The Collar and the Cavvarach

by Annie Douglass Lima

  Someone else was screaming now, and people were yelling things he couldn’t understand as they dragged him to his feet. He couldn’t move to dodge or defend himself, and one of the boys got in another hard blow to Bensin’s jaw before someone dragged him away too.

  The crowd parted as a man who was probably the restaurant manager marched up and glared angrily at all three of them. “How dare you come here and start a fight at my establishment?”

  “That collar started it,” Saul protested, pointing at Bensin and tugging free from the grip of the guy who held him.

  “No he didn’t,” one of the girls shot back. “You did, and you know it.”

  “I did not! He wouldn’t leave us alone! I told him to go away and he wouldn’t.”

  “The slave hit first,” the other boy agreed, jerking himself free as well. “We all saw it.”

  “No we didn’t!”

  “Well, the Watch will sort all that out when they show up,” the manager growled. “I called them and they’ll be here in a minute. I don’t care who started it; you can do your fighting someplace else.”

  Bensin’s heart sank. Watch officers were on their way?

  How will I ever find Ellie if they take me to the station?

  Chapter Twenty: Cracks in the System

  What if it was Officer Shigo who showed up? Alarm flooded Bensin’s mind at the thought. What will he say if he sees me in trouble with the law again? But was this even Officer Shigo’s territory? Maybe they were closer to a different Watch station. Bensin tried to picture the layout of this part of the city, but without his map, he couldn’t be sure.

  The crowd was starting to disperse. He tried to pull himself free as the other boys had, but the restaurant employee gripping him by the arms from behind didn’t let go. “Nice try, Collar. You’re not running away before they get here.”

  “Please,” Bensin called to the two girls who were still standing nearby. “When the cars left across the street, did you see who was in them? Did you see a little girl?”

  The two looked at each other and shrugged. “I didn’t notice,” one of them admitted. “I was watching Saul try to flirt with Sandra here.”

  The Skeyvian giggled. “I just saw the cars go by. I didn’t notice who was in them either. Sorry.” She stepped closer and examined Bensin. “Hey, you look familiar. Have I met you before?”

  Beside her, Saul scowled. “That’s the oldest line in the book.”

  “No, really. He looks familiar.” She turned back to Bensin. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Bensin. I fought in the Grand Imperial Cavvara Shil Tourney today.”

  “Oh my gosh, no way! I totally saw you on TV! That’s why I recognized you.” She appealed to the other girl. “You watched it too, right? Wasn’t he great?”

  “He was awesome. Everyone who does cavvara shil is awesome.” Both girls had come closer to stare at Bensin. “I’m serious, if you weren’t a slave, I’d give you my phone number. But you are, and my mom would kill me.”

  “Please,” Bensin cut in. “My little sister is missing, and I think she’s been stolen. I have to go find her.”

  “Come on, let go of him,” Sandra urged the man. “The fight’s over. What’s the point?”

  “You better not let him go,” growled Saul, glaring at Bensin and his captor. “You heard what the guy said. The Watch is coming, and they’re gonna want to question him.” He stalked closer, fists clenched threateningly. Bensin shifted position, ready to swing a kick at him if necessary. “Yeah, they’re gonna have a lot to say to a slave who thinks he can attack a free person. I hope you’ve counted the cost, Collar.”

  Bensin felt a cold prickle of fear.

  At that moment, they all heard a siren rounding a distant corner. “Oh, come on. You’ve gotta let him go,” Sandra pleaded. “You heard what he said about his sister. Besides, the tournament isn’t over. He has to compete in the semifinals tomorrow!”

  “I don’t care if he has to wait on the emperor,” the man growled. “My boss said to keep an eye on him here until the Watch arrives, and I’m gonna do that.”

  “But he didn’t do anything,” the other girl protested. “He was just defending himself.”

  “That’s for them to decide.”

  The siren was getting closer. Bensin was feeling panicky again. What if they really did kill him? At the very least, they would lash him and then call Coach Steene to come take him home. Either way, he would be in no condition to find and rescue Ellie afterward.

