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performers.
    Kasan asked, "Would you like a dancer to come to you tonight?" Despite his years in the East, Gavin's Presbyterian conscience had never become inured to this kind of casual pandering. "Thank you, but no. I have much to think about, and will do it better without distraction."
    "Your thoughts turn to the slave woman?" The sultan smiled lazily. He'd drunk a good deal of wine for a man who was nominally Muslim. While his speech remained clear, his edges became sharper as the evening advanced.
    Glad the subject had been broached, Gavin replied, "As I said earlier, I'd like to buy her, but not as a bedmate. She didn't interest me that way." Uneasily he recognized that wasn't true. Even shabby and abused, she had been a striking woman. The kind who would always attract second and third looks from men.
    "You are-what is the English word?-something of a Puritan, Captain."
    "Perhaps," Gavin said, "but you seek honesty and hard work, and those are Puritan virtues."
    "Touche." Kasan snapped his fingers, and the slave behind him gave his master a pair of twelve-sided objects about two inches square. Kasan rolled them in his hand. Carved of ivory, they had symbols etched in gold on each pentagonal facet. "Maduri has a unique form of dice. Do you care to test your luck? "
    "We Puritans are not fond of gambling," Gavin said dryly. "Especially when we don't know the rules."
    "The twelve-sided dice are very ancient. As a pair, they are used for gambling or divination. A single one is used in what we call Singa Mainam. The Lion Game."
    Kasan tossed a die across the table. When it skittered to a stop, he said, "When a warrior wished to challenge his chief for leadership, he threw five times. Each symbol tests the strength, wisdom, or courage that a good leader must have. Swords or chess. Swimming or marksmanship. Diving or fighting the dragon. This symbol means unarmed combat. The hands of the gods determine what the challenger faced."
    He gave another lazy smile. "You understand that this was long before Islam came to the Islands and we became civilized. But the Lion Game is still part of us."
    Intrigued, Gavin said, "Maduri is surely unique among the Islands."
    "And it will continue so. We will not become meat for European weapons." Kasan's voice was soft and deadly.
    Thinking the man was both admirable and alarming, Gavin lifted his glass of rice wine in a toast. "May your land always be safe from European invasion, Your Highness."
    Kasan smiled and lifted his glass in response, and the conversation became more casual. Nonetheless, it was a relief when the banquet finally ended. Wearily Gavin followed his guide through the corridors of the sprawling palace. He wondered if the guide was another slave. Probably. Why should the sultan pay wages when slaves were so readily available?
    The subject turned his thoughts to the European slave woman again. Was she lying in some dank cell, praying that he might be able to help her? Or was she beaten and bloody and beyond hope? He hoped that Suryo might have learned something about her-Gavin had sent his friend to socialize with the palace serving staff and learn about real life in Maduri.
    Gavin entered his rooms, and stopped in astonishment. A huge, hexagonal cage made of heavy gilded bars had been erected in the center of the suite's drawing room. And huddled in one corner was the slave woman.

CHAPTER 4
    Aex had finally dozed off in a corner of the cage, but she jerked upright at the sound of footsteps. Slavery had taught her that changes were seldom for the better, and she'd been frightened ever since guards brought her to the palace to confine her in this triple-locked cage in a strange, luxurious chamber. At first, the dim light of the single lamp showed only the arrival of a tall, intimidating male. Then she recognized the European who'd visited the slave market. She'd begun to wonder if he was a hallucination, but he was real enough-a tall, powerful man with an air of command. Those