Chapter 10 – Resting Place
	
	The day I buried my mother, I felt real loss for the first time.  It wasn’t just grief over loving a loved one, though – I felt, for the first time, like I was lost.
	Nothing I’d imagined my adult life would be like as a child had come to pass, and I’d had very humble expectations.  At least, they felt that way at the time.  Laborers make up the bulk of Huudari society, even amongst the powerful peoples, like the hyenas and the lions.  I suppose it’s arrogant to assume that wanting what most of the rest of the population are all striving for is ‘humble’.  Odds are, if everyone else is competing for that kind of life, some of us will lose, but the point was, my failures weren’t because of anything I could have controlled.  
I wasn’t lazy, I wasn’t a troublemaker in the city at night, I didn’t drink or take the Divine, and I tried to live up to my family’s expectations.  I maintain to this day that I did become the man my father wanted me to be, back before the drink changed him.  Everything I’ve ever said about him is true – he was proud, he was strong, he was a role model for me.  The creature he became when alcohol consumed him was not the man I’d once idolized.  I prefer to remember the jackal he was when I was young.  The man I killed was a corpse walking around in my father’s clothes – my real father died years before.
I wanted what everyone else wanted, sure.  But was it really so much?  I wanted a place to lay my head at night, secure work I could feed myself and my family with, and a wife who loved me and worked as hard for our family as I did.  My father had all of that and ultimately squandered it, and I was ready to be the man he couldn’t be, and live the life of a laborer, proud and shameless.  An honest life if nothing else, and more than enough for me.  It had been enough for my mother.
Until she died.  
The kilns have a cost that some pay more dearly than others.  For my mother, it was a lung ailment.  She’d had it for years and we couldn’t afford the herbs to treat it.  She might have lived longer if she’d gotten away from the fires, the medicine man in our village said the illness came from the smoke itself, but she refused to stop working.  Especially after Amon came.
My mother lived with us for the last month of her life, and we did what we could for her.  Watching her struggle to breathe for so long, wondering at night if she’d wake the next day, was like watching someone drown in the shallows of the Hyronses.  She was right there, the whole time, lingering and clawing for life, but there wasn’t a thing I could do for her.  When we found her on the final morning, her eyes were wide open and her body was frozen, thin fingers clutched at her blankets.  She looked terrified.  
Everything between my wife and I changed the day we put my mother in the ground.  They’d never even been especially close, but that didn’t matter.  Ishaya was frightened by what she’d seen.  What had always been a given to me was not a future she wanted, and if she’d disliked the way we made our living before, from that point on she loathed it. 
Ishaya was from a higher caste than my family, and she never let my mother or I forget it.  In the first few years it was simply evident in her dislike of . . . well, everything about our lives.  Our living conditions, our few possessions, our meals.  She held her tongue most of the time in the beginning, but as she grew from a young girl to a young woman, she became bolder.  And once my father ‘disappeared’, she no longer feared to speak her mind.  And that was a problem, because she had a lot to say.
My mother, gentle as she was, dealt with Ishaya’s demanding ways by placating her and comforting her to the best of her abilities.  But I began to resent her, no matter how hard I tried not to.  It wasn’t that she was bitter or angry like some women can be with their husbands, more that she was just never really . . . happy.  With anything in our lives.
She wanted more.  Not just more things – I tried to give her those.  I worked hard and provided for her and for our pup, and we did well.  Far better than my family had growing up, because all of my coin came home.  But good water jugs, warm blankets, even better food couldn’t make her happy.  She wanted us to live closer to the Hyronses so we didn’t have to carry the water.  She wanted a house with less drafts, so we didn’t need better blankets.  She wanted to find work that paid well enough to eat well all the time.
She wanted a different life.  And after my mother died, she became even more frantic with her demands.  Worse yet, she had a grave to point her finger at when we argued about our son.  She used my mother’s death as an example as to why our life wasn’t good enough for him.
She wanted Amon to learn how to read.  She wanted us to leave the village my family had lived in for generations, and chase the ridiculous dreams she had in her head.  She wanted to fly away from our lives, and ascend.  She wouldn’t, or couldn’t open her eyes to the truth around us.
If I’d had wings, I’d have flown from my life years before.  But wanting doesn’t make it so.  I’d wanted far less out of life, and I still hadn’t gotten it.  I’d tried to find happiness instead with what I had, and I’d mostly managed.  My family may not have been everything I’d ever hoped for, but I had my son.
But Ishaya refused to accept things as they were.  She wouldn’t rest.  She wanted us to be more, and that was the beginning of the end.

Our flight from the manor was a blur, after we lost Lochan.  Ahsan could barely stand, let alone move his legs.  By the time we made it out to the gardens, I was nearly carrying him, his whole body slumped against me and wracked with sobbing.  I said everything I could think of to him, trying to pull him back, but he wasn’t making much sense anymore.  It was more than just grief and outrage, I think he was also simply physically exhausted.  It was easy to forget it had been a day since they’d taken him, and not only had we worked an entire day in the fields before that, none of us had slept.
My own paws were dragging, my lungs rasping with each breath, body aching in the aftershocks of the combat I’d endured.  I’d gotten off easy, I know that.  Other than a snapped claw on my right hand and a few areas that felt bruised, and of course the wounds I was still nursing from the fight with Vikram, I’d managed to avoid major injury.  But I was losing strength fast, and my willpower would only carry me so far until my body gave out the same way Ahsan’s was.
So it’s a testament to how desperate I’m feeling, that when I see the blurred spots of Raja’s hide stalking his way through one of the open walkways inside the compound, I’m honestly glad to see him.
“Raja!”  I call out, my voice coming out weaker than even I expected.  
The big cat turns once to regard me, and I’m almost afraid my eyes led me astray.  His face is dark like a panther’s, the darkness smeared down from his jaw across what should be a normally white chest.  It takes me a few moments to realize it’s just . . . a lot of blood.  Very dark blood.
His shoulders are hunched in that predatory way cats have when they prowl, the fur down his back mane-like as it stands on end.  He makes his way towards us, and the closer he comes, the more I brace myself.  I can feel the anger coming off of him in waves.
