I had my first real experience with hyenas when I was eight years old. I was injured for the first time working at the kilns. I'd been scraped and bruised many times prior, of course, but this was my first broken bone. I'd been carrying a load of clay that had turned out to be far more than I could handle, and I'd dropped the basket on my right foot. It wouldn't be the last time in my life I made the very same mistake, but it had certainly seemed far worse as a child than it had when I'd done it five years later.

When you were injured working at the kilns, one of two things happened. Well . . . three. If you died, your troubles were over.

Either you were asked to leave employment until you recovered, (in which case of course, you were not paid for the time you couldn't work) or more rarely, the kiln owner would pay for you to see a healer. You still wouldn't be paid for the time you couldn't work, but at the very least you'd be back working again sooner and you wouldn't have to pay a healer yourself, which could cost a weeks' worth of wages for an entire family, depending on the injury.

Our kilns were rare in that they were owned and run by a man. Most everything owned by the Hyena clans was supervised by a female, whether it be a brothel or a brick kiln. But the man who owned our kilns had been married to a Clan Matron's sister, and she apparently felt it was beneath her to work at the site.

The man who owned our kiln was a spotted hyena, graying along the edge of his muzzle, but otherwise sporting his age well. He was a severe man and not shy about letting us know when we'd done something wrong or our production for the day was slower than expected. But my father insisted he was kinder than many foremen we'd find and that he would take care of us if something happened while we were working. That was a very big concern for the men in our family especially, since we doubled as mules throughout much of the work day.

I'd asked once why they didn't simply buy more mules. Apparently, actual mules were expensive. It was less expensive to pay us than to buy them, feed them, and care for them.

When I'd broken two of my toes, we'd counted on that help. My father assured me, while I sat there trying not to get sick from the pain, that the hyena would call a medicine man for me. That he had done so many times in the past for my father and my mother when they'd been injured. And then I would just have to rest and wait to come back to work.

But when the hyena finally showed, he'd only brought a man who worked for him at the kilns. The black-footed ferret at his side had given my foot a cursory once-over that involved squeezing my toes, and I'd nearly blacked out from the pain. When afterwards the ferret had declared the injury to be 'minor', which I contest to this day was an uneducated guess, the hyena had simply frowned down at me like he would have a cracked brick, and casually told my father I was to leave the kilns until I could walk again. When my father inquired where the medicine man was, the hyena had simply explained that the ferret was a medicine man, and that he'd said I could go home to heal, and if my father felt the need to bother him with the matter any longer that the rest of his family could leave as well.

I found out afterwards, when I was resting at home with a freshly-wrapped foot we'd had to pay an actual medicine man to treat, that the hyena's interest in his workers' well-being was primarily tied to how productive they were at the kiln. The man was shrewd, not charitable. And I was eight years old, so in his estimation . . . not worth the investment for an actual healer.

What bothered me about the whole incident wasn't even that we'd been screwed. It was that my father, the man I worshipped, the man I was proud of each and every single day, had accepted it without so much as one word of argument. He'd not even insulted the man or spoken one ill word about what he'd done when we were at home. Not even when we were forced to live on barley water for a week to pay for my treatment.

Eventually, it had gotten to me, and I'd done something I rarely did. I'd raised my voice to my father. I'd demanded to know why the hyena hadn't helped us, when my father had always told me he would. Wasn't he supposed to be a good man? Wasn't that why we chose to work for him? Why hadn't my dad made him do what he'd promised?

My father had backhanded me.

I don't blame him, of course. I couldn't understand at the time what kind of pressure my father was under. How thoroughly dependent we were on the steady work from the kilns. Losing my income for a short while, we could and did survive. If my father and mother had been asked to leave, we would have had absolutely nothing to live on while they sought out new work, and we very well could have starved before we'd found anything steady again. My father understood that. All I could understand at the time was that I was hurt, hungry, and the employer I'd thought I could trust hadn't kept his promise to my family. The pain from my injury, and the sense of betrayal I felt at being let down by the hyena had been echoed and reinforced all that night as I nursed the bloodied nose my father had given me. It all sunk deep into me and festered, and became one experience.

But I never blamed my father. I blamed the hyena.

Even though I eventually realized how immature I'd been at the time, that day had left an indelible mark. I never trusted his kind again. They'd done more than just neglect my family. They'd turned my father against me.

I don't sleep well that night. The lodging's new, the sounds are new, and even on the straw mat, I'm cold. I wake countless times, startled by something that isn't there, a shadow I think I see, the scent of a memory. I dream, but only in flashes.

I'm all nerves by the time the morning comes around, and I've been awake for an hour when the bell rings out. The backs of my eyes feel heavy, my body feels leaden and sluggish, and I'm still shivering when I stiffly pull myself up into a sitting position. The men all around me are beginning to stir and wake to various degrees, including the hyena, who apparently managed to inch his way closer to me throughout the night. He's curled into an impossibly small ball for a man so tall. He's all limbs when he unfolds himself from the sarong he was using as a makeshift blanket, and a mouth full of clean white teeth flashes as he yawns.

I don't have time to concern myself with him anymore. A guard is at the door, not Lochan but that lion I saw the other day. His voice is rough and demanding as he calls for us to wake, and he starts pacing the lodging house, digging his foot into people who aren't stirring fast enough for his liking. He's leaner than the Aardwolf but no less threatening-looking, and judging by the various scars I see criss-crossing his arms, legs and muzzle, and the deep umber brown color of his mane, he's also a veteran. I don't need trouble with him or anyone else right now, so I force myself unsteadily to my feet and take as little time as I can to wipe the exhaustion from my eyes.

