Chapter 5 -  Den of Thieves

	When I was first taken by the Sura, it wasn’t done kicking and screaming.  Most indentured servants are contracted for remarkably mundane reasons, by soft-spoken deal-makers and bureaucrats.  It’s rare that there’s all that much drama or violence at the start, despite the fact that someone’s life is being sold.  
I didn’t think to fight those first few days, because for a time, I believed the man who’d contracted me.  I knew very little of what to expect.  I did know right from the moment I’d been offered a contract that at the very least, there was a chance that I was becoming indentured.  At the time, I’d been in such a frenzy to find some way across the country, I hadn’t cared.
	It wasn’t until they’d brought me to one of these places. . . a trade compound. . . and dragged me into the chamber where they’d affixed the collar to me, that the gravity of my situation settled onto my shoulders.  And that’s when I began to fight.
	And I never stopped, until I met Lochan.  
	Now I’m entering one willingly, once again as part of a quest to find my lost family.  The last time I did this to myself, it forever changed and nearly destroyed my life.  
	This time, it could end it.

	The compound is massive in scale, much more so even than the Sura Manor at the plantation was.  We get a good look at it from the crest of the market district, looking down on the oval, wall-ringed district.  It isn’t just one building, it’s like a whole small town in and of itself.
	It isn’t as secure as the manor was, though.  Likely because it’s not an estate meant for people of great importance, like the Matron.  Most of the powerful Sura leaders don’t come to a place like this, they send their underlings and workers.  This is a place of business, primarily.  Also, being a place for trade and distribution, there are a lot of ways in and out big enough for caravans and large groups, and none of them are gated.  And while I can still see plenty of guards milling about, especially as we draw closer, I’m starting to feel more confident about, at the very least, our chances of escape.
	There aren’t any gates, but there are huge stone arches over each of the entryways, and the towering pillars that hold them up are intricately carved with depictions of. . . .
	Slavery.  I realize it as we pass them.  These pillars, which have probably stood for hundreds of years judging by the wear and the way the ancient wax paints are fading on them, are carved with depictions of people in chains.  People building monuments to the Gods, and bowing at the feet of hyenas.  This place was probably built on an ancient site where men and women were traded and sold.  
	It hasn’t so much changed as it has. . . transitioned.  The weight of the chains around my wrists, and the collar on my neck, are testament to that.  This place still serves the same purpose it did centuries ago, with a new varnish adapted to the treaty and the times.  Just like the new construction in the square ahead.  Fresh bricks and stonework, built by the poor and the indentured. . . to sell the poor and indentured.
	It makes the burden we bear feel all the more heavy and impossible to shake free.  Nothing has changed.  People are just finding new ways to own other people. 
	The eyes of the two stern, well-equipped and particularly enormous gate guards follow us as we pass them, but only for a short amount of time.  Then we’re inside, and I try to keep my own eyes ahead, and not reflect on those pillars and everything they represent.
	The inside is a bit less busy than I’d assumed, but to be fair, it’s late in the day.  There are still a few caravans and wagons unloading into some of the squat buildings along the edge of the place.  The whole compound seems set up in rings with a lot of the more shack-like structures, probably meant to house their lower-value goods, on the outside, while the sturdier stone structures are closer towards the center.  There’s a very large building at the nexus, reminiscent of the estate building on the Sura Plantation, but less opulent and minus the garden.  It’s larger, though.  Everything here seems built more for practicality and scale than as a showcase for wealth.  This is where this Clan builds their wealth.  
	Camps of guards and travelers are set up along the walls, with a lot of cooking fires going now that it’s getting closer to supper.  Some of them have set up tents, some haven’t.  Most of them probably work here or are merchants taking up temporary residence within the protection of the walls.  I’m sure the higher value merchants and the actual clan members get housed in the main building.