	But when he eventually speaks, he actually sounds as tired and ragged as I am.  “I can’t . . . find it,” he snarls, the menace in his tone tinged with desperation.
	Then he lunges forward and grabs at my collar, and my reflexes, honed by the horrors of the day, finally avail me against him.  I bark out a warning at him and shove my arm up beneath his chin before he can grab for me, pushing him back with enough force that even he seems stunned.
	“I don’t have the goddamn time or the patience to get shoved around by an ally right now, Raja!”  I snap.  “Neither of us do!  We need to get the hell out of here!  What are you even doing inside the gates?!  The guards are rallying, can’t you hear?  You should’ve been gone by now!”
	“You’re not listening to me,” he insists, vehemently.  “I can’t find it!”
	“Just take what you can!” 
	“I can’t find the Liberator!”  He roars.  
	I set my teeth at that, uncertain what to say.  I’d suspected since he’d told me that it was an unlikely coincidence.  Fate has never conspired in my favor.  He’d been waiting for this chance for some time, and the events involving Ahsan and Lochan that had made this day the ripest time for his attack hadn’t even really been planned by him, he’d just seized an opportunity.  To think that all of that would come together during the same days in which a Liberator was somewhere within these walls, right in his grasp, was beyond unlikely.  In fact, he may have never had any good information regarding that at all.  He could have been lying to us – and possibly himself – about the chance this whole time.
	“What made you think there’d be one here?”  I ask, as calmly as I can.  My gaze moves towards the horizon I can see past the wall, to the rising sun.  The hyenas are baying and it’s not going to be long before they rally.  Even with the Matron dead, there are others along the chain of command in this stronghold who will assume control before long.  The chaos is our ally for as long as it lasts, but hyenas are good at reigning in chaos.
	I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but I’m not prepared for his response.  
	“I saw him,” he utters, his voice laden with what must be a lifetime’s collection of powerful emotions.  Desperation, hope, fear, sadness, yearning.  His ears are tipped back, his blue eyes wide like a child’s, and with aching clarity, I suddenly believe him.  
	“I saw them leading him down the lane, three days ago,” he insists vehemently, his whole body shaking.  
	“How did you-“ I begin.
	“The broken circle,” he says.  “Burnt into the flesh on his brow.  I know a Liberator when I see one, I’ve seen them before.”  His eyes fall to the earth.  “Never for me.  Never for me.”
	I swallow, unsure what I can say that will ease the devastated cheetah.  Or my own disappointment, for that matter.  If there really was a Liberator here, and we either killed him, or missed him by a day or two. . . .
	Much to my shock, it’s Ahsan that breaks the silence.
	“There was a woman amongst the serving staff,” he says, his voice thin and fading, “when I still worked there.  A cook.  She was a few months from paying off her contract, when I left.  He may have been here for her.”
	My heart lodges somewhere in my throat.  I wish Ahsan had said nothing, because it confirms what Raja believed, and I know as well as he knows that if the determined cheetah hasn’t found the man by now, he’s either one of the nameless casualties strewn in the hallways inside, fled from the attack by now, or was never here at all.  The last is the worst option, because that means we just barely missed him.
	“No!”  The cheetah suddenly screams, raggedly.  “No!”
	“Raja,” I put out a hand, slowly.  “We need to go while we can-“
	“Where?!”  He howls, wrapping his fingers around the unyielding metal collar around his neck, and yanking it up beneath his jaw, his fur bunching up around it as he struggles to rip it from his head, to no avail.  His voice is becoming more frantic, almost crazed now, and his eyes are wild.
	“There is no freedom in the world with this binding on me!”  He snarls.  “I’ll always belong to them!  A possession to be reclaimed!”
	“We can go somewhere . . .” I grasp at nothingness for ideas,  “. . . somewhere . . . where they can’t find us.  Where no one knows us.  Maybe . . . we’ll flee somewhere foreign-“
	“Mataa is my home!”  The cheetah cries out, and he’s literally crying, I realize.  The tall, strong cat doesn’t even seem ashamed, just exhausted and angry.  “These lands are where I was born!  Where my family, the family these people took away from me, has always walked!  Why should I give up who I am, who I was meant to be, disgrace my ancestors and flee?!  Why must I let them win?  I want to be free!  I want their claim on me,” he pulls at the collar until it’s biting into his flesh, “gone!  I want to die with my dignity, with my neck bare!  Why must I continue to endure this?!  Have I not suffered long enough?”
	“I’m sorry, Raja,” Ahsan says quietly, where he’s resting against my shoulder.  His dark eyes open to thin slits, and the cheetah looks down at him for the first time.  “What happened to you . . . is wrong.  I wish . . . I wish we could take it away.”
	Perhaps it’s simply hearing the hyena, whose life has been filled with the sort of horrors men like Raja and I can’t even make sense of, apologize to him, but Raja begins to lose his anger.  Ahsan does that.  He takes the blame for something needlessly, like he’s taking away some of the pain by assuming responsibility for it.  As though anything that’s happened here is at all his fault, just because he’s a hyena.
	That had been my mindset a few months ago, I realize.  It’s hideous now in retrospect.  And maybe Raja is having that same realization, because his posture slowly slackens as he stares down at the exhausted hyena.
	“Where is the aardwolf?”  He asks at length.  His eyes say he knows already.
	  Ahsan just slowly squeezes his eyes shut and presses his muzzle in against my shoulder, sobbing quietly.
	“We need to go,” I repeat again, trying to put some authority in my tone.  I’m not smart like Ahsan, or skilled like Lochan, or even as recklessly brave as Raja, but I’ve always been good at setting my mind to a task and getting it done.  And right now, with Lochan gone and our world quite literally falling apart around us, I feel I’ve assumed some kind of responsibility.  I swore to the aardwolf that I would get Ahsan out of here alive, and I intend to do at least that.  Past that, I don’t know yet.  When the time comes, I’ll have to give my own orders to myself to follow.
	Raja rubs his arm along his bloody muzzle and pulls his own shotel from where it was slung at his side, then looks to me.  “Alright, Jackal,” he nods.  “We move.”
