"Even if otherwise the lot of them scatter in all directions and someone decides to take the job of punishing them off your hands for you since you can't handle it?" suggests Aya.

"I am not going to torture innocent people to death even if it would be really convenient and they're going to die anyway."

"And you're not going to decide, well, he's not innocent, he ran off - after you bought him so he could be with his sister again -"

"Correct, I am not going to decide that."

"And you're not going to decide it would be really efficient to stage it and then not make quite sure..."

"I can imagine deciding to stage it, what are you worried about precisely -"

"I think you have a lot of incentives pointing towards torturing this guy to death. And I am not going to tell him that against all odds he is safe if he is not."

Sigh. "That's very reasonable of you."

"Do you have a plan that gets him safe or just nontortuously dead?"

"I have some, they aren't great."

"What've you got?"

"Errand for Atyel, or my mother, or somebody, it was all a misunderstanding, he can go back to work. Had spots on his skin and said a rat bit him, say we killed him already and burned the body in case it was plague."

"Either could depend on what he said to the folks who caught him."

"Yeah. There're probably other options I haven't thought of yet."

"I'll go ask what he said."

Nod. 

Aya goes to the wine cellar.

Predictably, there is a terrified slave chained there.

"Hey. She is not going to have you tortured to death."

" - why -"

"Some combination of actual decency and a weak stomach. How much we can salvage the situation from here depends on what you said to the people who caught you, can you remember?"

"- I don't think I said very much -"

"What did they say? Did you say anything?"

"Tried to run, obviously - asked my name, didn't answer that - had the piercing out -"

"Do you know how they recognized you?"