<div align="center"><em>Autolycus leads the Pict into the Study</em></div><hr/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/Prakkie/Medicus.jpg)</div>It hadn't been easy, but in the end Autolycus had managed to do what the Dominus had asked of him. The Pict as he led her up the stairs, bound and gagged and with a collar 'round her neck, was as clean as could be. Her skin paler even than before now that all that grime had been removed, her hair glossy and black, if quite a bit shorter than it had been. Some of it had been so tangled and matted he had been forced to cut it off. Sorcha no longer looked like a filthy urchin. No, she was a beautiful creature. Unusual in her looks, dark-haired and fair-skinned as she was, slighter and thinner than the woman from Germanica or Gaul or from Rome itself but in the Medicus' eyes that, as well as the tattoos that covered her body, only served to make her more interesting, more appealing. And with her breasts out as they were she could be a sex-slave.<br/><br/>He didn’t like it. Wished he didn't have to present her to Manius and his friends like this but what choice did he have?<br/><br/>He paused outside the study and turned back to speak to her. "You’ll have to be good," he told her, his voice urgent, commanding. Nowhere near the kind and gentle it had been in the bath-house because soon they wouldn't be alone anymore and he'd be his masters servant, leading in just another slave, nothing special, not like he felt any more for her than he did for... say... that extremely well-endowed blonde fellow that had been brought in this morning.<br/><br/>As he entered the study, leading the Pict by a chain leash, he found it filled with house-slaves and gladiators and one guest, a man of the legion, to judge from the mark in his neck. He nodded in greeting, silent and wordless as any slave - though he was very much a free man, as was obvious from the iron ring on his finger - then lead the Pict to a quiet corner of the room.<br/><br/>After a while he became aware of a certain tenseness in the room.<br/><br/>"What's going on...?" He whispered to Nadia and Galo, who stood nearby.