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She climbed on top of the wooden platform and confronted the slave she just bought face to face.
The boy-man’s eyes widened at the sight of her, and he stopped struggling.
With a brief look, she commanded the two soldiers holding his leash to let the ropes slacken, giving the slave a moment to breathe.
Wherever the rough ropes touched, his skin was rubbed raw and bleeding. With dirt and salt from sweat caking the wounds, they must hurt terribly. But he didn’t seem to notice. His wild eyes were trained on her face like a cornered beast.
“Why do you struggle?” she asked softly, hoping the boy-man could understand her language.
He frowned to show his lack of comprehension.
She switched to one of the Sea Peoples’ languages that she’d been studying and tried again.
His heaving chest started to calm as understanding dawned.
“My parents. We cannot be separated. Mother is ill and father is wounded. They need healers. I must take care of them.”
He looked to the row of other slaves lined up at the back of the platform and indicated two people huddled together, the man’s arm wrapped protectively around the woman’s shoulders.
“Do with me what you must. Use my body to pay for their medicine. Please. I beg of you.”
It would be a simple thing to fulfill the slave’s request, and Heba opened her mouth to say so.
But before the words left her lips, Papa’s comments echoed in her mind.
“He has the makings of a great warrior. Best to keep that type of strength close rather than on the other side of battle…”
“It is a lonely position at the top, closest to the gods. Many would seek to pull you down. This is why you need a few fierce and powerful protectors to guard your safety and tell you the truth…”
She looked the boy-man from head to toe, seeing the barely leashed power underneath the grime. The determination and strength in his eyes.
She could not tell the color from where she stood; the shanks of his hair blocked her view. But she could feel their intensity. This was a boy who would grow into a formidable, powerful man.
“If I help your parents, take them into the Palace along with you, what will you give in return?”
“My blood, my body, my life—” he immediately vowed.
She was already shaking her head.
“I want your heart and mind instead,” she said softly.
“Your unmitigated loyalty and devotion. Forevermore.”
His breath seemed arrested in his chest as he stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Not as a small girl still in the schoolroom, but as someone powerful in her own right.
After long moments, he dropped slowly to his knees before her, head bowed.
“I am yours,” he said in his low, raspy voice in that rumbling foreign tongue.
“Forevermore.”
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
“His name is Shai,” Heba murmured, rolling the word off of her tongue, trying it out.
Tasting it.
“How is it that a foreigner is named after our ancient god of Fate and Destiny?”