  He had been standing unresisting for a long time. The man probably wasn’t expecting anything. Bensin suddenly burst into action, leaping forward, breaking free of his captor’s grip. But he jerked too hard and stumbled, off balance, even as he tried to dash away.

  The man yelled, and he and Saul both lunged for him. Bensin found his balance and dodged, turning toward the street, but Saul reached out to grab him. He dodged again, and the boy missed his arm but managed to seize the edge of his shirt. Bensin tugged and heard the fabric rip, but before he could pull away, the man had seized him by an arm again, boxing his ear and then gripping his other arm too. Saul advanced on him, fists raised, but both girls were clutching at their friend, yelling for him to stop.

  The siren’s wail was almost on top of them now, the swirling lights on the Watch car flashing across the buildings on every side. No! Bensin lunged once more, but he couldn’t escape.

  The car pulled up to the curb beside them and stopped. The night was suddenly still as the siren turned off, though the lights kept revolving. A crowd was starting to gather once again.

  The car doors opened and two uniformed officers got out, both with guns in hand. Officer Shigo was not one of them, and Bensin breathed a sigh of relief. Not that things would be any better without him; they would just be worse with him there. But the words on the side of the car did say South Jarreon Precinct City Watch. That was where Officer Shigo worked, Bensin recalled.

  “What’s going on?” one of the officers demanded, pointing his gun back and forth as though afraid someone standing around might be about to attack.

  The manager had reappeared. “Hey, thanks for coming. Had a bunch of teenage thugs fighting it out right in front of my restaurant. Didn’t know when they were gonna be pulling guns or coming crashing in through the window, so I thought I’d better give you a call.”

  Both the officers’ gazes fastened immediately on Bensin. “I take it this one was involved. Where are the others?”

  A dozen fingers pointed at Saul. Heads turned, and then a questioning murmur went up. “Where’d the other guy go?”

  Bensin looked around too. The second boy was nowhere to be seen.

  “He got out of here while he could,” Sandra suggested to the girl beside her. “Didn’t want the Watch to find out he’d been drinking.”

  Saul suddenly paled. “Oh! I — um — I’ll go look for him.”

  “Not so fast.” One of the officers put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re staying right here until we get to the bottom of this.”

  “If you please, sir,” Bensin put in, seizing his courage in both hands, “my sister’s disappeared and I’m trying to find her. I think she’s been stolen. Please, would you be able to — to —” He broke off, not sure what to ask.

  “We’ll get to you in a moment. You can wait in the car while we question the others.” One of the officers took his arm, and the other man finally released his grip. The officer led him toward the car and opened the back door.

  Bensin tried one more time. “Please, sir, it’s urgent. I’m worried for her safety.”

  “I said, we’ll get to you.” Impelled by that grip, Bensin climbed into the backseat, and the door shut behind him.

  It was just like he remembered from last time. The same cage around him, the same feeling of trapped helplessness. Like an animal. I don’t even count as a person. But this time, the seat beside him was empty.

  There was no door handle on the inside. He couldn’t
even roll down the window. But he watched through the glass as the officers separated Saul, the two girls, and several bystanders, taking them aside and questioning them one by one. The minutes ticked by as Bensin watched and waited, fighting despair. What’s happening to Ellie?

  Now that the adrenaline rush of the fight was over, he felt sore in half a dozen places. He would have bruises by morning. His hands, when he held them up to the light from the window, were filthy and covered with tiny cuts and scrapes. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except Ellie.

  Finally one of the officers led Saul over and took something out of the trunk of the car. Twisting around in his seat, Bensin saw the boy, looking angry and scared, breathe into a tube. The officer frowned and spoke to him sternly, though Bensin couldn’t hear the words, and then the other back door opened and Saul climbed in.

  As the door shut behind him, he turned and glared at Bensin through the bars. “This is all your fault, you grang filthy collar. But you’re gonna get in worse trouble than I am.” That was probably true.

