The Thin Executioner

CHAPTER TWENTY

Weeks of graverobbing followed, trawling the lands of southern Abu Saga, hitting the more prosperous towns and raiding their mausoleums. They weren’t all as straightforward as the first. Many of the graveyards were guarded — although raids were rare, they did happen occasionally, so the wealthier Um Saga preferred to put patrols in place where possible.

If Bush and Blair had been working by themselves, they would have avoided the guarded graveyards, valuing their necks over profits. But they were not overly concerned about Jebel, so they happily sent him in by himself, sneaking him past those on watch, leaving him to plunder on his own.

Jebel hated those raids the most, having to slip past the guards and work silently, terrified in case he was discovered. The first time he was sent in solo, he tried to fake an unsuccessful robbery. He hid in the shadows of a mausoleum for a few hours, then climbed out, claiming that the tombs had already been robbed. But Bush and Blair saw through the lie. While Bush held his mouth shut, Blair cut a small slice off the tips of both his index fingers. They vowed to chop off whole fingers the next time he lied to them, then sent him back in.

Occasionally a graveyard was too well guarded, and they had to skip it, but that was rare. Bush and Blair sent Jebel in except when the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against him. Despite their protestations that he was an important member of the team, Jebel knew he was expendable. He didn’t think they planned to keep him beyond winter. If he wasn’t caught robbing a tomb and killed before they headed south for the spring, he was sure they’d sell him to slavers or slaughter him in his sleep.

The bogus Masters let Jebel wear gloves and a cloak now, and gave him a blanket when he slept. And they fed him more but not too much — he was more useful to them thin than fat, and even though he told them he had always been thin, no matter how much he ate, they didn’t want to take any chances. Jebel wasn’t starving any longer, but he was never far from hunger’s door.

Jebel knew that the clothes and food were given in order to bend him to Bush and Blair’s will. They thought they’d broken his spirit and were using the gifts to make him feel indebted to them. The tyrants were cunning but arrogant. It never crossed their minds that Jebel might be acting, pretending to be more disheartened than he was, letting them think he was beaten when in fact he was constantly plotting to escape.

His captors no longer bound his hands except at night. When they were walking, Jebel deliberately fell behind, complaining of weariness. Bush and Blair had lapsed into the habit of letting him trail after them, and every day he dropped a little farther back, creating the space that he would need when the time was right to run.

But would that time ever come? He was always reeled in when they drew near a town or passed by a river where there might be boats. Where could he run to here in the wilderness? Where could he hide? Bush and Blair would follow his footprints in the snow, track him like hounds, and punish him cruelly.

He thought a lot about Tel Hesani. Was the slave working down a mine, never to see sunlight again? At first Jebel blamed the Um Kheshabah and held to the belief that his guardian should have seen this coming. But as the days turned to weeks, he remembered that Tel Hesani had done his best. He had been suspicious of the traders in Shihat and warned Jebel not to trust them, but Jebel had ignored him. There was no point blaming the slave. Jebel decided that if he was dead when the Wadi witch tried to contact his spirit in the summer, he would demand freedom for Tel Hesani’s wife and children.

They didn’t raid every night. Bush and Blair worked cautiously, never hitting a town where people might have been forewarned. After looting a graveyard, they would walk for at least two or three days, resting only to eat and sleep. When they had outpaced word of their vile misdeeds, they struck again.

Every couple of weeks they stopped at a town to bathe, relax, and stock up on supplies. Fellow travelers were rare in this part of Abu Saga, but they ran into some occasionally, usually traders on their way to market with rabbit or fox pelts. Bush and Blair always greeted the traders warmly. They shared their food and drink, traded generously — even when they had no need of the goods — and passed on tips about nearby towns, urging them not to try such and such a spot, or to definitely head for such and such a place.

Jebel was confused by this until he realized that the towns they criticized were those whose graveyards they had robbed. Bush and Blair believed in paying attention to even the smallest of details, which made a gloomy Jebel suspect that his forthcoming attempt to escape would be far from a roaring success.

From a purely professional point of view, Jebel had become an accomplished graverobber. He could be in and out of a mausoleum in minutes. He had learned to tell those worth robbing from those not worth bothering with, how to avoid guards and slip by them like a ghost, the difference between a real diamond and a fake. If he had been interested in pursuing this as a career, he couldn’t have wished for a finer education.

But one thing that hadn’t changed was his sense of shame. He despised himself for what he had to do. He still put a hand to the forehead of all those he robbed, begging their forgiveness. He had taught himself to smile around Bush and Blair and laughed at the jokes they made about the dead. He acted as if it was no different from common burglary. But he knew this fell far outside the bounds of all that was decent. This was the work of demons.

