Inner sight (for the people)

The captain told me to close my eyes and relax. To clear my mind and think of nothing for a minute. I tried to do this, and then I wondered, "Why me?" This consumed me. Why me? How come he had plucked me from prison, from a death sentence, and given me a new life?

"Did you clear your mind?"

"No, I couldn't, there's something I need to know." I had wanted to know since that first day, but the time was wrong, or I had been too afraid to ask.

"What?"

"Why me? How come you knew to find me? Why did you pick me? How did you find me?" The questions just poured out of me now that I had asked.

The captain gave me a rueful smile. "Well, I suppose you had to ask eventually. And I guess that I have to answer." He paused, and thought for a while.

Finally, he drew in his breath and started to speak. "It was Holly who found you."

Holly? Holly? No. It couldn't be.

The captain saw my amazement. "Yes, it was Holly. See, when I got given this mission, we both knew it was going to be tough. I went and read the records, and found out for myself what the past history of missions like this was.

So I spoke to Holly about it." He noticed my sceptical look. "Yes, I told you she was my soul-mate, of course we talked about it. She said that the men needed a woman to keep them going.

I laughed at her, but she was serious. I said there was no way that we could take a woman with us. But I couldn't tell her any reason why, except that no one would want to come."

"She got a little smile on her face, and then we didn't speak about it anymore. But a week later, she asked me about it again.

I hadn't thought about it anymore, but she told me she thought she'd found someone who'd want to go. When I asked who, she told me that it was a young girl who was working as a prostitute because she was addicted to seed.

She even had healing training — and I had complained to her that they hadn't given me any one with healing knowledge."

"I told her that there was no way I'd let a prostitute come with us, but she said that that was exactly what we needed to come with us. When I asked her why this girl would want to come, she told me about being a seedie."

"But how did she know that?"

"I don't know. Holly has a broad education, she has many servants and she's very down to earth. She introduced me to that old healer woman, and the three of us worked it out. So here you are."

I thought about that. "So is that why you kept the men away from me before I was off the seed?"

"Yes, the old women said if I let them touch you before then, the karma would be all wrong."

It still didn't make sense to me. "So, you're telling me that Holly set all this up? But what about you and me?"

"Yes, I worried about that. But she knows I'm not a virgin, and she told me that she trusted me to do the right thing."

Wow. "Umm, have you?"

"I think so. I'm not convinced, but I've written to her and told her what happened."

I began to feel that Holly was casting a long shadow over me. Only one thing I still wasn't sure about.

"So, you guys knew that I would come?" I thought that I wouldn't have come at all, except for my death sentence. I stared at the captain hard. "You got me arrested!"

He looked at me. "I wonder whether you'll believe this. I was very sceptical that you'd want to come — it was just too desperate and I didn't think you would do it.

Of course, I hadn't met you, but one of Holly's servants checked you out and he thought you'd go for it."

Great. I wouldn't remember that, but I imagined this Holly virgin princess getting a blow by blow account of my performance.

"Would you have gone for it?"

I didn't know. Obviously, it would've been the best thing for me to go for it, but I doubted that I would've made such a big decision. I shrugged.

So I still hadn't decided whether to talk to you or not. I had done some preparation — got you a horse and stuff — but I still didn't know whether I was going to talk to you.

Then Holly sent a messenger early that morning to say that the Vizier had found out that Tom was giving money to one of the Kings enemies, so they decided to use the prostitution laws to take him down.

When they had found one of his girls doing seed, they had enough to sentence him to death, all clean and above board.

We were just lucky that you were the girl, you had to be sentenced as part of the grounds for Tom's death. So I came and talked to you."

Well, that made sense. I had wondered why Tom had been raided, when the city was full of brothels, and why I was the only girl jailed, even though all the others were the same as me.

"How come brothels are illegal? There's so many of them, and the soldiers use them all the time. How can they be illegal when the king's army is selling slaves for sex?"

His face went dark. "It's the king. On the one hand, he says that brothels are bad for society and families, so he wants to close them down.

On the other hand, he wages war on the enemy and takes slaves. Then he sells them so he can continue fighting — it's an expensive business, war. But the vizier doesn't care about the brothels, he just uses it as a convenient way to bring people down.

So everyone's happy except for the slaves. But it's hypocrisy, we shouldn't tolerate it. Still, what can you do?"

"So you don't agree."

"No, I don't. They wanted to send me out on a slave gathering mission. It was a way to corrupt me, and it wasn't even a proper mission, purely slave gathering.

That's the problem with war, you start it, and then it gets out of control and you lose sight of your goals and you're just reacting, and making things worse."

"You told us that that thug had come over to rape and murder till he died. I don't understand why he would do that? How can we not fight against that?"

"Well, what I didn't say was that what he really wanted to do was find his younger sister who had been taken as a slave. If he could find her, then he would try and escape, otherwise his life was too bitter to live."

I thought of that young girl I had seen in the square, forced to display herself to the crowd. Maybe that was his sister? Probably not, the timing was wrong.

My brothers wouldn't come looking for me. "So why did we call him a thug? Wouldn't you do the same?"

"Yes, I would, but my sister was killed, not taken as a slave. But now, since we started taking slaves, she would be taken as a slave.

If he had come over the mountains to just find his sister, then I might even have helped him. But he raped and killed, so I burnt him alive instead."

"So how can it end?"

"Well, it doesn't. We just go on killing each other, taking slaves, making everyone hate each other more."

"You said that you'd give your life for this mission. But you don't sound very convinced now."

He sighed. "Yes, I'd give my life for this mission, we are defending our people and our land. This mission is a simple compelling one."

For the people and the land. I nodded. He had been very open and honest with me. "Thanks. I'm surprised you told me all that. I'm sorry about your sister."