Page 83 of Tiger's Dream
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 Iwouldbe 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.