He notices me, of course. Likely just because I'm new. He regards me from several mats away for a moment or more, then gives an odd, twisted kind of smile, only one corner of his muzzle twitching up. The other side of his face has a deep scar running from one cheek down to his mouth, and he might honestly not be able to move that side of his face much.

He doesn't spare much more time for me, though. There's a thin, old squirrel at his feet still asleep, and he levels a kick at the man at about the same time I decide to look anywhere else. I'm concerned if I hold his gaze much longer, it will be an invitation.

I move off towards where the men are massing in the gathering area between all the lodges. A doused fire pit and a few rocks drug in to scattered positions around it likely make up the area for socializing at the end of the day. The workers have begun to mass in and around the pit from the various lodging houses, and I try to fall in amongst the crowd departing mine, but most of the men are giving me a wide berth. I’m not certain if that’s a good thing or a bad thing just yet, but at least no one’s messing with me.

My peace is short-lived.

I’m watching a small gang of canines gathering, mostly dholes, other jackals and a few wolves with thinned-out coats that were chopped down by the least precise of groomers, when I’m suddenly pitched forward into the dirt. The double-blow catches me completely by surprise and had to have come from a powerful set of paws, because I have absolutely no chance to catch myself.

I fall mostly on my knees, then my right shoulder, skidding hard enough against the coarse, exhausted soil that I know I’ll be picking fragments out of my scraped skin for the rest of the day. I roll to my back with a groan as I finally let the wind out of my lungs. Whoever had hit me had caught me in the small of my back with a good hook, before shoving me into the dirt. Something around my kidney hurts . . . it might actually be my kidney. But I don’t have much time to reflect on it, because just then the figure behind me makes his way into my line of view, blocking out the dim morning sunlight, and he’s leveling a kick at me while I’m down.

I get my wits about me, finally, and roll back on my spine, snapping my own legs out at the man and catching him first. My foot-paw connects with his shin and I hear him grunt and stumble back. Unfortunately he does manage to catch himself, unlike me. But at least it gives me the time I need to struggle back to my feet, too proud to clutch at my side, but gods how I want to.

It’s the cheetah. I was right to be concerned about him the night before, as it turns out. I don’t know why he waited this long, he could have easily come after me in my sleep, but I’ve heard stories about their kind and their odd code of honor. Something about their lone lifestyle makes for a strange kind of people, with a religion all their own that most other peoples consider wildly insane. Or, as my mother once tried to explain, ‘respectable but strange’. I’ve never known a cheetah well, they don’t tend to work manual labor or stay in one place for long. And I’ve rarely seen them indentured, either.

I’ve seen enough of them to know this one looks odd, though. He’s like most of the ones I’d seen along the Hyronses, tall and lean, but he has a bit more bulk on him than most, just like I would have said about myself compared to most jackals. At least, before the last month of malnourishment and imprisonment.

His collar is tighter to his neck than mine, suggesting he’s had disciplinary problems in the past too, and he’s got blue eyes. But most strikingly, his spots don’t look right. He’s turning around and straightening when I catch sight of him first, and I can tell the normally small, black points along his fur are far too large, melting together in places, and forming three near-perfect lines down his back, following his spine.

He narrows his eyes at me, and I snuff out a nose-full of dirt as the crowd parts around us. I can tell by the scattered looks of fear and the fact that absolutely no one seems to want to be a part of this that he must command a certain reputation here. So either he’s laying down the law right now as part of some rite of passage, or I pissed him off somehow.

A dim memory from the night before prickles at the back of my mind, and I curse under my breath. Right. He’d been the one to warn me about the hyena.

But, he hadn’t exactly stopped me last night. So I’m left wondering if that really has anything to do with this sudden attack, at all. It’s drat confusing.

“What the hell is your problem?” I demand, peeling back my lip to flash my canines. I straighten my hips and cock an arm out in front of me, guarding my head, and drawing the other back and balling a fist. I know how to scrap, and I’m not afraid to give the man a fight, whether or not I have a chance at winning it. I’m not at my prime right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let myself appear weak. Men like this will target you from the day you start working until the end of time if you let them think you’re an easy meal. I’ve got to shake him now while I have the chance, let him know I won’t allow it without getting in a few good knocks, myself.

“Raja!”

I twist an ear to the side at the sound of someone shouting. Mostly because it’s the first voice to pierce the silence since the crowd formed up around us, but also because it seems to have caught the cheetah’s attention, too. He stares past me, his expression hard to read, but something in it shifts and suddenly he looks less confident. Not scared, not intimidated exactly, more . . . concerned?

I wait for him to come at me again. There’s a shuffling in the crowd behind me, but I can’t turn to look at it without taking my eyes off the man, which I’m not going to do.

“Raja, please,” a voice – a voice I am now beginning to recognize – pleads from behind me, “don’t hurt him anymore.”

“feather off!” I snap at the hyena behind me, without turning anything other than an ear towards him. “This isn’t your fight!”

The cheetah seems to be relaxing though, and for some reason that infuriates me. The last thing, and I mean the last thing I wanted right now, was for the drat hyena to stand up for me. The scrawny poo poo is demeaning me, and I can’t even stop him without taking my eyes off the cheetah long enough that he might floor me.

The lean cat stares over my shoulder and sniffs the wind suddenly, his tail thrashing behind him once, in that way big cats’ tails do when they’ve noticed something. His eyes shift back to mine, and he speaks in a deep voice that honestly might be more fitting coming from a lion.

“We will speak later,” he promises, and heads back off into the crowd.

I’m tempted to follow him, but hitting him with his back turned to me would only cement my reputation as a coward, and that’s not going to help me. Instead, I turn and direct my ire towards the only other available target. The striped hyena. He literally back-steps when I level my gaze at him, and his ears wilt back, his hands knitted nervously in front of him. He’s stooped and cowering, just like he was last night, and the posture looks especially pathetic on him when he’s standing.

