by Victor Poole
She was trying not to think about the implications of the lights that she had drawn three times now from the earth. The first time, in the forest, when she had put light and life back into Delmar, she had told herself that she was hot and tired. She knew this wasn't true, but she wanted life to be less exciting than it was. She wanted life to be what she had thought it was before Slavithe. She did not want her mother to be a witch. She did not want to think of what her mother's knowledge of dark powers would mean for her, and what it would mean about her brother and father.
Ajalia ran through the streets of Slavithe, and she tried to outrun her thoughts, which were patching together a reality that she wanted to avoid. The magic, she was beginning to see, was real. There were women in Slavithe, old women, who had too many faces, the way her mother had worn too many pairs of eyes. If what she had heard was true, there were men in Talbos, priests, and men like Rosk in the mountains, who held with the old ways, and trusted the lights in the earth.
Ajalia told herself that she was making things up; she told herself she had not slept for a long time. She told herself that she was imagining the cords of glowing gold, and that her overheated brain was creating stories to comfort her somehow. She did not find the magic comforting; she found it frightening. A wiggling desire to run away, to get back to her master in the East, was just starting to grow in her heart.
Ajalia did not want any of the magic to be real; she wanted to be a clever slave who was growing a new political force in the heart of Slavithe. She wanted to change Delmar into the man he would someday be, and she wanted to glory in his strength. She wanted to take the old houses, and straighten them up. She wanted to be like everyone else, lost, and powerless. She had always, she thought, had more power than other people, but not power like this, not power that moved in the silent night and glowed like strange fire.
Ajalia came to the dragon temple, and went swiftly up the stairs. The entrance hall was quite dark; she moved like a shadow down the long hall, her heart spreading heat and a frantic pulse through her chest. When she came to the stairs near the back of the temple, she took a deep breath, and fluffed her clothes. The bowl she wrapped in the rag, and left at the bottom of the shelf that lay at the end of the stairs. She went up the back stairs, and came into the room on the second floor, where she had told her servants to assemble. She saw the light from the room before she saw her people; one of the silver lamps from below had been brought up into the upper room, and a strange blue cast was on the white stone walls, and along the smooth floors.
Ajalia closed her eyes, and told herself to be calm. She had a horror of being interrogated by officials; if the guards followed her here, she thought that she would have some kind of breakdown. She took a deep breath, and stepped into the light. Delmar was the first person she saw; he was standing next to Daniel, and a haunted look was in his eyes. When he saw her, he stepped forward swiftly, and drew her back into the shadow.
"Will you talk to me again?" he asked urgently. She looked at him, and blinked.
"What is wrong with Delmar?" Ajalia asked Daniel. She went towards the ring of servants, and looked over their attire. Clare, she noted with satisfaction, was of an appropriate build for a second self. Ajalia thought that she would have to cut the girl's hair, and train her a bit in the role before she would do.
"I don't know," Daniel said, glancing at Delmar, who lingered in the shadows, a tortured expression in his eyes. "He's been anxious since he came back."
"Have you seen Denai?" Ajalia asked. Her eyes passed over the row of neat boys, who now looked startlingly identical to each other.
"He came in just when it got dark," Daniel said. "He met that woman you sent, and took her and the donkey into the back."
One of the perks of the temple, Ajalia had found, was a tiny stable that lay in the corner of the courtyard behind the main building. She had begun to form a pet idea about the stable; she wanted to keep her black horse there, but had not yet mustered the willpower to take up the management that a horse behind the house would entail. Pudge, she reflected, would be a good start; the ass was tiny, and the boys could get used to the upkeep of an animal.
"Listen to me," Ajalia told the servants. "I have killed an old woman." Clare looked up sharply at Ajalia; Sun and Ossa glanced at each other, but made no other sign. The boys waited to hear more. Ajalia did not look around to see how Delmar would react; she thought that she would have to manage him on his own soon anyway, and she could hear his view on the murder then.
"Why do you tell us this?" Clare asked, before Ajalia could continue.
"You are my household now," Ajalia told them all. "You are my servants. In the East, slaves are as children to their master. You cannot protect me, if you do not know my actions."
"Why will we protect you?" Sun asked.
"Because the old woman was a witch," Ajalia told her. A shiver of anger, and of fear, passed through the young women. Ajalia saw that the little boys did not change, but Daniel's mouth drew down at the corners. "I know little of your ways," Ajalia said, "but I know that witches are not meant to be left alive, where they are found."
"My father will kill you, when he knows," Delmar said. He was behind Ajalia; she turned and looked at him. She had suspected this would be the case, but she kept her eyes neutral.
"Why?" she asked him. Delmar was watching her. She saw that intelligence had come once more into his eyes; he no longer looked afraid.
"If you can kill a witch," Delmar said slowly, "my father will see that you are capable of fighting him." Delmar glanced at the young women, and at Clare, and Ajalia knew that he was thinking they would tell. "He will want to make sure of you, before you grow powerful," Delmar said.
"You must be a witch," Sun said to Ajalia.