	“We should gather as many of the others as we can on our way out,” I say, steadying Ahsan over my shoulder once more.  
	“Most of them scattered the moment the first wave of guards came,” Raja says bitterly, and much to my surprise, leans down to take Ahsan’s other arm, assisting me in lifting him back to his feet.  “You must have been making a mess inside, because we honestly didn’t run into many defenders on our way into the grounds.  And once we got inside, I couldn’t keep the men together no matter how much I bellowed.  It became . . . well, you’ll see.”
	And we do, once we’re inside the entrance grounds, where the first of the gardens and the stables are.  There isn’t much left that hasn’t been destroyed or stripped somehow, two of the out buildings are on fire, and there are dark mounds leaking even darker trails  that snake and settle their way between the paving stones here and there that, even in the dim light, I can tell are all bodies.  Some of them wear the distinct glint of metal around their necks, others don’t. 
	No one is moving.  It occurs to me now that we must have been inside the manor for quite some time, even if it all seemed to be happening too fast while we were living it, but this . . . this was over quickly.  The revolt swept through here like a flash flood, and left little behind.  I can hear guards in the distance, but not many near the gate, since it’s already compromised.  They’re probably off chasing down and picking off stragglers.
	“How long were you in the manor looking for the Liberator?”  I ask Raja, as we make our way towards the distant, torn-open gates.
	“I don’t know,” he mutters tiredly.  “Long enough to kill half a dozen guards.  It got to where I couldn’t even find any more when I was looking for them.”
	“We did more damage than I thought we’d do,” I admit, glancing back across the courtyard, which is more a battlefield at the moment.  This place looks like it endured a war.  I would imagine, anyway . . .  I’ve never actually seen a war.
	“At least we left a scar,” Raja snarls.
	My eyes narrow, but I don’t bother fighting his victorious statement.  What happened here is far worse for us than he realizes.  I’d thought the revolt might take down a guard or two, and that some of the servants might loot and damage the place, but perhaps because it became a two-pronged attack, Raja’s followers were able to tear this place to its seams.  Even if they never really got into the manor proper, we did, and so did he.  And we-
	That’s it, I realize.  We broke their chain of leadership.  The clans are renowned for their strength as a group, but they have a very distinct pecking order, and we had their Guard Captain distracted for most of the fight.
	Still alive, though.  And she’ll organize them once more, and another hyena in the clan will step up to a leadership position in the Sura Clan.  And Raja’s right, we left a scar.  One they won’t forget, or forgive.
	When we pass through the gates, I don’t feel as uplifted as I’d hoped.  I’m leaving the plantation with two companions, a weapon and armor I didn’t possess before, and no one is standing in my way.  But Raja is also right about our future.  So long as the steel around our necks remains unbroken, we’re marked.  
	And they’ll come for us.  They’ll exact what we owe, and it’s greater now than it ever was before.

	It’s burning hot, the sun high in the sky, by the time we’ve made it far enough that I feel safe.  Or at least, safe enough that we can stop for a time.  We settle, (in my case collapse) beside a grove of boulders and dead scrub grass, and I shut my eyes against the sun as my head settles down into the crushed brush.  No bed of dead weeds has ever felt so inviting.
	I can feel Ahsan’s heat settle beside me, and without so much as considering it, I weakly put out an arm for him.  The hyena moves into my hold a moment later, and I tug him up against me, squeezing his nose in tight against my chest.  I hear Raja moving past us, his footsteps distinctive by how little noise they make, even amidst the weeds.
	“We should have gathered water on our flight out,” I mutter, irritably.  “I’m angry at myself for forgetting it.”
	“Other priorities at the time,” Raja’s voice murmurs, back to the calm baritone I came to expect from him, on the plantation.  It’s comforting at least to know he’s settling, somewhat.
	“The heat will kill us before the hyenas do,” I point out.  
	“We aren’t far from a trade post,” he replies.  “The one the merchants that sell on the estate camp at is barely four miles from the plantation, and so long as we stay in sight of the camel road, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”
“We can’t just walk into a trade post run by hyenas and expect a warm welcome,” I say.  “Even if word of the revolt hasn’t made it here by now, we’re still marked men, unescorted-“
“You have armor,” he reminds me.  “And a hood.  You can cover your collar.  We’ll wait behind while you get supplies.”
“With what coin?” 
The cheetah gives the first hint of a smile since the day began, and produces something from gods-know-where, tucked into the waistline of his loin cloth, where his shotel is still dangling from a bunched, long strip of rag fabric.
He tosses the small bundle to me, and I just barely catch it, hearing the distinct clink within the thin leather coin bag.  I arch an eyebrow up at him.
“I wasn’t just looking for the Liberator,” he smirks.
“Anything else useful you may have looted that you’ve got shoved in there?”  I ask wryly.
“Nothing else I looted,” he replies.  “But we could make use of it later if you wanted.  I know you both prefer guards, but-“
I throw the purse at him, and he just barely dodges it, chuckling lowly at me, flashing his long feline fangs.
“While I’m glad you’re clearly feeling better,” I snarl, “that’s not fucking funny right now.  Nor will it ever be,” I try to put menace into my tone to make my point.  I feel Ahsan shift from beside me, and try to tug him back in, but he’s already shakily getting to his feet.
“The air out here is clearing my mind to the possibilities,” Raja says, dragging a long breath through his nose and closing his eyes for a moment.
Ahsan’s managed to get up, and is staggering off, away from the cheetah.  I growl and force my own aching body up, my knees threatening to buckle when I put my weight back onto them and finally manage to stand.  
“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” I inform the cheetah.  He seems nonplussed.  “You manipulated him just like everyone else in his life, manipulated Lochan, and now you don’t even care enough to spare his feelings.  The kid’s lover died a few hours ago, damnit!  Ahsan had to see it, had to,” I grit my teeth, slicing a hand through the air, “watch him die!  I had to drag him from that place, from everything he’s ever known-“
“I’d say that’s a good change, considering his previous circumstances,” Raja says.