“Who said I needed your help?” I demand fiercely, advancing on him. For every step I take towards him, he takes another back, somehow lowering himself with each one until he’s literally about half his height.

He holds a dark paw up, as if to shield himself. He’s stammering something that was probably meant to be words, but he’s not fitting any of them together properly and it’s all coming out in a jumble of near-whispers.

Despite all of that, he’s got the oddest expression on his face. His eyes are wide and I’m fairly certain he’s afraid of me, but he also looks somehow . . . hopeful? The best I can compare it to is the dim look you get from animals when you’re trying to discipline them and they’re too stupid to understand that they’ve done something wrong.

“Jackal, fall in!” A gruff shout echoes across the camp, and I know immediately that it’s Lochan. He and the lion, as well as two other guards, apparently made an appearance at some point in the last few minutes, and they’ve begun collecting groups of men. That was likely what the cheetah heard.

I cast one more glare down at the piteous creature, but I was never going to attack him in the first place. In fact at this point, I want nothing more to do with him.

“Don’t you get between me and that cat again,” I snarl. “It’s not your business!”

I leave him at that point, pushing through the crowd towards the guards. At this point a day of hard manual labor is actually sounding better than it has in a long time. I might be sore and tired, but I’m also angry, and work has always helped me burn off unwanted feelings.

Lochan begins to go over the day’s work, and I’m finding it sounds a lot less familiar than I was hoping. I’ve never worked in poppy fields before. He’s talking about ‘scoring’ duties, and ‘collecting’ teams, and I have no idea what either of those two words mean in the context of plantation work. When he mentions they need carriers for the weeders in one of the fields, though, and it seems an unpopular job, I instantly raise my hand to volunteer. I can carry whatever they need me to carry. I can do that all day long.

Lochan gives me an ‘aye’ when I raise my hand, and gestures for me to join a team of men gathering to his left, and I do just that. The cheetah isn’t amongst them, thankfully. In fact most of the men on this team seem comprised of the smaller races. A ferret, a weasel, that old squirrel I saw earlier, and one other large man, the painted dog. He’d also volunteered to be a carrier.

I readjust the collar around my neck, still not used to its tighter fit, and consider asking the painted dog about the work, when he speaks up first.

“Leave the hyena alone,” he says, in a quiet, civil tone. “And Raja will leave you alone.”

I sigh. “Is that really what that was about?”

“He won’t beat on you so long as you follow the lodge rules,” the painted dog explains. He’s got a patient, calm tone that sets me at ease, somehow. Everything’s been absolutely mad since I came here, but I’m instantly comfortable with him after just a few words.

“I just came in last night,” I explain to him raggedly. “I don’t know the lodge rules.”

He gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry you had to learn the hard way,” he says, sounding honestly apologetic. “But Raja deals in absolutes. He warned you once, and you didn’t listen. That means punishment, as far as he’s concerned. I think he feels he made his point, though. Just leave the hyena be and you won’t have to worry about going through that again.”

“Until I break another rule I’m not aware of,” I point out.

“I can tell you all the rules while we’re in the field,” he offers. “There really aren’t many. Don’t take anything from Raja. Don’t beat on too many people who don’t deserve it. Don’t leave the lodge at night, and don’t mess with the hyena.”

“Why?” I ask, perplexed.

“We’re not really supposed to talk about it,” the painted dog says with an air of discomfort. “Just . . .” he pauses, “. . . just leave him be. Don’t even talk to him. He’s untouchable.”

What he actually uses is the word ‘Harijan’, which up until I became one, I’d heard used to describe indentured people. ‘Servants’ like everyone here, and myself, unfortunately. When I’d been a pup, my mother had explained it meant people that were so low below us, touching them could bring whatever curse or disease afflicted them on us and our family.

But we were all Indentured Servants here, so what the hell did he mean? What was lower than us?

The painted dog seems really uncomfortable now, and I feel a distance growing between us, which I definitely don’t want. For many reasons. For one, he’s the first person to honestly reach out to me here, and he’s canine. I’m an independent man, but you always want to have friends amongst your work force. Especially when you’re indentured and you literally can’t have friends or confidantes with anyone else in the world.

So I drop the subject for now. “What’s your name?” I ask instead.

“Chandan,” he replies, his wide ears perking in my direction. I get a polite smile out of him, and just as soon as it had come on, that distance is gone.

I extend a hand to clasp his, and he takes it, and then I’m smiling a little as well. “Kadar. Well met,” I say, and he nods back.

“I’m sorry again about Raja,” he says. “He’s a good man. He just has rules.”

I wave his comment off, even though my kidney still hurts and I’m honestly not done nursing a grudge towards the cheetah. Obviously, he and the painted dog are friends, or he’s at least earned the man’s respect, and even if I can’t understand why at the moment, I’m determined not to make an enemy of every man here. We’ll see how things shape up with the cheetah. Hopefully he and I can just avoid one another from this point on.

Besides, everything, all of it, was ultimately the hyena’s fault. They want me to avoid him? I have no issue doing exactly that.

A lioness guard comes to escort us to the field we’ll be working on that day. I fall in line with the others, trying to ignore the pain in my side and the fact that my stomach’s begun to twist with hunger again. They’ll bring us our midday meal out in the fields after a few hours of work, and I can wait that long. Maybe there will even be meat, I think. Probably not. But one can hope.