"I'm a slave from the East," Ajalia told the young woman. "I have many skills."
"Witches can't be killed," Clare told her.
"This one is dead," Ajalia said.
"Then you are a witch," Ossa insisted.
Ajalia drew the knife from behind her back. She walked to Delmar, and put the hilt of the knife into his palm. Delmar watched her, his eyes steady.
"This young man is the son of the Thief Lord," Ajalia told the ring of boys and young women. Their eyes were fixed on her; she saw them look at the light that played from the lantern over Delmar's face, and that caught like bloody fire in the gem he wore in his ear. "He is heir to the power of the old ones, of Jerome, and of Bakroth."
Delmar made a hissing noise, and his face shot towards Ajalia. She ignored him, and watched the ripple of disgust and unease move through the bodies of the Slavithe children at the mention of Bakroth's name.
"The Thief Lord inherits power," Ajalia said, holding Delmar's hand with the blade aloft. The edge of the knife glinted in the silvery light. "If the Thief Lord, who holds this power," Ajalia told them, "puts his magic into my knife, and with my knife I cut the thread that ties together the lives of a witch, will the witch die?"
Clare's mouth was agape, and her cheeks were pale. Sun had lost her jaunty stance, and Ossa was holding herself tightly with both arms wrapped over her chest. The little boys' faces were a mix of terror and delight.
"If you cut the thread of a witch," one of the boys said knowingly, "and you hold the golden light, the witch dies."
"That's just a story," Daniel said scornfully.
"It isn't, it's true," another boy put in. As the boys began to argue, their voices overlapping in the wide room, Ajalia reached below the temple, where the rock met the earth, and drew a cord of golden light into her hand. She pushed the cord of power into Delmar's fist, which she still held wrapped around the hilt of her knife, and then released the son of the Thief Lord.
Delmar gasped when he felt the heat of the magic coursing into his hand; Ajalia saw his fingers convulsively clutch at the hilt. He stumbled a little, and dropped the knife to the white stone floor. His palm released an explosion of pent-up light; the room was lit for a brief moment with start
ling gold and shimmering light. The boys fell dead silent, and all the eyes in the room were fixed on the blazing palm that Delmar yet held, his elbow crooked just above his head.
The light melted gradually away. The silence in the dragon temple was complete. Sun and Clare both stared at Delmar as they might have regarded a god; Ossa was trembling, and her lips were taut with withheld tears. The boys gazed at Delmar solemnly, their mouths forming a communal stern line.
Ajalia picked up her knife, which had fallen with a violent clang, and replaced it in its sheath. She went to Delmar, who was shaking a little, and breathing hard, and took up the position that she had often taken up behind her own master, behind his left shoulder.
"Many in Slavithe will tell you that I am ambitious," Ajalia told the children. "Many will tell you that I am a slave, and that I aim to corrupt your ways. I am no slave," she told them. She could feel their attention; she held their eyes, and the whole attention of their hearts. She waited for a moment, and then spoke again. "I follow the true Thief Lord."
She let a pause grow within the room, and then she reached behind Delmar, where none of the servants could see, and pulled on his arm. He turned sharply, and went out of the room.
"Daniel, come," Ajalia said. She glanced at Clare, and at Ossa. She felt a surge of impatience; she wanted time to slow down. A buzzing in her skull told her that the night was far from over, and she had yet to instruct her servants. She had put it off, and put it off, but she thought now that she would never find a calm moment to train the young women. Daniel trotted to her side, and looked up at her expectantly. "Young ladies, with me," she said finally, and followed the shadow that Delmar had made out of the room.
She found him on the stairs; he was leaning against the white wall, and his shoulders were hunched in the darkness. He opened his mouth angrily when he saw her, and shut it when he saw Daniel appear handily beside her.
"Come with me," she told him, and led the way into the room at the back of the temple, where the chairs lay about the center table. It was the room where she had met with Ocher, when he had come with Delmar and Wall. Delmar followed Ajalia slowly; she sat down in a chair, and watched him edge mutinously into the room. Daniel followed Ajalia quickly; she gestured for the boy to sit down in a chair.
Clare came into the room first, her hands twisting slowly around each other at the top of her thighs. Sun entered next. Her eyes fixed on Delmar as soon as she was through the door, and Ajalia saw the young Slavithe servant bite her lower lip in an enterprising way. Sun, Ajalia thought, was going to be sent away very soon. Ossa came last of all.
Ossa was the sturdiest of the three girls; her cheeks were fat and smooth. Ajalia looked at Ossa, and she thought suddenly that perhaps Ossa would do as Yelin's successor. She had tried Nam, and she had tested Clare, and now her eye was fixed on Sun for the part, but each of the three girls had proved unable to bear the pressure of the role. Ajalia wondered now if Ossa would take on the part of a great beauty with any grace.
