Jeran looks genuinely awkward. “Er, he says he doesn’t like fish.”
I shoot Jeran a withering glance. “He doesn’t like fish?” I sign flatly.
“Maybe best not to belabor it,” Jeran says.
“The bread, then?” I sign to the prisoner, annoyed.
His lip curls in distaste, but this time he grabs the bag and takes out a hunk of bread. That’s when I see a slight movement wriggle from his shirt pocket. A small, furry head peeks out from it, its nose sniffing the air, beady eyes locked on the food. It’s a fat mouse with a missing tail. To my surprise, the man lifts his hand so the mouse can climb into his palm, then lowers the creature to the bread, where it puts its tiny foot-paws on the crust and starts nibbling away.
Beside me, Jeran makes a face and shudders. “I feel like it’s on me,” he whispers, his eyes locked on the mouse.
“Glad to know I brought food for your pet instead,” I sign at the prisoner.
He just shrugs, one thumb idly rubbing the mouse’s head. “It was here first,” Jeran translates with a queasy expression. “And it keeps me company.”
Something about the prisoner’s gentle movements around the mouse makes my dislike of him waver. I think of my father leaning beside me as we watched the butterfly’s chrysalis.
I sigh. “Tomorrow, you fall under my charge,” I sign instead, changing the subject. “So I thought we should get to know each other a little better before we spend more time together. Don’t you think?”
Still, he doesn’t answer.
“Were you born in the Federation?” I ask.
The first serious light comes into his eyes. His lips go flat, but he shakes his head. “I lived there for as long as I could remember,” Jeran says for him. The prisoner’s hands move unconsciously, like they will somehow help him explain, and I find myself searching for words and meaning in the gestures. After a while, he looks at me again. “You?”
“My mother and I fled here when your Federation conquered Basea.”
I can’t keep the bitterness out of my gestures, and he notices it. This time, Jeran hesitates.
“What did he say?” I ask him.
“At least your mother still lives,” Jeran replies quietly.
Anger flares white hot in me. Maybe it’d been a mistake to save this prisoner’s life. My mother has lived to bear the permanent scars of what the Federation had done to her, and I do not have the patience to listen to a former Karensan soldier shrug that off.
“What happened to yours?” I sign. If I had a voice, the words would have come out ice cold.
He looks away, refusing to contribute to our conversation. The mouse finishes nibbling and darts back into his shirt pocket.
“And your father?”
Still nothing.
“Why don’t you want to live anymore?” I ask him, my signs gentler now.
He pauses for a long time before he gives me a steady look. I watch his lips move as he speaks to Jeran.
Jeran glances apologetically at me. “He wants to know why this matters to you.”
“Why what matters?”
“This. Him. His past.”
The conversation I’d once had with Corian comes back to me in a torrent of emotion, and for an instant, I’m twelve again, lounging by the grapevines beside my Shield. Why does it matter to you, how I feel about Basea? I’d signed, and I can hear his answer in my memory. Shouldn’t it matter to everyone?
The similarity of this moment, here and now, takes me aback. For a moment, I feel as if I were Corian, the one reaching his hand out to this foreigner.
I bend down to balance on the balls of my feet and rest my elbows against my legs. Our eyes are level. If I really do have to lead him around in shackles for the unforeseeable future, I’d at least like to be able to trust him enough to be near him.
“My mother and I lost everything,” I tell him, “when we fled into Mara—everything except for each other. Our pasts matter because they created us, helped mold us into who we are.”
He gives me a suspicious frown. “You want to dig into my life by holding out pieces of your own.”
Well, he’s not as generous as Corian was. Now I think he’s mocking me with the tilt of his head, as if it were easy for me to talk about the broken pieces of my childhood. I nod at the brand peeking out from under his shirt. “Your brand. What did the Federation do to you?”