by Victor Poole
Ajalia tried to look into the future, and to see a time when this quiet could be, but all she could see ahead of her was an endless chain of conversations, of tense struggles, of testing the truth among a whole body of lies, and her whole body ached at the prospect. I want to go back to bed, Ajalia told herself, and she almost laughed.
She pictured to herself what would have happened if she had stayed at home, and not interfered in the doings of the people of Slavithe. Delmar, she thought, would still be huddled, starving and abandoned, in the bare room where his mother had kept him. Delmar's father, and his mother, she thought, would be alive, and practicing their awful corruption on the people of the city. Clare would be moping around in the city with baleful eyes, and Ossa, undetected as a witch, would be working black cords of magic through the hearts of the people. Ossa had claimed to be a good witch, but Ajalia saw in the girl's eyes only harmful meddling. She did not believe in the existence of good witches. It was all well and good, she thought, for witches like Ossa or Salla to tell themselves they were good by never stealing, but it wasn't enough. These good witches, as they termed themselves, still tried to control other people, and to plant deep magic in their hearts.
Ajalia thought of Denai, and she was very glad that the horse trader had come around. She found, now that she had been close to losing him, that she relied on him to form a steady backdrop to the doings in the house.
Ajalia came to the door where Philas was, and she paused. She closed her eyes, and thought through the people in the house. She did not think that Ocher was still here, though, she told herself, Clare might have shown the bearded man the secret gate in the back enclosure. Ajalia was sure, from the ardor with which Ocher had regarded his future wife, that the powerful man would be sneaking into the dragon temple at all hours to steal kisses, until he married Clare, and carried her off to his own house.
She thought of Hal, and wondered what the witch hunter had done with the body of Rane, and with the two men, Tree's front men, that had been held in the prison in Ocher's house. Ajalia was sure that this prison was not the secret room where she had gone to fetch Delmar, after she had taken him from his father's house, and given him to Ocher to hold. That secret room had had no kind of restraint, and very simple locks. Ajalia wondered what a dungeon in a Slavithe house looked like; she had seen no kind of a prison anywhere in Slavithe.
She thought of Coren, and she was sorry that she had been right about him. She had hoped, briefly, that the boy would see the light and growth of the people who lived in the dragon temple, and that he would reflect with soberness on the corruption of his upbringing, but she had thought it extremely unlikely that Coren would have the inner strength to undergo a complete transformation of all his past character and habits in less than one day. She had told the boy that he would be good for a time, and that he would upset Delmar, and become a liability. Ajalia was sorry to have been right. She hoped that Delmar would have the sense to deal harshly with the boy. Ajalia thought that Coren needed exposure to a wider world, and long experience of the world outside his parents' house and city. She wanted the boy to be sold, not because she sought to punish him, but because she thought that life as a slave, and labor at the behest of a motivated owner, was the best chance Coren had to become a normal human. The boy, she saw, had been abused by his mother and father, and by the other witches, almost since he could walk, and she thought that life as a slave, doing the work that another commanded, and enforced, would give the boy experience, and teach him the narrowness, and the evil of his place of origin.
Ajalia did not see slavery, in her own case, as an absolute evil. She herself had been abused as a child, and though she had been exposed to greater abuse in her early days as a slave, moving through the wider world, and seeing a variety of people, places, and living situations, had given her perspective, and taught her to see her own awful family as petty and insignificant beings, in the wider world of people and things. Her family still had been within her skin, and had given her much trouble, but she had been able to see, with her conscious mind, what her family was. She remembered the first time she had encountered a happy set of parents and children, when she had first been a slave. She had been travelling with the trader who first took her on, and near them on the road, for two days of their journey, had been a family who were moving to another city, and until those two days, Ajalia had never known that humans could treat each other with decency and kindness within a family. She had watched the travelling family until her own trader had outstripped them, and she had thought about them for months. There had been a pair of sisters, near in age, and Ajalia had never been able to get out of her mind the image of the mother talking to her two daughters, a look of solicitous affection on her face. Ajalia had worn in her heart, like a talisman, the expression of trust and love that had shone out of the sisters' faces, when they had looked at their mother, and this experience had given Ajalia hope. It had taught her that her mother was not like other mothers, and that her family had not been a functional one.
Coren, Ajalia thought, did not understand how much he was worth to others. Now that the secrets she needed had been gotten out of the boy, she saw that Coren still thought of himself as an essential linchpin, a turning point in the affairs of Slavithe. Ajalia did not believe that everything the boy had told them about Ullar and Bain was true; she did not particularly care what the truth was. She had heard enough, and seen enough herself, to know that both Ullar, and Lilleth, and Bain, and Coren had behaved badly, and were tainted with internal darkness. Once Ajalia was sure of the darkness inside Coren, and once she was sure that he liked to use the darkness, and had no real desire to be filled with light, she had disengaged from the boy. She would no longer seek to protect him, and if Delmar failed to deal effectively with the boy, she would encourage Delmar to deal mercilessly with the child.