	Which is where we’re headed, I realize after Anala takes a moment to speak to one of the passing guards.  I envy her calm and poise.  She pulls him aside like she’s not at all concerned about drawing attention to ourselves, and asks him, (in a tone that sounds for all the world like she’s just a weary guard fresh from the road) where she can bring a group of indentured for a transfer.  He points towards one of the distant double doors of the large building.
	“Contract Manager is through there.  They’re about to close the office for the night so best hurry, unless you want to be stuck with ‘em out here in the yard for another night.”
	“Thank you, and no,” Anala curls her lip and glances back at us with a look of disgust that I have to remind myself is probably feigned.  Probably.  “I’m eager to make them someone else’s problem.”
	“Get ‘em there quick, then,” he says, unbuckling a place of his armor as he begins to head off.
	Anala waits until he’s out of hearing range, even for a hyena, then speaks lowly to us as we begin to move, “They’re changing shifts earlier than I thought.  We need to get you all inside before we lose our window.”
	So we do hurry.  And we don’t even seem out of place doing so.  A lot of other people are heading for the main building, for various reasons.  One other group even seems to be headed for the same door we are.  Two Aardwolves with a small flock of rats in tow.  They look like hunters, the rats are all collared and barely on their feet.  Haggard, tired and skinny.  Probably escaped servants being reclaimed.
	Anala’s words come back to me then in a big way.  War.  This is the start of a war.
	I’m not a learned man, but I know enough about the nature of people to know that most wars are born out of anger.  People see something they can’t abide by, or want something someone else is denying them.  Sometimes it’s justified, sometimes it’s just greed.  
	This feels justified.  Whether we are starting a war, or whether we’re just on the front lines of one that’s been going for centuries now, this is why.  This is our reason.  This place.  Everything it stands for.
	It has to end.
	Thankfully for the Aardwolves bringing them in, the rats are ushered inside far before we get there, and long gone by the time we make it to the big double doors.
	“Transfer of contracts,” Anala says crisply to the door guards there.  Again, another two.  They’re both still large, intimidating men, but these two look even more disinterested than the ones at the gates.  We’d timed our arrival well.  Everyone was near the end of their shift, and eager to be done with the day.  These two hardly gave us a cursory glance before they grab the double rings on the big wooden doors, and let us in.
	We head inside into a long stone hallway, built like many of the ones on the plantation except there are no carpets.  No wall carvings.  No adornments of any kind.  And no smell of flowers and incense.
	If the hallway smelled of anything, it was desperation and fear.  This was clearly a conduit meant for us- servants.  It was a processing center for a commodity, not designed for comfort or to impress.  There aren’t even any windows in this area, and the rest of the building looked to have plenty.  It makes me nervous about where they might put us once we’re checked in.  If we’re ferried into an out-of-the-way, locked down location like this, with no routes in or out save the way we’d come, we could be trapped if we encountered overwhelming odds.
	Anala doesn’t seem worried.  She glances back at the doors once they close, and gives a noise in the back of her throat that doesn’t sound impressed.  “Sloppy,” she mutters.  “Looks like they’re rotating out most of their shifts at once.  I made sure to overlap multiple times and always have at least one fresh face on every door.”
	“We’re putting a lot of faith in you, Anala,” I remind her.  “Now isn’t the time to remind us you used to work for this system, let alone how you would have improved its efficiency.”
	“Servants don’t talk back,” she chastises me cheekily, and yanks on my chain, making her way down the hallway.
	I narrow my eyes at the back of her skull.  None of this is cute to me.  She may be content with bygones being bygones, but I haven’t forgotten that just a few months ago, she was pursuing us like some monster through the labyrinth of the Sura compound, thwarting our desperate fight for freedom at every turn.  And by the dark look in Ahsan’s eyes, he hasn’t forgotten either.
	She takes us down the left fork of the hallway, which suggests to me she’s not only been here before, she’s specifically escorted servants to this area and knows the layout.  In this case it’s a boon to us, but it’s still a reminder of who she was.
