by Rachel Lee
But to escape through the front entrance of the house would be comparatively simple. The house was not yet barred to the slaves, although there had been outbreaks of violence caused by other slaves since the news had arrived that a Bozandari legion had been defeated by an Anari army. Those who had never considered hope now whispered of their deliverance. And Mihabi dreamt with them.
But this family trusted its slaves. Or perhaps more important, this family could not begin a day without slaves to make them their first meal and tend their young.
As slave owners went, Mihabi felt this family was better than most. Mihabi had never felt the bite of the lash or the weight of chain on his wrists. But the Anari were still their slaves. It was a condition that burned its way into the soul no matter how well treated a slave was. He felt the weight of chain on his heart, and that weight wore heavier than any shackle.
Mihabi had been born here in this household. All he knew of his people were other slaves and the tales his mother told him of his kind in the lands to the south. Yet those tales had fed in him an innate need to be free, to learn to commune with the rock, to stand tall and proud as only a free man could.
He paused in a tiled hallway, listening. Nothing. He took another silent step forward.
The news of the defeat of the Bozandari legion had upset his masters and all the Bozandari including the emperor, whose beloved cousin had led the defeated troops. The general outcry for a rescue mission had overborne even the fear of the restless slaves who grew more and more threatening. The mothers and wives of the missing soldiers wanted their men home, and the emperor wanted his favored cousin back safely.
So a legion had marched forth. Other legions were being recalled, but for this brief space of time, the capital city was relatively lightly protected.
And the growing restlessness and anger among the slaves had turned into a plot. All who could were to meet tonight, and the uprising would begin with the dawn.
Mihabi slipped toward the door, a sliver of torchlight from outside lighting his way through an uncovered window. Soon he would be free, and if that freedom came in the form of death, then so be it.
Suddenly an arm grabbed him from behind, wrapping tight under his chin. He felt the prick of a knife against his side.
“Mihabi!”
It was the voice of Ezinha, his master.
For the first time since deciding to join the revolt, Mihabi was glad he carried no weapon. He could claim innocence in his passage through the house.
“Master.” Mihabi spoke the word, though never had it burned in his throat more.
At once Ezinha released him. The Bozandari, a tall, pale man, was clear to Mihabi’s gaze, while Mihabi must have been nearly invisible to his master. Between them the knife glinted red from the torchlight, but Ezinha made no threat with it.
Ezinha spoke. “You go to join the rebels.”
Mihabi wanted to deny it, but suddenly found it impossible to lie.
Ezinha nodded. “I thought this would come. How can you do this? Your mother nursed us both and raised us as brothers. We played together as children. I have always treated you well.”
“You have done such,” Mihabi said. “But I have always been a slave.”
Ezinha stiffened. “I have loved you as one of my own family.”
“Yet still I have had no freedom.”
“I thought you loved me as well.”
It was then that Mihabi felt his determination waver, as his chest suddenly tightened and his eyes began to burn. Now, truly, he was facing in the depths of his being what he was about to do. It no longer seemed exciting. It only hurt. His voice was hoarse when at last he replied. “I have loved you, master.”
Ezinha looked down at the knife in his hand, then slowly lowered it. “I would not hurt my brother.”
Mihabi swallowed hard. “I have never been your true brother. Had I been, I would have been as free as you. I could choose my own place in life, rather than having it chosen for me. I could have chosen to love and serve you.”
Ezinha nodded slowly. “You will die out there, Mihabi.”
“Perhaps. But I will die free.”
Ezinha stepped swiftly forward. Before Mihabi could react, his owner used the knife to cut a slash through the slave brand on Mihabi’s arm. It was the mark of a freed slave. Blood ran down from it onto the tile floor.
“You are free now, my brother,” Ezinha said. “Do what you must as a free man. But mark my words, Mihabi. If you threaten me or mine, I will treat you as I would treat a thief in the night.”
“I would expect no less.”
“Then, I pray you, do not come here again. For your life’s sake. For if I see you again I cannot trust you.”
Mihabi turned toward the door, still dripping blood, but then he paused and faced his owner once more. “You have never trusted me. Our stations have forbidden true trust. If we meet again, let it be as equals. And if we both survive, then perhaps trust will be born.”
Then he slipped through the door, into the night. Aye, he was free now, the stinging wound on his arm protecting him from any roving night patrols. But the blood price of freedom paled beside the ache in his heart. For what did it mean to be free when he had lost the only brother he still had?
As he walked through the city, tears stung at his cheeks. Tears and blood were the currency with which freedom was purchased. And he knew the cost was not yet paid in full.
More tears, and more blood, would be shed.
Dawn barely limned the eastern mountains as the armies set out in the morning. Given the latest reports from their scouts, it was determined that the Anari should lead the way through the mountains, then circle around until they were in the rear of the rescue legion. The remnants of Tuzza’s legion would approach head-on.
Most of the Anari felt better about approaching in this manner than approaching head-on with Tuzza. Trust between the groups was still tenuous, and neither group cared to be in a position where they must rely on the other.
