On the third day, Rae realised the most important thing in the caravan was not made of flesh, but of wood and iron.
The proof was in the eyes.
Guards walked with blades at their hips and whips at their belts, but their gazes did not cling to the long chain of slaves. They glanced over the bent backs and raw wrists the way a man glanced at rocks on the side of a road.
Their eyes were pulled, again and again, toward the middle of the caravan.
Toward a single carriage.
It was not the largest wagon. Not the most decorated. It was squat and heavy, a sealed wooden box banded with iron, riding on four thick wheels. The only door had three locks and a crossbar. There were no proper windows, only narrow slits near the roof where thin lines of light could slip in.
The guards orbited that carriage like anxious moons.
Every morning, before they checked water, before they prodded at the slaves, one guard would go straight to the side of the box. Fingers ran over iron. Each lock was tugged, each hinge pressed. Only when the wood stayed stubborn and silent did the man breathe out.
At midday, when the caravan stopped long enough to choke down dry grain and a few mouthfuls of water, another guard would wander past the carriage, lean a shoulder against the door as if resting, and listen. Just for a breath. Just to make sure whatever was inside had not changed.
At night, the pattern became clearer.
When the fires were lit and the thin stew began to simmer, most guards threw their blankets down near the warmth, trading curses and half hearted jokes. One man was always sent away from the glow, blanket under his arm.
He laid it beside the front wheel of the guarded carriage, pressed up against the iron band, as if he was trying to share a bed with the wagon itself.
On the second night Rae watched Grell walk once around the carriage, slow and thoughtful, like a man measuring a shadow.
The big guard took a strip of red cloth from his belt, tied it in a rough knot around the same front wheel, spat once in the dirt, and walked away without a word.
No one laughed.
No one asked why.
Rae had never seen that cloth before, but he knew what it meant.
Even men who trusted steel sometimes asked weak things for help. A colour. A knot. A quiet little superstition to lean against when their swords could not cut the shape of their fear.
Whatever was in that carriage made grown men ask favours from a rag.
Rae noticed because noticing patterns had kept him alive long before chains had tried to kill him.
On the Ring he had watched numbers the same way. A half beat slip in the hum of a generator. A drift in sensor readings measured in digits after the decimal point. A light that flickered once every four thousand heartbeats instead of every five.
Here, there were no consoles, no diagnostics, no clean corridors of metal. Only road, people and dust.
So he counted people.
And all their lines of attention pointed to that wooden box.
They are not really guarding us, he thought, watching a guard's gaze slide past the slave line and lock on the carriage instead. They are guarding that.
He could guess some of what lay inside. His broken suit, for one. The visor with its glass spiderwebbed by a fall. The dead power core that had once hummed with enough force to bend space.
Other things too. Goods bought in the city. Metal or stone that did not belong on this road. Strange objects whose worth they measured only in how much others would pay.
Valuable things.
Dangerous things.
The kind of things that had always seemed to drift toward him, or he toward them.
Whenever the locks were opened, Rae tried to see.
The first time he noticed keys in Talan's hand, he angled his body while walking, pretending to ease a cramp in his ribs, eyes straining toward the carriage door.
Talan stepped half a pace closer at that exact moment. His travelling robe hung loose and wide, cloth turning into a wall.
The second time, Rae used reflection. A strip of metal on the side of a nearby cart had been polished smooth by hands and rope. It showed a warped picture of the world, enough to hint at movement.
Rae watched the reflection instead of the door.
Daro chose that moment to speak with the driver, moving between cart and carriage with his back neatly blocking both real and reflected view.
On the third attempt, Rae timed a stumble so he would fall just as the locks clicked, hoping that being on the ground would give him a lower, clearer angle.
Grell stepped in with all the subtlety of a closing gate and filled his sight with leather and muscle.
Three attempts. Three different men. Always at the same moment. Always in the way.
They are not careless, Rae realised. They have rehearsed this.
After that he forced himself to stop staring when the locks moved. Peeking would not change anything. Seeing whatever sat in the dark for half a heartbeat would not loosen a single knot on his wrists.
What mattered was not what was inside the box.
What mattered was getting far enough away that he never had to see it at all.
