Chapter 17
A Villain by any Other Name
My head wrenched to the side and the copper taste of blood filled my mouth. I barely had time to notice one of my molars was loose before the second strike came. By the time my eye was swollen shut and the breath wheezed in my lungs, the man was thankfully called away. I remained still, waiting for the healing to begin and the pain to ebb, but it seemed to get worse, not better. I groaned and reached for the healing firefruit juice only to remember my bag had been taken.
Knowing the firefruit juice was gone was bad enough, but losing the truth stone was an altogether idiotic thing to do. If this was my quest, the one I was tasked with accomplishing all alone, I was royally screwing it up. Ren and Kelsey would have done much better.
I managed to pry one eye open and saw Anamika sitting across from me. She stared at me with wide, fearful eyes. I’d have to do better by her, by both of us. Despite the pain, I tried to give her a reassuring smile but she quickly looked away. She was either scared of getting beaten herself or of the man returning to finish me off.
When we were collected, I followed willingly. Though the beating had been severe, it was nothing that wouldn’t heal over time. None of my bones were broken and my body was still strong. My face was messed up though. I could feel how puffy and bruised my cheeks and jaw were. The worst part was knowing that my swollen face probably scared young Ana. I was sure it wasn’t a pretty picture.
The older version of Ana teased me once about using my good looks to get my way, especially when it came to extra rations. I’d tell her she was crazy. The girls always liked Ren, not me. The servers whispered behind their hands when I came in the dining hall, true, and they offered me extra plates of food, but I suspected it was mostly because I was too severe and unsociable and they wanted to deal with me as little as possible. In essence, they dropped the food and ran.
When I suggested they were frightened of me, Ana laughed in the mocking way she often did and said they were trying to get my attention and that it was too bad that I was too thick-headed to notice when a girl liked me. “There’s nothing left of me to like,” I’d said to her, quietly, feeling sorry for myself. In response, she’d cupped my face in her hands until I lifted my eyes to hers. It was a tender gesture for her. One that she exhibited rarely.
“A smart girl,” she’d said, “would see the man beneath the armor. Besides,” she added, tracing a small white scar on my chin leftover from a long-ago battle, “the strongest gems are the most precious. They do not crack. Weaker stones break against them. These are the gems women claim and place upon their fingers as symbols of love. Is that not correct?”
“It is,” I’d answered, “but you forget, diamonds are coveted for their sparkle, not their durability.”
“And why can’t a woman have both?” she’d asked. “All it takes to bring out the sparkle is a little polishing.” With that she smashed her hand against my nose and began rubbing vigorously. I laughed and pushed her aside but she twirled, rising to her feet, and gave chase with a handful of mud, claiming she needed to rub it into my skin to make me prettier.
That was one of my few good memories with Anamika. She always had the ability to distract me from my dark thoughts. That was the problem. I didn’t want to be sidetracked. I’d wanted to brood while I was missing Kelsey and feeling sorry for myself. Every time we shared a meal after that and I’d get an extra portion, she’d wiggle her eyebrows, trying to make me laugh. I didn’t appreciate her efforts and often left her alone as a result. It didn’t take long for her attempts at cheering me to fade.
Once I’d thought her hard. Too stern and formidable to allow for any softness, but I’d seen many different sides of her now and I’d had a direct link to her emotions. To those who hurt others, she rained down vengeance, but to the small and broken, she was tender and gentle. She didn’t coddle, but her kindness and generosity shone through. I thought that those characteristics were simply a part of her ethereal glow as a goddess, but I saw the signs of it in the young version of her as well.
Even now, as we followed our new master, she gave me a small smile of empathy. It was as if she knew the direction my thoughts had gone and wanted me to know she understood. Though she didn’t know who I was or who she would become and she was barely out of childhood, her presence centered me in a way. I didn’t realize how much I’d come to depend on her companionship. It felt right being close to her even though our situation was far from ideal.