“What the hell do you know?”  I curl a lip.  “In the whole time you’ve known him, have you ever bothered to really know him?  He was a means to an end for you.”
“Without the Guard Captain’s aid, you never would have gotten him out of there,” Raja points out, narrowing his sky blue eyes at me.  “So you should be grateful I pushed the boy at that man.  He should be grateful.”  Before I can come up with another outraged argument, he interrupts me, “In any case, it’s not as though I had specific plans for either of them.  The aardwolf took male lovers from the servant ranks for years before you even arrived here, everyone knew it.  And he was watchful over the boy from the moment he came out here, I simply encouraged what was likely inevitable, anyway.”
“For your own means!”
The cheetah literally shrugs.  “The entire world only exists in our perception of it,” he says.  “It is natural to be selfish.  If I spent my life worrying over how others experience it, I’d never see my own journey to its fullest.”
“I assure you,” I growl, “the world will still exist once you die.”
“Not for me,” he replies evenly.  “And the world I can see is the only one I know.”
“Are all cheetahs this self-absorbed?”  I ask, flatly.  “Or are you just the worst example of your people?”
“For better or worse,” he says, turning to stare off at the horizon, deliberately avoiding looking at me any longer, “it makes sense at this point to travel together.  And I would rather not clash the whole way.  You don’t cow easily.  I don’t have the energy to keep putting you in your place, so I’d suggest a peace between us, for now.  We’d do better to save our aggression for our enemies.” 
“My ‘place’ is wherever I want it to be, now,” I say, my hackles raised.  “I’m not some half-starved new recruit in your miserable little kingdom anymore, you can’t and won’t tell me what to do!”
He chuckles, still not turning to face me.  “Indeed.  I knew you were defiant when we first met, but you still stood down in the end.  You grew a spine, jackal.  You’re welcome.”
“Don’t you dare take credit for anything!”  I snap.  “You don’t know me, you don’t know what I’ve been through, and if anyone pushed me to this point, it was Lochan!  The man you just dishonored.  I wish he was here with us and you were lying in that courtyard with your neck severed, but the gods always seem to kill men like him and reward assholes like you.”
I walk around him so he has no choice but to face me.  Maybe it’s the uneven terrain, but when I finally make eye-contact with him again, he seems less imposing than I remember.  I might even be taller than him, it’s hard to tell.  
He holds my stare, but his ears are flattened defensively, and his posture’s rigid.  I’ve got him on edge.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s afraid of me, but something between us seems to have levelled out.
“You want peace?”  I demand, and when he doesn’t reply after a few moments, I stomp one foot towards him and put out my chest, making as if to charge him.  He takes a step backwards and growls, but catches himself before he gives more ground to me.
“You treat Ahsan and I with respect,” I snap.  “You stop acting like you own us.  I don’t give a shit about who’s top dog, here.  We can talk out what we’re going to do as a group, and make our decisions together.  No one’s in charge.  Let’s just get that out in the open, first.  I don’t want to be dealing with your constant challenges any more than you want to deal with mine.  We’re equal, free men right now, alright?  Isn’t that the whole goddamn point?”
His expression is unreadable for a few moments, caught somewhere between taking offense and contemplation.  He’s thinking this through, and he’s afraid that even agreeing with me means he’s somehow giving in.
“That idea you had about my stopping in at the trade post, because of my armor,” I point out.  “That was good.  It should work.  We need more ideas like that, and we’ll do better out here if we’re all listening to one another.  Alright?”
The compliment seems to win him over, and eventually, he nods.  “Right.  That’s all I was saying.  We work together.”
“That includes Ahsan,” I point out.  “Stop taking advantage of him.  It’s all anyone’s ever done to him, except for Lochan, and he just lost him.   Show some fucking respect.”
Raja averts his eyes for just a moment, and drops his voice when he speaks again.  “I honestly didn’t realize either of you gave a damn about the guardsman.  Especially not you.”
“I . . . haven’t given the impression of being a man who respects authority, I’ll give you that,” I admit.
“Not that,” the cheetah snorts.
I tip an ear.  “Then what?”
He narrows his eyes at me, as though he’s annoyed.  “Obviously.  You want the hyena for yourself.”
His words stick in my skull, reverberating inside the whole short walk it takes me to find Ahsan.  I can’t help but question myself, despite the fact that on the surface, it seems ludicrous.  
I never wanted Ahsan, at least not in the way Lochan wanted him.  I just wanted him near, so I could protect him, and have a companion, someone to talk to and sleep beside, someone to take comfort in, because. . . .
It’s my own mind, so lying to myself is pointless.  I was lonely.  Losing my family left an enormous void, and filling it with nothing but anger and outrage for the last few years has made me a miserable, hateful man whose only comfort has been the thought of returning to a life long-gone.  My time on the Sura plantation, with Lochan and Ahsan in particular, forced me to face the reality that I’d made for myself.  That this is my life, now.  Even if at some point in the future, I’m able to somehow find them again, everything will be changed.  And it’s my doing, in the end.  Blaming the hyenas throughout the years was a way to ease my conscience.
And maybe there was a time when I felt I needed to separate Ahsan from Lochan, but that was when I thought the guardsman was taking advantage of him.  I’m pretty certain none of it was jealousy.
There was . . . damnit, I can’t lie to myself.  There was a moment, after I’d spoken to Ahsan about how he and Lochan came together, and I knew the hyena had actually begun the whole thing himself, but we were fighting and . . . just for a moment, right before he’d been taken, he’d rejoiced in the thought of seeing Lochan again.  And then he’d been taken to the manor, and everything had become chaotic.  
But for a brief second in time, I’d felt that stab of fear.  I’d just essentially rejected Ahsan’s feelings for me, whatever they were, outright.  I hadn’t even taken a moment to listen to them, because I’d arrogantly assumed he didn’t know his own mind.  That he was simply throwing himself at every available man for protection, because it’s what he’d been raised to do.  But that was shit of me, and after seeing him turn on his own mother, I’d never again question that the boy could have his own mind.