The road was changing.
When he had first been dragged from the village the track had been wild. Roots had clawed through it, stones had broken its skin. Now, as they drew closer to the city, there were more marks of people. Old wheel ruts crossed and recrossed each other, pale scars under newer lines. Broken straps lay half buried in dust. In the distance he could see fences, leaning and grey, marking fields someone had once cared about.
He had asked an older slave where they were going, fumbling the local words with his stubborn tongue.
"To be sold," the man had said, as if describing the weather.
There had been no anger in it. No rebellion. Just tired fact, smoothed down by time.
Those three words sat in Rae's chest like a rock.
He looked at the road. At the forest that darkened the horizon on one side. At the open sky that had no handholds at all.
On the Ring, a process had steps. If a step led to a bad result, you looked for the weakest part of the sequence and pulled. Somewhere wood and habit could be bent the same way.
So he watched.
He watched the spacing of the carts. The order of horses, mules and oxen. He watched which driver slept in his seat and which kept a tight grip on the reins. He watched how often Grell looked at the front and at the back. He watched the way the slave chain dragged behind the last wagon, like a tail.
Slowly, the guarded carriage came back into focus.
Not for what it carried.
For how it was built.
One of its front left spokes had a crack.
He had noticed it that morning as they watered the animals. A thin line along the grain near the hub, just deep enough for a fingertip to feel when brushed. Not enough to break yet, but enough to promise that under the right force, it could.
He could not pick locks with rope around his wrists. He could not break iron with bare skin.
But wood, weight and bad ground he understood.
He needed three things.
Soft earth.
A bad angle.
A moment when no one could afford to look away.
The answer waited ahead, just before noon.
The sun had climbed high, turning every stone on the road into a small sharp glare. Heat pressed down like a hand. The air over the ground wavered in tired waves.
At first Rae saw only a darker line across the road. Then the light broke on it and he saw water, a narrow stream cutting through the earth, a strip of moving silver between banks of churned mud.
A bridge lay over it. Not a true bridge, just thick planks and old logs laid side by side across the narrowest point. The wood was grey with age and swollen from too many seasons of soaking and drying.
Beyond the stream the road rose.
That was where the track turned ugly.
In the rains, carts had sunk there, wheels chewing the slope into a mess. Hooves had clawed at the mud, trying to find grip. Now, in the dry, the scars had hardened. Ridges and holes ran across the path in crooked lines. One long rut slanted nearly from one side to the other, deeper and darker than the rest.
Someone had tried to fix it. A few stones jutted from the hollow like broken teeth. Most of whatever fill they had thrown in was gone, dragged away by floodwater or wheels.
The guarded carriage rolled toward it now, wheels humming on the last even stretch.
Rae's heartbeat began to match that rhythm.
He checked the cracked spoke again with his eyes, measuring distance as if reading a scale.
Weight. Speed. Weakness. Soft ground.
His thoughts lined up cleanly. For a moment he could almost hear the soft hum of the Ring in his ears, the background music of calculation and risk.
If the wheel hit that rut with the spoke already under stress, the wood might give. If the wood gave, the wheel might sink or twist. If it sank, they would have to stop and unload.
Stopped meant shouting. Unloading meant open doors. Open doors meant, for a little while, the attention of every guard and merchant fixed somewhere that was not on one thin boy trying to move.
The front wagons reached the bridge.
Hooves thudded on the planks. The wood groaned and rocked. Water slapped against the logs. Drivers leaned back in their seats, judging the sway, guiding their teams up the far side with curses and tugs.
The guarded carriage followed.
Its horses were stronger, coats glossy with better feed. Iron studs along their harnesses winked as they caught the light. One flashed straight into Rae's eyes, turning the world white for an instant.
He blinked the glare away.
The carriage rolled onto the bridge. Planks bowed. Nails complained. The heavy box swayed lazily on the suspension.
Rae's group stepped onto the wood behind it.
Cold came up from the water and wrapped around his sore feet. After days of dust, the touch of it made his skin prickle. For a moment his knees really did want to give way.
He held them.
Three more steps.
Two.
One.
The front wheels of the guarded carriage rolled off the last plank and dropped onto the torn ground at the bottom of the rise.