Anamika was put into a cart and I was given a leg up onto a camel. The reins were kept from me and the docile beast I rode followed the man ahead of me. My face burned in the hot sun as we traveled, and I dozed fitfully, grateful each time they offered me a small sip from a canteen. I kept my eyes trained on Ana’s cart, praying that they wouldn’t separate us.
If I was suffering on camelback, I knew the inside of the carriage where she sat with the other new slave children must be miserable. Though I heard the soft sniffles of children coming from the cart, I couldn’t tell if any of the sounds were coming from Ana. The older version of her rarely showed such emotion, but perhaps this younger version was different.
When the sun set behind the dusty hills, we finally came to a stop. Herds of animals, mostly camels, dotted the land. Perhaps my new master traded in them. Then I noticed mercenaries standing guard. There was a man every fifty feet or so, each one brandishing a wicked-looking scimitar. I stopped counting after I passed five dozen. If the turbaned man was a simple camel trader, then I was a…what did Kelsey call them? Ah, an astronaut. Camels needed very little protecting, so why were all the men armed to the teeth, their eyes trained on the horizon?
The rising moon looked watery and I blinked rapidly with my good eye to bring it into focus. Now that the sun was down, the temperature seemed almost mild. A man began lighting lamps atop the watch towers. They cast a muted glow over the sand where all the new slaves were lined up and inspected. The young ones, including Anamika, were taken through one gate, leaving me and two other men to be escorted through another. My muscles strained against my chains as she was guided away. The rattling of my chains caught the attention of several men who circled us and gave me the once-over.
“This one causing trouble?” a man asked.
“Tried talking to the kids,” another answered. “He seemed fine on the journey. Understands his place now.”
The first man grunted and said, “Better keep an eye on him.” Then he gestured that we were to follow him.
After I was locked in a cage, the two other new slaves beside me, we were given plates of food and a cup of water. The two men crumpled to the dirt floor, tucking themselves into a corner, and went to sleep. I stayed alert and listened to the sounds of the guards.
In the Rajaram household, the guards were dutiful; the evening conversations were hushed but contented. This place was very different. The mood was raucous, dark, and as portentous as an incoming storm at sea. The men were hard. Not battle hard but cruelty hard. They reminded me of the men who worked for Lokesh. They’d seen much and they were willing to do whatever was necessary to keep their position, either that or they preferred their heads attached to their bodies.
I sat watching them for several hours that night. The pain in my face would have made sleeping difficult regardless. When morning came, we were introduced to the slave master. If I’d thought the soldiers were hard, this man was much worse. He was missing several fingers off his right hand so he wore a glove. It had been specially made, and instead of fingers, he’d had knives sewn in. The first thing he did was threaten to gut us if we stepped out of line, brandishing his gloved hand to make a point. I believed him.
We were set to work immediately. My strong back was used to doing more heavy labor than my fellow slaves. I quickly proved my worth, but the other two weren’t as healthy or as big as I was and suffered beatings for it. It didn’t take long to learn I was right about my first assumptions. The camel herding was a front for selling weapons.
Because the turbaned man sold weapons to any paying customer, he employed several caravan drivers who traded with various wealthy tribesmen in many different places—even some outside of India. To avoid getting in trouble for selling weapons to opposing kings or providing arms to both armies fighting one another in wars, his identity was kept secret and most of the deals were done with the traders. In the space of a week, I packed thousands of blades, knives, and sets of steel-headed arrows in secret compartments created to fit the over the backs of camels.
On top of those, I loaded grain, cloth, spices, honey, and a variety of other goods to disguise the fact that weapons were being traded. A caravan trading cloth was an everyday occurrence, but if it were known that highly sought-after weapons were hidden among the colorful bolts of fabric, it might tempt the more nefarious to raid the caravan. The traders had a few extra men riding alongside, keeping guard, but that wasn’t anything abnormal.
I had to admit, the entire setup was slick and brilliantly executed.