Just because I hate the life I’ve fallen into, hate everything about it and every circumstance that led me to this point, doesn’t mean I fight it every second of every day. More often than not, in fact, my baser need for survival wins out over my pride. There’s only so much hunger and pain a man can endure before you start to think that maybe falling in line might just be your best option for the day.

Of course, that’s what they rely upon. The people who own us.

The march out to the field is long, so I take the time to ask Chandan a few questions. Most of them he answers patiently and, it seems, as honestly and directly as he can. But when I get to questions about our contracts, he’s a bit more hesitant.

“Didn’t they go over everything about your contract to Matron Sura when you were first sold here?” he asks. “That’s personal. I can’t know the details of your contract, they’re unique for all of us.”

I snort. “They didn’t even tell me they were moving me here. They drugged me, I think. I woke up in that stone building up on the hill, in a cell. I didn’t even know I was in Tavesi until Lochan told me last night.”

His ears fall back. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “That’s hard.”

“And illegal,” I point out, “not that that matters.”

He nods. “They would have sold your contract whether you objected or not, but . . . yes, they should have gone over it with you. They’re supposed to. But that’s how it was for many of us. Raja doesn’t talk about it much, but I think it was the same for him.”

“Oh?” I ask, idly. I don’t want to prod the man about the cheetah too much, but I am curious.

“Well he was pretty much starving and injured when he first arrived,” he explains, “much like you.” He drops his eyes to my limp. I thought I’d been covering it well. “Are you certain you’ll be alright to carry?” he asks. “The bundles are heavy.”

“I’m on the mend,” I assure him, with a firm tone. I don’t need anyone questioning my physical capability right now.

He seems to get the point, and just nods, changing the subject. “We’ll be weeding in a field that hasn’t reached maturity yet,” he says, “and that’s probably where you should stay, for now. Keep away from the scored fields. If they drugged you, the allure of the Divine will be strong. The last thing you need in this line of work is to be caught stealing product. You’ll be hung. And an addiction you have to pay for is just a slower form of death.”

“I have no interest in taking their drug,” I snarl, dismissively. “What the hell would make you think I would?”

He shrugs. “If you can’t remember your time under its influence, or it simply didn’t agree with you, so much the better. For some the Divine takes well, for others it’s not nearly so pleasant.”

“I mostly remember nightmares,” I murmur.

“That’s for the best,” he says solemnly. “It is a crutch you don’t need.”

When we at last reach the field, the sun’s begun to creep its way further into the sky and the morning chill has worn off. I can tell it’s going to be a hot, humid day, and I actually am glad that all I’m wearing is the loin cloth. For now. By tonight I’m certain I’ll be cold again and wanting my old, ratty clothing back. But they’ve probably burnt it by now.

As it turns out, weeding a poppy field isn’t much different than weeding a grain field, or anything else. The weeders set to work immediately, moving along the rows removing unwanted growth, and Chandan gives me basic instructions. Follow, collect, bundle and carry. Once you reach the end of a row, bring your bundle to one of the wagons then start on the next row.

It’s usually the smaller types of people who weed, especially those who are most comfortable being on all-fours for most of the day. If I did work like that, I’d end up stooped and crooked over like a hook in a few years. But for the rodents and the weasels, it’s more suitable work.

It takes me a row or so to figure out how to bundle the long grasses and various weeds, but eventually I get the hang of how to knot and undo the rope without losing the whole bundle. Chandan has to show me more than once, but he doesn’t seem frustrated with me, so I guess I caught on pretty fast compared to most. That or he’s eternally patient.

I’m still tired and sore, but work helps me forget. And it feels good to use my body again. The last few weeks in the prison weakened me, and I don’t like feeling weak. A few weeks of work like this and some decent food, and I’ll be able to regain my strength. For right now, that’s a goal, at least.
I’m honestly enjoying the heat when it comes, (not so much the humidity, we don’t get a lot of that near the Hyronses) and by the time our midday meal arrives on a donkey cart, I’m feeling better than I have in all the time since I came here. I sit down with Chandan near the meal cart, drinking the bowl of soup they brought us. No meat, but I taste weak chicken broth mixed into the barley water, and there’s some hearty root vegetables of some sort that aren’t all that bad. And of course, more of that stone-cooked bread. I get the feeling I’ll be eating a lot of that.

And then the day goes downhill, all at once. Because cresting the road in the distance I see the person I least want to see in the world right now, followed closely by the second person I least want to see in the world. Chandan notices me stiffen beside him and his large ears twist towards the horizon, where two tall silhouettes are making their way towards us.

“I thought you said he’d leave me the hell alone,” I snap, not intending to take my irritation out on Chandan, but I want answers.

He looks nervously towards the cheetah approaching us and slowly stands, dropping his empty bowl in the dirt and wiping a paw down his chest fur to shake off any crumbs from the flat bread. “I don’t know why he’s here,” he admits.

I stand rigidly, straightening my posture and putting weight on my foot, even though a pang of pain reminds me I should be showing more care with it. I am not feeling up to another fight, especially right after a meal, but-
Chandan calls out to the cheetah as he approaches, cutting off my train of thought. “Raja!” he takes a step past me, putting an arm back in an obvious gesture to me to stay where I am. Picking up on my tension, I’m sure. “What’s wrong?” he asks as he approaches the spotted cat.

And why is the hyena with him? I want to ask. The creature’s eyes are downcast and he’s barely shuffling behind Raja. He looks almost guilty, but every now and then his eyes flick up and he seems more . . . expectant . . . ?

I curl back my muzzle when he catches my eyes, but I’m caught in the man’s dark-eyed gaze just long enough that recognition finally strikes.
He’s . . . hopeful. That’s the emotion I’ve been unable to pinpoint all this time. Hope isn’t a feeling you have, let alone see a whole lot of, in this life. The sheer fact that those thoughts just went through my head makes me feel melodramatic, but there’s no denying it’s true. That’s why I couldn’t read it until now.

