Kynan swallowed his pain, his confusion, swallowed the demeaning status in which he found himself-a virtual slave in Satan’s dominions-and worked hard to earn the scant coins he needed to pay for his tiny sleeping room and the meals of rice and strange vegetables which kept him alive. He missed meat desperately but was unable to afford it on what he earned
Several times a day, his hatred of the strange, demon birds which lived here-birds with teeth in their bills -deepened as he watched them eat colorful fish he was forbidden to take for his own meals. If he hadn’t been terrified of incurring the king’s wrath for killing one of the protected birds, he’d have killed and eaten one of them.
So he carried baggage for rich people whose behavior he could scarcely comprehend and whose Language he could comprehend not at all, found a second job sweeping floors in the bewildering place in which he was trapped, and quietly hugged his misery and terror and bitterness to himself. Every time he saw the grinning jackanapes who’d first told him what had happened to him, who had laughed at him while four strong men held him down…
Every time he saw the man called Kit Carson, Kynan wished to do more than violence. He wished to do murder.
But he’d watched that man practice mock fighting in the huge, lighted hall called “gym.” He was a cunning, strong warrior as well as a knave. If Kynan wished to purge the stain of disgrace from his honor, it would have to come through sudden, unexpected attack. Kynan once would have sneered at any man who planned such a treacherous approach to an affair of honor, would have rightly called him blackguard. But Kynan was no longer in a land which made sense. He was in hell.