The Silver Sparrow

With Or Without Your Clothes On

She was nineteen years old when he found her, bound to a post in a military tent, half-naked, and was about to be raped by one of his generals. The prince, son and heir to the Salar of Rasharwi, High Commander of the royal army that had successfully wiped out her Kha'gan and three more in the Vilarhiti, was said to be in the middle of a damage assessment report and therefore in a mood to cause more damage when the news about a woman being missing from the prisoner's camp had arrived.

The general who had yet to learn––or had been too ignorant to notice––the supernatural ability of the crown prince's most trusted advisor and right hand man to be so shockingly accurate on head counts during the chaos of battle, had thought he could keep a girl for entertainment for a few nights before sending her back to her holding pen. The prince, being already on edge from the heavy loss of his army despite the eventual success of his campaign, had stormed into the tent, unsheathed the two obsidian blades strapped to his back, and executed the general with his own hands—something he hadn't done often, judging from the looks on the guards' faces.

He turned to his advisor, snapped a clear and precise command to have every man who might have been aware of such treason executed and strode toward the exit. He stopped, as though there was a calling or an invisible force of some kind that prevented him from leaving, and turned, in an agonizingly slow and calculated manner, to look over his shoulder toward where she was.

Time inched by like a nervous criminal hoping to escape as three other men and one woman kept their mouths shut, seemed to screech when it was snatched back into the tent by the prince who, after some deliberation, decided to return to the exact same spot from where he'd slain the general.

It took him no time, no time at all to figure out what she was.

"Why," he said, cold anger rising in his tone, "did no one know there's a Bharavi among these Kha'gans?"

The soldiers behind him shifted their weight, suddenly finding something stuck between their teeth or in their fingernails a matter of great importance and proceeded to pick on them in perfect synchronization. Only the man she understood to be his trusted advisor was able to keep his personal hygiene a concern for other times, despite the visible effort to swallow a mysterious object that must have suddenly materialized in his throat.

The prince turned to look over his shoulder when the answer didn't come. "Are you all deaf, or am I?"

Those words, spoken in a mere whisper, had been enough to mute everyone in that tent in addition to their sudden hearing loss. The advisor, however, managed, at long last, to swallow the mysterious object and replied, "I will have the men responsible found and brought to you before dawn, my lord."

The young prince, drawing a breath and exhaling loudly as if to make sure it could be heard by his deaf and mute officers, shook his head. "Have their heads on display before dawn along with General Hamir's accomplices and their crimes clearly explained for all divisions," he commanded in an effortless, practical tone, the same way one might have instructed a meal to be prepared or a table to be set. "Take this woman, wash out the red filth on her hair and bring her to me. I will speak to this Bharavi before nightfall."

The soldiers carried out his instructions with utmost care. They washed out the red dye she'd applied to her hair to hide her identity. The paste, made from a mixture of red wine and the root of a Biba tree, came off easily enough with water, but left a blood-like stain on her clothes. Having been too terrified to touch her after learning what had happened to their general, the small group of soldiers assigned to carry out the task had left her dress on as they emptied buckets of ice-cold water on her hair and decided to deny her a change of clothing.

It had not been a part of the command, one soldier had argued when another suggested giving her something dry to wear. She might be executed soon, he had said, and it could be considered a waste of resources, which the prince didn't like. Then again, her soiled garment and state of appearance might offend him, the first man had argued. The rest had nodded in agreement, but none had found the reasoning sufficient to draw a safe conclusion. The issue, from which more arguments ensued for a considerable amount of time, ended up being passed over to a higher ranking officer on duty to judge. The officer, finding it above his rank to decide, thought it would be best to bring it up to the general of their division, who then decided it was safer to check first with the prince's advisor regarding this highly complicated issue before issuing a command. By then twilight had already approached, and the decision, she overheard from the commotion, ended up being one of sending her over to his tent in whatever state she was in as soon as possible. The most crucial and clearest part of the command, his advisor pointed out, was, 'before nightfall.'