“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 a
t 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.
Chapter 18
The Princess and the Tiger
“Anamika?” I murmured softly. “My name is Kishan. I’m here to rescue you.”
She didn’t respond. I couldn’t blame her really. She didn’t know me. Her brother had said she hadn’t even remembered me from before. Something brushed my shoulder. I wrenched my body back, thinking it was a rat or a spider or some haunting specter bent on my demise, but then I heard the voice of a young boy coming from the cell next to mine.
“Will you save us too?” he asked.
I couldn’t see in the utter blackness of the cellar, but I reached out my hand and found a rail-thin arm and the fingers that had touched me. My heart broke in that moment and I gently took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “I will help all of you,” I said. “I promise you this.”
Though my tiger eyes were gone, I could have sworn dozens of hungry eyes had turned in my direction. I could almost taste their hope, their childlike faith. “You’ll have to be patient with me,” I warned, trying to speak loud enough so they could all hear me but quietly enough not to draw the attention of the guards. “I’ll need some time to figure out how to break us out of here.”
“We’ll wait. And we’ll help you when you’re ready,” the boy near me said.
“Good. You’ll be my captain then,” I told him, reaching out to pat his bony shoulder. That he had been starved to the point of emaciation made my skin hot. I wanted to strangle the man who’d done this to them with my bare hands.
So far, Anamika had said nothing. There was a rumbling on my other side and I realized it came from a child’s stomach. “Shall I tell you all a story of great bravery?” I asked the group.
My purpose was to distract them from their hunger and suffering. It was a trick Kadam had often used on us and it worked very well.
The girl on my left quietly whispered, “Is there a princess in your story?”
“Why, yes,” I answered. “There just happens to be a princess, a very kind one. This story is called ‘The Princess and the Tiger.’”
The children shushed one another so they could hear and I began. “Once, many, many years ago, in a world we have forgotten, there was a special tree. On it grew the most delicious fruit, but the fruit was only to be consumed by the gods. If a mortal took a bite, you see, they would become immortal.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” the girl said.
“Oh, yes, you are right. But you cannot live in the world and be immortal. This is why the feet of the gods never touch the earth. They sit on lotus blossoms and magical carpets. Or they ride on great beasts and float in the air. Anyone, even a god, who eats the fruit with their feet touching the ground will suffer the consequences.”
“What happens to them?” the boy asked.
“Their bodies are consumed and they become pure light. Once that happens, the gods use them for their own purposes, for they can no longer roam the earth. Anyone who came upon them would burn up in their fire. Despite this fact, many men stole the immortal fruit and made the mistake of eating it with their feet on the ground. This is why there are so many stars.”
“You mean each person caught by the gods became a star?”
“That is right. The gods put them high up into the sky to give light to the world in the darkness.”
“That’s a lot of people!” the girl said.
“Yes. Well, despite the risk, there were many who sought immortality, and the sky was becoming overcrowded with stars, so the gods decided to do something about it. They formed a tiger—the very first one in the world—and they placed him beneath the tree to guard it. Any man who came to steal the fruit would be eaten by the tiger first.”
“I’m afraid of tigers,” the boy said.
“Tigers are fierce and powerful,” I said with a smile and sat back against the wall, crossing my legs one over the other. “You are right to be cautious around them. But this tiger, the first one, was different. Though he was supposed to eat those who came to the tree, he didn’t like the taste of mortals. He didn’t kill for food anyway because his body didn’t need it.
“The tiger enjoyed hunting, but his duty was to protect the tree so he never left it for long. Most people were frightened enough that they didn’t even try to get the fruit once they saw him. You see, he had a fierce roar and the sharpest of claws. When people came, he showed his teeth and tore at the ground. Most of the time, that was enough.
“Some men tried to trick the tiger, but he was very smart and no one had ever gotten the better of him, though many had tried.
Most tigers have a great sense of hearing and even better smell, but this one could hear the birds singing on distant mountains. When a storm approached, he could predict the moment it would stop.
“He could crouch down and hide in the grass or in the leaves of a tree and make himself invisible. You’d never see him until it was too late. In most cases, his fearsome posturing proved successful and the people who came close ran away in fright. This was what he preferred. But in some cases, the mortal proved too stubborn and he would be forced to kill the offender. Instead of eating him like the gods wanted, he dragged the bodies to a large ditch far away from his tree. That way he wouldn’t be diverted by the smell of their rotting corpses.
“Sometimes he failed, and a mortal would grab a piece of fruit from the tree and bite into it before he could stop them. When that happened, all he could do was watch as the mortal turned into light and the gods descended to escort the person to the heavens. Each time that happened, the gods punished him by giving him a lash from their fiery whip. This is how the first tiger got his stripes.”
I heard an audible gasp from the children. It was surprising they’d never heard the tale before. Biting my lip, I paused, wondering if me sharing the story now was how it originated in the first place. Kadam would have a fit if he knew. I sighed, wondering if I’d made a mistake by telling them, but then the boy asked me to please continue and I willingly obliged.
“Okay. As I was saying, this tiger was the first, and as the first, he had been created with no stripes. He got his stripes as punishment by the gods—one for each mortal who turned into a star.”
“I thought this story had a princess,” the girl said.
“I’m just getting to her part,” I answered. The two children whose cells butted up against mine had drawn close. I could hear the raspy breathing of the boy and the quiet breaths of the little girl. So far, I’d heard not a single sound coming from Ana’s cell. It worried me that she was so quiet. It wasn’t like her at all. “So,” I continued, “one day, a princess came to see the tiger.”
Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5) Page 27