Glances went around the circle, each eventually landing on the witch.
“Come closer, foalboy,” she said. “Let me look at you again.”
Her gnarled hands swept over his head and face. Her fingertips touched his brows and held still, caressing the scar where his moonstone once hung. Then they continued on, thorough and frank.
“Just as I thought,” she said. “You’re holding back the real treasure.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You have a secret.”
A murmur from the tribe. Bodies leaned forward in interest and the flames of the fire stood up tall.
“Secrets are expensive,” Sorĉi said. “Such a price to pay if they’re discovered. Which is why we guard them so close. Once given, you never get them back.”
Fen’s breath, already shallow, quickened. His heartbeat pounded behind his eyes now, garnet sparks dancing through his gaze like a radiance of cardinals.
The witch’s grip on his wrist tightened. “Not one,” she whispered. “Many. Oh, so many secrets in your bones. I can smell them. I can hear them between your heartbeats. You are rich, kheiron. You can afford the best.”
She spoke to Zornin in a tongue Fen couldn’t understand. The headman went away and came back with a paper-wrapped object. Sorĉi unwrapped it to reveal an obscene hunk of kyrrh. It had to contain decades, maybe centuries of collected sap.
“This for your secrets, Tehvan il-Kheir,” she said. “All of them.” She set the kyrrh between their seated bodies and rolled her hands up to the cave’s ceiling. “Put them in my hands. And believe me, I’ll know if you keep any back.”
Fen stared into the witch’s palms. They were strangely smooth and soft, puddled red as the firelight bounced off ruby facets and collected in the creases and lines.
“Tell me,” Sorĉi said. “Tell me everything that happened in Arcodolori.”
The words beckoned seductively. A siren’s call within the wrinkled crone. Aspida, the horrible turtle disguised as an island oasis, luring travelers to death. Or Kharbidis, the gentle eddy that morphed into a whirlpool of razor teeth, reducing ships to slivers.
Mesmerized and tempted by this poisoned candy, Fen still clutched at his trove, desperately hoarding the precious stash.
It wasn’t me. It was him. He did all those things. I just watched. It was another life. It was long ago. None of it matters anymore.
The witch’s foot bumped the hunk of kyrrh, moving it closer to Fen. “Tell me.”
He began to talk.
And once he started, he could not stop.
When the needs of men are pushed inside Tehvan il-Kheir, forced down his throat or spilled across his face, he stands it by thinking of revenge.
You will beg my father for mercy.
Between every blow of a fist: He’ll take a week to kill you, man.
Between every crack of a lash: And I will watch.
Months pass, the moon’s egg cracking open and spilling across the skies. Then it’s been a year and Tehvan’s mantras turn to questions.
Is my father taking the world apart?
Has he stopped searching?
Does he care if I suffer?
Will I spend the rest of my days here?
In the city of Aybar, boys fetch higher prices than girls. Young boys are more expensive than older ones. At thirteen, Tehvan is considered old. He and a dozen other past-their-prime slaves are sold north, where the fadara plantations need labor and brothels need prostitutes. The buyer is a grotesquely corpulent man named Haize. He has glittering black eyes and a soft, prissy little mouth that grows wet at the corners as he inspects Tehvan top to bottom.
Tehvan keeps his expression impervious as he’s poked, prodded and fondled. It’s not as difficult as it used to be. Most slaves detach from reality with fadara, which eventually makes them captive to two masters. Tehvan disconnects by dividing his tripartite nature. The humos slave being used and abused is not him and has nothing to do with him. He, Tehvan il-Kheir, lives safe in a private fortress of the mind, existing in either kheiros or equos. Here in his head, Tehvan walks on four legs, watching everything that happens to his two-legged aspect with cold detachment.
That’s him, he thinks. All that’s happening to the human. It’s his problem to deal with. Yes, I am forced to share space with him, but he’s nothing to do with me.
He fortifies his castle with future scenarios. One day, when the ordeal is over and Sevri has broken open this godsforsaken land and killed every last person in it, he’ll take Tehvan home, but leave the humos behind.
