In the morning I watched as a medicine seller, his wares tied to a wooden yoke, lifted it to his shoulders. All the bottles—different sizes, shapes, and colors to indicate their contents—swung on individual strings, lightly hitting one another with a delicate musical sound, the noise I’d heard the day before, carrying through the open air.

The Attolian looked into his wallet and after a moment of indecision pulled out a coin to pay for two bowls of food from a man wheeling a giant pot through the camp. It was a soupy mix of grain and vegetables. The merchant apologized for the lack of meat, but I didn’t mind. I thought it was delicious and ran my finger around the inside of the bowl before I gave it back to him.

“It’s only three days to Traba on the road,” the Attolian said. “Four, maybe.” He meant at the rate I traveled. “I think we can stay on the road without being too noticeable, especially if we keep our ear to the ground for word of the Namreen.” He was taking stock of our provisions and our resources. “We can fill our waterskins at the wells for free.” He looked at me apologetically. “And then to eat there’s—”

“Caggi,” I said wearily.

CHAPTER FIVE

We looked up at the walls of Traba. I had reluctantly agreed that we would need to part with the slave chain.

“We’ll need to find a money changer with a questionable reputation,” said the Attolian. He approached a group of city guards where they were passing the time dicing against a wall in a game of Pits and Monsters. Not hiding his Attolian accent, but flaunting it, he joined the game, chatting comfortably about the dreariness of guard duty and the universal stupidity of superior officers. He’d staked our last bit of money and won at first, but the longer he played, the more he began to lose. At one point a loan from another player was all that kept him going. By then the other guards knew he was a soldier doing a favor for his father, traveling out to check on business matters with one of the family slaves.

I waited nearby like an obedient dog, with my eyes on the ground, keeping my surprise to myself: I hadn’t heard the Attolian say so many words in all the days we had been together. He’d not been this voluble even with Roamanj’s caravan guards. By afternoon the Attolian had any number of new friends and was substantially in debt. When one of his new friends, a man with a scar across the bridge of his nose and several of his teeth missing, put a friendly arm around him, he dwarfed even the Attolian. The giant smiled as he said with unsettling intensity, “It would disappoint me to win that much money in a lucky game and not be paid what I am owed.”

As the Attolian explained his very regrettable lack of coin, he hooked a finger through the chain on my neck. He and the Traban exchanged a speaking glance while I stood there with a watery smile. The giant suggested a money changer who might address the problem.

“Master,” said I, bobbing along beside the Attolian as he strode into the market, “I strongly suggest you reconsider.”

“Shut up,” said the Attolian. They were the first rude words he had spoken to me, and they cut, though I knew they weren’t meant to.

Like a dutiful and long-term house slave, I hung on the Attolian’s shoulder all the way across the market to the small stall with a striped awning over it and a sign with the traditional scales that indicated a money changer, urging him to reconsider his plans. I stood wringing my hands while the Attolian explained his errand in a penetrating whisper.

“Master,” I positively whined.

“Shut up,” said the Attolian again, and turned back to the money changer. “And I’ll need another slave chain, somewhat cheaper, to fix the ownership seal to.”

“Your honored father—” I said.

“Is a thousand miles away,” said the Attolian.

“But when we return—”

“I’ll get another made before then. I always win my money back.”

My face eloquent with discontent, I fell silent and obediently leaned forward so that the money changer could grasp the chain and with a sharp jerk pull it from my throat. I had never noticed its weight until I felt it slide from my neck. Next, the money changer threw a cheap imitation gold chain around my neck to replace the one that was gone. In a moment he’d run Nahuseresh’s plaque onto the chain and used a crimp to seal the links together.

In less time than it takes a cup of coffee to cool, we were on our way. The Traban guard waiting for his money just outside was quickly paid off. He offered another game, but the Attolian asked instead where we could find a place to have a bath and spend the night, promising to return for a game in the morning.

Once outside the market, the Attolian led the way into one alley after another until we were alone.

“You are sure you don’t want another game with your nice new friends?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No, thanks, I’m all for the quiet life.”

Grasping the chain around my neck with one hand, he yanked it hard, but the chain didn’t break; he just pulled me off-balance, and I had to steady myself on his arm or fall over in the street.

“The cheaper the chain, the harder to break,” I said, rubbing my neck. The gold in the chain of a high-status slave marks not only his value, but also his master’s trust in him.

Using both hands, the Attolian gathered the links of the chain, and with muscles bunching under his skin, he wrenched it apart. He walked along the narrow alley until he came to an opening for the city sewer and dropped the chain to rattle through the grating. It was almost gone when I pinned it in place with my foot. Kneeling, I caught the little gold plaque with my master’s seal on it. Pure gold, it was easy to twist free.

“It’s small enough to keep hidden,” I said.

Looking down at me, the Attolian shrugged. “Keep it if you want,” he said.

We walked through Traba and picked out a bathhouse for ourselves. The Attolian chose a prosperous-looking place, more expensive than a common guard was likely to afford. With my chain gone, we didn’t want to run into any of the men he had been dicing with earlier. Even after giving away almost a third of the money to pay our debts, we were suddenly very well off. When we were clean and shaved, we asked at the bathhouse for a good inn. We ate a prodigious amount and then staggered to our beds. In the morning, after the Attolian had checked them over carefully, we purchased two mules and some provisions. There’d been no sign that anyone from Perf had caught up to us, and we knew we would make good time riding instead of walking. We threw the Namreen’s saddlebags across the mules’ backs and left Traba feeling we were well ahead of any pursuit.

“Have you been a slave all your life, Kamet?”

We were alone on the road and could speak freely. It wasn’t a polite question, and the Attolian knew that, but we had been together long enough that he must have thought we had reached a point where we could ask uncomfortable questions—that he could ask uncomfortable questions, rather. I considered what I should answer—yes, I had been beneath contempt since birth? Or, on the contrary, that I had once been a man as worthy as himself and had become less of one at some time in my life?

I waited a moment to see if he would retract the question, but he didn’t.

“I was taken from my home as a child by raiders and then sold to the Mede.”