Ajalia leaned her temple against the cool surface of the wall, and made a swift litany of those who were within her house. Chad, she remembered, was watching Esther. Chad had surprised Ajalia; she never would have guessed, or dared to hope, that he would turn into the paragon of usefulness that he had seemed to be today. She suspected, and hoped, that the transformation was a permanent one. Chad, she thought, had learned very suddenly to respect himself. Chad saw himself now, she reflected, as a man, and as a capable and effective instrument.
She thought back to the way the dark-haired young man had been when she had first met him, and hired him, and she smiled. Chad was almost unrecognizable now. She thought of Esther, and of the way Chad had worked over the young woman with the lights he had drawn from the earth and sky. She hoped that Esther would choose to be true, and honorable. She knew, or she thought, that Chad would be disappointed if Esther devolved into darkness, but, she told herself, such an event would prove to be a testing ground for Chad's new awesomeness. She would find out then if he was as wonderful as he now seemed, or if it was a temporary flare of effort that he was putting forth in the excitement of the moment. She hoped that Chad would be as wonderfully confident and sure in a time of settled peace, as he was now, in a time of conflict and transition.
She was thoroughly satisfied with Leed, and with Daniel. She had a vision of those two as grown-up young men, and she thought that they, and many of her boys, would be invaluable to Delmar's government, when life settled down, and time passed.
Ajalia yawned, and then she went into the room where Philas was bound.
Philas was sitting back in the chair that was encircled tightly with golden lights. He had stretched out his legs, and crossed his ankles, and he was staring thoughtfully at a far wall. He looked over at Ajalia, when she came in, and then settled back into the position he had been in. Ajalia expected Philas to speak to her, but the slave looked as though he had been thinking of what to do, and Ajalia suspected that Philas wanted to gain the upper hand through a determined and prolonged silence.
"Did you like Sun?" Ajalia asked, sitting down, and curling her legs beneath her. Philas sighe
d, and settled his head more deeply against the back of the chair.
"Did you spend our master's money on this furniture?" Philas asked drily, closing his eyes. Ajalia saw that Philas was trying to rile her up, to put her on the defensive.
"I told Sun that she wasn't allowed to kiss you," Ajalia said. Philas grinned in spite of himself.
"I wouldn't kiss a little girl like that," he said, but Ajalia didn't believe him.
"Are you going to be king?" Ajalia asked. Philas laughed.
"You aren't going to let go of that, are you?" he asked.
"No," Ajalia said. "It would be satisfying to me, to have put two men onto the throne, all in the space of a few months."
"You'd have to come with me," Philas said, watching Ajalia closely, "or I'd never do it."
"Why?" she asked. "So you could trap me into corners, and tell me you were only kissing me to show me how much I really loved you?" Philas's jocular expression wilted.
"That doesn't make any sense," he snapped.
"It makes a lot of sense to you," she said. "That's what you did before, and you thought it was going to work." Philas shifted uncomfortably.
"Let's talk about me being king," Philas said.
"Do you think master would want one of his former slaves to be the ruling monarch of Saroyan?" Ajalia asked. Philas scowled, and Ajalia saw that she had hit on a tender spot. "Is that what Lim was holding over your head?" Ajalia asked. "He found out who you were, and he threatened to tell master?"
"No," Philas said in complaining tones. "He didn't know anything about me. He thought I was blackmailing someone else, and he stole my things."
"The papers, and the knife," Ajalia said. Philas nodded.
"I didn't know he still had them," Philas said. "I tried to get the things back a few times, but Lim convinced me that someone had already stolen them. I didn't think I'd ever get them back again."
"You asked me if I would marry you," Ajalia said suddenly, remembering. "You wanted to know if I would say yes to marrying you, if you were the king of Saroyan." Philas regarded her warily.
"I probably didn't say that," Philas said. His voice was guarded.
PHILAS UNDERGOES A PURGE
"I don't think I would make a very good queen," Ajalia said. She thought with satisfaction of Delmar, and sighed. Delmar, she told herself, is perfect.
"You're only saying that because you want to be Delmar's wife," Philas said bitterly. Ajalia looked at Philas.
"Yes," she said. "I do want to be Delmar's wife." Philas's mouth, which was already turned down in a frown, deepened now into an angry snarl.
"That is not fair," Philas said. "And anyway, why are you sitting here and talking to me, if you only want Delmar?"
"Well," Ajalia said, "you came here, to my house, and told me you wanted money."
"I don't want your money," Philas snapped. "So great, there you go. Let me out of this chair."
"No," Ajalia said.
"Why not?" Philas demanded.
"Because if master comes here, I will have to tell him that I had the real heir to the Saroyan throne all tidily tied up in one of my rooms, and he asked me to let him go, so I did. I would feel embarrassed to say this to master. You are," Ajalia said, "after all, master's property. He paid for you."
"He paid for you as well," Philas growled, his eyes lit up with the fire of indignation.
"Yes," Ajalia said smoothly, "and look at me. Here I am, doing exactly what my master would like me to do."
"You said you'd been adopted by the people of Slavithe," Philas snapped.
