She did not get far. As Prince Mendelt withdrew down the corridor, Ares stepped into her path, and his attention went straight past her to the prince.
"Why are you in a deserted place with her?"
Mendelt turned.
"If the two of you are seen together like this, it will start rumors," Ares said. "A future crown prince ought to be more careful."
The prince conceded the point with good grace, offered Averifa a quick apology, and left them.
Alone, Ares turned his frustration on her and caught her arm.
"What is your real game?"
Averifa looked at him with an expression of enormous tiredness.
"I'm not after anything," she said. "I'm simply tired of you."
He was stunned. "That's absurd. You expect me to believe that everything you did — all of it — can be dismissed that easily?"
She was unfazed.
"Then let me apologize," she said. "For everything I have ever done. All of it, without exception. I will accept any punishment the heir of House Nozenleaf cares to name." She let that sit a moment. "On one condition. That my life is spared."
She stood there resolute, prepared for whatever he decided.
Ares smirked. He was, quite plainly, intrigued.
For a second she wondered whether she had said something too outrageous even for her, and then she reaffirmed it to herself. She had meant every word.
To her surprise, he did not get angry. He simply agreed.
"Fine," he said. "As it happens, since you're in the capital, the Emperor has given me a mission." He looked at her. "You'll be accompanying me."
Averifa waited for the rest of it. That was all there was.
The carriage took them through the city at dusk, and she spent most of the ride wondering what on earth the man beside her could be planning. It stopped in a narrow street in front of a shabby-looking inn, and she recognized the place at once, or at least recognized the kind of place it was: an establishment with a certain reputation, the sort used for meetings nobody intended to record.
"Heir of House Nozenleaf—" she began.
He stopped walking.
"Call me by my name."
He held out his hand. After a moment's hesitation she took it.
They went in together, and she could not shake her suspicion. What imperial mission could possibly require the two of them to walk through a door like this one?
"A slave-trading operation," Ares said, low, as they crossed the threshold. "Illegal for thirty years and running in broad daylight, in the heart of the capital. We're going in undercover."
"Dressed as lower-ranking nobles?" she said. "Why?"
His answer was perfectly logical. "Nobles of high status can't be seen strolling into a place like this. So they disguise themselves and sneak in with their lovers." He said the next part plainly, without any change of tone at all. "For this to work, we'll have to pretend to be a couple."
A man came forward to greet them, all warmth and appraisal, and remarked that he did not believe he'd had the pleasure — first time, was it?
Playing his part, Ares pulled Averifa close against him.
"Show us the goods."
The man led them to a stone staircase and down it, into a basement lit badly and smelling worse, and what waited at the bottom was a horror. People. Numerous people, locked away in cells on both sides of a long passage.
"Where did they all come from?" Averifa said.
"Some were bought at auction," Ares said grimly. "Others were simply taken."
"Many nobles are frequent customers, my lord," the keeper offered, with a nervous laugh. "Very frequent. At the auctions."
Ares played his role perfectly. "Show me your strongest."
The man was eager now. He led them halfway down the passage and pointed into a cell.
Averifa looked, and her blood ran cold.
The man inside was chained and battered and filthy, and he was instantly recognizable to her.
Lynn.
Her mind went back into the other life. Lynn was not a stranger. He had been Ares's loyal right hand, and more than that — far more than that — he had been the only person in that cold ducal castle whom she had ever trusted. She remembered him telling her about himself, in the low voice of a man who had never told anyone: an illegitimate child of the distant royal family of Yamato, a heritage that Averifa's own father shared. That common ground had made a bond between them that nothing in the castle ever managed to break.
And here he was, in a cage in a basement, waiting to be sold.
She was at the bars before she knew she had moved.
"Is your name Lynn?" she asked softly. He lifted his head. "My name is Rifa. You're safe now."
Then she turned around.
"Heir of House Nozenleaf," she said, "allow me to take this man."
Ares said nothing.
"We share a distant connection. My father was also of the Yamato royal family."
Ares turned to the slave keeper. "I'll purchase him."
The man was already congratulating himself, already talking about arrangements, when Ares's whole demeanor changed. The pleasantness went out of him. What replaced it was a chilling calm.
"In fact," he said, "I'll be taking every captive in this building."
A sudden frost went through the air of the basement. He drew his sword, and the keeper's face came apart.
"You are under arrest for violation of the anti-slavery laws."
"Who — who are you?"
"For a man whose freedom is ending," Ares said coldly, "my identity is irrelevant."
His men came down the stairs behind him and began securing the passage, cell by cell. In the middle of it Ares glanced back at Averifa, and there was a single question in his eyes, and he did not ask it out loud.
How had she already known Lynn's name?
She faced it without flinching.
"We're distant relatives," she said. "Don't make me repeat myself."
Her tone ended the conversation.
Later, with the chains still on him, Lynn was brought before the heir of House Nozenleaf, who looked him over once.
"From this moment," Ares said, "you are my subordinate. Serve House Nozenleaf well."
And with that, the old life was struck off him entirely.