Chapter 4

	Father always said that people like us that tried for education were lazy, and thought too highly of themselves.  There were some mothers and older men in our community that knew how to read, and some families would send their children to them for an hour in the mornings to study.  But that was an hour lost to idleness, as far as my father was concerned.  Honestly, I think in some cases he was right.  Most of the children I knew who started their learning originally did so precisely for the reason my father said . . . because they were lazy.  It was an hour they didn't need to work.
	Apparently reading could be just as difficult as real work though, because most of the children I knew never finished their learning.  They all inevitably ended up back at the kilns, except for one girl who learned enough to read signs in the city.  She died from bad water before she ever got a chance to make use of her 'education', though.
	I never thought it would be necessary for my life.  But then, that was back when I thought I'd make bricks my entire life.  Marry another worker.  Have a family, and raise children who'd also make bricks.  Just as my family had for generations.
	Honestly.  Was that too much to ask for?
	When I'd first seen my contract, I'd let my pride overwhelm my common sense.  I hadn't been willing to admit to the man who, at the time, I'd thought was hiring on workers for a caravan, that I couldn't read.  I'd thought that because I'd trusted the man who referred the work to me, that I could trust the man hiring me.  
	No . . . that's wrong.  He was a hyena.  And even if I didn't loathe them as much then as I do now, I still didn't trust him.  The truth was, I even knew about those sorts of deceptions.  I'd heard about people foolish enough, stupid enough, to get tricked into a contract.  People who thought they were signing an agreement to rent land, or to work a job, or send their children to school. . . who signed their lives away without even realizing it.  But the fact is, I'd always thought myself more canny than that.
	Stupidity, I realized too late, was not just being too desperate or dim-minded that you didn't question what you were signing your name to.  Stupidity could be pride, and the stubborn refusal to admit you were incapable of something.  I'd lost my life to a collar because I hadn't been willing to accept a failing.
	And partially out of desperation, as well.  I was no better than any of the people I'd once snuffed at.  All it had taken was the right set of circumstances, and I'd given my life up.

	My limbs are stiff  when I wake, and there's an odd pressure atop my left arm, my fingers gone partially numb.  My eyelids feel tacky as they do most mornings in the dusty, dirty, moist warmth of the labor lodge.  When I finally manage to open them and my surroundings come slowly into focus, I find my field of vision is mostly taken up by the hyena tucked against my side.  He's fallen asleep on my arm and somehow managed to snake his own arm around me in the midst of the night, and he's wedged too far up in my personal space for my liking.
	Just as he has been every morning for the past several weeks.  Ever since I'd given him permission to sleep on the mat beside me, I've not been able to go a single night without inevitably dealing with a hyena blanket.  The boy seems incapable of respecting my boundaries while we're asleep, even if he's completely polite when we're awake.  At first I'd wake in the midst of the night when he'd shift his way slowly into me, and shove him back.  But he sleeps like the dead, he always inevitably creeps his way back over towards me by the time the morning comes, and at this point I've honestly just taken to allowing it.  Keeping close company with Ahsan has made me anathema to most of the other men here anyway, other than Chandran and a few brave souls who are willing to look past the hyena's origins, so I don't honestly care what any of the rest of them think of the fact that I allow him so close.  
	The fact is, I've given up on hating him.  I've mostly let go of the idea of disliking him.  And I'm trying hard not to pity him, not because I don't feel he's deserving of pity, but because I earnestly believe it's the last thing he needs.  The hyena has grown enough in my estimation, primarily I'll admit because he's still making my life better by bringing me food and sharing his blanket with me, that I want to do more than pretend to help him.  He doesn't need protection from the men here.  He doesn't need a bodyguard.
	What he needs is confidence, and to rise up from beneath the distant heel of the Matron.  Even now, even after he chose to leave the estate, he still speaks of her and the manor on a daily basis, wistfully.  Perhaps now more that I've seen it, been there, learned more than I wanted to know about the place he grew up in, and the people he was beholden to there.  He is always sparse on details, and I don't pry for them regardless.  I'm a firm believer in leaving wounds that have already scarred over alone.  
	So whenever he speaks on his previous life while we're in the fields, or lying on our mat at night, or just whenever I catch him staring off towards the west where the manor lies, I talk to him about something else.  Anything else.  I tell him something new about myself, because that always catches his attention, enraptures him.  I can't say why, my life has hardly been extraordinary.  But whatever distracts him.  He'll often follow by telling me something about himself.  The conversations at least have been enlightening.
	I've learned much of what I already knew, and some things I suspected.  He has no memory of life before the Sura Estate, or this plantation.  He seems to believe he was as important to Matron Sura as a son, and in fact calls her his mother more often than not.  He loves her still, even if it seems to me that if she ever loved him in return, that is no longer true.  Something clearly happened between him and the Matron, and he fell out of favor somehow.  I hope it was violent, I hope he raised hell.  But I'm certain that's not it.   