Now.
He did not simply trip. He threw himself.
His legs folded as if every muscle had failed, but he twisted as he dropped. His hips turned, dragging his ankles sideways. The chain between his feet snapped to the side like a whip.
The man behind him was not ready.
The chain yanked at his legs. He swore and went down too, all his weight crashing into the line of iron.
Two bodies. One chain. All of it dragged across the road, pulled into the deepest part of the rut like a snare.
In the thin space between cause and effect, the world slowed.
Rae felt the hollow clink as the chain went tight.
He saw the shadow of the wheel roll over them.
He smelled water and hot mud and horse in one heavy breath.
The wheel hit the chain.
Impact ran up through metal and wood. The cracked spoke screamed in a way no human throat could, the sound lost under the panicked shout of the driver and the raw whinny of the lead horse.
For a heartbeat, the wheel tried to climb.
The carriage listed, one side rising. Inside, something heavy threw itself against the boards. Iron bands shook and rang as they took the sudden load.
Rae felt a fierce spark in his chest.
It is working.
Then the ground refused to follow his numbers.
The earth in the rut, darker even than the rest, softened under the weight. The chain that was meant to hold like a bar began to sink, half swallowed by wet soil.
The wheel slipped.
Instead of locking against iron, it slid down along the chain, crashed into the far lip of the rut and bounced. The strain that should have snapped the spoke shot past it, into the axle.
The second front wheel slammed into one of the buried stones.
The whole carriage jolted.
A horse screamed, high and sharp. It jumped sideways, wild-eyed, foam at the corners of its mouth. The shafts bit into its flank. It kicked out blindly, hoof catching the nose of the wagon behind.
The mule on that wagon panicked and tried to bolt, dragging its load at an angle.
Along the line, motion turned ragged.
Drivers cried out and hauled at reins. Slaves stumbled as the chains jerked them forward and sideways. At the back, a smaller cart rode up over a loosened patch of ground, tilted, and lost a crate. Wood hit stone with a crack. The box burst open and dried roots flew down the slope, pale shapes rolling and bouncing into scrub.
Someone blew the bone whistle.
The sound knifed through everything, high and thin, cutting into Rae's ears.
Noise crashed back in.
Men shouting.
Animals shrieking.
Wheels grinding on rock.
Rae did not have time to enjoy any of it.
The chain at his ankles, caught for that single perfect heartbeat, sprang free of the wheel.
The force that had built in the iron snapped straight through his legs.
He was flung forward as if the road itself had punched him.
Sky, dust, wheel, hoof, all spun together.
He hit the ground shoulder first. Pain burst from his collarbone down through his ribs and out his back. Grit bit into his skin. The breath tore from his lungs in a sound that could not quite decide between a gasp and a groan.
For a flashing moment there was only brightness and the taste of copper on his tongue.
Move, something older than thought snarled inside him.
He rolled, dragging the chain, aiming for the side of the road. The ditch waited there, no more than a shallow dip, but enough to hide a body if the eyes looking for it were busy with screaming horses.
Thin grass and stubborn thorn bushes clung to the slope. Their roots looked like something a chain could catch. If he could get under those branches, even half under, he could loop the iron around a root and saw the rope on his wrists against bark.
Skin would go first. Rope followed skin if you were stubborn enough.
He managed half a turn.
A hand closed on the back of his collar, thick fingers catching cloth and flesh together.
His momentum died like a power line cut.
Rae's feet left the ground.
The roar of hooves and wheels swung under him as he was hauled up. Dust fell away in a slow curtain. His body hung from Grell's grip like something hooked.
The big guard turned him with a single jerk.
The world steadied, and Grell's face filled it.
The usual lazy look was gone. His eyes were narrow and clear, like a dog that had finally found the rat in the grain.
You, Grell said.
Rae's lungs scraped for air. He coughed, shoulders burning where the hand bit in.
Around them, drivers were fighting the tangle of animals back under control. One guard slid down the slope after the runaway roots, cursing as he scrambled. Another checked the harness on the frightened horse, hands quick and rough.
The slave line had stilled. Men and women watched with the flat, careful eyes of people who had seen enough punishment to recognise its path.
