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“My father sold me when I was eight. I know my mother would never have held with this, though. It won’t be long. I only need to wait for the news to get all the way down to her father’s village, and she will give my father a good scolding and come buy me back,” Rashid’s words pour out of his mouth without the slightest uncertainty in their shared language, melodious as when he sings and so quick Arun’s head hurts. “I'm not waiting forever, though: I’ll give her three more years until I’m a man, and then I have my own plan. Did you know that here if you steal, they put you to row on their boats? I can take a beating, and boats are easier than men. I can get off at the first port and go find my mother. You could come with me and be my little brother, weave in my grandfather’s shop and I'll teach you to play the oud. Did someone bite off your tongue, Arun? You haven’t told me how you got here yet, little mouse.”
Arun’s tongue is in place but very dry, mind blank. He’s still unsure what went down that night, whose money went in whose pocket, if there was ever an apprenticeship. He thinks that if he were Rashid, he wouldn’t like that a younger inferior boy had one more parent than him wanting him back. He thinks that he might still do it, because he’s Rashid, but he wouldn’t like to bother himself rescuing a boy who might leave him to return to some other home. “My parents sold me to the ship captain.”
He’s rewarded for his skill with a kiss on the forehead, and wonders if he should be trying to forget it's a lie.