Raja and Chandan are speaking lowly, and I haven’t really been paying attention, but when the painted dog turns to regard me for a moment with a questioning expression, I avert my gaze from the hyena, finally. But Chandan doesn’t say anything to me yet, he just turns back towards Raja and mutters something. If my ears weren’t still so full of dirt and grime from the weeks I spent in the cell, I’d probably be able to make out what they’re saying.

I need to take a more thorough bath.

I’m getting tired of all this clandestine poo poo though, and I finally work up the nerve to tell them so.

“If this concerns me,” I say, annoyed, “then I drat well have a right to know what you’re saying. If not, I’m going back to the fields.” I turn to go, hoping that the cheetah did in fact come to speak to Chandan and not me, but at that point the cat finally raises his voice.

“Jackal,” he calls out, “come here.”

I’m half-tempted to disobey, but my side still hurts, and honestly I’m curious. So I take a few moments to vacillate like I’m thinking about it, let him know I’m not going to fall in like a good little lapdog, then I make my way over there, again being careful not to show my limp. When I make it to them, he reaches out for me and I nearly pull away from him when he puts a paw on my shoulder. But even though his eyes are boring into me and he’s got a very no-nonsense look about him, I don’t sense the same aggression from him he was displaying the last time we met. And you can always tell with cheetahs, with the ragged scruff of fur down their necks and backs. He’s relaxed, now.

“He is your responsibility, now,” he says, stone-faced. For a moment I have absolutely no clue what he means. At all. Then he jerks his thumb back towards the hyena behind him, and answers at least one of the ten questions I might have asked.

I blink, then snuff derisively. “Excuse me?”

“The hyena,” the cat states. “He is yours now.”

“I heard you,” I snap. “What the hell do you mean by that? Make sense.”

“He must remain safe,” the cheetah explains, as he explains everything. In the least amount of words possible. “Or the entire lodging house will suffer. I have taken care of him until now. I am giving him to you. You are to look after him now.”

“Like hell!” I growl, outraged. “What the feather makes you think I want that responsibility?”

“I do not care what you want,” the cheetah states plainly. “He prefers you. I prefer not to have the burden any longer.” He drops his grip on my shoulder, and turns on one foot-paw, speaking over his shoulder. “Make sure no harm comes to him.”

“We aren’t done talking!” I take a step forward after him, and feel Chandan’s hand replace the cheetah’s on my shoulder, trying to hold me back. “I don’t want him! I don’t want anything to do with this, whatever the hell is going on here!”

“No one said you had a choice,” Raja says as he passes the hyena.

“I won’t do it!” I threaten. “I’ll let the little bastard get beaten on day and night-“

“The only one stupid enough to do that was you,” Raja replies coolly, levelling one last stare at me just long enough that my next words catch in my throat. His fur is raised, and there’s a low growl in his voice. The threat is there, and obvious.

“Kadar,” I hear Chandan behind me, his calm voice easing me back into a state of clarity. “Don’t. Not right now. We’ll work this out at the end of the day.”

I yank my shoulder out of Chandan’s hand, snarl pretty well plastered on my muzzle now. The cheetah is leaving, as though he has absolutely no reason to question that his commands will be followed. He probably doesn’t, when it comes to most people around here. If he’d asked me anything else, I might have honestly decided it wasn’t worth my time or effort to say no. But this . . . .

The hyena is looking at me again, his dark eyes mostly on the ground, but occasionally flicking up to mine then down again, as if he’s hoping I might somehow warm to him. He’s clutching his own bicep with one hand, and his paw looks to be shaking where it’s gripping his fur. The way he’s stooped over bothers me.

“Stand up straight!” I finally snap at him. “The way you skulk and slink around is making me loving uncomfortable.”

“I-I’m sorry,” he says, his ears perking up just a bit. He does stand a little taller, if only for a second, before I raise my voice at him again.

“What the hell is wrong with you, anyway?” I demand. “Why does everyone here treat you like you’ve got the confounded plague? And why are you here?”

“I’m . . . indentured,” he murmurs.

“I meant why are you here, you little poo poo?!” I growl. “Here. With me. Right now.”

The man is quiet for far longer, this time. At this point I’m starting to think he might be simple, or far younger than he appears. He has the bearing and many of the expressions of a pup. When he does speak, at length, he does so in a near-mumble, and I have to crane my ear to hear him.

“You talked to me,” he states simply. I wait for more, but apparently there isn’t any.

“I’m regretting that,” I say, still perplexed and increasingly annoyed. “Honestly, if I’d known you were such a pushover, I wouldn’t have targeted you. I thought you’d put up a bit more of a fight.”

But not so much of one that I couldn’t handle him. That had been the plan, anyway. I’m starting to think I made an enormous mistake. A niggling voice at the back of my mind tells me exactly what I don’t want to acknowledge, but can’t deny. You brought this on yourself.

I shove those thoughts aside for now. How was I to know there was something wrong with this hyena? This particular hyena? I couldn’t know there was some lodging house conspiracy surrounding him. Couldn’t know that stealing his mat would lead to all of this. I’d literally just arrived here yesterday. I didn’t know the goings-on of this place, yet.

“No one talks to me,” the hyena says, his first un-prompted words since I’ve met him. “Ever,” he finishes in a quiet, defeated whisper.

“The people here are afraid of being near you,” I state, making it clear with a step forward and some heat behind my words that I am not. Chandan is still somewhere behind me, I can all but feel him hovering there, probably afraid I’ll hurt the kid.