After a week, there was still no sign of Anamika, though I did spot one of the other children, a boy who seemed to be around fourteen or fifteen years of age. He had bruises along both arms, a limp, and a swollen lip. His frame was sunken and his eyes were hollow. The boy looked starved, and I hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the other children to know if he was purchased at the same time as me or if he’d already been there a while. My guess was he had been recently replaced by the new crop of children.
He passed me bread and filled my cup with water, and as he did so, I gave him a sympathetic glance. I said nothing to the boy, though, except to grunt my thanks. Despite this, the slave master watched me carefully, and when the boy left, he warned, “Don’t talk to the children and don’t talk about them either.”
I glanced up to acknowledge he’d spoken but kept my mouth shut and shoveled in another bite, knowing I’d need all my strength to break out with Ana. Despite the limited freedoms I’d been given, I hadn’t yet managed to form a plan. The citadel I was imprisoned in was formidable. It was built with thick stones into the side of a mountain. Sentries lined the walls at all times both day and night. Archers watched the outlying country through arrow slats big enough to fit projectiles that would take down an armored battle elephant.
Without my powers, I wasn’t even sure I could break myself out, let alone save Ana. She wasn’t even being held in the same place as me. All I knew was that she’d been taken into the fortified home on the far side of the citadel, which was surrounded by another wall. As far as I could tell, the only way in was through a thick iron door, and only the slave master held the key.
It was heavily guarded. To break in, I’d have to obtain the key, pass all the wall guards unseen, and then overtake the two at the door. Then there was the matter of what I’d find on the other side. For all I knew, Ana was held in a dungeon far beneath the home. I rubbed my jaw, thinking if I had enough rope, I might be able to scale the wall instead and climb in through a window. I could glimpse the top of the roof peeking out from behind the wall.
The slave master clocked me over the back of the head. Luckily it was with his normal hand. “Pay attention!” he said. “I heard about the day you taunted our master. Right now, he’s busy with the kids, but he likes to break young men like you too. He’ll come for you eventually. Trust me when I say you don’t want that to happen.”
He wiggled his lethal fingers in my face, the sharp edges of the knives brushing against my cheek, and my blood went cold. The turbaned man had taken his fingers?
“I’m telling you this because I like you,” the man said as I tried to school the horror on my face. “You’re smart, you work hard, and you keep your head down. I used to be a soldier too.” He paused. “It was a long time ago but I’m not too old to recognize a fellow warrior when I see one.”
“How…how did you know?” I asked.
He grunted. “Men for hire are sly and sneaky. A soldier will look you in the eye as he kills you. He takes no pleasure in it. Your eyes show me what you are, boy.”
Nodding, I swallowed and said, “I appreciate the counsel.”
The man leaned forward. “Don’t take what I say lightly, son. What goes on in that house is something that turns my muscles to water if I give my thoughts over to it.” He looked around warily to see if anyone was listening to our conversation and my veins turned to ice. Whatever it was the turbaned man did in his heavily fortified house was obviously bad enough to frighten a hard man like the master of the slaves.
During the second week, I still hadn’t managed to do much more than squirrel away a small length of rope and scout the wall for an easy spot to climb. When I was tasked with doing inventory on a new shipment, I noticed a sharp, well-crafted blade that had come from Asia was being tested by the slave master, and remarked on it.
He immediately brought it to my throat and demanded what I knew of it. Following a series of questions and a quick story about how my mother’s family had come from a distant land, proving this by speaking in a few different languages, he asked what I knew of weapons.
Fortunately, I had been a student of Kadam’s and knew a great deal more about the swords in question than any of the men surrounding me. I asked if I could demonstrate the use of the sword, and he agreed to allow it, watching me with wary eyes. I was quickly surrounded by mercenaries brandishing bows and arrows, and he handed me the weapon.
I spun through a series of moves with the sword and then found the box it had been brought in. Lifting out a second blade, I twirled both in the air and began a complicated dance using many of the techniques I’d perfected over the years. When I was finished, I bowed over the swords and held them out, palms up, to the slave master.
