“All the gravy.”

He popped the sausage and bread into his mouth, making his cheeks bulge comically.

“Well slow down. You’re not worth anything dead,” Valak said with a rough edge in his voice.

His boys were used to Valak’s rough ways. They knew when their Handler was mildly annoyed, and when he was about to whip ass. But Jasari wasn’t one of his boys. A shadow of fear crossed the slaveboy’s pale face. The memory of Valak’s cold knife pressed to his throat haunted his eyes.

“Go on boy, eat,” Valak said in a softer voice. “I’ll bring you more if you gobble it all.”

The boy looked up at him, unbelieving. “You would do that Sir?”

Valak nodded. “Yeah. So slow down. I mean it.”

Valak ran a gentle hand through the boy’s soft, golden hair while Jasari ate. Diogo saw a look on his friend’s face that he had come to know and dread.

“No,” Diogo said, making the word two syllables. He shot up his forefinger, ticking it back and forth. “Don’t be thinking of it.”

“What?” Valak said, his eyes wide.

“Don’t be looking at him like no stray pup. He’s going back or we’re selling him.”

The stray pup look vanished from Valak’s face and that hard, dangerous look that was never far came into his eyes. Cutter’s eyes, Diogo called them. That’s how Valak looked when he was carving up a screaming man like a Gods-Blessed Feast Day bird.

“Haken’s scum,” Valak said.

Diogo let it go. Long summers of friendship had taught him not to argue with those cutter’s eyes.

All this seemed to go by the boy, who went on eating without looking up at the men. Outside, seven bells rang.

“Call them in,” Diogo said. “Let’s take care of this. Daylight’s wasting.”

The boy spared Valak no glance when he left. Diogo sat back with the air of a man at a particularly good magic show and watched the boy stuff another tremendous bread wrapped sausage into his mouth.

The moment the boy swallowed the last of the food, he looked afraid again. He wiped the crumbs from his full ruby lips and knelt between Diogo’s legs looking up at him with his dark green eyes, more scared