Sequel to: "Tender Mercies of the Wicked."

Warning: Implied sexual situations; poor Malik stumbling upon said situations.

Author's Note: Malik in this story is based off the manga version, who is a bit more assertive, almost demanding.

He had caught Rishid passing his room and stopped the servant in his tracks. Where was he going? he had asked with a smirk on his face. Did his father know that he was wandering the halls at that hour? Tsk, tsk! he tutted. Father would have been very displeased.

Rishid looked very sad when Malik pointed all this out, but then again, he almost always looked sad. Even when he played with him or studied with him, whether he laughed or just smiled, Rishid's eyes always seemed sad.

Malik pouted, his fun cut short by consequent pity. He held Rishid's free hand and huffed, "I won't tell. You always cover for me when I do stuff that makes father upset."

The servant gazed straight into his eyes. The sadness was still there, but another feeling accompanied it, one Malik had never seen in the meek servant—the feeling of anger.

"Master Malik," he began quite sharply, "go back to your bed. Now."

The sharpness made Malik jump back and release his hand. He had never spoken to him that way! Even when he told him to avoid a dark corridor or not climb a pillar or stand too close to a ledge, he did so passively.

"Rishid, how can you speak to me like this?" Malik demanded with a pout. "I'm an Ishtar! And I—"

"Master Malik, you shall go to bed," Rishid growled at the boy. "Either that or deal with your father. Do you understand me?"

The young boy's eyes widened. Rishid…

"You are not to follow me," the servant continued. "That is an order, and your father would agree with me this time. Now go back to bed."

Then he marched down the hall, casting a stony glance over his shoulder that sent the child scurrying back to his room.

As he stood at the entrance, hand on his chest, Malik's face felt hot. He felt hot, and his stomach felt strange, and his heart beat so hard. How could Rishid do that to him? He was the Ishtar Heir, the most respected—and sometimes feared—child of this entire clan. No one talked back to him or roughly to him like that—not unless that person wanted to deal with his father. And if his father found out, he would punish that person so hard!

As he stomped back to his bed and plopped unceremoniously down, he suddenly wondered if Rishid was already in trouble. After all, Rishid always did what his father told him, and he would never wander just anywhere at any time.

Maybe something bad was happening within the clan. Maybe someone important was sick or dying. Or maybe an outsider had broken in.

"Wah!" Malik ducked under his sheet. His father had talked about the outside world, though not often and not happily. It used to be that all the clan could walk above and below ground, but then invaders came to Kemet who killed anybody who did not worship the way they did. His father called them the servants of the demon god Apep, sent to kill them and swallow the pharaoh's memories.

But wait, he thought, if outsiders had gotten in, why was no one else up? His father would be up and shouting, the men grabbing their weapons and the women taking him and his sister and the other children into hiding. So why else was Rishid so sad and angry? Was it really so wrong to follow him?

Malik did not go back to sleep. He lay on his bed, but he tossed and turned, wondering and wondering, worrying and worrying. Rishid was just a servant, but Malik still liked him. He was almost like a big brother to him, and even though his father beat him up a lot, Rishid never took out his anger on Malik. He seemed to love him even more.

Malik uttered a curse he had learned from his father (but of course would have never repeated in front him). He was going to go to his father's room and ask what had happened to Rishid. He would refuse to go to sleep until he was satisfied with an answer.

With oil lamp in hand, the boy marched down the corridor to his father's room. The man always slept at strange hours, so he could have very well been awake at that time. Awake or asleep, he hated to be disturbed, but Malik did not care. His father yelled at him, terribly so, but he had not raised a fist against him yet.

Once he reached the entrance, though, his courage began to diminish. He really did not like it when his father yelled at him. His eyes would get bloodshot, and if he picked up anything, he would throw it against the wall. Then he would call in Rishid and showed Malik what he would do to him if he ever disobeyed him. Still, if Rishid were in trouble—

Was that Rishid's voice on the other side of the curtain? he thought. He sounded like he was already in pain. As Malik's hand hesitated on the curtain, he wondered if perhaps he should have heeded the servant's grave warning and returned to bed.

"F-father?" he stuttered in a low voice, peering inside. "Father? Rishid?"

The boy barely took two steps in when he nearly dropped his oil lamp.

His father's head whipped toward the entrance, eyes wild with shock.

"Malik…" he said.

The boy knew right away he was not meant to see any of that. When Rishid finally glanced up from where he lay, he seemed utterly mortified and in the next moment terrified.

Malik's father glared down at Rishid. "You wretched slave! How dare you let this happen!"

"Ah!"

Malik fled. He did not fully understand what he had seen, but he fled back to his room, even as Rishid's screams grew louder and followed him into his room. He ducked under his sheet again and wrapped it tightly around him, trembling and fearing that his father would come after him next. He began to bargain with the gods that if they kept him father away and made him forget his anger, he would never let his curiosity get the better of him again.

Just make the screaming stop, he begged, tears pouring down his cheeks. Make Rishid stop screaming like that.

When the morning came, Rishid had not come to wake him as usual.

Malik crept out of his room with all the caution of a frightened child—looking over his shoulder and spinning round in the middle of the hallway, listening for every footstep and every voice. He had no desire to pass his father's room, and when he did, he tiptoed as far away from the entrance as he could.

He did not call out Rishid's name as he approached the servants' quarters. He peered into the open entrance, looking at all the cots.

"Rishid?"

All the other servants had disappeared to do the clan's bidding. Curled in a lonely corner was Rishid, his head cradled against his knees. He had not seemed to have heard Malik, but the boy did not carry on, saying his name. He walked over to the servant and sat beside him, close but not too close.

"I… I'm sorry I didn't listen to you, Rishid…" he said quietly. "I didn't… I didn't know…"

The servant slowly lifted his head and gazed at his young master with only one eye. His left was bruised and swollen shut. His bottom lip was cut, blood half-congealed. His robe was blood-stained in several places.

Rishid averted his gaze and laid his forehead upon his knees again. He groaned.

"Wha… What did you do," Malik asked slowly, "to be punished like that?"

"It wasn't a punishment," Rishid replied hoarsely.

"But today, you look so—"

"It didn't start off as a punishment," Rishid said, lifting his head slowly. "Not until…" He stopped for a moment, looking into Malik's large, penitent eyes.

"Malik, your father and I have a… complicated relationship. The only time he really, really likes me is when I do certain things for him, things that neither you nor anyone else in the clan is supposed to know about."

"But you seemed like you were in so much pain!" Malik shouted.

Rishid held out a hand to silence him. Nobody else needed to happen upon the conversation. The night before had been a horrible enough happenstance.

"Master Ishtar was very happy with me up until last night," he said. "It's not often that he's pleased with me, and I shall do anything to make him happy with me."

"Even if it hurts you?" Malik hissed.

"Not always."

"But you're so sad all the time. Is that why?"

Rishid paused. His unharmed eye shifted from left to right as he thought for a moment. Then he smiled meekly and replied, "I guess I'd be sad anyway without doing what you… what you saw us doing. It's just… well, you're far too young to understand. Maybe in a year, after your initiation… but even then, I don't know."

Malik leaned against Rishid and wrapped his arm around his.

"I'd never treat any of my servants like that," he said. "I could but I wouldn't. You know I wouldn't do anything like that to you, Rishid? I'd never do it."

The servant gently pat the top of his head. "I know you wouldn't, Master Malik, I know you wouldn't.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh is the property of Kazuki Takahashi, Shounen Jump Weekly, and Nihon Ad Systems. The author, Danners, makes no profit from this fanfiction.