Ajalia's master had kept with the very old ways; the oldest customs in the East demanded a highly ritualized household. Each master kept a personal double, a face-bearing slave that could appear in his place in far cities, or at troublesome functions. A lithe young man had played this part before Ajalia took it from him; he had worn the sharp layers in his hair, and held his face in an adequate summation of their master's expression, but he had not been quick or sharp, and he had never acted on his own initiative. When Ajalia had pushed the young man out of the part, he had tried to go to their master to appeal what she had done, but when their master summoned Ajalia into his presence, she presented him with a pair of slaves she had negotiated from another master, and an advantageous agreement on a shipment of silver silk thread that had been brought into the country by her master's nearest neighbor. Ajalia's master had looked at her for a moment, and then sent her to cut her predecessor's hair. She had trapped the lithe young man in the slave quarters, and the other slaves there had watched mutely as she wrestled the young man into the corner, and sliced the deep layers out of his hair.
Ajalia could still feel the press of the young man's shoulders under her arm, and the hot huff of his breath as he had struggled against her. His name, she remembered, had been Uliam, and he had come from another estate in the East. Her master had sold Uliam, soon after Ajalia took his place, and she had served as face-bearing slave ever since. Face-bearing slaves often moved up in the ranks of household slaves, after some years, to be replaced by younger men. A face-bearing slave carried enormous respect and power in the house; such a slave acted in the master's name, and carried out independent trades while impersonating the master. Uliam, Ajalia soon found, had been weak, and slow to seize opportunity. It had taken her only a few days to surpass all that Uliam had achieved in the years he had served their master. Ajalia's master never spoke to her about her prowess, but he quietly kept her in her place, moving first one and then another slave into the places above her in the house. Philas had been one of these, but Ajalia knew that her master would hearken to her above all others. He had entrusted her with the dearest wish of his heart in the caravan to Slavithe. Ajalia knew that her master dreamed of seeing himself restored somehow to the dignity of his fathers; she knew he would give all he possessed to be once more on the level of his great forebears.
Ajalia drew her attention with some difficulty back to the room, and the people in it. Delmar, she saw, was regarding her with morose suspicion.
"Remember what I say," Ajalia told Daniel, who sat near her, his eyes fixed earnestly on her face. "I will expect you to spy on them, and to report their doings." Daniel nodded, and looked at the young women, and at Delmar. "Not him," Ajalia said, holding back a sigh, "the young ladies." Daniel nodded again.
Delmar was standing against the wall nearest the door; his arms were folded across his chest, and he was glaring at Ajalia with his mouth creased into a frown.
"I did not mean to keep you," Ajalia told the young women. "Where are you?" she asked in annoyance, looking around at them. "Go stand over there, where I can see you," she told them. Sun and Ossa moved into the space she had indicated. She waited for Clare to join them. "I am making mistakes," she told Delmar. "Keep track of them, and tell me what I do wrong. Now," Ajalia said, shifting in her seat, and looking wearily at the three young women. "You are here almost by accident. If Card had known you were with Calles, you would have been taken to the dark valleys, and you would have been sold to the farms there."
Clare watched Ajalia with blank eyes. Sun was turning her fingers over and over themselves, her eyes alternating between Ajalia and Delmar.
"Delmar has no interest in idle young things like you," Ajalia snapped at Sun. "He will never fall in love with you. Give up. Nam tried the same thing," Ajalia said, turning with a sigh to Daniel, who nodded wisely. Sun's face blanched, and she turned pale. Her mouth opened, but then she closed it, and stared with wide, irritated eyes at Ajalia's knees.
"Yes, little one," Ajalia told her, "look at my knees, and think of how wonderful you are in your new clothes. Do you know her name?" she demanded across at Delmar. Delmar had watched this exchange with an unchanging frown.
"No," he said shortly.
"And is she a person of interest to you, in any way?" Ajalia pressed. Delmar did not answer, but his mouth creased with scorn. "Look at his face," Ajalia told Sun, who turned reluctantly, and looked. She put her face down at once, a vivid blush climbing into her cheeks and brow. "Delmar is not a thing," Ajalia said. "He is a person, and he is your new ruler. So stop now, before I start to get bored."
"You're already bored," Clare said dully. Ajalia looked at this young woman. She was beginning to be interested in Clare, now that her stuffy pretense had fallen away. Clare's eyes were honest, and angry now. Before the scene in the oblong house, Clare had been defiant, and coarse, but now she had a gritty fury in her that Ajalia found compelling.
"I need you to form a household while I work," Ajalia said. "Co
nsider this your training. Learn to read," she said. Ossa nodded complacently. Ajalia saw Sun glance at her friend in irritation. Clare, whose eyes were still empty and strange, looked at Ajalia without blinking.
"What are you going to do with me?" Clare asked her. Ajalia ignored this interruption.
"Sun, you have one more chance," Ajalia said. "You are the beautiful one. You are to dress well, to have wonderful hair, and to learn to flirt. You will distract from Ossa. If you make another mistake," Ajalia said, "I will replace you."
Sun glared at Ajalia, anger licking finally into her eyes. Her jaw thrust a little forward, and the lower level of her teeth showed through her parted lips.