He’d taken all the risks of acquiring Jak and illegally enslaving him, and considered the return reasonable.

Meanwhile Jak had been sold by the merchant to a training establishment, making a reasonable profit on the deal. Jak’s disappearance was therefore never noticed, as he officially “graduated” from the orphanage into oblivion one year later. When he was 16 an itinerant slave merchant called at the orphanage and paid the superintendent – absolutely illegally – a reasonable sum to take Jak off their hands, a transaction welcomed by the superintendent who in addition to the trader’s bribe continued to take state money for Jak’s upkeep. He was brought up harshly and without love or affection in an orphanage in that country, receiving only minimal education except in the harsh world of life. Jak barely remembers his parents as he lost them in one of those interminable civil wars in the near east. And a comment of family relationships amongst the rich.