But when I saw him, so happy to see Lochan returned, I’d felt suddenly like I’d made an enormous mistake.  I’d spent the whole of our time together essentially pushing him away, because I’d assumed on the surface that we didn’t want the same thing from one another.  It wasn’t even that he was a man.  It was just that he . . . in some way, embodied every fear I’d ever had in my marriage.  That I would somehow inevitably take advantage of him and hurt him.  Like I’d done to my wife.
It had been so pervasive a fear, I’d even assumed another man was doing it to him.  
Why the hell was this all so complicated?  It had seemed so simple when I was young.  You find someone, you marry, you live together, you’re happy.  I’d always assumed the only reason it hadn’t worked well for my parents was because my father started drinking.  And I didn’t drink.  I was even a good man, once.
Was it sex?  Was that what complicated it for me?  It’s what made my wife hate me, it’s what made me feel like I had to hurt her to be with her.  It’s why I’d assumed Ahsan was being hurt.  Because it’s how he’d been hurt in the manor . . . how I’d been hurt by Vikram.
If you took that part away though, it all made sense.  I’d been afraid if Ahsan began going to Lochan again, I’d lose everything else we had.  The comfort, the companionship, even having him beside me at night.  It had been a long time since I’d felt . . . needed.  Or that someone might be there for me, when I came home from a particularly hard day.  The way he’d been there for me after Vikram.
It’s how I should have felt in my marriage, and never did.  And somehow, impossibly, I’d found it with a hyena in mutual slavery, on a drug plantation in the middle of the desert.  And it must have been what Lochan had hoped to find with him.
My eyes sting, and I swallow heavily.  How the hell do I handle this?  I don’t know what to say to Ahsan.  I don’t even know, in the end, how the hyena felt about it all.  It’s never been clear.  But he’s certainly acting like someone he loved died.  
Gods, my feelings don’t matter right now.  This is the worst possible time for me to realize I’ve changed my mind.  There couldn’t be anything more manipulative or terrible than seizing on Ahsan’s sadness now to take from him what he lost with Lochan.  But I . . . I also don’t want to act distant with him, or push him away again.  What the hell am I supposed to do?
I find him sitting beside a large boulder, as far from Raja as he can be in the area.  He’s leaning against a jutting slab of sandstone, staring out across the dusty scrubland.  It’s drier the further inland you go towards the Hyronses, and this sort of land would be considered lush back where I came from, but for three men with little to their names other than the clothing on their backs, it’s too barren to survive in for long.
He’s quiet now, his head resting against his own shoulder, elbows over his knees.  I slowly sit down beside him, unsure how best to comfort him.  He seemed to accept my hand before, so . . . I offer it again, tentatively.
He takes it again, without hesitation.  And he leans against me, dispelling all my concerns at once.  Of course Ahsan still wants to be near me.  He always has, that’s not going to change now.
I envy how certain he always is about his feelings.  I wish I knew my own as well.
We sit in silence for a time, until I notice something.  Jutting out from a shaded crevasse of rocks, there’s a particularly green patch of earth.  It probably traps rainwater well.  And growing out through the center of it are a cluster of very familiar red flowers.
I growl and go for my shotel, intent on removing the reminder of where we came from.  They probably drifted here on the wind from the Sura estate, and they’re the last thing I want to see right now.
“No, don’t,” Ahsan says hoarsely, squeezing my free hand.  I glance down at him questioningly, and he keeps his gaze on the flowers.  “I like them.  I want to look at them for a little longer.”
“Why?”  I ask curiously, putting my shotel away.  
He lowers his eyelids slowly, and for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to fall asleep, but then he speaks.  “I know you worked at a number of plantations,” he says, “but for me, the fields were . . . they were the first place I was ever really happy.  They were a place I could be, where she felt miles away.  No parties, no dancing, no one to entertain.  Just flowers, and work, and,” he pauses, then looks up at me, “you.”
I want to ask him if he remembers anything of what happened in the estate, if he’s come to grips yet with what he did to her.  But there will be time for that later.
Instead, I lean in closer against him and finish what I know he wanted to say.  “And Lochan,” I murmur, softly.
“I met him inside, first,” he says, his muzzle quivering.  “I never would have left, without him there to strengthen my resolve.”
I can tell he’s trying not to cry, so I shake my head.  “You can mourn him, Ahsan,” I assure him quietly.  “No one will think you weaker for it.”
“You thought,” he says, swallowing, “that I was just with him because Raja told me to.”
“I didn’t understand,” I insist, guilt-stricken.  “I’m sorry, Ahsan, I didn’t-“
“Do you think he thought that?”  He asks, turning towards me.  
I feel my ears fall, and my mouth goes dry.  I saw the doubt in Lochan’s eyes on our way towards the manor.  I saw the pain.  The questions he had, questions that Ahsan never got the chance to answer.  He died never knowing if what he’d had with the hyena was real.
“He knew you loved him,” I lie.  “He knew, Ahsan.”
“We never really . . . said it,” Ahsan chokes out, softly.  “I wasn’t sure.  For a long time, I didn’t really . . . I thought the . . . Matron loved me.  I wasn’t sure what it was, to love someone.  But this has to be it.”  His head falls to his chest, his eyes closing fully, finally.  His ears are tucked back and I want so badly to take hold of him and stroke them with my palms, like my mother would do for me after my father beat on me.  
“I wish I’d said it,” he whispers, giving a long sniff. 
My resolve crumbles at that, and I lean down, wrapping both arms around him and pulling him in as close as he’ll allow me.  He not only allows it, he clings to me, returning the gesture twofold.
And then all at once, he pulls back just enough that he can look me in the eyes, and he grips my arms, hard.
“Kadar,” he says, “I love you, too.  Please . . . please don’t ever wonder.”
I stare down at him in shock.  The declaration seems to have come so easily to him.  I should say something in return, but I can’t seem to find the bravery to make my mouth move.  How is this all so easy for him?
He’s opened the door, and I’m still not sure what’s right.  Is it wrong of me to seize on this time, when he’s at his weakest?  What kind of love does he mean? 
Does it matter?
