I didn’t know it at the time, but she had been correct.
“Fierce little Nari,” the large, silver-haired man sighed as he folded me into his bear-like hug. I forgot all about Tamin’s past, and for a moment I only remembered what it had been like on the long and hot Plain’s evenings, in our hut, eating fresh-cooked tagine around a fire and listening to stories.
I had to pull away though, for fear that I might cry. “What are you doing here?” I sniffed and looked up at his wizened face. The flickering candlelight of the mines only cast deeper shadows around his eyes, making him look older. It was clear from his mortified expression that the light didn’t do any good for me, either, as his mouth dropped.
“What happened to you?” he gently held my hands up to the light, turning them over so that he could see the scrapes and wounds on my arms.
And my four brands, there dark and one still puckered and livid.
“Dear Stars!” he gasped.
But I didn’t feel ashamed. If anything, I was proud of them. “These mark the times I’ve tried to escape,” I held my forearms out of his grasp and held them up higher, defiantly. “I’ve been here four years, and every year…” I nodded to my arms.
“But, they look so painful, Little Nari!” a tear welled in the corner of Tamin’s eye.
“Don’t be sad, Uncle! Be happy, that the daughter of your spirit-friend was raised so well that I can still remember what it means to be free!” I said loudly, letting the other new slaves hear me.
Tamin held my gaze for a moment as a small, crooked smile quirked one side of his face. “You were always trouble, Little Nari,” he said. It was almost his old humor, but then his look darkened, and all trace of mirth vanished from his features.
“Nari, I have something to tell you. Something about your village,” Tamin said heavily.
Around us, the rest of the Daza slaves, both the new and the old, fell to silence at the serious tone in Tamin’s voice.
“Inyene’s men came to your village this last Winter gone. Your mother Yala sent word of it to me through the Traders, and I returned as soon as I could,” Tamin said.
“What did they do?” My voice was hard and cold. There were always people coming and going from Inyene’s keep on the mountain side. I would often see groups of riders or sometimes whole caravans snaking down the slopes.
And I didn’t think that any good would ever come wherever our ‘masters’ went.
“They have been offering goods, loans, services,” Tamin said. “I didn’t realize that was what Inyene was up to, but I had been seeing reports come across my desk at Fairwater – that was the Middle Kingdom village where he worked – for the last few years or two. People trying to fight debt claims.”
“Debt claims?” I echoed. I didn’t understand. The Daza people had no ‘debts.’ If one of us owed another tribesperson for a service or an object, we would help them with what we could and that was that. It wasn’t a ‘debt’ – it was an act of gratitude, of thanks.
But wasn’t that what Dagan Mar and the overseers have been saying to us? That we owed them somehow? Just for merely existing, it seemed to me.
“I know. It’s a new thing – or a very old type of thing, actually. Inyene has been using some very ancient Torvald laws about property and debt, allowing that if you owe somebody something, they have a right to come and take it from you.” Tamin’s eyes swept around the cramped tunnel. “Or, if you have nothing, they can force you to work off what you owe.”
“That’s insane,” I spat.
“Yes. But not illegal,” Tamin said carefully. Illegal. That was another of those words that the Three Kingdom people used. Some things were against the rule of the King, or the Princes, or the Chiefs, and if you broke the rules, they would punish you for it. Again, it was a strange concept for us Daza – but it was one that I had quickly gotten used to here in the mines.
“Anyway, Inyene has been sending her emissaries across the borderlands, picking on small villages and the Plains villages as they don’t understand Three Kingdom law,” he said.
Mother had been right. We didn’t need Torvald paper!
“She offers loans of good solid gold coins for the people to do whatever they want with, and she expects payment when her Collectors come back,” Tamin explained. “Or else, she will do something like drive into a plains village with a cart stacked with tools and weapons and expensive wines, and just leave it there and ride off. Then, the next season, a Collector will turn up at the head of a guard outfit, and they will demand that the goods be paid for, along with interest.”
“Interest?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a fine, a punishment for taking out a loan or borrowing something from Inyene,” Tamin explained.
“Then why does she offer anything in the first place, if she feels she has to punish people for accepting it?” It made no sense to me. These Middle Kingdom people were crazy.
“She’s dressed it up in all sorts of fancy language – something about the cost to employ clerks and repair cart wheels and feed her horses.” Tamin endeavored to explain the unexplainable. “But yes, essentially you are right. It is all a lie. But it is sadly a legal lie at the moment.” The great man shook his head. Around him, the pale faces of the other Daza were already stern and angry, as they nodded and agreed at this description of Inyene’s injustice.
“What happened at my village?” I sighed heavily in disgust.
“What your mother told me is that Inyene came, and she offered the loans and the wine and the swords and bows – but a few of your tribespeople took out the loans for the items, but your mother was strong in resisting her,” Tamin explained. “I think Inyene had not bargained in finding a woman as determined as your mother!”
“No, I bet she wasn’t.” I grinned in the dark. Good on you, Mother!
“But Inyene wouldn’t leave. She had a horrible man with a limp—”
“Dagan Mar,” I said. “He’s her head slave master,” I explained.
“And a whole contingent of guards. Mercenaries, I think. Inyene then told your people that she had already loaned the use of cattle guards to all of the neighboring villages – which she had – and that these guards were busy rounding up and protecting the herds so that no other village could hunt them.”
“What? But the herds move freely!” I burst out. It was true that we Daza people hunted the gigantic herds of cattle or the flights of birds that moved over the plains. We would send out seasonal hunting parties to follow them, always leaving if they wandered too deep into another tribes’ territory. It had been the way of the Daza for a long, long time – and together we had made it work.
“Well, not anymore,” Tamin said sadly. “So, your village had to take out loans to hire their own guards, and lawyers to negotiate with the other villages, and better bows to hunt quicker…”
I could see where this was heading. Inyene was setting the villages against each other and forcing them to take out her loans with ‘interest’ just so that my people would get into debt.