He glanced at another man, jerking his head to indicate he should take the swords. When they were safely back in the box, he called for another weapon, and when they were placed in my hands, I did a cartwheel, bringing the blade to the neck of one man before he could even fire off an arrow and slicing the braid clean off the head of another man.
More weapons were brought, and after I showed my skill with each, my workload shifted to the other slaves and I was used to examine the weapons for defects and to test the strength of the blades. Pleased with my previous work, the slave master treated me more like a trusted confidant after that than a slave, especially when an entire shipment was found to be faulty.
I was able to listen in on the dealers speaking in their language and found out not only how they planned to cheat us out of money but that they had held back their best swords as well. The fine weapons were brought out as a result and a very profitable new deal was struck. The slave master gave me extra rations, an afternoon off, and a gold coin for my efforts.
By the end of that week, the slave master took me aside. “You’re of great value to me,” he said bluntly. “I’d like to take you with me to negotiate a purchase. You understand the weapons better than anyone and you can speak the language. Coming with me will get you out of sight too, which will benefit both of us.” He visibly shivered when he glanced at the rooftop jutting over the wall.
“If you prove your worth to me,” he continued, “you’ll be trusted with more freedoms. Maybe even get out of those chains while you sleep. More food. A comfortable bed. If you try to run or ruin the deal, maybe try to negotiate your way to freedom, you lose your hand or your head depending on what suits my purposes. Do you understand, boy?”
I drained a cup of water. “I understand,” I said.
He grunted and we went back to work.
Getting outside of the citadel was a welcome change and yet leaving Anamika trapped weighed heavily on my mind. I did well by the slave master and we negotiated the deal to our advantage. As the days passed, his trust in me slowly grew. When we returned, he was true to his word and gave me a comfortable bed to sleep in and as much food and water as I wanted, and my chains became a thing of the past.
An entire month had passed in the time I’d been slowly working on gaining my freedom when, one morning, I was roused from sleep by a gruff man who poked me with his scabbard, jabbing it into my ribs.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The master wants to see you?”
“At this hour?”
I rubbed my eyes and stumbled out of bed, pulling on my boots. Manacles were clapped onto my wrists as my arms were pulled behind my back. I froze. Something was wrong. “Where are we going?” I asked.
The man didn’t answer as he dragged me outside. Six other men met my captor and surrounded me, escorting me out to the gate. I spied the slave master standing nearby. He looked me in the eye as I passed, his expression stony. Then, he glanced purposely at the house hidden behind the wall.
I let out a breath and nodded my head slightly in understanding. The turbaned man had finally decided to turn his attention to me. My shoulders straight, I followed the men through the gate, watching carefully to see how it was locked, and then I studied the face of the man who held the key and watched where he kept it.
Taking in every detail of my surroundings served to distract me from the pain that I knew was to come. Ren had suffered terribly at the hands of Lokesh to the point of having his heart cut from his chest. Surely, I could tolerate pain as well as he did.
Once we entered the house, a rug was scooted aside, revealing a trap door leading to a basement. The hinges creaked as it was opened. One man descended and took a lantern from the wall while the others pushed me down behind him. It took several minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, and when they did, I wished I could unsee what was before me.
Inside the cellar, lining each wall, were small cages, and in each one was a child. Some slept. Others wept quietly. A few, too many, had bandages wrapped around hands or feet, and I thought of the missing fingers on the hand of the slave master outside. One boy had an eye patch. All the children looked emaciated and dehydrated.
As we passed, they scurried as far back in their cages as possible, making themselves small and disappearing into the shadows where they could. I scanned each cage for Anamika but I didn’t see her. If the goddess Durga had been summoned to such a place, she would have killed every last man and saved each child, either finding them a home, likely ours, or returning them to their parents.
I clenched my fists. It was one thing to torture a man, but children? I vowed at that moment that I would kill the turbaned man before leaving. And I would be leaving. I’d be taking Ana with me too. I was escorted to a small room in the rear of the cellar and deposited in a chair. My feet were locked into chains that were welded into the floor.
