Tom!

No, I don't have a title yet. :p

First Chapter
Second Chapter
Third Chapter

Alisha shivered.

She stood a few steps away from the doorway, wondering where Tom was. When he was coming back. If he was coming back. She whined. She was so dumb. She had told him to leave her because she had gotten mad. Now Tom wasn't coming back. Tom was upset and he had shown it by leaving. She was going to be kidnapped. She hugged herself. She had been kidnapped once. Tom had said he was going to let it happen again, and if it did, there was nothing Alisha could do to stop it. She was a princess, weak. This was just awful!

She was lost. Terribly lost. She needed Tom. She didn't know where he was. She didn't know where she was and needed to get back to Father. Father was probably so worried. Would he be mad at her? Father was the only one whoever got mad at her. Father. And Tom. She stared out the doorway, looking for a sign he was coming back. Alisha turned away from the doorway. No. She didn't need Tom. He was not her slave, and she couldn't treat him as one. So what was she waiting for? She should find someone to help her. A guard, or an official. That might work; Father said to trust them.

But what if they wanted to kidnap her too? The men before had said they were guards, hadn't they? And Tom said not to tell anyone who she was. Alisha spun around, staring through the doorway once more. Tom, where are you? Alisha pleaded silently. A figure passed by in the distance, raising Alisha's hopes. It looked like a man. She watched hopefully. The figure came closer. Alisha could finally see his face. Her smile faded, until it turned into a depressed frown. No. Not Tom. Tom had left, and he wasn't coming back. And it was all her fault.

Tom felt like it had been ages trapped in the cell before the captain came. The guards had dragged him to the small prison and shoved Tom in a small cell, only about five feet deep on each side. Tom sat, huddled against the wall for a while. His stomach had acquired a new bruise from where the guard punched him, and his arms had marks from the soldiers' firm grip. Tom hugged his knees. They were going to kill him. He moaned. Or, if they didn't, it would be worse...

His mind flashed back to a different time and place.

But you could barely tell.

Tom was still in a prison, just a little smaller. You couldn't tell whether he was more terrified then than now. He was in about the same pose, curled against the corner. Footsteps, clear and heavy. Guards'. Metal armor clanging along with the spears that soon peaked around the corner. Two of them. One went about unlocking the door, and both faces were serious. The guard watched Tom carefully, glaring with extreme loathing. Tom couldn't differ. He hated himself then, but for different reasons. For getting caught. For getting in there. For getting himself killed.

"Last wishes, thief?" the guard with the keys spat as he swung the door open.

Tom mumbled something as he was yanked to his feet.

"Too bad. No one like you is gonna get any kind of special treatment," the other guard growled and shoved Tom out of the cell.

Then a blur. Tom pulled out his dagger. The guards lowered their spears. Tom's arm was cut, but he remembered that guard falling to ground in a TERRIFYING puddle of blood. Then, in the other guard's surprise, Tom pushed his dagger into the other man. And then Tom ran. And ran. Ran away from everything he had known, except his dagger and his marks. He ended up in many places, all of them worse than the last. The beater. The drunk one. The one who never fed him. His scars would let Tom get away with nothing.

Tears streamed down his face as he knew what fate lied ahead of him. The fate of a dead man, or the fate of a murderer. He was stuck. They would not go easy on him. They would look into his records and see what he had done… Tom was going to die. He sobbed into his knees.

“If you are going to steal from someone in this town, you should at least be a man about it,” a man said.

Tom glanced with red eyes at the large man before him, who Tom recognized as the captain of the guard. The captain stared at Tom with open revulsion and hatred. Tom cowered and hugged his knees tighter. This man would be the death of him. Or others. Tom couldn't help it as his fingers grasped the hilt of his dagger slowly. It was his only comfort here. Or anywhere. The man wore clothes like the guard: tan tunic and pants with a sash to show their allegiance to Qirmizi. This man also wore a dark brown vest and a cloth around his head to shield his face from sand and sun. The head covering gave the captain's face a shadowy, brooding look. Tom could only just see the man's dark, pebble eyes staring at him with a scowl to kill.

The captain kicked the bars, causing Tom to shake more. "What's your name, slave?" the man barked.

Tom winced and turned his head away, keeping his eyes on the hard ground.

