"I was such a fool, such a damned fool. I was the hero prince, the warrior prince, the unbeatable and unstoppable Prince Sado of unbeaten, unbroken, unbowed Komestra! We had not lost a war in fifteen hundred years. Yes some were harder than others, but there was never a sight more feared on the battlefield than that of a Komestran Prince and his army. Maybe that's why I lost. Maybe that's why I couldn't hear what my advisors were saying. Maybe that is why I couldn't do what that monster said I should have done."

"My name is Prince Sado, or just… 'Sado' now. When anyone says I am a prince, they preface it with 'slave' or they follow it with the words 'of chains'. It is a mockery, a mockery I can barely endure."

"I don't know why I'm keeping this record of my thoughts, I only know that I am, and I have to be grateful of all things, to the woman who not only rescued me, but keeps me enslaved. I went to my knees and asked permission to write my thoughts, and she gave me a book of blank paper. I don't know if she intends to read it, but given what I now am, it's none of my business, I don't even own the book in which I write. Still, I am grateful to her. This is my first entry, and it comes on the day I lost yet another fight. At least this one was likely unwinnable. The monster who serves the mistress, 'Solution' by name, gave me a task today which I will never forget."

"I… became a dishwasher. I went to the kitchens on her order, there were ample wooden buckets around, hot water was always going, it was scalding, but the other slaves didn't seem to mind, so I, on my pride, couldn't complain if they didn't. I lowered my head, took my place, and reached into a bucket full of wooden bowls that other slaves used for eating their morning meal. I then began to wash. The hands that once signed documents between great cities, now scrubbed slave spit and dried crusty bread away in scalding hot soapy water."

"I wasn't there just to wash dishes though, I had a reason to be there. The bodyguard of Mistress Aiwenor, she told me to ask a question that it shames me to admit, I had not ever thought to ask. She told me to ask the men and women scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, 'If I'd won the war, would they have cared 'how' I won it?' That was hard on me. But with nothing else for it, I obeyed.

I avoided their surprised looks at first, that was bad enough, but when I fell in beside them and watched their broken hearts form on their faces, hopeless, longing for things they didn't speak of, for people who were dead or gone away, I began to understand in a way I hadn't even before the bodyguard's cruel lesson, why I was being told to ask."

"At first things were quiet, busy with work as we all were, there was no time for chatter, just the barked orders of the one in charge and the endless repeating clatter of wooden bowls and cups in fresh buckets as load after load was laid down in front of me. I didn't get the chance to ask until an hour or two after the last soldiers and servants ate in their various common areas, eventually though, when it was done, we were given the chance to do the same. Our supervisor wheeled in a wooden barrow loaded down with fresh vegetables and a small amount of horsemeat. I'll never forget his words. 'Eat up, slaves, you have the next meal coming up sooner than you think!' the endless drudgery hit home painfully. Was this to be their lives? Just an endless stream of dishes to wash, fear, hopelessness, and sleep in between?"

"I, a prince, sat down on the floor with a wooden bowl of vegetables and a single strip of horse meat, paired with a wooden cup of water. Beside me sat other slaves who had food like myself, and they kept looking my way. I couldn't avoid their eyes anymore, whatever I am now, I am still not a coward. So I asked them the question as bluntly as I could. I will record their answers here as best I can. Any mistakes therein are my own, as were the ones that brought us to this point."

'My mother died when the city fell. My father died in the raid on Pas'en. My older sister got married before the war began, she went on the auction block before me, she was sold to a man who announced his ownership of a brothel so the ones who lost the bidding would know where to find her. I haven't seen her since.'

'My son died when the mages of three cities bombarded our district with fireballs, I can only assume he burned to death under the ordered attacks of the Kaisenian general.'

'I now know my worth… eight copper coins. And I don't know if this will ever change. I've been washing dishes since the day I was bought. I have no hope of seeing my wife ever again, we've heard from the soldiers that two family members of soldiers were bought and set free as a reward for good service, merit in battle for one, and a great service in recovering lost property for another. I wash dishes. What merit can I earn? My wife told me she was pregnant the same day the war began. There was no way for her to run, and nowhere to run, when the siege began. I doubt very much I will ever see her, I don't know if my baby was a boy or a girl, I don't know if it looks like me. I don't even know if they let her carry it or if she was made to drink the bitter waters to lose my baby before birth so she could spend more time working. I don't know what she sold for or what she's doing. I just get up, wash dishes, and go to sleep waiting for fate to end my nightmare.'

'All we want is to wake up and find our city alive again and ourselves in our own beds, all of us… you took us to war, we followed you, but you failed us. Sure, everybody likes the hero stories, but this isn't a world where heroes charge in, kill everything, and come out clean on the other side. If you'd assassinated the prince of Pas'en, or won by trickery, or thievery, or anything else… you'd have still won. My Prince… we loved how you fought for us, we know it was not vanity that took you down the path it did, but whatever your reason, the result is the same. You traded our lives, our families, our futures, our freedom, so you could act like someone out of a bard's tale. If you'd won dirty, I'd have a home. Because you lost clean, I lost… we all lost everything.'

"I listened to them all, one by one, I met their eyes as best I could. I listened to the young woman who didn't say a word, just stood there in the flower of youth, her posture emphasizing her shapely beauty, and did not need to ask what she endured when the city fell and she was taken prisoner. The bump already forming in her belly told me enough. I listened to them all, and each one was a lesson I had never heeded in my life, or considered. By the end of it all, when I understood the gravity of my folly in yet another new way, the monster's lesson hit home. I knew the truth as I never had."

"There is no right or wrong but victory when it comes to protecting what's yours. They were mine, and I kept my honor at the cost of their lives, their bodies, their families, their futures. I mocked the politics of the great cities, the backstabbing that I was sure made them weak. I was so sure that our unity was stronger than their divisions, I didn't see that they had closed the separate fingers into a fist. When they were done, I rejected my folly and my past. The mistress is a woman of ambition, a woman of cunning and ruthlessness, I must learn from her, learn from her bodyguard. I must learn what I should have always known, that nothing matters but the end, in the game of cities. I will listen to Kaiji, to Freyjin, to Onimeus, to them all. When I had this revelation, I had no right to be on my feet before them. I went to my knees, and lowered my head to the floor. I begged their forgiveness for failing them. I swore I wouldn't again. I don't know if they believed me, or if they cared. But the young woman simply remarked, 'How can you fail us at washing dishes?'

"I had nothing to say to that, I could only hope that the mistress holds to her plan to elevate me into a leadership role, and that it gives me another chance to prove myself, not just to her, not just to my people, but to myself, and that I can learn from my mistakes. I don't know what tomorrow brings, but at least I can have hope, and if some part of me is still a Prince? Well perhaps I can still bring hope to my people, now that they're her people. That is all."