[ alhaitham listens. kaveh's rage burns. it burns with the flame of the lost and the dying, the flame of something cornered and bleeding. a creation with claws and teeth against inescapable odds. that kaveh has chosen alhaitham for the target of his rage is obvious. he is, after all, the only one here. he is vissudha. he is alhaitham, the prince. the argument makes itself - that what makes alhaitham, the prince, worthy of kaveh's rage and not alhaitham's servants, or the soldiers of the vissudha, is because alhaitham is vissudha's prince.

but instead, what alhaitham says is this: ]

The difference is that your people are in the slave pens, and you are here with me.

[ on the heels of kaveh's fury, the impotence of his rage, the hard heel of his distress - in the hush of a silence, the reply comes like a whisper.

the difference that kaveh, the prince, can be here with alhaitham. the difference is that all others cannot. the difference is that kaveh's gold manacles lay like decorative baubles on the ground, and the slaves below are being scrubbed with course sand-soaps and dressed in rags. the difference is that the slaves below are currently being sent to bed. they are not being sent to their own beds.

alhaitham says, again, quieter: ]

Kaveh, you are here. And they are not.