Grell shook Rae once, hard, until his teeth clicked.
What did you do
Rae's mind threw up and discarded three lies in as many heartbeats. Grell was staring at the same rut he had used, at the same marks in the mud. There was no pretending this had been a simple fall.
Bad ground, Rae forced out in the local tongue. I fall. Chain catch. Not want.
His accent chewed the words. The last one fell apart completely.
One of the other guards snorted.
He talks like his mouth is full of gravel.
Grell did not laugh.
He turned Rae sideways so they both faced the rise.
The marks were clear. Two bodies had carved a long, slanting line where the chain had dragged across the road into the deepest part of the rut. No one with eyes could mistake that for a straight stumble.
You pulled the chain, Grell said. You waited for this spot. You watched the wheel.
Rae said nothing this time.
Talan had finished inspecting the axle. He wiped dust from his hands and walked over, Daro close behind.
Is it broken, Daro called.
The spoke is still holding, Talan answered. The axle is not happy. If it snaps on a worse slope we lose the whole load.
His gaze settled on Rae.
The villagers were not lying, he said quietly. This one thinks too much.
Grell grunted agreement.
He watches the ground, Grell said. He watches the wheels. The others only watch their feet. Leave him in the line and he will pull the road out from under us sooner or later.
Daro rolled his shoulder where a panicked mule had brushed him.
We can beat it out, he said. Break one leg. He will not run then.
Crippled slaves bring little coin, Grell replied. Buyers like their meat straight. If we had not paid for him already, I would have kicked him into the stream.
He tightened his grip on Rae's collar.
You tried to break the wagon with your feet, he said. Do you hate chains that much, boy
Yes, Rae said.
The single word came out clean.
For a moment something that might almost have been amusement flickered in Grell's eyes.
At least he is honest, the guard said. Honest and foolish. Put him back in the line and he will try again. Next time we might not be lucky.
He looked at the guarded carriage.
We built that box to keep dangerous things in one place, he went on. Thick wood. Good locks. Chains inside that bite. If he sits in there, he cannot drag his chain across any more roads.
Daro's brows drew together.
"With her?"
Grell nodded.
"She is tied to the floor…He is skin and bone. If he tries anything, the iron will choke them both before they move a handspan. Out here he can use mud and wheels. In there he can only use his tongue."
Talan was silent for a long moment.
He thought of the strange broken suit locked in that carriage. He thought of the girl, of the faint, heavy pressure that had filled the room when her collar loosened at the slaver's base. He thought of coin, and risk, and how often they walked together.
Two problems in two places was foolish.
Put them together, and you only had to guard one door.
Lock him inside, Talan said at last. If anything breaks in there, I sell him by weight.
Rae opened his mouth, then shut it again.
Words would not change this. They would only give the guards something else to laugh at.
Grell dragged him toward the carriage.
From close up, the door looked even thicker. Oil had darkened the grain to the colour of old smoke. Iron bands crossed it like scars. The red cloth on the wheel brushed Rae's leg as he passed, its knot stained with dust and sweat.
The air near the door was different. Less dust, more iron. There was a faint metallic tang, like old blood, and under it a dry bitterness that might have been herbs, or fear, or both.
Grell hit the wood twice with his fist.
Open, he called. We are putting the clever one inside.
On the other side, metal shifted. A bar scraped up from its brackets. One lock clicked, then a second, then a third. No one rushed the movements. Even with horses stamping and drivers swearing, whoever was inside took care.
The door swung inward a handspan.
Cooler air slipped out, touching Rae's face.
Grell shoved him.
He stumbled up the narrow step and into the dim.
The door closed behind him with a heavy, final sound. Locks slid home again, slow and sure. The bar dropped, a dull thud that seemed to press the walls in a little closer.
For a few heartbeats, the world was nothing but breathing and the soft creak of wood.
Thin light leaked through the high slits, turning the dust in the air into slow, drifting threads.
Shapes emerged.
Iron rings bolted into the floor and walls. Chains hanging in coils, others drawn tight. A low chest pushed against one wall, iron bands glinting faintly. Dark patches on the floor where old stains had soaked deep into the wood.