“I’m,” I manage the one word with no idea how to follow it up, except to stare down into his expectant eyes.  “I’ll always be here for you, Ahsan,” I say, finally.  “I’m not going to let them take you back to that place.  Wherever we go from this point forward, we go together.”
It’s so much less than I wanted to say, but it seems to make him happy.  He smiles softly, and moves in back against me.  I weakly lean back against the sandstone, and reach up to stroke his ears.
“Where do we go from here?”  He asks, after a time.
“I get us some supplies, first off,” I reply.  “And then, we have a promise to keep.”

After everything we went through at the manor, the distant brothel, squeezed in between two equally-downtrodden, ramshackle shops, looks like a bad joke.  There is one guard at the entranceway, and no door, just a dingy red saree cloth, the color indicating what’s inside.  The place has no windows that aren’t boarded up or covered somehow, and no sign or markings as to what it is, but places like this don’t have to.
“This is it?”  Raja asks, and for once I’m in agreement with the mockery in his tone.  “This is the place our almighty Guard Captain was so afraid to break into?  His sister must be rolling in her grave.”
“I don’t doubt he was capable of laying this place to waste if he really wanted to,” I growl at him, peering once again past the brick building – one of the few in this miserable little trade town – we’re currently taking shelter behind.  
“He talked to me about her a lot,” Ahsan says softly, his hand gripping my bicep lightly as he leans past me to look at the place as well.  “She was the one who didn’t want him to make trouble with her owners.  This place is also owned by the Sura clan, they have nearly all the holdings in these parts.”
“Right, and they’re hyenas,” I sigh.  “You make trouble with one of them, you’ve got trouble with all of them.”
Raja chuckles lowly.  “Well, we’re already in deep, there.  What’s one more conquest?”
I sigh, and look back towards Ahsan.  “Did you hide the provisions?”
He nods.  “I dug them in back by the hitching post.  Do you want camels or horses?”
“That depends,” I say.  “I know you can ride a horse.  Can you ride a camel?”
“Not . . . well.”
“Horses, then,” I nod.  “And be safe.  If you don’t think you can snatch any without getting mobbed on, don’t.  We’ll find another way.”
“I almost hope we have to,” Raja smirks, showing his fangs.  “To hell with running.  We can take the guards in this village.  They aren’t even armored.”
“One mistake,” I hold up a finger, showing my own fangs to the cheetah.  “That’s all it takes, Raja.  One wrong move, one missed moment, and one or all of us dies.  They have weapons, and even piss-poor village guards are better trained than we are.  Don’t get stupid.”
I lean past the brick wall again, eyeing the harem guard at the door.  He looks bored, and tired.  A dhole, so probably not a eunuch.  Hired help.  Not even a hyena, so probably not trained by the clan.  The hyenas inside might fight back as well, and we don’t know how many of them there are.  Judging by the size of the building, not many.  But it’s an unknown.
“Let’s just do this,” Raja says from beside me, impatiently.  I glare at him briefly, but say nothing.  I’m glad enough that he was willing to come along for this, seeing as it’s really just trouble we don’t need.  But I made a promise to Lochan, and I intend to keep it.  Raja just enjoys the thought of further violence against the clan.  And in his own words, ‘the gratitude of some desperate women’. 
“We need to see if we can get inside,” I remind him.  “I don’t want the women inside caught up in the violence.”
“Well you’ll pass for a traveling mercenary, or something of the like,” Raja says, plucking at his collar.  “But there isn’t much I can do about this.”
I sigh.  “We should have stolen some clothing.  I’m not sure how we can get you ins . . . .”  I trail off as I catch the cheetah’s shifting golden hide in a stray ray of sunlight, the beautiful patterns rippling with the movement of his lean, muscular shoulders.  
He eventually glances back and catches me looking at him, and narrows his eyes.  “What?”
“You’re an awful pretty man, Raja,” I smirk.
He just gives me a confused look, and then Ahsan starts laughing from behind me.  I see realization dawn in the cheetah’s eyes, and then he growls, “Hell no.”
Raja, as it turns out, makes a pretty enough would-be male prostitute that when I bring him to the brothel, I barely have to lie my way through the front door.  All it takes is getting halfway through my opening line about him being a new acquisition, and the Dhole waves us right on through.  
We emerge into a smoky, dimly-lit, cramped entrance room, with little more than a table and one chair, and another curtain leading to the main lounge.  The smoke reeks of the Divine, unsurprisingly, and there’s the distinct smell of musk and sex from many different creatures beneath it all.  Not a pleasant combination, in my opinion.
I try my best not to show my distaste when a female hyena emerges from behind the curtain and starts making her way towards us.  She looks thin and ragged, but she’s not wearing a collar.  Her eyes are bloodshot and when she gives a rattling cough, I recognize the sound.  Chandan had a similar cough, as did most of the other workers who were hopelessly hooked on the Divine.
She gives us a curious look when she finally takes stock of us, then just makes her way to the table and pulls out a drawer, sorting through an unfolded stack of parchments.  I hate to admit it, but the guardhouse where they kept our papers at the plantation was far more organized.
“I didn’t know they were sending us a boy,” she mutters, irritably.  “We’ve little need here.  Business is slow enough for the women.  And we probably can’t afford him.  Where are his papers?”
I glance to Raja, whose shoulders are shifting enough that I know he’s slipped free of the loosely-tied ‘restraints’ I’d put on him by now, (little more than the same strip of cloth he’d been using to tie his shotel to his waist).  He gives me a curt nod.
I lunge forward and grab for the woman’s throat with one outstretched hand.  She hardly seems lucid to begin with, so it’s no surprise to me when she puts up little to no resistance.  Her eyes widen and she begins to open her mouth, but by then I’ve got my shotel out and cupped around the other side of her neck.
“Don’t try my patience,” I warn her.  “Not a sound.  Just lead us to the women, and your coin.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re robbing?”  She whispers fiercely, flashing yellowed teeth.
Raja removes his own shotel from where I’d hung it on the other side of my belt, and gives it a test swing through the air, glancing back out towards the thin curtain separating us from the outside, and the guard.  “Let’s move this into the next room,” he cautions.
