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fire smoke.
    “Jerzy, Master.” He swallowed, having to force the name out after years of disuse and silence. “My name is Jerzy.”
    The Vineart nodded, as though this confirmed something he had expected. “What did you feel, Jerzy? When the crush spilled?”
    What did he feel? The question again made no sense. “Nothing, Master.”
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing, Master.” He dropped back down to the ground, awaiting his punishment. What answer had the Master wanted?
    “Ah. No tingle? No desire? No need to run your fingers through the liquid, to feel it touch your skin?” The words were like hooks, trying to pull something out of him.
    “I. . .Master, I. . .there is something wrong with it, Master.” The words spilled out of him before he even knew what he was going to say. Idiot, he thought again, and braced himself for the next blow, expecting it, at last, to be the deadly stroke.
    The Vineart’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded once again, as though finally satisfied.
    “Come with me. Now, Jerzy.”
    The Vineart turned and walked away, toward the taller stone building behind the vintnery that housed the Master’s living quarters. The House of Malech. Forbidden territory to even approach, for a slave. The overseer aimed a kick at the slave in order to get him moving, but the boy rolled and was on his feet, nimbly avoiding the blow. The paralysis that had held him earlier was gone, and his entire body felt alive again. He was alive. He wanted, very much, to remain that way.
    His face still averted, his shoulders hunched from years of habit, the slave followed his master away from the harvest and everything that had, until then, been his life.
    The overseer’s whipstick cracked in the air behind them, and his low growl sounded over it: the boy flinched, even though it was not aimed at him. “Back to work, you worthless bits of flesh! The sun’s still up and there’s fruit to be taken in! Stop wasting the Master’s time!”
    The boy, following blindly, almost mindlessly, felt the dry soil under his feet give way to sun-warmed paving stones, and then to the rougher cobble of the wide pathway separating vintnery from the Master’s own building. He paused, risking one last glimpse over his shoulder. Already the vintnery seemed impossibly far away, the vineyard and sleep house farther yet. He felt no regret, no sense of loss to be leaving it behind. And yet, something made him stop.
    Before the sleep house and the fields, there had been only the slavers’ caravan. Weeks filled with endless hours of walking, of traveling from one market to another, praying to be chosen, to be overlooked, to die, to survive.
    “Are you coming?” the Master asked, still in that same dry, incurious voice. “Or do you wish to stay in the fields?”
    The vintnery was safe, in its own way. For the past however many years he could remember, it had been his home. But no, he didn’t want to stay there.
    Head bowed, the boy followed his master across the pathway, under the green arches of the entrance proper, and into the House of Malech.

Chapter 2
    Those few steps, and forbidden territory was suddenly, immediately, real. The path was smoother underfoot than the cobbled road, and up close, the boy could see that the green arch he walked under was made of vines similar to those growing in the fields, palm-sized leaves twined over a frame so thickly the wood could not be seen underneath. Unlike those growing in the fields, there were no grapes hanging from these stems, and the greenery seemed to rustle as he passed underneath, although he could no longer feel the breeze on his skin. Crossing those cobblestones, he might as well have entered a different land entirely.
    Something tickled the back of his neck as he walked under the archway; that nonexistent breeze touching his sweat-damp skin like curious fingers, and he almost shuddered. Not unpleasant, exactly, but unexpected. Unexpected rarely meant good news, and his nerves