The snows worsened. Blizzards raged, with flakes the size of Jebel’s eyes, driven by powerful winds. Some days they had to stay huddled over a fire, waiting for a storm to die down. Even Bush and Blair were morose on such occasions, recalling tales of travelers who had been buried alive in snowdrifts. It was one of the hazards of life in Abu Saga, and every time they were snowed in, they wondered if they had seen their last clear sky.

Jebel dreamt a lot of home. Mostly he fixated on Debbat Alg, her beauty, the time he had kissed her. But her face kept changing. He found it hard to remember what color her eyes were, how she looked when she walked, what she wore. He’d be kissing her, only for her to turn into the leering Bush or Blair — Jebel couldn’t escape them even in his dreams.

He dreamt of his father and brothers sometimes, even Bastina. He recalled how she’d cried when he said farewell and the way she always sobbed at executions. Her tears had bewildered him, but he understood now. Bastina knew from her mother’s tales of their family’s past how ugly this world was, how cruel people could be. She wept for the same reasons Jebel sometimes cried in his sleep or while stealing from a corpse. In a strange way he now felt closer to the sour-faced girl than to any of the others he had left behind.

Jebel was seriously ill and often woke coughing. He wasn’t sleeping much and had fallen prey to another chill. He found it hard to keep food down and often didn’t bother with his meals. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he was skinnier than ever. He could shrug off the tremors while walking, but when they stopped for the night he shook uncontrollably and moaned pitifully in his sleep.

“Perhaps we should find medicine for him,” Bush said one evening as the wind howled around them and snow threatened to quench their fire. “We’re not far from a town. We could…”

Blair shook his head. “If we start pampering him, it will never end. If he survives this, he’ll be all the tougher. If he doesn’t… well, I won’t cry. Will you?”

Bush glanced at Jebel. The boy didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was staring into the flames, shivering wildly. “No,” Bush admitted.

But Jebel did hear. And although it didn’t come as a shock, it helped steel his resolve. I won’t die, he thought angrily. I won’t give those ghouls the pleasure. I’ll live and grow strong. I’ll escape, then hunt them down and make them suffer.

His teachers had always said that hatred was a distraction. You couldn’t think clearly if your thoughts were clouded by rage. But this wasn’t a classroom in Wadi, and Jebel had learned that his teachers didn’t know all the answers. Hate was essential if he was to survive. Hate kept him going. In a land without gods, separated from his family, friends, and Tel Hesani, hate was all he had left.

Fueled by this burning hatred, Jebel fought off his chill and forced himself to eat healthily again. The dark circles under his eyes remained, and there was a tremble in his hands that he couldn’t stop, but he kept going. If he was to die at the hands of Bush and Blair, he’d die on his feet like a man, not quivering like a dog.

But Jebel was careful not to show his fierce determination to live. He maintained a defeated expression and made the tremor in his hands look worse than it was. He started thanking Bush and Blair for every scrap of food and word of fake kindness. He acted like a faithful hound in their presence. He didn’t overplay it — just enough groveling to let them think he was completely broken, entirely theirs.

A couple of weeks later, having robbed another graveyard, they reached the as-Disi, close to where it roared down out of the al-Attieg. In the distance they saw clouds of spray from the famed as-Disi waterfalls. Travelers sometimes sailed the entire length of the river just to marvel at the falls. Jebel would have liked to go and take a look, even though you couldn’t see them clearly in this weather. But Bush and Blair weren’t interested in natural wonders.

“What say you, Master Bush?” Blair asked as they stood by the banks of the roaring river. “Northwest to raid more tombs or straight north to Disi for a rest?”

Bush scratched his beard — he had let his goatee grow long — and grunted. “Disi beckons promisingly. But it will be hard to turn our back on the comforts of real lodgings once we get used to them, especially in this weather.”

“Conditions might improve,” Blair noted. “A week or so of civilization will lift our spirits and embolden us for the rest of the season. And if the worst comes to the worst and we’re snowed in, we have enough swagah to tide us over. We could pass a pleasant few months there if we had to.”

“That would mean starting from scratch in the spring,” Bush muttered, then snorted. “But why look that far ahead? You’re right, old friend, as usual. We are due a break. How about it, young Rum? Are you excited by the thought of a stop in Disi?”

Jebel shrugged. “I go where you go, my lords.”

“Then it’s decided,” Bush grinned. “Look out, Disi — here we come!”