We do.  As we head towards the smell of smoke and sex, I drop my voice and demand of her, “How many others are here, save you?  Clan members?”
“Just,” she hisses, as I yank her arms behind her back and begin to shove her forward, “two . . . men.  Here for the girls.  They’re in the back rooms.”
“You’d better not be lying,” I warn her.  “Because the second I find out you miscounted, this blade rips you a new hole to breathe through.”
We scare the shit out of a few women in the main sitting room, and I get my first look at some of the workers here.  Some kind of squirrel and a pair of meerkats.  I’ve never had a lot of experience with prostitutes save those I’d see on the streets in the city growing up, but they resemble many of the women from my memories.  Underfed, superficially well-groomed and dressed in brightly-colored but cheaply-made clothing.  They all wear collars and jewelry that I’m certain they don’t own, and the two meerkats are obviously very young.  The squirrel looks closer to my age, and bears scarring along the edges of her ears that suggest she’s led a hard life, either here or elsewhere before here.
Before they can scream, Raja hisses a warning at all of them, striding forward.  The meerkats huddle together on an oversized, torn cushion in the corner of the room, and the squirrel regards him warily, clinging to a curtain near one of the hookahs.
“Here’s what’s happening,” I tell them all, still keeping my blade to the hyena’s throat.  “We’re razing this place to the ground, and taking whatever we damn well please in the process.  Now, that doesn’t include any of you-“
“It could,” Raja purrs, his tail thrashing behind him.
“-but if any of you want to leave, now’s the time,” I finish, glaring at the cheetah.  “We’re willing to take any of you with us when we go, if that’s what you want.”
There’s a brief pause of silence in the room, until the squirrel finally speaks up.  “Where?”  She asks.
I consider that for a few seconds, then reply, “Away from here.”
“They’ll hunt you all down like game!” the hyena I’m holding spits, and I tighten my grip on her, the blade pressing into her fur.
“Cut her throat already,” Raja growls.
“She’s right, though,” one of the meerkats says, shakily.  “We can’t leave.  We have contracts, they’ll send their hunters to collect us.  I don’t want any part of this!”
“That’s your choice,” I reply, trying to keep my tone even and calm, and keep this whole scene from spiraling out of control.  I hadn’t thought for a moment we’d come in here like these womens’ personal saviors, I’d been owned long enough to know that some people wouldn’t or couldn’t imagine running from their contracts.  Hell, some of these women may have been like Chandan themselves, working to pay off their addiction.  It was the drug that kept people like that chained, not the collar itself.
“You’re not giving us a choice,” the squirrel says, boldly.  “Whatever you do here, they’re going to take out on us.  You know that, right?”
My jaw opens at that, but I’m not sure what to tell her.  She might be right.  But, is letting this place continue to operate really any better?  
I’m getting a small taste of what Lochan must have endured throughout the years his sister was here, and now I’m not certain what to do.
“I want to leave,” the other meerkat suddenly says, speaking for the first time.  She stands, and tugs away from her friend, making her way shakily towards us.  
“Davika!”  Her friend, (or sister, I can’t be sure) cries out.  “Don’t be a fool!  They’ll find you!”
“I don’t care,” she insists, showing her small incisors.  “This place is so much worse than the one we grew up in, and nothing they promised is true.  We were supposed to be dyeing cloth, Kanti.  They lied to us, and I can’t spend another day here.”  Then she looks to Raja, and points towards an alcove that must lead to another hallway.  “There’s two doors down that way.  One leads to her quarters,” she points to the hyena.  “All the coin’s kept there, in a lock box.  She takes it from us at the end of the day.  They won’t even read us our contracts, I don’t think any of our earnings matter.”
“At least here we have a guard to protect us from the men on the street,” the other meerkat insists.
“They sell us to the men on the street!”
“Speaking of the guard,” Raja mutters, glancing past me, then back to the small meerkat.  “We’re going to need one of you girls to lure him in here.”
“Wh-why?”  The meerkat named Davika asks, suddenly sounding less certain.  Raja’s next words certainly don’t put her any more at ease.
“Well, we can’t just kill him in the street,” he smirks.  “Too much noise.”
“You see, they’re just murderers!”  The squirrel cries out.  “Don’t trust them!”
“We’re not going to kill him,” I interject, glaring daggers at Raja.  “He’s only a hired soldier, we’re just going to take him out of commission for a bit.”
“You should kill him,” a new voice - sedate, deep, yet feminine in tone – emanates suddenly from a corner of the room I hadn’t even realized was occupied.  Raja stiffens about the same time I do, proving he also didn’t realize we’d missed someone.
She pushes herself up from one of the large collections of ratty old cushions, partially obscured behind a curtain in the corner of the room.  When she steps out from the shadows and reveals herself to be a lioness, I feel slightly less embarrassed.  They have a knack for being near invisible when they’re sitting still.  
She looks rough around the edges like the other women here, but built stronger, like she had considerably more muscle-tone at some point in her life.  She’s topless and doesn’t seem concerned by the fact, and unlike the other women, wears little in the way of colorful attire.  The wrap around her lower half is faded blue and hiked up to her knees, and she’s easily the least feminine woman here.  It’s little wonder she wasn’t one of the workers kept in the main area for the clientele to see.
“That man takes his payment in drug and time with us,” she says, lifting her muzzle.  “He’s a miserable, brutal cur, and every woman here knows it.”
The other women are silent at that, which only confirms her claims, as far as I’m concerned.
“Gut him,” she says, the deep furrows beneath her eyes crinkling as she narrows them.  “If you need help, I will help you.” 
“You, come with me,” I motion to her, then look to the meerkat.  “Davika, was it?  You go with Raja.  Take him to the strongbox, then wait out here.”
“The men in the back-“ she begins.
“Raja will handle them,” I assure her.  “They’re with a few of the girls, right?”  She nods, then I look to Raja.  “They won’t be armed, then.  Don’t kill them if you don’t have to, and for gods’ sake, don’t hurt the women.  Give them the same offer.”
The lioness crosses the room towards me, shoulders held high, her stare impassive as she comes to stand beside me.  She doesn’t seem intimidated by either Raja or I.  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet.