When I advance another step, the hyena looks like he wants to bolt. This time, though, this time he doesn’t. The leg he has tilted back is shaking slightly, but he’s not moving. And he’s slightly less hunched. That’s something of an improvement. I’m close to him now, and this is the first time I’ve been so close to him and he’s been standing even remotely up to his full height. He and I are actually pretty well matched if he would just stand like a man.

“Why?” I demand, sick of the games. “Why are you untouchable?”

“Kadar,” Chandan warns from behind me. “Listen, I’ll explain it-“

“Shut up,” I say without looking behind me. “I want to hear it from him. If Raja wants me to watch his butt, I want to know why. And he needs to stop being a loving child, and speak for himself. You hear that?” I demand of the hyena, taking the final step to cross the distance between us. His ears are flat against the thick fur down the back of his neck, and he’s beginning to hunker down away from me again, so this time I reach down and hook three fingers under the edge of his collar, yanking him back up.

“I said stand up straight!” I bellow, and he gives a breathless yelp as I yank him up. “Have some rutting self-respect, would you? Address me like a man!”

He’s still not saying anything intelligible, and my blood is hot, the midday sun is hot, I’m still hurting from this morning and it’s his fault, and I feel my anger at the entire situation starting to bubble and burn in my chest. A familiar feeling takes hold, and though usually I’d repress it, right now I’m frustrated and hurt and still tired, and I don’t have the patience for any of this.

I guess I hadn’t even realized I’d raised my fist, until he cringes and closes his eyes. He doesn’t fight me, doesn’t even try to get away. He just waits. And my vision seems to blur, to snap back to a memory. A lifetime ago, a different pair of eyes staring up at me.

I pull my hand free of his collar like it’s molten to the touch and take a few steps away from him, lowering my fist. He slowly opens his eyes, staring after me as I back away, and mostly, he seems confused. He’s still hunkered down and looks like he’s anticipating I might change my mind, but I’m forcing myself to calm down, willing away that heat in my chest.
I hate that feeling. I hate it more than anything. Even the collar around my neck. And I’m privately horrified that I nearly let it take hold again.
It changes everything about this moment for me. I have to force myself to recognize that I might have been letting my frustration weigh on my decisions too much, and I’m not myself right now. Those aren’t my words, of course. They came from a far wiser mind than mine. My mother used to say them.

Anger isn’t an excuse, I remind myself, like a mantra.

A shout from our supervisor is exactly the sort of interruption I want right now. His voice cuts through the silent, tense moment passing between the three of us, sharply commanding us to get back to work in the field. I give myself a few seconds to cool my blood, gather my thoughts and re-focus. Work. Work always calms me down.

I turn from the hyena and try to put him out of my mind for now, passing Chandan as I make my way back towards my row. The painted dog follows me a step or two, speaking at my back as I go.

“Kadar,” he calls out, “are you-“

“I’m fine,” I insist, quiet but firm. “Let’s get back to the fields.”
Chandan can only follow me so far, since only one carrier works per row. But he isn’t the only one who’s following me. At least twenty paces back, the hyena is hesitantly tailing me. He has to work too, I tell myself. I’m going to have to get used to being in the fields with him.

When he joins me in my row as a weeder, though, I have to bite back on a growl. I thought for sure he’d be here as a carrier, considering his size. At least then we’d have a good distance between us all day. He falls in silently to do his work though, and it soon becomes clear he’s probably been a weeder before. He’s fairly good at it, despite being so tall. Probably comes natural to someone who stoops so much, anyway.

My thoughts are a tangled mess of continued frustration and encroaching guilt over what I’d nearly done. It’s confusing, and I don’t like being confused. But I definitely don’t feel like beating on the kid any more, and that’s probably for the best, for obvious reasons and others that have yet to be explained to me.

It’s like he’s in my head. Or maybe, it’s just that it takes him an hour to answer the last question I asked him. Because midway through our second row, he speaks un-prompted, again.

“I belong to Matron Sura,” he says, as he plucks a long stalk of grass, and instead of depositing it on the ground, hesitantly holds it out to me.
I take it. One less time I have to bend over to retrieve something. I don’t hide the ire still in my eyes when I reply. “We all do,” I mutter.

“I belong to her . . . directly,” he explains quietly.

I digest that for a few moments before it begins to make sense. “You’re from the house?” I clarify. “One of the ruling Matron’s personal Servants?” He nods after that, and then I’m shaking my head. “That’s why no one wants anything to do with you?”

“I believe,” he says, still speaking so softly I’d not hear him if I wasn’t a jackal, “they are afraid that damaging me or upsetting me in some way may bring down the ire of my Matron.”

That actually makes some degree of sense to me, but then I have to wonder. . . . “Then why are you here?” I demand. “At all? Why did she send one of her personal Servants to the fields to work?”

He clearly wasn’t suited for the work physically. It explained everything, really. Why he seemed so well-maintained. Why he didn’t look like he’d done a day of hard labor in his life. The holes in his ears, where he’d likely once had jewelry. Not to mention his sickening demeanor. House Servants have to be especially obedient, especially trustworthy, for the Matrons and their families to allow them to live in their personal space.

Some Servants get strange like that when they’ve been indentured for too long. Or indentured young. I’ve seen it before. It’s disgusting to me, but I have to admit, to myself if not out loud, it’s probably not his fault. But you don’t see it in field workers, often. And I’ve never really met many House Servants, except in passing. Are they all like this, I wonder?

“So what did you do?” I ask as I set back to work, once it becomes clear he’s not going to answer my previous question. I scoop up the remainder of the weeds ahead of me that he’d pulled prior to starting this conversation. He vacillates, but then gets back to work as well. “To get kicked out of the house, I mean,” I speak up, so he can hear me over the shuffling of my bundle. If the hyena is secretly some kind of hell-raiser, it might honestly improve my opinion of him somewhat.