  The front doors opened and both officers got in. “You can’t take me anywhere without my permission,” Saul yelled at them as the engine started. “My mom will sue you!”

  “Underage drinking carries a penalty,” the driver told him calmly.

  “But it was only one drink! Not even a whole one, even!”

  They ignored him and the car pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn in the middle of the street, and zoomed off. Bensin rested his head in his hands, fighting despair. Ellie. Oh, Ellie. What’s going to happen to you now? He just knew the officers wouldn’t do anything about her. All they would care about was the fact that a slave had been caught fighting two free people. He still had his pass with him, but when they called Coach Steene and found out that Bensin was supposed to have been home by nine, they would probably punish him for attempted escape anyway. At least they had no way of knowing that he had been trying to help Ellie escape.

  At last the car pulled up at the same Watch station Bensin and Ellie had been taken to last time. “I want my phone call,” announced Saul the moment the officers brought the two of them out. “I know my rights. You have to let me make a phone call.”

  “You’ll get your phone call. Now get moving.” Gripping the boy’s arm, one of the men ushered him in through the lobby and down a hall.

  “I don’t suppose I have the right to a phone call, sir?” Bensin ventured as he entered the lobby with the second officer. He wasn’t sure exactly what he would say, but if they were going to call Coach Steene anyway, he would rather talk to him first.

  “As a slave, your only rights in life are to a six-day work week, and until you turn eighteen, an eleven-hour work day.” Another officer joined them, as the first one, keeping a firm hand on Bensin’s shoulder, guided him down a different hallway.

  They scanned his collar tag like they had last time and then searched him thoroughly, emptying his pockets of his bus card, pass, apartment key, and the envelope of remaining cash. One of the officers counted the money. “Where did this come from?”

  “It’s mine, sir. I earn money hiring out on my days off.” At least they hadn’t caught him with the two thousand still on him. That would have been a lot harder to explain.

  “Really.” The man didn’t look convinced. “We’ll see about that.”

  The other officer picked up his pass and examined it carefully, bending to compare the signature on it with the tiny one inscribed on Bensin’s tag. “Looks legit,” he admitted finally, and Bensin was thankful they couldn’t see the signature he had forged for Ellie. It would probably not have passed such a thorough examination.

  They made him breathe into a tube before locking handcuffs on his wrists. “At least you haven’t been drinking.” One of the officers scooped all Bensin’s possessions into a clear plastic bag. He wrote on the bag with a permanent marker and set it aside. “All right, back out we go for questioning and discipline.”

  Remembering how long it had taken last time before anyone had even come in to talk to him, Bensin’s heart sank. Ellie could be dead by that time — or worse. If it hadn’t happened already. Not that it made a difference, of course, if they weren’t going to help her anyway.

  An idea came to him, one that filled him with dread, but at the same time, with a ray of hope.

  “If you please, sir, is Officer Shigo working here tonight?”

  The two men exchanged glances. “He was,” one of them replied, checking his watch. “He’s probably gone or on his way out right now. His shift ended five minutes ago. Why?”

  Bensin swallowed hard. “I was wondering if I might be allowed to talk to him, sir, if he’s still around. He knows me. If you told him Bensin was here, sir, I think he’d want to see me.”

  The officer raised his eyebrows. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check.” He glanced at the other man. “I’ll stop by Kalgan’s office if you want to stick this one in an interrogation room.”

  Bensin sat in the same cold, silent room as last time, cuffed wrists fastened to the same steel loop in the same icy table. Like last time, he shivered in his short sleeves. But he felt a much worse dread, a deeper fear, than before. Ellie. Where are you now? Where have they taken you? What are they doing to you?

  The minutes rolled by, and he tried to convince himself that the delay was a good sign. It could mean that Officer Shigo was still around and was taking the time to find out what had happened before he came in. Of course, Bensin was dreading talking to him. Why had he even asked to see him? He wasn’t sure. Maybe because, if any free person would really listen and give him a chance to explain, it would be Officer Shigo. He did know that much.