And in the far corner, chained to a ring in the floor, sat a girl.
She was smaller than the weight of the guards' fear had made Rae imagine. The chains around her seemed almost large enough to swallow her whole.
Iron circled her ankles. More iron bit into her wrists. A collar wrapped her throat, a short length of chain running from it to the ring in the floor that kept her spine near the wall.
Because of that chain, she could not stand. She sat with her knees drawn up, back against wood, body held by metal rather than by choice.
Her hair hung in tangled strands, but enough had fallen away for him to see her face.
Her cheeks were hollow, her skin too pale under the dirt. Her clothes were torn and stained, but the cut of the cloth said they had not been made for a slave.
Her eyes did not belong to one either.
They were not bright flames. The red in them was deeper, quieter, sitting like a ring of embers around the pupil. Ash on top, heat beneath. Not enough to light the carriage. Enough to prove that whatever had tried to stamp that colour out had not quite succeeded.
Those eyes lifted and met his.
For a moment Rae forgot the bruises on his shoulder, the ache in his ribs, the failed plan behind him.
It felt like stepping into a silent room and finding one old indicator light still glowing on a dead panel.
The guards had looked at him like a problem. The slaves had looked at him like bad luck. This girl looked at him as if he was… interesting.
Not safe, not dangerous.
Simply unexpected.
He realised he was just standing there, rope cutting into his wrists, chain cold around his ankles, mouth slightly open.
He forced himself to speak.
He had spent weeks forcing her language into his skull, repeating words until his tongue was tired. Now, when he wanted a simple greeting, the syllables scattered.
Hel… lo, he said.
The word broke in the middle. The first sound came out too hard, the last too soft. It fell between them like a dropped stone.
Heat crept up his neck.
Once, back on the Ring, he had switched between accents for fun, copying station controllers and pilots until his crewmates had laughed and thrown rations at him. Now he could not even say hello without chewing it.
The girl's expression barely changed.
One corner of her mouth twitched, as if the memory of a smile was trying to push through old ash.
She did not answer immediately.
Her gaze travelled slowly over him. The bruises. The rope marks. The way he stood even now, as if ready to run, though there was nowhere to run to.
When she finally spoke, her voice was rough, as if every word had to scrape past a throat that had not used language much lately.
Did they drag you out of a cave, she asked. You sound like a wild child trying to chew words.
Rae blinked.
The insult was simple and accurate. He could not even be offended. It made him want to sink into the floor and laugh at himself in the same breath.
He lifted his bound hands a little and tapped his chest.
Name, he said. Rae. I learn words. Just… bad.
The last word stumbled again.
Her eyes followed the movement of his fingers. At the small act of claiming a name, something in her gaze sharpened, as if she knew what it meant to hold onto at least that much of yourself in chains.
So you are not from here, she said quietly. Your tongue fights every sound.
She shifted. The collar chain rang softly against the floor ring.
Why did they put you in this box
Rae thought of the rut, the wheel, Grell's hand on his neck.
I pull chain, he said. Make wheel jump. They angry. Say I think too much. So they lock me where I cannot touch wheels.
He tried to twist a little humour into the end. His accent still chewed it.
She watched him in silence for a long breath.
You tried to break a wagon with your feet, she said at last. So they put you beside the thing they guard most.
Her tone made it clear what she thought of merchant wisdom.
Rae spread his hands a little, rope stretching between them.
Not my choice, he said.
The carriage rocked as the caravan began to move again. Outside, hooves beat the road. Wheels found their rhythm. Grell shouted something about the line.
Inside, the world had shrunk to wood, iron, and the space between two people.
Rae lowered himself carefully to sit opposite the girl, wary of the pull on his ankles.
Pain throbbed in his shoulder and ribs. His escape had failed in every obvious way.
Yet as he sat there, across from a girl whose eyes still smouldered like coals that refused to die, a thought settled very quietly in the back of his mind.
He had tried to flee the road that led to sale.
Instead, he had been locked in the one place the merchants feared most, beside the most dangerous thing they owned.
Outside, the city waited.
Inside, the guarded carriage rolled forward, carrying a boy who had fallen from the sky and a girl whose blood refused to forget old hatred.