“I . . . asked to leave,” he says, his tone hard to read. But then that’s no real change. Everything about the way the man talks and acts is sort of strange and foreign, to me. At least now I have some idea why.

“Seems like an odd choice,” I snort, “for someone like you, anyway.”

He pauses, turning to regard me, and I nearly bump into him. He looks up at me, (something he wouldn’t have to do if he’d just correct his drat posture) and flicks an ear, his expression inquisitive. “What do you mean?” He asks.

“I mean you’re a soft, pampered, cowardly thing,” I state plainly. “You can’t possibly prefer it out here. Wouldn’t you rather be back where you belong?”

He looks down for a moment, like he’s honestly considering my words. When he looks back up at me, his voice sounds the least hesitant, least uncertain it has since I met him. There is almost a grain of strength behind it. “I do not belong there anymore,” he says decidedly.

I give him a long stare, trying to see past the fact that he’s a hyena, to look at him like I might another jackal, or really any other species. It’s hard. I hate their kind. I see every one of the guards, clan members and swindlers who’s locked me into the life I’m trapped in now when I look at a hyena. Any hyena.

I picture, without wanting to, what it would have been like to hit him. And even the imagined sight sinks into me like a hot blade. My stomach cramps, and I feel vaguely sick. It would have been like striking a child.

The guilt gnaws at me enough that I manage to let the anger go, at least for the moment. My voice comes out with less of a growl this time when I speak, and he notices, his ears lifting up just a fraction. “Why didn’t you just stay with Raja?” I ask, with a sigh. “I didn’t . . . I wasn’t trying to . . . I don’t know what you thought I was trying to do.” I wasn’t trying to reach out to him, that was for drat sure. And that’s the way he seems to have taken this. “I just wanted your straw mat,” I explain raggedly. “I didn’t know any of this about you. I didn’t want to.”

I still don’t, really.

“You can have my mat,” he says quickly, so quickly I feel like a bully, now.

“That’s a given,” I mutter, not feeling terribly good about myself. But if he’s going to fold this easily, I’m hardly going to have to try as hard in the future. “I just don’t see why I have to be the one to watch you now,” I try to explain.

“You don’t,” he says quietly. “I just hoped you would.”

“Why?” I ask, confused. I’m about to say what’s so wrong with Raja? But the words seem stupid even as I’m forming them in my head. Raja, the cheetah who’d just beaten the hell out of me in the yard earlier that day. The man who spoke about three words at a time, with absolutely no inflection in his voice, except the occasional growl.

“Raja doesn’t really. . .” he pauses, “. . . talk. . . to me. He just decided I needed to be protected, and he does that. He makes sure I work in the same field with him, but he treats me like everyone else does.” His ears drop. “Like I don’t exist.”

“Listen,” I open my mouth, then pause.

“Ahsan,” he fills in for me. And then finally, I have a name. Other than ‘hyena’.

“Ahsan,” I say, measuring my tone and still somehow managing to keep my frustration out of it. I’m not calm exactly, but my remorse for my previous outburst is helping me retain a bit more self-control. “You don’t really need anyone to protect you,” I insist. “Everyone knows you’re off-limits. You’ll be fine. You don’t need to barter your straw mat for some kind of guard. In fact, you’re a. . .” I pause, “. . . well you’re no rodent, or even a fox. You’re bigger than half the men we work with. You can probably take care of yourself, even if you think someone’s going to mess with you.”

“I can’t fight,” he says, almost amused at the concept. The slightest hint of a smile on him strikes me as looking far more fitting on his dark muzzle than the terrified, despondent look he’s worn up until now. I dismiss that thought almost as soon as it comes, because why the hell would I care?

“Would you really be happier being dependent on someone else?” I try to reason. “If you want to work in the fields, you’re going to have to learn to take care of yourself eventually. You can’t live this life and stay docile. Trust me. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Even a reputation only gets you so far.”

“I can’t be like Raja. Or you,” he says, knitting his hands in front of him, nervously. “I’m just not like that.”

“Like what?” I prickle.

“There are those who command, and those who listen,” he says in words that don’t sound like they were ever his own. “I am one who listens. I am meant to be kept, not a keeper.”

“No man is meant to be kept,” I say, pushing the words out with all the emphasis I can. His eyes widen somewhat at my change in tone, but he doesn’t look scared. Instead he’s staring at me even more intensely now, enrapt. His paws are still wringing at one another near his waist, tail tucked, but at least now I have his full attention. He waits, expectantly, for me to continue.

I get the sickening feeling this was what he wanted. It makes me feel dirty, taking advantage of the spineless obedience that was clearly ground down into this poor creature.

“Please,” he pleads, after I’ve made it clear I have no more to say, “tell me what I can do to change your mind.”

“Nothing,” I say flatly. “Stand on your own two feet. Or go back to Raja. I’m bad at taking care of people, trust me.” I begin to heft my bundle, so we can get back to work.

“I can get you meat at meal times,” he offers quietly.

My ears perk. “Say what?”

That night, Ahsan comes through on his promise. I’m sitting on his straw mat, starting off with my bread for the night, when I see him appear in the doorway of the slowly-filling lodging house, a steaming bowl in his hand. The bowl in and of itself isn’t odd, I have one just like it, full of rice and some kind of vegetable curry, but when he makes his way over towards me and sits down, I smell lamb.

