"Languages. This I know. But you can heal an army. Surely this gift weighs far more than speaking to our enemies!"
This was not going the way I planned. I sought some sort of reasoning without really understanding the culture I'd been dropped into, aside from the fact they seemed to be always at war.
"What other gifts do you have?"
I sat back on my heels, wracking my brain for an answer that would matter to him. My brain wasn't working quickly this morning. My gaze fell to the two men listening from their positions groveling.
He yanked on the chain.
"The uh … sky god doesn't always tell me," I managed. "I am here for a purpose, one he hid from me."
Chaghan appeared to be considering this.
"And this? Does it contain more of your magic?" He pulled my cell phone from a pocket and held it up.
I sucked in a breath. If I'd been a little less numb from painkillers, I'd feel the panic I was certain was racing through my blood at the thought of my only connection to my time and home in the hands of a madman. "It's a … a tool," I stammered. "It can only be used by me."
"What does it do?" He was watching me with the same penetrating look Batu had given me, one I took to mean they were trying to determine whether I was truthful.
"I can't really explain it," I replied.
"Does it affect your blood? Your languages?"
"No."
"Will it help me win the war?"
"No."
"Then it is of no use."
Before I could react, he had dropped it on the ground, drawn a curved sword and stabbed it through. As if that wasn't enough, he then ground his heel into it until the circuits and glass screen formed a puddle of chards around it.
And I stared, unable to react, not sure how to react to the sight of my way home being destroyed.
"Uncle." The same nephew from earlier, who had refused to drink his wine, peered into the tent. "May we speak?"
Chaghan didn't appear pleased. "Go," he barked at the two men near me.
They scrambled out of the tent. Chaghan tied my leash to a pole before approaching his nephew at the entrance of the tent.
Barely aware of them, my attention was on the remains of my cell phone. Of all the things to think about now, my mind was on Taylor again.
If there'd ever been a place where I wouldn't have minded being stuck, it was probably with him in the large farmhouse on the plains. I had been struggling not to think of him at all, because of my ambivalent emotions, but it was impossible not to see my way home destroyed and recall what he'd told me the night after we were married.