Chapter 5

I am leading Amina out of the dungeon with the guard following behind when I glance back. The sight suddenly makes me stop in my tracks. My plans are changed in an instant. Instead of leading us straight to the gate, I take a detour to the main building. I locate my father in his study.

“Hello, Rachael. I see you’ve come to pick up your slave. She’s been well behaved overnight.”

“How much of this charade do you believe, father?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Look at Amina and the guard. If they aren’t brother and sister then I’m the daughter of a dung shoveller.”

“Hmmm. Mind your manners, Rachael. I’m your father and the city warlord, remember. Okay, I admit I thought their whole story was odd. I suspected they could be related, but Phoebe and I couldn’t get them to change their story. I’m making discreet enquiries among my contacts to verify their story about the war in the west. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to wait two weeks before doing anything permanent to the girls.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday! I could have helped you interrogate them.”

“Well you are welcome to try now,” replies my father. “So far the men have stuck to their story, and the girl refuses to speak.”

Father gathers the four young mercenaries who brought the girls to Wadi Halaf. When they are gathered together, I can see that they are related; either half-brothers or cousins. They join Amina and I in one of the meeting rooms. Father sits at the back of the room, making it clear to everyone that I’m running the meeting. Since the men only speak a few phrases in Balochi, I conduct the interrogation in Farsi.

“Unless I get a truthful story from the five of you, then Amina will be wearing a slave tattoo on her shoulder by this evening, and I’ll be selling her as a pleasure slave to a brothel by this time next week. Do you wish to change the story you told the warlord yesterday?”

There’s an uncomfortable shuffling among the men. Amina looks shocked and I sense that her resolve is weakening. The men don’t respond and it’s Amina who speaks next.

“What do you wish to know?” asks Amina.

“Are you related to these men?”

After the first few questions I begin to get the whole story. The four half-brothers and their half-sisters fled from their father’s palace after he was assassinated during a bitter power struggle for leadership of their homeland. Five of Amina’s brothers died in the ensuing battle, and Amina’s mother and her father’s other concubines were slaughtered. Following a pre-arranged escape plan, the six remaining brothers and fourteen sisters left the palace through secret tunnels and split into three groups. They travelled by different routes to an agreed rendezvous where money had been hidden for just such an emergency. However, only two of the groups arrived at the rendezvous. They waited for the missing two brothers and five sisters, but after several days they realised that it was too dangerous to delay any longer. The main battles were over, but confusion and random bloodshed still reigned everywhere. Deciding that they wouldn’t find safety nearby, the siblings hatched a plan for the brothers to pose as slave owners transporting female slaves to the eastern markets. They found a caravan master of an eastbound caravan willing to let them travel with the caravan. Fortunately the money the brothers offered the caravan master was sufficient to ensure his cooperation and silence. The younger girls would never be able to walk the distance involved, so a small caged wagon was purchased, along with a horse, and a marching chain as part of the disguise for the four older girls.