It was also a good tactic, a “hammer and anvil” as Tuzza called it. The Bozandari had been successfully applying this tactic for generations, and the Anari had only just used it against them for the first time.
At the head of the column rode Archer, Tuzza, Jenah and the three Ilduin. They had hardly traveled half a league when Archer saw Ratha galloping across the plain to catch them. As soon as he saw the lightness in Ratha’s face, he knew something had changed.
“Welcome, brother,” he said as Ratha rode up beside him. “It is good to have you at my side again.”
“Thank you,” Ratha replied. “It is my honor to march with your company, Lord Archer.”
“My company?” Archer asked.
Cilla laughed. “He speaks of me, I think, Lord Archer. Though he would never say as much.”
“But you would,” Ratha said, trying to fight the smile that spread across his face.
“Of course she would!” Tess said with a chuckle. “But fear not, my friend, for whatever she has said was spoken genuinely and with kindness.”
“And we did not believe the rest,” Archer said.
“What did you…?” Ratha began, before Archer put a hand on his shoulder.
“Fret not,” Archer said, laughing. “We jest at your expense, my friend.”
Ratha nodded, joining the laughter. “Three kisses and I am the talk of the camp, it seems.”
“I had not told them about all three,” Cilla said.
“Good that you did not!” Ratha said. “Or they would have dragged us to the temple at sword point!”
“Now, cousin,” Cilla said, squaring her shoulders. “Let us speak no more of this.”
Archer laughed again, and moved his horse to Ratha’s other side, placing Ratha beside her. “Let me not be between you.”
“Perhaps it is better that you are,” Tess said. “It sounds as if they need a chaperone.”
“Sister!” Cilla cried.
“You sowed this seed,” Tess said,
shaking her head. “I merely note the harvest.”
“Enough,” Ratha finally said, his expression one of mild embarrassment. “We are an army on the march, and not children.”
But, Archer noted, Ratha took Cilla’s hand as he spoke and did not release it. That small gesture warmed Archer’s heart. And he would take any warmth he could find on this march, for he feared there would not be enough.
Archer saw that Tuzza kept silent throughout. While he had noted Ratha’s arrival, he seemed to feel no impulse to greet the brother of the man he had killed. This did not surprise Archer, but neither did it please him. There were too many in this column who had shed one another’s blood. He hoped that they would shed no more of it, but he knew too much of men to take comfort in that hope.
Nor did he take comfort in the way both Anari and Bozandari expected him to lead this campaign and somehow quell the inevitable stirrings of anger. The weight of military command was heavy enough without the added burdens this placed upon him. Sooner or later, he knew, the impulse to peace must come from the Anari and the Bozandari themselves. He could not impose it from above.
“You are troubled,” Tess said, having moved to his side as if she had read his thoughts.
“There is trouble afoot,” Archer said. “And we are marching into it. There can be only so much laughter in such times.”
“Aye, that is true. But it is the laughter which buoys our spirits and renews our courage.”
“Only to a point,” Archer said. “When the true test comes, it will not be laughter that carries us forward. It will be each man’s implicit trust in the men next to him. And this we do not have yet.”
“No, we do not,” Tess said. “But we will.”
After a long moment, Archer set his jaw.
“We must,” Archer said. “Or all is lost.”
Chapter Twelve
Ezinha Tondar had not slept since his slave Mihabi had slipped away into the night. At first he had tried to sleep on a sofa in the drawing room, but failing in that he had gone to the kitchen to make himself his first meal. He had abandoned that plan when Ialla—his cook and nanny—had awakened to his stirrings and insisted that she prepare it for him. On any other day, he would have seen this as an act of kindness by a woman who had been with his family for nearly forty years. On this day, however, he saw it for what it was: the act of a slave who feared she had disappointed her master by not rising in time to have the meal ready.
Ordinarily he would have left her to the task with hardly a word spoken between them. On this day, he found he could not. He sat at a table in the kitchen, searching for the right words to open a conversation he knew Ialla would find uncomfortable at best, if not insulting. Failing an elegant approach, he opted for directness.
“Have I been a good man, Ialla?”
She paused in whipping the eggs that would be his breakfast and looked at him. “You have been an honest and fair master, sir.”
She had obviously chosen her words carefully, and the mere fact that she had done so said much. He thought for a moment before continuing. “That is kind of you to say, Ialla, but that was not my question. I have striven to be a fair and honest master, for you and your kin who are in my household. And I believe I have done such. But have I been a good man?”
“I am not sure what you ask, master,” she said.
“Mihabi left in the night to join the uprising,” Ezinha finally said. “I was shocked that he would do so, for I had considered him a brother. Yet I now wonder if I truly had. You raised me as much or more than my own mother, yet you do not think of me as a son.”
Ialla said nothing while she poured the eggs into a hot skillet, one seemingly frail but sinewy strong arm shaking the skillet to spread them in an even layer. Only after she had set the skillet over the low flame did she finally turn to him.
“No, master. You are not my son. The time has long past when I could scold you, and even in your youth I could do so only because your mother entrusted you to my care.”