“I don’t believe we’ll be needing that anymore,” Sevri will say. “What do you think?”
Tehvan will pretend to think about it. “No,” he’ll say. “It’s nothing that belongs to me. I have no use for it.”
Pleased, Sevri will nonchalantly kick humos aside with a hoof and put a proud hand on Tehvan’s head. “I’m in awe of you. Such strength and fortitude of mind. It’s no wonder you survived when so many others surrendered.”
A shy love fills Tehvan’s veins as he crafts his reply. “I survived because I knew you’d find me.”
A lash across the back of his calves yanks him back to the present. He’s been sold. His now former owner looks decidedly sulky as he strips Tehvan’s rings off his fingers and hands them to the obese man, who looks about to rub off on them. All men get a ridiculous rise from wearing the rings. As if wearing a kheiron’s silver while fucking him will make wings of their own sprout.
Men aren’t my concern, he remembers as he’s rounded up with the others. Once more the sickening stench of burned flesh and his own scream echoing in his skull as he’s re-branded.
No, it’s not me it’s him. Him. It’s all happening to him. Not my pain but his.
He’s marched through the desert. He learns to save his spit and not be picky about food, but it’s hard learning to ignore the incessant wailing of the fadara addicts in withdrawal. One night he can stand it no longer. He slips through the dark, presses his hand over a screaming mouth and pinches the nose shut. The wretch writhes and struggles, yet his eyes are filled with grateful relief. Slowly they empty until he stares past Tehvan into nothing.
The kheiron goes to sleep, unphased by murder.
It wasn’t me who did it. It was him.
In years to come, during rare tellings of his time in captivity, Tehvan will say he witnessed the appalling incident and was powerless to stop it. It’s not like anyone can verify the story—Tehvan was the only one who survived.
It wasn’t me. It was him.
Haize owns two fadara plantations and a brothel in Danysh. The armpit of the world, where evil lives in the open and goodness ekes out a miserable existence on its knees underground.
Or on four legs in one’s head.
Haize is a brutal, hedonistic master, and his brothel slaves have an unusual hierarchy. Status is assigned by price. The expensive higher-ups are allowed to turn tricks on the side to make money. A few make enough coin to buy a slave of their own.
Xeromo. Slave of a slave. The lowest of the low. Someone who has to buy their freedom twice. Their price comes with knowing the master owns everything, and slaves who own slaves must acknowledge where the bread is buttered. The master has a turn with your xeromo before you do. The master can take a piece of your property for free. If he tells you to beat your possession, starve it, torture it, kill it, you obey. Or die.
Xeromi are the worse in “well, it could be worse.”
Other than death, xeromi have no worse.
Tehvan il-Kheir, with his hard good looks and exotic wing marks, fetches top prices at Haize’s establishment. He knows how to play the game now, and soon he’s running a discreet but lucrative side business. He’s not saving for a xeromo. Not yet. First he buys back eight of his rings from Haize.
On my face. On my knees. I bought them back with
my mouth and my body. I whored out my humos to buy back what was mine.
Not daring to wear the rings openly and not trusting any hiding place, he cuts tiny slits in his arms and legs and sews the rings beneath his skin.
The ringos, his ninth ring, will never be won back. Never earned or bought. But if he can steal it, he’ll be free. Haize knows this, too, which means Fen’s best chance at freedom lies with someone else stealing the ring for him.
Haize knows this as well.
Tehvan’s position is complicated. He needs a third party for his escape plan, but Haize is watching him. Any whiff of a friendship, partnership, cahoots, complicity, accessory or accomplice will be immediately suspect.
His intelligence and cunning hone a desperate plan to a lethal edge. The plan has no allowance for morals, no contingency for compassion.
He’s fourteen when he has enough to buy a slave. A boy called Jindo.
“Before the sun goes down tonight, you’ll think I’m your enemy,” Fen tells him. “But I’m the only ally you have right now. I’m your one chance to get out of this place.”