"I have been," Ajalia said. "And I'm going to marry the new Thief Lord. And I'm going to remain on cordial terms with master. Did you know that all the people of Slavithe were once slaves? I'm going to turn into a cultural mascot. To master, as I am now, I'm a goldmine." Philas looked as though he were silently gnashing his teeth. Ajalia watched him. She felt much calmer now than she had only a few moments ago. Watching Philas, and his turmoil of emotion, made her feel positively at peace with herself, and with life. She smiled.
"What are you smiling about, you hypocrite?" Philas growled.
"I think master will convince you to be king," Ajalia said. "Anyway, I'm free now, and it's quite nice."
"You aren't free," Philas half-shouted, straining forward out of his chair. "I'm never going to be free, and neither are you."
"Are you upset because you really want to be king, and you think it won't happen?" Ajalia asked. "Is your mother still alive?" Philas settled back into an angry silence. "I would like to meet your mother, I think," Ajalia said. "Is she a nice woman?"
"I don't want to talk about my mother," Philas said, his cheeks reddening in the dusky light from the lamp.
"I think you're blushing," Ajalia told him. "I think she must be a very nice woman, and you're ashamed. Shall we talk about that?"
"Why can't you go away and leave me alone?" Philas howled in despair.
"I can't leave you here," Ajalia told him. "I would find it embarrassing. I don't usually have to tie people up to make them talk to me." She thought of Coren, and of how the boy had been hog-tied when he had first come to the dragon temple.
"Then let me out of this chair," Philas said, smiling a sickly smile, "and I will talk to you then."
"No," Ajalia said. "You're violent."
"I am not!" Philas shouted, his hair wild, and his half-grown beard tangled around his chin.
"You look awful," Ajalia said in a friendly voice. "Do you think you're going to calm down at any point, or is this raging and struggling going to last for days?" Philas glared at her.
"It will last for weeks," Philas growled. Ajalia had an idea; she clapped her hands together.
"I know what I will do," Ajalia said brightly. Philas regarded her suspiciously, a deep line between his eyebrows.
"What?" he asked grudgingly, after she did not continue. Ajalia looked at Philas, her lips twisted to one side.
"I am deciding whether or not I will tell you," she said. "My plan could work out better, if I didn't tell."
"What plan?" Philas asked. He sounded interested in spite of himself, and Ajalia's tone and demeanor, she could see, were softening the angry slave. He was leaning forward as much as he could, and his fingers were no longer grasping vigorously at the empty air. Ajalia realized, for the first time, that she was actually pleasant to be around. She had a picture in her mind suddenly, of what Philas's life must be like, and of how empty and ragged he felt in his heart. She pictured Philas without her, and then she imagined what he actually felt when he was around her, and hearing her make plans, and work deals. She told herself that Philas was bored, and that she was like an engaging show. I am better than liquor, she told herself, and though she was tempted to smile, she turned her attention on Philas as he was now, and thought of how to use her newly discovered power to get him to do what she wanted.
"Ocher was a lot like you, when I first met him," Ajalia said.
"Who's Ocher?" Philas asked resentfully.
"He was the man who managed much of the quarry business for Simon," Ajalia said.
"Who's Simon?" Philas demanded, his eyes darkening. Ajalia saw that he felt very out of the loop. She did not glance at the door, but she wondered what Delmar had decided to do with Coren, and with Ullar. Denai, she thought, would be all right, but then she remembered how Delmar had not trusted the horse trader, and she started to her feet. "Where are you going now?" Philas complained loudly, as Ajalia went to the door, and looked out at the place where Ullar and Denai had been. She could see no one. She crossed quickly through the empty floor, and came at last to the door of Denai's room. She hesitated for a moment. She told herself that Denai would not be there. She told herself that she was too late, and that Delmar would have turned on Denai, and inflicted some punishment on the horse trader. She knocked on the door.
After a moment, when she heard no answer, Ajalia opened the door, and looked inside. The room was dark, but she saw a muffled form on the bed.
"What do you want?" Coren demanded. Ajalia's eyes adjusted, and she saw that the boy was tied up again.
"Where's Delmar?" she asked.
"He's gone out with Denai, to do something to Ullar, I don't know what," Coren said bitterly. "They tied me up again. Denai tied me up," he added with a bitter sneer. "Delmar didn't want to touch me, I guess."
"All right, thank you, sleep well," Ajalia said, and she shut the door on Coren, whom she heard complaining loudly. She thought she heard the phrase, "let me go," but then the boy subsided once again into silence. Ajalia went back to the room where Philas was bound to the comfortable chair.
"At least it's a lovely chair," she told Philas, who glared at her.
"Where did you go?" he asked her, in a voice that was not friendly in the least.
"Checking on Coren," Ajalia said.
"Well, that doesn't mean anything to me," Philas complained. Ajalia was again tempted to laugh, but she reminded herself that civility now could buy a prosperous trade relationship with Saroyan later. She was almost sure now that Philas would become king, in the same way she had decided that Delmar would be the Thief Lord, and whenever Ajalia reached these inner determinations, she found that they came to pass more speedily than not. She was sure, if she did decide to make Philas king, that he would remember very clearly every detail of their exchange tonight. She did not want to needlessly tease or humiliate Philas.