  At last the door opened and one of the original officers returned, accompanied by Officer Shigo. Bensin hadn’t seen him in uniform since the last time they had sat in this room together, and his heart lurched in fear. What should he say? What would the officer say?

  “Thank you; I’ll take over from here,” Officer Shigo told his colleague. The door shut behind the other man, and the officer sat down across from Bensin. He rested his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and leaned forward. There was a moment of petrifying silence while Bensin stared down at his lap, feeling the man’s eyes burning into him.

  “Bensin. I’m very disappointed to see you here again.”

  Bensin licked his dry lips. “Please, sir, please let me tell you what happened,” he begged, almost in a whisper.

  “I’m listening.”

  In spite of the fear and worry, those words dropped a tiny sliver of calm into his heart. Officer Shigo was listening. There was hope.

  Though it felt disrespectful to do it, Bensin made himself look the officer in the eye so he would know he was telling the truth. “Sir, it’s my sister Ellie. She disappeared, and I think she’s been stolen. I’m so worried. Please, sir, would you be able to — to do something to help find her?”

  The officer frowned and took a little notebook and a pen out of his shirt pocket. “Where did you last see her?”

  “We were by a mechanic’s shop called Wenn’s End Auto Repair and Detailing.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Bensin didn’t remember the exact address, but he knew the name of the street and the nearest major cross street. “What else is nearby?” the officer inquired, jotting the information down. Bensin described the convenience store and fast-food restaurant, Officer Shigo writing all the while. “All right. So what exactly happened?”

  “Well, I told Ellie to wait outside while I went in to talk to the boss, Wenn, and do a little work for him. I had a pass, sir,” he added.

  “I know; I saw it. Do you know Wenn’s full name or the name of anyone else who works there?”

  “No, sir. I just know there’s at least three other guys.”

  “Okay. Keep going.”

  “Wenn made me clean a room inside, but when I was done, I realized he had locked me in. The place had closed and the lights were off and eve
ryone was gone.” He hesitated, then recalled that Officer Shigo already knew about his lock-picking skills. “I picked the lock and managed to get out, but Ellie wasn’t outside where I’d left her. I looked all over, and she wasn’t anywhere. I went across the street to ask if anyone had seen her, and someone said they saw a couple cars come out and turn right. That is, it was their right, so it would have been left out of Wenn’s End. But then that boy Saul got mad at me for talking to the girls and started a fight with me, and that’s when we got arrested.”

  He was still worried about what might come of the fight, but the officer brushed past that part for the moment. “What time was it when you last saw Ellie?”

  “I think it was a few minutes before eight, sir.”

  “And when did you realize she was missing?”

  “About nine thirty, sir. But they closed at nine, so if they took her somewhere, I guess it was probably around then.”

  “Did this Wenn know she was out there?”

  He hesitated. “Y-yes, sir. I told him when I came.”

  Officer Shigo caught Bensin’s hesitation. “I’m going to need more information. Why did you bring your sister along when you hired out? I can’t help either of you unless you’re completely honest with me about the entire situation.”

  Bensin hesitated again, trying to think of a way to explain it without going into the parts that would get him in trouble. But the officer leaned forward once again.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that Ellie’s safety is at stake, Bensin. By telling me the complete truth and only the truth, you make it much more likely that we’ll be able to find her.”

  Nodding, Bensin took a deep breath. I’m going to be in huge trouble in the end anyway. What does it matter now? “I — I had heard that Wenn sometimes helps slaves get their collars off, sir.” He didn’t dare look up to meet the man’s eyes now.

  “Ah, yes, one of those. So, you went in search of freedom for yourself and your sister.”

  “Not for me, sir,” Bensin was quick to assure him. “Just Ellie. Her owners were selling her, and a horrible man was going to buy her. I had to —” He broke off, remembering that man at the Creghorns’ house. What if Ellie was with someone like that now?