	We end up waiting outside, in what must be an area meant to house large groups of people.  It’s a bare room like most of the hallways we’ve passed, and there is a window here for ventilation, but it has bars on it.  There are also the distinctive crescent moons emblazoned on the walls everywhere, but many of them have been scratched and worn away at.  Graffiti is dug into the walls just about anywhere within reach of paws, and a lot of it is what you’d expect, but a lot of it is also just. . . horribly depressing.  Family symbols and tribal markings indicating who has come and gone, and even the occasional bit of writing.  I don’t need to know how to read to know why so many peoples wore down their claws in here.  The scrawlings are messages to note their passing through here, or perhaps to let others who might follow know their loved ones are still alive.  
	I briefly, fleetingly wonder if my wife and son ever stood in this room.  They couldn’t write, and we had no tribal symbol or alphabet, but I still find myself looking.
	I picture her standing there in the corner, shackled, perhaps with a fresh collar around her neck.  Her slender figure, draped in a saree, holding our son to her chest.  
	Then a far more terrible image comes upon me unbidden.  My little boy, nearly six years old now. . . collared.
	The thought makes me feel more than a little sick inside, and I find myself reaching for Ahsan’s palm.  He looks at me curiously when my hand bumps his, then seems to realize I’m in distress, and takes it, squeezing it softly.  He looks at me questioningly, but doesn’t break the silence to ask me what’s wrong.  He will later, I’m certain.  I’m not sure what I’ll tell him.
	Eventually, the door opens and a heavyset spotted hyena leans out, looking us over.  “You’re the last of the night, then,” she says, then steps aside and leaves the door open.  “Bring them in.”
	The room we’re led into is much smaller than the ‘holding room’, (that’s what I’ve decided to call it) but still larger than the room in the guardhouse at the Sura Plantation.  And, I realize with a start, it’s not just where this Contract Manager works, it also looks to be where they store all of their records and contracts.
	It makes sense, now that I’m thinking about it.  Of course she’d work out of the room where all the information was stored.  It’s obvious in retrospect, but I hadn’t been prepared to find this place so soon.  There are racks of contracts from floor to ceiling, rolled up in cubbies much like the ones in the guardhouse, but in massive quantities.  There are also ledger books, by the look of how the columns are arranged in the one I can see open, and a few wooden boxes of stamps, quills and ink arranged neatly around her main desk.
	There are also guards.  Two, a male and a female, and these two don’t look bored or distracted.  In fact judging by the scent of curry in the air, they must have eaten their dinner here.  Or the Manager did.  Either way, they’ve cleared already been rotated out, or they simply possess sharper focus than their peers.  Considering what’s kept in this room, it’s hardly surprising they’d put some of their best here.
	The scary thing is, despite having an entire room dedicated to the storage of their contracts, the Sura aren’t even a clan that focuses much on indentured servitude.  Their primary cash crop is the Divine, not the sale of people.  That can be hard to believe, staring at that mountainous wall of contracts, and knowing each one represents a person.
	Anala produces the contracts we had forged, and we all hold our breath as the Manager takes them in her chubby paws and spreads the first out over the table, looking it over.  She inspects the seal first, and on that account at least, I think we’re pretty safe.
	“Mnnhh,” she hums, looking down over the scrawlings.  Her gaze moves back to Anala, eyes narrowed.  “Fresh ink,” she notes.
	My breath catches.  The scribe had brushed some kind of powder over the contracts that he’d said would age the ink, but she’d still noticed.  Were we sunk right here, then?
	“These are copies, aren’t they?”  The woman asks irritably.  
	Anala keeps her cool.  “Yes,” she replies evenly.  “My Matron assured me-“
	“Your Matron was wrong,” she makes a clucking sound in the back of her mouth.  “Original contracts always, if they’re being transferred.  That’s the law.”
	Anala gives a disgusted sigh.  “There. . . was a fire,” she says.  “The originals may have been damaged beyond repair.”
