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"You, thrall!" Nadja snapped, looking at a lion who she was fairly certain was neither a reaver nor a freeborn lion.

With the dramatic influx of outlanders that had begun with Aesir assumed the warlordship, it was not always easy for her to guess correctly which unfamiliar face held which rank. It didn't help matters that most of the time Nadja didn't care if she called someone by the wrong rank.

"Do you know anything about plants?" she demanded. If he did, he wasn't the lion she was looking for. If he didn't, well, he was exactly what she wanted and he wasn't going to enjoy his afternoon very much.

"I don't care what your name is," Nadja told him truthfully. "You're a thrall, and so your rank is sufficient. There's no reason for me to waste brain space on remembering anything more about you."

Believe it or not, Nadja had been like this all her life. She wasn't bothered by the fact that her personality seemed to alienate people. She had a few people whose presence she not only tolerated, but enjoyed, and that was sufficient. At some point she'd have to find herself a mate, but that could wait for a good long time. Mates meant cubs, and cubs meant that eventually one of them would start trying to kill her.

"You don't need to know anything at all about plants," she assured him. "Come with me. You're going to help me with my work. I'm training to be a priestess, you see, and my training is...unique to the rank. Every so often I require an assistant. Today that will be you. Congratulations."

Nadja gave the snarky thrall a sharp look. He would probably wonder later on if what she did to him was the result of his poor impulse control, or whether it had been her intention all along, as was in fact the case.

"That doesn't really concern you," Nadja informed him. "Your time is at my disposal."

She relented a little and answered as she walked, "It will depend on whether I've done my work correctly. If I have, it shouldn't take very long at all. If not, you'll have to wait until I figure out where I went wrong."

"It will be uncomfortable," she admitted. "But I doubt it will qualify as torture and I can certainly instruct you in remedying the discomfort when we have finished."

She didn't have to explain herself, but she also didn't want to have to hunt down another thrall because this one ran off because of some imagined fear that was far worse than reality.

At some point Nadja knew she would have to get a personal thrall to experiment on, but choosing one and breaking it in seemed like a great deal of trouble. It would be simpler to inherit her mother's thrall upon her death, but her blasted mother was clinging pretty hard to life.

When they reached the place where Nadja did most of her concocting she indicated where Atheris was to sit and moved about with confidence, certain that her orders would be obeyed as she gathered her supplies. In the end she had several hollowed gourds of water, a shallow bark trencher of paste, and a packet of powder.

"Ready?" she asked.

"You're right," she agreed cheerfully. It seemed that he had accepted his fate, and that was good. Now she just needed him to do as she told him.

"I want you to dip your paw in the largest gourd of water and then pat it in the paste."

Before continuing she hesitated, but then decided it would be better to go with full disclosure. "This is the uncomfortable part. Your paw will start to burn and itch, especially between your toes, I imagine, where the skin is the most tender."

"After that I will add some of the powder to a gourd of water and ask you to put your paw in it, at which point your job is to let me know if it takes away the burning and itching."

While Atheris was doing as she had told him, Nadja measured out the amount of powder she thought she would need to negate the amount of water and paste on his paw. The paste was somehow made to burn when it came into contact with water, but water with the powder she'd ground made it stop. At least, it was supposed to.

She added the powder to the water with quick, precise movements and told him, "Paw in there, please. If I'm right, it should stop hurting."

She was actually being far more pleasant to him than she would have been if he hadn't been one of her experiments. She always felt a little sorry for the thralls she experimented on, and so she was inclined to be nicer if the experiments turned out to be unpleasant.

"Because I made a mistake," Nadja answered, frowning at Atheris's foot as though it was his fault.

The obvious thing to do would be to add more of the powder, and so Nadja did that first. She knew that less of the powder would be even less effective, so there was no point in wasting time with that.

If increasing the powder beyond a certain point proved useless, she would dismiss the thrall after getting the paste off him and go back to work. She knew there was a way to make this work. She just didn't need to have a thrall sitting there in agony the whole time.

His howling was distracting, for one thing.

Nadja didn't bother answering his first question about the purpose her paste served. There was no reason for a thrall to know that. Besides, if he gave it a few moments' thought he'd figure out for himself that such a thing had myriad applications for a warlike pride that lived beside water.

"Don't worry. It's not likely ever to be used on you again," Nadja remarked distractedly. She was more interested in noting how much powder she had added to how much water. The ratios were important, since that was what made it effective in neutralizing the paste.

"Let's clean that gunk off your paw first," she said. "Otherwise you'll just get it on yourself later and have to come back here."

She had a tool specially for that. It had taken careful crafting to make it. It had also required a number of tongues. In essence, it was a large, artificial tongue. It looked disgusting, but it got the job done. She flipped it over to Atheris.

"Here. Use this."