I slowly remove the shotel from against the hyena’s neck, and she begins to open her muzzle to ask me something, when I bring the pommel down hard on her skull.  The first hit doesn’t knock her cold, but it puts her on the ground senseless, and a kick to the side of her skull does the rest.  I’m a bit concerned I may have overdone it, but I’m not exactly an expert at rendering people unconscious.  Most of the time if it happened when I fought people with my fists in the past, it was just a side-effect.
“Lead me to the coin,” Raja purrs at the young meerkat, who seems more terrified than charmed by his manner.  She scurries off towards the hallway, the cheetah in tow.
“Are you certain you shouldn’t accompany him?”  The lioness surprises me by asking, her golden eyes following his departing tail.  “He seems . . . unhinged.  If any harm comes to the other women-“
“He can handle two unarmed men,” I assure her, glancing back towards the curtain out.  “And anyway, we need to do this thing with the guard quietly, or he’ll alert the whole damn village.  Do you think you can-“
She bumps her shoulder into mine as she pushes past me, calmly making her way out through the curtain to the small entrance room.  I follow her after a second’s pause, and wait in the shadows behind the threshold as she heads outside into the waning dusk light.
There’s a brief conversation between her and the dhole, and a moment or two later, she lifts the curtain with one arm and steps back inside, the shadow of the male canine following behind her.  I step back behind the threadbare curtain separating the entrance room from the main parlor, and wait to see what he does.
“The rooms are all occupied,” I hear her say.
“Where, then?”  He asks, and now all I can see are their silhouettes beyond the curtain, cast into stark relief by the light from the road outside. 
Her figure tips over the edge of the desk, her elbows leaning over it, tail curling up against her back.  “Here is fine,” she says.  “The madame’s sleeping.”
My ears easily catch the distinct clink of a belt being undone, and with it the heavy thud of a scabbard hitting the stone floor.  It’s all I need to hear.
I do my best to push the curtain back quietly, and walk softly up behind the man.  Luckily, he’s distracted, and facing away from me.  His ear twists at the last moment, but by then it’s too late.
I clap my paw over his muzzle and hook the shotel around his neck.  I’d been prepared to give him the same chance as the hyena, but in a snap decision I decide it’s not worth the risk he’ll yell, and the lioness’s words make that decision all the more easier.
The pain in my chest is less this time when I drag the blade across his throat, the jerk of my arm more certain.  The lack of hesitation makes it go faster, and within a few seconds, he’s a gurgling mess on the floor, his pants undone around his ankles.
The lioness straightens up slowly from where she was bent over the desk and gives the man an impassive stare, fixing her wrap.  When I lean down over the man to level the shotel at his neck to finish the job, she speaks.
“He deserves to suffer,” she informs me, in that same dead tone.  “Let him bleed out.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, “but no.”
It takes more than one chop, for me.  I don’t have the strength or training Lochan had, and the shotel’s not ideal for it, either.  I don’t manage to sever much, but eventually something cracks, and he stops twitching.
When I stand, the lioness is sitting on the edge of the desk, looking at me expectantly.  “You never did say where we were going,” she says.  “Do you even know?  You’re about to make a lot of powerful people very angry.”
“Trust me, we’ve already done that,” I assure her.  “And . . . no, we’re not entirely certain where we’re going, just yet.  Away from here, like I said.  With whatever we can take.”
“The girls in there are right, you know,” she says.  “They’ll hire hunters.  They do nothing but hunt down collared people for the clans.  You need a way out of the country to escape them entirely, or at least a safe haven to take refuge in while you find a way out.”
“You’ve given this some thought,” I arch an eyebrow at her.
“This isn’t the first place I’ve run from,” she replies, slowly shifting up from the desk.  
“You know a place,” I guess, after a few silent beats.
She nods.  “Not far from here.  A few days through the desert.  Do you have camels?  Food, water?”
“We have provisions,” I say.  “And one of us is . . . acquiring some horses now, as we speak.”
“You didn’t plan this out much, did you?”
“We didn’t have much time to,” I sigh.  “What do you want?  And how do I know I can trust you?”
“I’m indebted to you,” she admits, flattening her ears and looking a bit vulnerable, for the first time since I’ve met her.  “I couldn’t get out of this place on my own.  I tried more than once.  The location of the oasis is a gift, if you’ll just get me there.”
“An oasis?”  My ears perk.  “They’re usually owned by the clans.”
“Not this one,” she assures me.  “I promise you.  I’m as desperate to get away from them as you are.”
“Alright,” I agree, only a bit uncertainly.  What she’s saying makes sense.  We have mutual enemies.  
“Lavanya,” she says.  I tilt my head, and she explains, “My name.”
“Oh.  Kadar,” I say.  “The cheetah in there is-“
As if on cue, the lanky man pushes through the curtain and steps into the room in a brisk walk, followed by a string of women.  “We should go,” he says curtly, making for the door.
I sniff, my hackles raising.  “Raja, what the hell-“
“The crazy cat killed all the hyenas and tipped the lanterns!”  The squirrel cries out, rushing past us all.  “The place is going up like a brush fire!”
“Raja!”  I snarl.
“ ‘ Burn it to the ground’,” he pauses just long enough to smirk at me.  “Were those not his exact words?”
“I would have, after we were all outside!”  I snap at him, grabbing the curtain and opening it for just long enough to get a mouthful of smoke, and glimpse into the parlor beyond.  The fire is clearly deeper into the brothel, probably in one or all of the rooms in the back.  Two more women follow in Raja’s wake, a fennec fox and a rat, and they at least seem unharmed.
The hyena I’d knocked out in the parlor has a knife I don’t recognize jammed into her back, though.  I’m not certain if it was one of the girls or Raja, and I’m not even certain if she’s dead yet, but we don’t have time to check.
“Shit,” is all I can say.  I give Raja a shove, and we make our escape. 
I leave the place feeling like a robber and a murderer, and I’m not even certain we did what was right for the women here.  But it’s done now and it can’t be undone.  And at least I kept my word.