"Now!" the man demanded, frowning. "Listen to me, slave; this can be done quickly or not quickly. I will determine how much clearance you get, and I can have you get by unscathed, or I can have you killed. You want to be on my good side, don't you?"

Tom moaned and buried his head in his knees. If he told the captain his name, Tom would be found out all the sooner.

The captain sighed and squatted. "How old are you, slave?"

"F-four, fourteen." Tom whispered.

"Fourteen? Where are you from?" the captain continued in a calm, but firm voice. "Here, or out of town?"

Tom swallowed and paled. He couldn't answer that either.

"I have a son your age," the captain said, changing subjects. "He's got the same color hair as you, but shorter. Your masters didn't take good care of you, did they? Is that why you ran away?" His voice was strained to stay level. When Tom refused to answer, the captain stood and kicked the cell. Tom yelled and scrambled away from the side of it. "What's your name, slave!" Tom curled back into the fetal position, hoping the captain wouldn't try to hurt him again. Another kick was sent to the bars though.

Suddenly, screams were heard from outside the jail. People fled past the doorway, and sounds of fighting soon accompanied the yells. The captain glanced at Tom, swore, and ran out, already taking his sword out of his sheath. Tom watched in dismay, standing and staring through the bars. He saw the chaos from his seemingly calm and safe place inside.

Alisha!

Oh no...had she been kidnapped? What happened? Was someone ransoming her right now? Visions of her in tight bonds and surrounded by men who wanted to hurt her filled Tom's vision. He pursed his lips. He had to get out. He had already tried to pick the lock, though. He swallowed as the havoc from outside continued, and he had no idea what it was. Tom couldn't see any guards or the captain now. What if some danger was coming through the city, and since Tom couldn't leave, he would die? He moaned and tugged on the bars. Nothing. He hadn't really expected them to just move right out of the way, though. He ran a hand through his long hair. Great. What happened?!

The fleeing seemed to relax for a while, but maybe because the people were no longer fleeing where Tom was. He was sitting in a corner of the cell with a very hopeless attitude. He dug his dagger into the ground. It was getting dark. He was hungry. The city was probably ruined. The princess was long gone. The guards were all dead and no one had the keys to the cell. He would be stuck here forever, trying to see whether boredom or hunger killed him first. He kept pressing the dagger into the ground, distracted enough to not see the man come in for a while.

At first, Tom thought it was one of the city's attackers, coming to end his life short and quick. Tom had mixed feelings about this, but it didn't matter. It was not an attacker, it was the captain of the guard. Tom shrunk away, but the man was too busy unlocking the door. Tom scowled. He would die now. Maybe the captain found Tom guilty for whatever anarchy happened before. Tom stared at the man, whose face was red and he was fumbling with the keys. Finally, he opened the door and motioned for Tom to get out. The captain began running to another corridor, but paused and stared at Tom.

"Go! Now! While you can!" he growled.

Tom hesitantly stood again, nearing the door. "W-why?"

The captain gave a twisted smile. "Instead of you being dead, it looks like it might be me. Now run, I want to give the next captain a run for his money." His face began serious in a certain amount of cruelty and vengefulness, and he ran to release more prisoners.

Tom only paused a second more before running out. He slipped out of the doorway and retreated to a shadow. When he looked at the city, he was in shock. The main building, that Tom had sorely avoided, the palace, had smoke rising above it. A fire. That made sense. The water would have been scarce to put it out. It might not have been so bad, since Qirmizi was built next to a river. Tom had also avoided that. He wasn't used to such large, powerful things, and it would have too many people flocking around it. Tom also couldn't swim. Who could, really? Tom's mind went back to the fire. Who started it? The fire was much too close to the palace to have been an accident, that was obvious.

Wanting to see exactly what happened, Tom wandered to the outskirts of the city. He spotted a small boy of about five and grabbed his arm. Tom wasn't as hesitant to talk to people, seeing as whatever he did would be fairly dwarfed by the fire. "What's your name?" he asked the boy quietly.

"Samer," the boy said, staring up at Tom. He pulled his arm away and picked up a rock interestedly. He wore no shirt, just rough cloth shorts.

"Yeah? Samer? Do you know what happened, Samer?"

Samer turned serious. "Our Emir. Emir Zafir was killed," he said with wide eyes.