Page 73 of Dark Chains: First Link
She narrowed her eyes at her old friend. "I will never use my son's name as collateral for a promise."
Yaaf's jaw tightened.
"Sullha, what I need to tell you is important." He sounded exasperated. "I need to make absolutely sure it will not get out. Otherwise, people will die."
He was deadly serious.
"Your secret is safe with me." She put her hand over her heart. "I swear it on my eternal soul."
He studied her face, searching for something, and whatever he found must have satisfied him, because he leaned closer to her, close enough that she could smell the soap and motor oil scent that she was beginning to associate with him.
"I have an escape plan," he whispered. "My friends and I are getting off this island, and we want to take some of the women and children from the enclosure with us. You and Tomek are at the top of the list."
The words entered her ear, traveled to her brain, and stopped there, refusing to connect to anything that made sense.
Escape?
The word existed in her vocabulary the way the English countryside existed in her reading. It was a concept. A thing that happened in other places to other people. Not something that could apply to her, to this compound, to the women she lived with, and the children they were raising behind a three-meter concrete wall.
"You can't tell anyone," he continued in a whisper. "Not yet."
She nodded, because her throat was too tight to let out a sound.
He pulled back and looked at her, gauging her reaction. She didn't know what her face was doing, but it probably looked stunned because that was what she felt.
"I need your help with something," he said, his voice still low but no longer a whisper. "Do you know a girl named Asira? She should be around seventeen. And an older woman named Vinnah?"
Sullha's brain was still trying to recover from the explosion that the word 'escape' had detonated, but Yaaf's question gave it something concrete to grab on to. "Asira and Vinnah. The names sound familiar, but I can't associate a face with either of them. Twelve hundred women might not sound like a lot, but I don't know each and every one of them. Why do you ask? Do they have anything to do with your plans?"
"Asira is the sister of one of my friends. Vinnah is the mother of another. We want to include them, but we need to know if they can be trusted to keep quiet."
She searched her memory, trying to match the names to faces. She knew all of the women by sight and a fair number by name, but she didn't know everyone.
"I can find out more about them."
Yaaf nodded. "That would be great. Just do it discreetly."
"Burda knows everyone. I'll ask her. She's reliable, and she won't betray my trust. She might ask why I want to know, though, so I need to come up with a good excuse."
"I've met the woman. She's protective." He smiled, and the warmth of it reached his eyes in a way that transformed his facefrom a forbidding soldier to her old friend. "I knew I could count on you to help lead the rebellion."
She frowned. "You haven't said anything about a rebellion."
"Figure of speech." The smile faded, and the seriousness returned. "I want to save as many women and children as I can, Sullha. But I'm limited in how many I can take. The more people are involved, the higher the risk, and if we fail, the consequences will be deadly."
She swallowed hard. Was freedom worth risking Tomek's life? Was saving him from the training camps worth the risk?
"How are you planning to do this?" She kept her voice low. "You can't just walk hundreds of women and children out the gate."
"We can't save all of them. Not this time. Only some." He paused. "I don't have a full plan yet, but it will probably involve thralling guards and getting on a departing ship."
She stared at him. "Thralling? What's that?"
"Entering someone's mind and adjusting their thoughts. Making them see what you want them to see, remember what you want them to remember, or forget what you want them to forget."
The concept was staggering. She knew that immortal warriors were stronger and faster than humans. But the idea that they could reach into someone's mind and rearrange the contents like books on a shelf was something she'd never heard of or even imagined.
"Can all immortals do this?" she asked.