The men left me then, taking the light with them, and I thought about the house. How it had been full of wealth and opulence but then, beneath the floor, was a black secret. A disease that ate at the heart of the home like rot. You couldn’t see it until you peeled away enough layers, but sitting there in the dark, listening to the sounds of scurrying mice and the soft crying of children, I could feel the evil pulsing around me like a tangible presence.
I don’t know how long I sat there until a light penetrated the darkness. Heavy steps moved closer, and the weeping sounds of the children were cut off completely. The footsteps came to the door of my room, and slowly, the door opened. The turbaned man entered. This time he wore no turban at all though and I noticed his round head was nearly bald. Long, thin hairs were swept away from his forehead, which was sweating profusely.
A mercenary came in with him, set down a lamp, and then positioned himself outside, closing the door behind him.
“We meet at last,” the man said, his eyes glittering with interest.
When I said nothing in response, he leaned forward, placing corpulent hands on the table between us. I hadn’t realized just how much flesh the man had. He’d been ensconced in swaths of fabric at the slave auction. No wonder he’d been sweltering in the sun. He shifted in his chair, moving almost lazily as he removed his coat.
From an inside liner, he pulled out a pouch and unrolled it on the table in front of me. Various instruments, shining as if they’d been recently polished, were tucked into small pockets of the pouch. He removed one and began cleaning his nails with it. The corner of my mouth lifted. He might be able to scare children that way, but so far, I wasn’t impressed.
“What do you want?” I asked, unwilling to play whatever game he had in mind.
“You thought you were building a place for yourself here, didn’t you?” he asked, his expression blasé.
“What other choice did I have?” I replied.
“True. Very true,” he answered, then sighed and replaced the tool. His gaze sliced into me as he assessed me from across the table, tapping his fingers in succession. “I’ll be blunt with you,” he said.
“I appreciate that,” I responded neutrally.
“I have acquired an item that once belonged to you, and my curiosity is stirred enough by it that I will attempt to coerce your cooperation concerning it.”
“Oh?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
He barked an order and the man outside came in and deposited a familiar rucksack on the table.
When the man had left us alone again, he opened the sack and pulled out the phoenix egg. “This…gemstone belonged to you, did it not?” he asked.
“It does,” I said.
“Did,” he clarified in a piping voice. “It now belongs to me. What I want to know is…what is it?”
I shrugged. “It’s a gemstone like you said.”
He barked a laugh. “Do you think me an idiot?” he asked.
Choosing not to answer, I sat back in my chair. His eyes smoldered at my silence and his bald head turned a different shade. “I promise you,” he warned, “you will tell me…”
Cutting him off, I said, “Or what?”
If I thought he was mad before, he was seething now. His bald head was about to catch on fire like one of the outside torches. Quick as a hot sword dipped in a water bucket, he sat back, his temper cooling, steam pouring out of his ears, and he offered me a cold smile. “Or what, indeed,” he said. “You will tell me what I wish to know. That I promise you,” he threatened.
He called out and disappeared out the door, leaving me with the man who took off the manacles wrapped around my ankles.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the man’s voice rumbled as he led me to an empty cage. “It just makes it harder.”
“I don’t like bullies,” I said in answer.
He led me down the row of cages, opened an empty one, and pushed me inside. “It’s your head on the block,” he said. “Remember that.”
With those final words, the man headed out and darkness fell on the cellar once again. I don’t know how long I was down there. I must have fallen asleep at one point, but I woke when the cellar door opened and another prisoner was led down. The cage across from mine was unlocked and a skinny child was thrown in. The sad creature scampered all the way to the back and wrapped hands around knobby knees.
When the men left, I scanned the shadows but couldn’t see a face. “Hello?” I called out softly, making sure the guards couldn’t hear me. There was a slight shuffling and then I caught sight of long, dark hair and a green eye peeping out from behind it just as the cellar door slammed shut.