	“Oh, I wouldn’t admit that in front of them,” the Manager says in a slightly amused tone, glancing past Anala at us.  “A copy isn’t a legally binding contract, it’s just for records.  If it’s all you have. . . .”
	I pick up on the inference, and decide to play along.  “Does that mean we’re free?”  I demand.
	“Silence!”  Anala snaps back at us.
	“She’s saying we’re free now!”  Raja jumps in, giving a snarl.
	“I said shut your mouths, scum!”  Anala turns on us, pulling her sword.  For a moment I almost forget where I am and what the plan is, and my heart picks up, remembering the plantation.  
	The sound of laughter breaks us all from our dangerous little game, and even Anala turns to look at the woman.  The Contract Manager is chuckling, leaning back in her chair as she watches us.
	“You little backwater operations are always a fun way to end the evening,” she grins yellowed fangs.  “Not much for obedience training at your place, are they?  Well the lioness and the skinny lad seem docile, at least.  Let’s see what we can do here. . . .”
	She makes some room on the desk to unfurl all four contracts, looking them over for a time.  “I can see why your Matron wanted a transfer,” she murmurs thoughtfully.  “Unloading some unwanteds, hm?  They all have disciplinary records, and. . . theft?  Well now.  Quite a troublesome lot.”
	We’d asked the scribe to add that in, to explain away why we were all being traded.  Apparently she was buying it.
	She pauses when she gets towards the bottom.  “A transfer to a caravan that. . . I know for a fact is not in town. . . is listed here,” she notes.  
	Anala gives a frustrated noise.  “What next?”  She growls.  “I brought these shit stains over forty miles of bad road to be here.  There must be something you can do.”  
	“Calm yourself,” the woman murmurs, pulling over a heavy ledger and running a fat finger down a few lines before flipping a page or two to another indecipherable list.  I really wish I could read.  
	“We’ll find a place for them,” she promises Anala.  “Probably at half market rate, but considering what you’ve brought me, you’ll have to be grateful for that.”
	Anala puts up her hands.  “I was not authorized to deal on my lady’s behalf.  Just do the best you can on them and send me with a writ, so if she has any troubles, she brings them to you.”
	“But she said you can’t-“ Raja begins to object.
	“And that one needs his collar tightened,” Anala says, snarling back at him.  The look of pure liquid hate she gets back from him is not at all faked.  Raja and I have both had our collars tightened on at least one occasion.  It’s a punishment given to the most disorderly of servants, to remind us of what happens when we misbehave.  Raja’s is tight enough that I suspect he’s had it done more than once.
	“I’ll put in a request to the Liberator,” the woman says, “but I suspect the forge is closed for the night.  They’ll be processed tomorrow regardless, so they’ll be put in holding overnight.  Are they high risk?”
	“You have no idea,” Anala says with a toothy grin.
	The woman sighs, then glances to one of the guards.  “Holding area three, then.  Central.  None of the out-buildings, got it?  I don’t care if we’re at capacity, tell them I authorized it.”
	“Yes, ma’am,” the guard replies, and heads towards us.  She begins to check our chains and takes the lead from Anala, as well as a key.  Hopefully, she’ll never attempt to unlock us, because if she does, she’ll doubtless realize the key holes on our manacles don’t match the key.  And moreover, they aren’t locked.
	“No one else knows about the fire, right?”  I hear the woman still speaking to Anala as we’re lead out.  “Let’s just keep that between us. . . .”
	But my mind is still spinning around what she’d said only moments earlier.  There really is a Liberator here.  And they need him to tighten collars?
	It makes sense.  The collar would have to be broken to have the seam adjusted.  The one time my collar was tightened was when I was moved to the Sura Plantation, and I’d been drugged the whole while. I couldn’t even remember the trip.  That means at some point during that time, my collar had been removed, shortened, and put back on.  And the same thing had happened to Raja, at least once, possibly more than once.