“Did you love me?” Ezinha asked, cringing inside as he asked the childish question.
Ialla smiled. “Of course I did. How could I not? You were a good-hearted child, and if you were prone to mischief, it was a mischief you shared with Mihabi and his cousins rather than playing against them.”
“I remember,” he said. “We tried your patience far too often, I fear.”
“No more so than any child, and less than most,” she said, now using a flat instrument to press the edges of the eggs as they solidified. She sprinkled a handful of chopped onions into the pan, seasoned with snippings of fresh brown peppers from his garden. “That your mother left was not your fault, master.”
“Oh, that I know,” Ezinha said.
He had long since come to terms with the bitter day when she had walked out the front door with nary a word to anyone, never to return. Rumors that she had taken up with another man were rife, but Ezinha’s father had never found her or the man. In the years after, Ezinha had come to realize that his father was a very hard man. Surely his mother had grown weary of his father’s dark moods, rages that Ezinha himself had felt the sting of more than once. Ezinha had felt more relief than sadness at his father’s funeral. He had sworn that he would never be his father’s likeness, yet had he not done exactly that with his cold words to Mihabi?
“I told Mihabi that if I ever saw him again, it would be as an enemy,” he said.
Ialla froze in the act of turning his eggs and looked at him. “Surely you did not, master.”
“He has gone to join the rebellion,” Ezinha said. “Anari are slaying Bozandari in the night. Could I doubt that he would do the same to me?”
Ialla kept her silence as she served his breakfast. While her cooking was nothing short of outstanding, on this morning he could barely taste his food. She cleaned the skillet and bowl as he ate, and finally he pushed the plate away.
“Speak to me, Ialla. Not as a slave to her master, but as a wise woman to the man she raised.”
“You were a fool, Ezinha,” she said. “Mihabi would no more harm you than I would. Are you a good man? Do you want me to tell you that Mihabi and I and your other slaves think of you as one of us? How could we? You own us. You sold Mihabi’s brother to another man, because you had no work for him. Would you have sold your own brother?”
Ezinha’s face fell as he remembered that day. He had not considered it a great thing. Bozandari often offered Anari on the auction block when they had more slaves than their work required. That he had separated two brothers seemed to him little more than what would happen if two Bozandari brothers chose different employers. But now, as Ialla confronted him with the reality of what he had done, he saw that it was something else entirely.
“How could I have been so blind?”
“You were raised to think of us as property, master. Individually, you may have loved Mihabi as a brother. But he was still Anari to you. Still a slave. Still property that you inherited from your father, as you inherited this house and your gardens.”
“And you, Ialla, who have always been my truest mother…” He paused, nearly choking on the words. “I took from you your son.”
Ialla folded her arms across her breasts and stared off into space. “Do you truly want me to answer your questions?”
“Help me to understand who I am, Mother!”
Ialla’s face softened then. Reaching out, she touched Ezinhar’s hair as she had often done in his childhood. “Then I will tell you. You will not like it.”
“I already do not like any of this.”
“Then hear me. When I was but a young woman of scant more than twenty winters, I was seized by slavers. They are ugly people, engaged in an evil business. Their only purpose is to enrich themselves. At the time I was taken, Mihabi’s brother was little more than two years old, and I was heavy with child. They took me from my husband. I know not what happened to him, not even to this day. I fear they killed him.”
Ezinha bit back instin
ctive words of sympathy.
“The day I was taken to be sold, your father sought a wet nurse, for you were about to be born. My eldest son was proof that I could amply provide, and so we were bought. I still do not understand why your father troubled to buy such a small, useless child, nor yet to allow me to raise him. Often, I learned since, once the older child has proved that a woman can produce sufficient milk, the older child is slain. Your father, for all he was a hard man, did not do that. Perhaps he thought I would be kinder to you if he did not exact that evil.”
Ezinha nodded, head bowed. “Instead I did it in a different way.”
“You did what slave owners do. I was able to learn that my son lives, though in a household where he is beaten for even small mistakes. I suspect that he has already joined the rebels. Perhaps that is why Mihabi left.”
Ezinha looked at her. “And you, Ialla? Will you also join them?”
The woman shook her head. “No. Who else will look after you and your children?”
The question pierced him because she was right. He and his family had become dependent on their slaves. The Anari were a background to their lives, rarely noticed. Yet, in their absence they would be sorely noticed. Little, he suspected, could function without them.
“You humble me,” he said.
“You have humbled us. But ever it has been thus. It is the revenge of those forced to serve: to make ourselves indispensable.”
Ezinha sat in silence for a long time, pondering as his self-assessment shifted to one far less flattering. He had been blind to his sins for no better reason than that it was easier not to think about them.
“I am not a good man,” he said finally. “You have answered me truly.”
“Nor are you all bad,” Ialla said. She reached for the food he would not eat, but before she touched the plate, he grasped her wrist gently. Then, pulling his knife from its sheath on his belt, he cut a slash through the brand mark on her arm. “You are free, Ialla.”
