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.