Ravi squeezed his sister's hand tighter and watched the ships.
They slept on a narrow ribbon of sand that night, hemmed in by crumbly cliffs guarded by watchers. Some of the children feared the ocean and cried. Ravi wanted to shout at them to stop, but he knew that would be unkind. He did not wish to be unkind. That would be making a bad thing worse and doing it to others as innocent as he. He was angry, and he did not want to let that anger fade or be replaced by fear or docility. He wanted to do something with it.
"Swear to me that you'll never give in to them," he said. These were the first words he had spoken in some time. He did not look at his sister but instead gazed unfocused. He raked his hands through the damp sand, feeling the texture in his fingers.
When Mor did not answer, Ravi faced her and studied her in the yellowish light of the fires that rimmed the encampment. He took her by both wrists and held tightly enough that he knew his grip pained her. "Don't go quiet. Swear that you won't!"
Mor looked miserable. "Ravi, how can I? You see them."
He drew close to her face. "Swear it! Don't give yourself to them. Don't."
She began to protest again, arguing that she would have to obey, alluding to the things they would do to her if she did not. Ravi cut her off.
"You're not listening," he said. "What I mean is don't ever believe that you are a slave, no matter what they make you do. The red cloaks say that we belong to some others now. They say we're not our own masters and that we have no parents. But they're liars. That's what I'm telling you to remember. You believe that they're liars?"
He waited until Mor nodded, then he continued, "Don't forget that. Don't let them make their lies into truths. Never forget that you are Mor, sister of Ravi, child of the parents we share. Promise me that."
She promised, and he finally let go of her wrists. "Why do you say these things?" Mor asked. "You act as if we are separated, but we're not. Just be quiet and don't draw attention and they will leave us with each other."
Ravi said nothing, and was glad when she did not ask him to swear, as he had done.
Sometime in the middle of the night he decided what he would do. And it was the opposite of not drawing attention. Mor would not understand it, but if he managed what he thought he could, she would come to understand later. He did not know exactly how he would do it, but he resolved to try. He felt he would know the moment when it showed itself.
S econd to the league vessels themselves, the barges that approached the shore the next morning to transport the children were the largest human-made structures Ravi had ever seen. Squat rectangular rafts, they stretched wide along the shore, flattening the waves beneath them. They were made of a slate-gray material, dull in a manner that seemed to capture the light of the risen sun. Ravi could not say what made them move, but something did, slowly, inexorably. And there were people aboard them. Not many, and not near enough to make them out clearly. But on one of the closer barges a cluster of five figures stood atop a raised platform. They did not move and were nothing more than outlines at first, but Ravi felt certain that each stared directly at him.
The children on the beach stared as if these silent things and those aboard them were more frightening than anything they had yet faced. They began to murmur and whisper. A boy near the twins said, "This is sorcery." Nobody denied it.
"Don't wet your trousers," one of the soldiers nearby said, guffawing. "Look at the lot of you. Gape mouthed like so many carp!"
Another added a remark about the smell of soiled undergarments. Still another-a bit farther away and moving forward with his arms outstretched to push the children in-made a joke about the enormous chopping block approaching them.
"Why are they doing that?" Ravi wondered aloud. "Why frighten us still more?"
His sister, holding his hand, did not respond.
The barges came on. The figures standing on the raised platform were more visible now. They were cloaked in hooded garments of the same dead gray as the vessels. The surf struggling beneath the crafts billowed out, grasping at the children's feet. They began to draw back, felt the pressure of others behind them, and began to panic. It spread as quick as touch. Over the rising confusion, Ravi heard the soldiers increasing their taunts. They knew this would happen. They were enjoying it!
This realization brought a shout to his mouth. "We are not slaves!" Without knowing he was doing so, he yanked his hand free of his sister's. He spun around, calling out over the heads of the mostly smaller children in all directions. "Do you hear? We are not slaves!"
His voice must have carried well, for many faces turned and stared at him-round faces, gaunt ones, sunken eyed and grime caked. In their eyes he thought he saw hunger, agreement. He thought he could stir that into certainty. "Just because they say we are doesn't make it true. We are not slaves just because they say we are!" His voice grew stronger. He asked them to look around. See how many they were. They were hundreds. Down the beach were thousands! The soldiers were few. How could they enslave so many?
He answered himself: "Because we let them!"
The soldiers noticed. They shouted to one another, to him. He saw two converging on him from different directions. The nearest was a bull, his shoulders bulbous and enormous, as if all his anger were gathering atop his frame.
Ravi grabbed Mor and pulled her away, both of them agile as anchovies. He slipped through the crowd, repeating again and again that they were not slaves. He told the others to fight, to run, to do anything but not give in. He couldn't tell if they were really understanding, or if the chaos had crashed over them, but all around the children jostled and scurried. They punched at the men who grabbed them and wrenched themselves free. A tide of them had pushed over a fallen man, and many small feet were trampling him as they surged down the beach.
Toward freedom, Ravi thought. He knew that Mor was beseeching him, but it didn't matter. He had her by the wrist and he was doing what he had to. He was changing everything.
"They cannot stop us all! Run to your homes!"
He had just spun around once more, mouth open, ready to flee if the soldier was too near. He was thinking it was time to join the others escaping down the beach. That's what Mor wanted, he was sure, and they would do it now.
He turned just in time to receive the full force of a soldier's tossed baton across his forehead. It had been thrown from a distance with great force and uncanny accuracy. It knocked Ravi's head back and turned his eyes to the cloud-heavy sky. Suddenly he had no legs. His body fell so that the back of his head was the first part of him to hit the hard sand. It left him stunned, breathless, one arm upstretched, his hand, which had just held Mor's, empty.
And then a fist closed over his hand, and a shape blocked the sky. The soldier yanked Ravi upward, spinning him in the air, then drove him face-first into the sand. He pressed his knee into Ravi's back, the full weight of him. Ravi's mouth formed an oval as the air inside him escaped. He gasped for more, but the man pressed him like he wanted to drive his knee through him into the ground.
"What to do with him?" he asked.
"End him," another of the soldiers answered, his voice calm. "It's a waste, but we'll still have her. The numbers will be right anyway."
Ravi, his head to the side on the damp sand, his lungs pressed flat, and his eyes rimmed with tears, watched a knife cut into view. And past it, he saw his sister, watching him, her face heartbreaking, desolate. A soldier had her by the shoulder, though it was clear there was no fight in her. Ravi wanted to tell her not to look, but he could not. And he did not have to. Something else caught her attention, someone whom Ravi could not see but whom she stared at with no lessening of her distress.