Jindo is eleven. Golden-haired and soft-skinned, with a crooked front tooth. His wide, gray eyes are trusting, though they narrow slightly at Tehvan as he listens.
“Forget who you are,” Tehvan says. “Forget how you were raised, forget everything you know about how the world works. By morning you’re going to hate me, but never forget this: I didn’t buy you for me. I bought you for freedom.”
Tehvan delivers Jindo to the master’s house. Haize’s mouth grows wet, just as Tehvan planned. He knows Haize’s weaknesses. He knows Haize’s type.
When Jindo returns to the slave quarters, trialed and tested, childhood has left his eyes. His gaze is a bow sighted on Tehvan, bitter and loathing.
“Wait,” Tehvan says. “Learn to ration the hatred because things are going to get worse.”
He plays his part to cruel perfection, managing not only Haize’s perception but the other slaves’ as well. He berates and belittles Jindo and makes sure enough people see how he treats his property. He’s prepared to be tested by the master. If Haize takes the boy for a night, Tehvan looks jealous, but not too jealous. If Haize makes him beat or humiliate Jindo, Tehvan looks sorry, but not too sorry.
“I don’t care if you hate me,” he says to Jindo. “I said we were allies. I never said we were friends. Do what I tell you and you’ll get your freedom. You’ll never have to see me again. You want to hunt me down later in life and settle the score, I’ll meet you. I’ll honor that fight, I’ll even admire you for it. Just know that I never lose.”
“How do you fucking stand yourself?” Jindo says.
“I don’t,” Tehvan says. “It’s not me. And it’s not you, either. This isn’t us, we’re not here. None of this is happening.”
It takes a while for Jindo to hate being a xeromo more than he hates Tehvan. A little while longer for the irrational loathing to clear from his eyes, for his gaze to settle cold and calculating on Fen and order, “Tell me what to do.”
“It’s the ring on his left forefinger,” Tehvan says. “But you can’t let him know you’re after it. Start to get interested in all his rings. Ask for their stories. Ask to see one and give it back immediately. Gain his trust. The idea is to get him to take all of them off. You have to get him by the ego. Tell him you want nothing between you and his hands.”
Every time Jindo returns from a performance in Haize’s bed, he throws up. Tehvan can’t blame him. For the first few months in this corner of hell, he did nothing but get fucked and throw up.
He has to keep up his end of the charade. Put forth the precise amount of brooding sulk when Jindo’s up at the master’s house, then be convincing when he makes the boy pay for being so desirable. He keeps their private conversations short, unemotional and infrequent, but he makes a point of using a certain word in all of them:
Us.
“It’s freedom,” Tehvan says. “For both of us. The ring can get us out of here. You can do this.”
“It hurts so much,” Jindo says.
“I know. Look at me.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“Look at me, Jindo. Believe what I say. If I can survive it, you can. It’s not happening to you. No, look at me. I’m telling you the truth. This is nothing. None of this is real, we’re not living the lives we were born to live. This is all a mistake and it doesn’t count. You can do this. I can get us both out of here but I need that ring and you’re the only one who can get it.”
Long tense days pile up into longer anxious nights. When no one is looking, Jindo murmurs, “Us,” out the side of his mouth and Tehvan replies, “Us,” from between tight teeth. The kheiron fights to keep his demeanor bland, passive and submissive while on the inside he is screaming, clenched, writhing in frustration. When he retreats into the furthest equos cave in his mind, he rears up shrieking, tearing holes in the sky with his hooves.
“It’s done.” Bruised, scraped and dazed, Jindo stumbles into Tehvan’s cell one morning. “I got it.”
“Where is it?”
Jindo puts a finger down his throat.
Tehvan stares at the puddle of bile on the stone floor, his ring glittering at the center of it.
“He was starting to wake up. So I swallowed it.” Jindo’s stunned eyes fill with tears. “Did I fuck up?”
“No,” Tehvan said, a bubble of hysteria in his throat. “No, that was…smart. You’re smart. Good thinking.” He’s laughing by the end. Falling to one knee, then the other. He reaches out to Jindo and pulls him close. “Good boy,” he says. “You did it. It’s all right now. No, don’t cry. You did great.”