	I can tell by his silence and downcast eyes that he’s thinking about it, too.  We’d essentially been freed at some point in our captivity, and then re-collared.  
	And the man that could do it again was really here.

	We’re lead down several more hallways, until we come to an area open to the sky, sort of like a courtyard, but with no plants or landscaping to be found.  It seems more like an amphitheater, with a large stone dais in the center and rows of tiered stone seating around it.
	“Auction block,” the female guard tells us as we walk through the area.  “Have you four never been through a processing center like this before?”
	I’m a bit intrigued that she’s talking to us at all, so I reply, “Myself, no.  I went through a few smaller operations before I was sold. . . to the last place that had me.  But nothing like this.”
	“It can be intimidating,” she says, “but trust me, everything will work out better for you if you just stay calm, and do as they tell you.  You want to be a higher-value contract, so you’re sold for higher pay work. . . not just as a laborer.  You’re all presentable enough and in good shape, I think you could do well for yourselves despite the red marks on your contracts.  You want a house job, if you can get one.  Working the fields is no place to be.”
	“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” I mutter, trying not to judge the woman too harshly.  I think she’s earnestly trying to be helpful.
	“Just keep your head down and try to avoid catching the bad eye of guards like that one in the future,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder towards the direction we came from.  It takes me a few moments to realize she’s talking about Anala.  “The real aggressive ones, the bitches who took their jobs just for a license to be cruel, they won’t care about breaking a law or two when it comes to servants.  It’s shit, and I’m sorry for you all for having to deal with that, but not all overseers are like that.  We’ve got a lot of buyers for some decent places coming in tomorrow, if you play your cards right, you could end up in a much better situation.”
	“The only ‘situation’ I’m interested in is freedom from this damned collar,” Raja growls out.
	“Your contracts weren’t the worst I’ve seen,” she says.  “You’ve got a good chance of being out in a few years if you find good work.  Just stay focused and try not to cause any more trouble.”
	“No promises,” Raja says with a visible fang as he grins.
	The woman, of course, doesn’t catch on to his meaning.  She has no idea what we have planned, why we’re here, or what we’ve done in the past.  She keeps leading us through the auction area, unawares that her well-intentioned advice was pointless.
	It serves as a reminder, though.  A lot of these people, even the hyenas themselves, aren’t monsters.  They’re just people caught up on the other side of the same system.  True, this woman had the freedom to do something else with her life.  But we don’t know her circumstances.  It could be her family has served as guards for this place for generations, and just like with my own father and mother, she was raised to inherit her family’s only known skill.  She doesn’t even seem the aggressive sort, despite her size and how well-equipped and armed she is, or she’d be disciplining Raja for his obstinance.
	From there we head back into another enclosed area of the building, a long windowless hallway that leads towards what can really only be called a ‘cell block’.  It reminds me of the one room in Lochan’s guardhouse, except if there was an entire small building devoted to housing people like that.  
	Luckily, it’s not quite maximum security.  There are two guards at the entranceway and two more on positions along catwalks overlooking a common area, another courtyard of sorts, open to the sky.  All of the barred doors to the ‘cells’ are currently open, and a good two dozen collared people are milling about.  I can smell rice porridge, and a few of them have bowls and are eating, so I think we caught them at supper.
	“There should be empty rooms, maybe even a few mats left,” the guard tells us as she leads us past the other two guards into the common area.  “There’s always water in the buckets over there.  It’s for drinking,” she stresses that, suggesting they’ve had issues with that.  “If you haven’t eaten yet, let the guards know and they’ll bring you a bowl.  The Manager will decide what to do with your contracts by tomorrow, so until then, you’ll be staying here.  The doors are closed and locked at dusk, make sure you’re in a room by then.  Doesn’t matter which.  This is only temporary housing.”