I take it from his offered paw, staring down at its contents almost disbelievingly. Last night I’d simply assumed there’d been meat available to everyone in the house, and I’d just missed it. But tonight disproves that. I got to the chow line early and got all there was available. Bread, rice and vegetables. When I asked some of the other men working here, they informed me they only ever include meat in the soups they give out at midday. If you want anything other than weak broth, you have to pay for it. I’m starting my work here with a zero balance on my contract, so that isn’t exactly an option for me.

“How?” I ask, mystified. The corners of his muzzle turn up a little, and he sits cross-legged beside me. I’m fairly well-inclined towards him as I dig in to the food, so I let him.

“Master Lochan always saves me some of the guards’ meal,” he says, reaching down into the sandy dirt beside the straw mat to idly trace curling patterns in the earth with a claw. As he does so, I can’t help but note the diameter of his arms, the ridges on his spine that are visible, the way his waist barely even bunches when he leans over. . . .

I pause, glancing down at my bowl and spooning out a handful with my paw, before handing what remains back to him. “Here. You haven’t eaten, right?”

“It’s for you,” he insists quietly.

“Have you eaten or not?” I demand.

“I’m not hungry,” he murmurs.

I knit my brow, and shove the food in my palm into my muzzle, chewing it and savoring it less than I’d prefer to right now. Then I reach forward with the same hand and grab him by the wrist, forcing the bowl with the remaining food into his palm.

“You want someone to tell you what to do?” I say, putting some authority behind my words. As expected, that gets his attention. “Eat, you fool. You don’t have a day of lazing around an estate ahead of you. I don’t know what you did for the Matron, but it sure as hell wasn’t manual labor. Your body will break if you don’t feed it, and your body is your tool. Eat, or you won’t be able to work.”

The speech gets the desired result. Hesitantly at first, but eventually with enough interest that I know he must have been lying about being hungry, he eats what remains in the bowl.

I sit there and finish my bread while he eats, idly taking in the sights of the house while we finish our meal. For the most part, the people here are still giving me a lot of space, which earnestly, I’m fine with. It’s actually been the easiest first day I’ve had at a new lodging house in several years. I see Chandan with a group of other canines, laughing and talking about something while they finish their own meals, and I have a brief pang of longing to be amongst some of my own kind again. But forcing my way in won’t work. At the very least, I know Chandan, and he strikes me as the type of man with a lot of friends here. Maybe eventually, I’ll gain acceptance through him.

My gaze catches on an intense, blue-eyed stare from across the room. I glare at the cheetah to let him know I noticed him looking at me, but he doesn’t seem to care. He keeps his vigil of me steadily, without flinching. Ensuring I’m following his command, apparently.

I don’t care what Raja thinks. In fact I don’t really care what anyone here thinks of me right now. At least, that’s what I try to tell myself.

The fact is, I’m eating meat right now and they’re not. And even if that means I had to take on a disease no one wants, to become untouchable too, at least for the moment, I’m eating better. Things like this get forgotten eventually. I might not even be at this plantation long, let alone in this specific lodging house.

“Do you want my sarong?” Ahsan asks, breaking me out of my reverie. I glance back over at him as he unwraps it from around his waist, where it’s bunched and tied around the hem of his loose pants. “It’s thin, but it keeps some of the cold away if you wrap it around yourself.”

“The last place I worked at had blankets,” I mutter. “They were ragged and flea-infested, but they were free.”

“The merchants come here sometimes with blankets and clothing for sale,” Ahsan says. “But it’s expensive. Especially the blankets.” He holds out the bunched-up sarong to me. “Here.”

I consider taking it for a few moments. “You’ve got a lot less meat on your bones than I do,” I finally say with a sigh. “Keep it.”

His ears droop, and he looks down at the bundled cloth. He’s silent for a little while, then his muzzle twitches nervously, and he takes in a breath. He looks like he’s about to suggest something stupid.

“We could sha-“

“No,” I say firmly, regarding him with a sour look. “Don’t push your luck.” I turn away from him and lie down on the mat, rolling over onto my side so I don’t have to face him anymore.

I hear him shifting eventually, wrapping the sarong around himself, and then he’s settling down beside the straw mat, just like he was last night. I’m vaguely relieved he didn’t move off somewhere else to sleep tonight. Because . . . because I would have felt guilty for taking the meat, if I wasn’t actually playing guardian for him.

Of course it’s pretty hard to guard someone while you’re facing away from them. Even though that thought is ridiculous, even though, I rationalize, I’ll be asleep soon and it’s equally hard to guard someone while you’re asleep, I eventually convince myself I should at least roll over. Make something of an effort to fulfill my end of this deal.

I turn slowly, hoping he’s asleep and I won’t have to tolerate the awkwardness of staring at him in the dimming light. I find that he is, or he’s at least got his eyes closed. But, no, his breathing seems even. He fell asleep fairly fast. I only wish it were so easy for me. Last night was absolutely awful. It took me what felt like hours to really, fully fall asleep, and then I woke constantly throughout the night, stirred by the cold.

But he’s sleeping a little closer tonight and his breath’s coming out in soft, warm puffs that I imagine I can almost feel on my chest fur. I’m not really certain if I’m warmer at all just because he’s a few inches closer than he was last night, or if I’m just imagining it. For a few fleeting moments, as I take stock of how many other men here share straw mats, I entertain the thought of dragging him up next to me. Because really, that was a pretty obvious, smart thing to do, and when you’re half asleep, some things that are really, really bad ideas seem like very obviously good ideas.

But at some point amidst that train of thought, I fall asleep, and thankfully don’t act on any of that nonsense.

"The Divine" is the name for Opium in this setting. Primarily derived from poppy plants, "The Crimson Divine" is the best cut from the best flowers.

King Cheetahs are an actual, real thing, not something I made up ;) Have a look - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....ng_cheetah.jpg