	I think he must have lost his value to her somehow, in the way a laborer does when he hurts himself.  Perhaps because he didn't wish to entertain men like the hyena I attacked in the garden.  If that's what he'd been raised for, to be an entertainer and whore for her nearest relations, and he refused to do that sort of work, that would explain why he's here in the fields now.
	He insists he was treated well there, raised as part of her clan, but the hairline scars I can see etched into the shorter fur on his muzzle, ears and wrists suggest otherwise.  He probably has more his coarser, longer fur is covering.
	And he wears the same collar I do.  I don't care what they made him believe over the years, your 'family' isn't supposed to own you.
	I wake him the same as I do every morning, and we file in line for the flat bread we'll be taking out to the fields with us, our only meal until the midday cart comes.  As usual, Ahsan tries to give me his, and I inform him forcefully that he'll be eating his own food whether he wants to or not.  He's learned by now not to argue with me.  
	He seems overly concerned with his weight.  It's the strangest thing I've ever seen, especially for a man.  He seems to hate his bulk, his height, and he's terrified of growing bigger in any way.  The boy's as narrow as a shadow, and it only inhibits him as a laborer, so I've done my best to talk some sense into him, but I fear the Sura clan's got a leg up on me.  The hyena has some odd opinions about how he should act and look that were firmly nailed into him far before I got here.
	Today ends up being a quiet day in the fields, mostly weeding, although we're near one of the fields being scored, and I'm oddly happy about that because Chandran is working there and I'm looking forward to having my midday meal with someone other than Ahsan for once.  It isn't often we work near enough to one another in the fields that we're able to spend any time together during the day.
	The painted dog and I really have very little in common other than the fact that we're here, and both canine.  We've spoken enough by now that I've learned he came from a different caste entirely before he became indentured, and unlike myself and most of the others here, he is here because by his own admission, he got himself into legitimate debt with the clan.  Chandran, as well as Tandi, (the big, older male lion I'd seen earlier who turned out to be one of Chandran's closest friends) are both addicted to the Divine.  As are at least a dozen other workers here on this plantation, I've been told.  It's common practice for men who build a substantial debt with the clans who grow and produce the Divine to eventually fall into the work of producing the very drug that's trapped them.  The beautiful flowers we're surrounded by each and every day in these fields have an insidious hold on those foolish enough to have fallen prey to their lure. 
	It's an unfortunate story, but not an uncommon one.  Before I'd been through my first plantation, I'd met addicts of the Divine.  Even home, closer to the Hyronses where the flowers don't grow as well, the Divine is everywhere.  I'd thought for a long time it was merely a distraction for the rich, but time spent in indentured servitude had taught me otherwise.  Even the poorest man can procure it, often for very little. . . at first.  The hyena clans use it like a net to drag in fish, and once you're caught you're caught forever.  Chandran says he's tried to leave the drug behind many times, and his body barely survived the attempts.  The Divine, much like a steel animal trap, will tear you apart before it lets you go.
	"The collar," he says as he sits beside Tandi on a large flat boulder many of the workers here have taken to using as a sitting area during our breaks, "was just the final, physical manifestation of my enslavement."  He says it with dry amusement, like he's reciting dark poetry.  He's probably said these exact words to many others, many times.  "I'd been a servant to the Divine far before I had a contract."
	He rolls his mixture of herbs and drug while we all sit to eat, he and the lion speaking lowly as they carefully prepare the cigarette.  The men here who buy tobacco are rare enough, and it's far less expensive than the meager amount of the Divine Chandran is able to buy on a weekly basis.  They mix it with tobacco both to make it easier to smoke, and to save themselves some expense.  But he's admitted to me he almost never finishes a week out without owing more to the clan than he's earned.
	Which is why he's still here, six years after he became indentured.  It's why he may never leave.  He seems fairly resigned to the fact, and that only makes me sadder.  Angrier.  But it's complicated.  I don't really know how much anger I should reserve for the clan, and how much I should direct at him, for allowing this to happen.  I always used to judge people who let themselves become indentured at all, but now that I've seen how easily it can happen, even to those who think they know better. . . .
	"Have you ever even seen your contract?"  I ask randomly, tearing off a piece of my stone-cooked bread and dipping it in the small clay bowl of soup they brought us for our midday meal today.  Chicken broth, at least.  Cooked with bones, if not any actual meat.  
	Three heads turn to stare at me.  I blink back at them, and eat my bread.  "What?"  I demand.
	"Haven't you?"  Tandi asks, his voice stereotypically lion, deep and masculine.  I've learned by now not to be intimidated by the man, though.  He's uncommonly mellow for one of the big cats.  But then, when you're his size, you don't really need to prove yourself as much as the leaner, smaller men, who pick a fight with just about anything that moves to show everyone what a big man they are.  Like Raja.
	"I saw it when I signed it, and once or twice since then," I snort.  "But it hardly matters.  I only know what they tell me it says.  And considering they told me it was a labor contract when I first signed it, I'm not inclined to believe much of anything else they say."
	"A labor contract?"  Ahsan speaks up.
