’t see many places left to hide!” She pulled a knife from the sheath on her hip drew it across her wrist. “I swear to God by my blood that I shall free Bashevgo before I die!”
    She raised her bleeding wrist for all to witness. Tull thought, She must be drunk . Old Uknai grabbed the knife from Darrissea, drew it across his own wrist, silently held it up.
    Tull’s heart pounded, blood thundering in his ears. He had never heard talk like this, open talk of war, and he marveled that an old man with a handful of paintings could hold such sway over them.
    Yet the rage was in him, the pent anger over what the Slave Lords had done. Tull grabbed the knife, drew it across his own wrist,