As if remembering all at once who he is, and how old he is, and what he’s been made to suffer, Jindo crumples into Tehvan’s chest, crying his mind out. He wraps arms around Tehvan’s shoulders, legs around Tehvan’s waist, clutches on tight, crying and crying. Unabashedly weeping like Tehvan didn’t dare to all these years, once he realized no one was coming for him.
“It’s all right,” he tells Jindo. And himself. “You’re safe. It’s over now. Just a little while longer and we’ll get out of here. Don’t cry. I’m here. I won’t leave without you, I promise.”
He slits the skin over the little bulges in his arms and legs, tip of his tongue held in his teeth in a quiet relish because this pain is good. In contrast, the escape from captivity is almost anti-climactic. Tehvan il-Kheir simply puts on his rings, straps Jindo to his back, walks outside and flies away.
Tehvan flies as far from Danysh as he can before the heat of the desert drives them to take shelter. Hidden among the old caravan ruins, Jindo can’t stop crying. Tehvan makes no reproach, only a soft counsel not to cry too much—tears are best conserved inside than out in the desert. When Solos charges behind the horizon on his winged steed, the boy is asleep in Tehvan’s arms. Once on Tehvan’s back, he stays asleep, his body limp and trusting, yet his arms wound tight and immutable around the kheiron’s waist.
It’s time for Tehvan to be himself again, but after two years of living outside his own experience, he doesn’t know how to reconnect. Or if he wants to. A slimy unease is creeping up the walls of his stomach and reaching fingers into his chest. A worry that if he died today and his soul were laid on the scale of righteous-to-damned, it wouldn’t be a goldfinch who came for him.
You did terrible things. You killed. You whored. You bought and sold human suffering. You beat and abused and humiliated a little boy.
You can pretend it was someone else but it was you all along.
They sleep a second broiling day away and in the late afternoon, Tehvan wakes to the boy’s hands fumbling at the laces of Tehvan’s breeches. Anger and revulsion gallop over his own horizon. It takes every ounce of his exhausted wherewithal to grab his emotions by the mane, gentle them down and realize Jindo is trying to than
k him. To pay Tehvan for freedom with the only currency he knows.
“No,” Tehvan whispers, catching the boy’s hands in his wrists. “No. You owe me nothing. This doesn’t come at a price.”
“Don’t leave me,” the boy says, sobbing. “I’ll do anything. You can do whatever you want to me. Whenever you want. Just keep me with you.”
“No one will ever do anything to you again,” Tehvan says fiercely. He rolls and pulls the boy’s back against his chest. He releases his wings and folds one over both their bodies. “There. You’re safe under here. No one can see you. No one will touch you while you sleep.”
“You can fuck me if you want. I mean it. I’ll do it for real. Not pretending.”
“Stop.”
“I’ll do anything you wan—”
“Shh,” Tehvan says. “No more of that. You’re not my slave and you’re not my whore. You never were. It wasn’t you back there, remember? You’re free. Do you understand?”
He goes on murmuring as the broken boy cries himself to sleep.
“You owe me nothing, Jindo. It’s over and it was another life.”
You’re fooling no one. It was you. You who did things to him.
“This is now,” he says through chattering teeth. “Nobody will ever touch you again, I promise. You’re free.”
He clutches the sleeping boy, trying to punch through to Jindo’s experience, be held in a circle of impenetrable arms and be told everything was all right.
I’m him. I am small and safe in my father’s grasp and his wings cover me up. Nobody can see me or touch me anymore. It’s nothing I am anymore. I don’t need it. I survived because I knew he’d come and now he’s here and he’s holding me. I’m Jindo and my father is me.
The reassurances work as well as walls built of dry sand. One blown away by the laughing wind before another can be erected.
It was you all along, Tehvan il-Kheir. You can’t hide.
As they make their way across the desert that night, Jindo shyly asks Tehvan, “Can I give myself a new name?”
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 36