	She looks us over as we file into the courtyard, her eyes settling on the chains binding us together, and tugs at something on her belt.  “Oh, and let me remove those. . . .”
	I bite my tongue before I can say ‘No’.  We had to get the one decent, considerate guard.  We’d also thought this place’s housing would be tighter on security.  Anala had assured us the shackles were a must, that moving us here without them would have seemed suspicious.  A lot of servants ran while they were being transported.
	We’d been doing well so far, but that one decision was about to sink us.
	She reaches for Ahsan’s first, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat and looks at me, uncertain what he should do.  I have no answer for him, but I slip a hand under my cloak, and I can see that Raja is doing the same. We hadn’t wanted to have to fight our way out of here during the day, let alone right off the bat, but here we are and it doesn’t’ seem we’ll have a chance.
	She pauses before she brings the key to the cuffs, though.  She gives them an inquisitive look for a moment or so, and then she simply pulls the pin and opens them.
	“Unlocked,” she says curiously, then collects the set off of him and disconnects them from the chain that binds us all together.  She gives it another second or so worth of thought, then simply shrugs, and smirks at us.  “Your lady wasn’t all that careful with you.  Guess a Priestess doesn’t need to be.”
	“She’s the only one with a sword,” I say pointedly.
	“Ha!  Truth,” the woman chuckles.  “Well, no need for the cuffs here.  I’ll see that they’re returned to her.”  She collects the rest of our shackles, looping the chains over her arm.
	She finally leaves us at that, and I think we all breathe a sigh of relief.  Ahsan is the first to say something as we all head over towards a less crowded corner of the courtyard.
	“Too many close calls,” he mutters.
	“You say that like it’s a bad thing.  I say we’ve gotten very lucky so far,” Lavanya murmurs, glancing briefly back over her shoulder at one of the guards walking the catwalk behind and above us.  “The Gods are with us.”
	“Anala knew this place,” I say.  “I can’t say how involved the Gods are, but we can credit a lot of our success so far to her knowledge.  She was right about them not strip-searching us, and letting us keep our belongings, too.”  I put my pack down, feeling the weight of my scimitar between my shoulder blades in its sheath.  “Past this point, we’re making it up as we go.  So I’m open to ideas.” 
	“The guards on the catwalks are a problem,” Raja says quietly, his blue eyes briefly flicking up above us.  
	“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” I sigh.  “But at least they don’t have guns.”
	“I saw one of them turn,” Ahsan whispers.  “They’ve got crossbows.  Quicker to reload than a pistol.”
	“Yeah, and we’re just as dead if we get shot by one,” Raja says.  “So they’ve gotta go.”
	“We have to get them down from there,” I say grimly, because I know there’s no easy answer to that.
“Not happening,” Lavanya states.  “I’m sure they’re instructed not to come down.  There’s probably also some kind of signal up there for them to light if there’s a breakout.”  
“I didn’t see walkways or staircases up, so I’m guessing they get up there from somewhere else in the building,” I say.  “So we can’t get up there to them. . . .”
Silence falls over the group at that.  It doesn’t seem anyone has an answer to this problem.  This was exactly one of the scenarios we feared.  Something we didn’t expect, something as simple as guards on a catwalk, that would trip up any escape plan.
“We should have jumped that bitch guard on the way here,” Raja mutters bitterly.
As much as his phrasing pisses me off, I’m inclined to agree.  I would’ve hated to have had to kill the one guard that tried to reach out to us, though.
“I. . . can think of one thing I could do,” Ahsan says hesitantly.  Extremely hesitantly, which instantly makes me nervous.  I look to him, lifting my brows and reaching for his hand beneath the notice of the others.
He takes a breath, and seems to steel himself.  “It wouldn’t take care of the guards on the catwalk, exactly. . . but it might get us out of here.  But. . . .”
“Let me guess,” Raja says wryly.  “We’re not going to like it?”
Ahsan looks down.  “No.  You might enjoy this one, Raja.”