	I nod.  This is a shameful subject for me, but I'm in the company of a whore and two drug addicts, so I don't feel particularly terrible about telling them the truth.  "I was referred to this. . . caravan," I recount.  "Or at least, that's what I was told it was.  An acquaintance of mine who'd worked for the Rochshan Clan, one of the larger clans near the Hyronses, referred me.  Now that I think back on it, I remember he had a gambling problem.  He was probably working for them to pay it off.  Anyway, he said these people had work for me, guarding a caravan that was heading for the sea-"
	"I thought you used to make bricks," Ahsan interrupts, then when I shoot him an angry glare, his dark ears tip back and he instantly looks nervous.  "I-I'm sorry," he stammers, "I just- you'd said-"
	"Yes, I used to be a kiln worker," I say.  "You're not wrong.  I came from a family of kiln workers, as far back as we can trace.  It was good work."
	"Hard work," Tandi says, taking a drag on his cigarette and passing it to Chandran, who continues to listen thoughtfully.  As much as we've spoken over the last month, we haven't really talked much about our lives before this place.  All I really know is that he was a herder, which puts him slightly over me in caste, because it means his family owned animals.
	"So why did you leave it behind to be a caravan guard?"  Ahsan asks carefully, quietly.  "If you liked it?"
	"Because I had to get somewhere," I state matter-of-factly.  "I had to go very far, all the way to the coast, and I had no money, and not enough food to make the trip.  Not to mention the dunes are death to anyone who doesn't go by caravan, or camel.  I thought by signing on to work a caravan, I'd get where I needed to go without having to pay for the travel."
	"You must have suspected," Chandran says, waving a paw.
	I nod.  "I did.  But it was the only way.  And I was willing to risk it, and trust in my friend.  It was a mistake."
	I was desperate, I think to myself.  But I don't say it out loud, because it will invite too many questions.
	"Why did you want to go to the coast?" Tandi asks curiously, tossing his tail at a horsefly nibbling on his exposed thigh.
	This is where I need to slow the conversation down.  "I needed to get somewhere, to see a family member," I say, making it clear by the edge in my voice that this is getting into personal territory.  "Honestly, it's been years, and it doesn't really matter anymore.  It feels like another life.  For awhile, after I realized I'd signed my life away, I was desperate to get out, to get back to what I had before.  But it's been too long."  I stare down at my bowl, and watch the meager contents of my soup float through the thin broth.  "I'm not sure what I'd even find, if I went looking for my family, for my old life, now."
	A palpable silence falls over us, and I know I've caused the other three to think on their own lost lives, their own doubts.  But they pulled it from me, so they can just suffer with it same as I am.
	"What they did was illegal," Chandran says at length.  "Lying to you about a contract.  It's forbidden.  Even if you can't read, they're supposed to read it to you before you sign."
	"What does it matter what's legal, when the Clans exist?" I ask, bitterly.  "Who besides them is going to enforce the laws?  Nothing matters except what they want, what they say is legal."  
	"The Northerners made those laws," Chandran says, blowing smoke out through his nose and gesturing to the horizon.  "After the last war.  Made a whole bunch of dictates about how they're supposed to treat people like us.  You'd think they'd enforce them."
	"How?"  Tandi counters.  "Another war?  You don't get one without the other, you can't demand their protection if they're not here, and when they were here all they did was displace the Clans and make colonies out of us.  The war was necessary, or we'd just be a part of them now."
	"Who's to say that would be any worse?"  Chandran replies, and I can sense he and Tandi are about to get into another of their philosophical debates.  They get like this whenever they smoke.  "I'd swap an overbearing canine for an overbearing hyena any day.  They might tell you how to live, but at least they don't believe in owning people."
	"You're just saying that because you're canine," the lion points a thick finger into the painted dog's chest ruff.  "We shouldn't have to bow to anyone, every type of people were meant to live free."  
	I tip my ears away from them and focus back on my soup, drowning out their conversation with my overwhelming disinterest.  I've never been one to think too hard on the state of the world.  I don't really feel I should have much to say about how anyone lives their lives, and I wish other people would do the same.  But apparently one of the effects the Divine has on Chandran and Tandi is to make them feel that the whole world is entitled to, and indeed should hear, their opinion.
	I both hear and feel Ahsan settle down beside me, at my feet, a habit of his I find disconcerting.  But he seems comfortable as he settles on to the sandy ground, so I don't dislodge him.  I feel his eyes on me as I finish up my soup, and when I set my bowl down he's looking squarely at me, inquisitively.
	"What?"  I ask with a sigh.
	"Just. . . " he pauses for long enough that it's beginning to annoy me.  "I mean, have you never read your contract?"
	"How could I?" I reply, irritated.
	"Have you never had someone read it to you?" he asks, instead.
	"What would it matter if I did?"  I snap.  "I'd have no way of knowing I could believe them."
	"I. . . I could read it to you. . . " he murmurs.
	I stare at him like he grew three more heads, and he begins to shrink back from me.  Before he can skitter away like a sand crab, I grab him by the shoulder and lean down.  "You can read?"  I demand.
	He nods.