by Victor Poole
"Up here," he said quietly, and led Ajalia up darkened stairs. Ajalia thought of her servants. She was supposed to be arranging her household, she remembered with a feeling of stretched annoyance. She wanted to discipline her girls, and to train Clare as a face-bearing slave. Once Ajalia's master came, if he did come, she wanted to have a fully groomed household prepared for him to step into. A partially-formed plan of escape had begun to develop in the very back of Ajalia's mind. She had never plotted her escape to freedom from her master's ownership before, but Delmar, and the strangely dream-like sequence of events in Slavithe, had begun to teach her the value of solitude, and personal autonomy. She began, in the depths of her heart, to long for some secluded hut in a wasteland, where she could live alone with some chickens and goats, and perhaps a horse for companionship. She wanted solitude, and quiet, peaceful days that linked together with a sameness that she assumed anyone else would find stultifying in the extreme. She wanted to pursue hermithood.
She could not imagine leaving Slavithe without achieving her master's goals; she found herself unable to picture any future in which she did not give him precisely what he wanted. Ajalia felt bound, somehow, to the needs and wants of other people, and she counted her own desires very last, if at all.
Bain led her into a high room at the top of the house. He went to a large window that lay along the edge of the building, and stepped onto the sill. The white city spread out below them. Ajalia could see the wall, and beyond the wall she could see the fluffy tops of the trees.
"What are you doing?" Ajalia asked. She could hear muffled thumps in the distance; she thought that someone was breaking down the door.
"I need you to come with me," Bain said. He looked back at her, and held out his hand.
"I don't believe in magic," Ajalia said. She felt her insides lurching around. She told herself that she was delusional, and that she was going to fly to her death from this building.
"You're not like other people," Bain said impatiently. "You can fly." Ajalia was not even tempted to laugh. She looked out on the white roofs, and the colored flags that draped over the tops of the buildings.
"Are you trying to kill me?" Ajalia asked Bain. Bain looked steadily at her.
"No," he said, but Ajalia thought she saw a glimmer of a smile behind his eyes.
"Because if I died," Ajalia said slowly, "maybe you could take my body." She looked steadily at Bain, and he looked steadily at her.
"Why would I want to take your body?" Bain asked. Ajalia felt a curl of anger in her throat.
"To see your mother again," Ajalia said shortly. She turned and went out the room, the way she had come. Bain followed her.
"There are guards after me," he said, but the urgency was leaving his voice. "Really," he added. Ajalia went down the stairs, and Bain followed along behind her. She came at last to the locked door, and pushed it ajar.
"You're a great liar," she told Bain. He said nothing. Ajalia paused, and examined the lock. Bain had put a dash of magic into the door, to make the lock appear bright for a moment. "How did you make me hear things?" she asked him. He shrugged.
"Maybe I didn't," he suggested.
"And would you like me to try killing you?" she asked him. He blanched.
"You wouldn't be able to," he said, but his voice wavered.
"Do you want me to try?" Ajalia said. Bain vanished. Ajalia went out into the courtyard that stretched between the houses. She went to the narrow alley, and felt her way through. At the other end of the alley, with a length of metal bar in her hands, was Ullar.
"Planning to kill me?" Ajalia asked, before Ullar could see her. Ullar jumped up in the air; the metal clattered out of her hands. The mother ran away into the streets, and her feet made a rattle over the white stones. Ajalia sighed, and nudged at the bar of metal with her foot. She was determined to get to the bottom of this business, but her legs felt weary, and she was annoyed with life. She imagined Philas coming to see her, and then remembered that he would bring the stealth of drink, and sarcastic eyes. She thought about Ocher, and his wife whom she had not met, and she looked up at the sky. She worked very hard at not thinking about Delmar. My life, Ajalia told herself firmly, is a mess. She began to walk towards the Thief Lord's house, and she thought about her servants. She had meant to have settled them all weeks ago, and she pictured them now, in their new uniforms, and tried to think of some way to get them into order in the next ten hours.
Ajalia had never been so weary as she was now. She felt awake, and alert, but she knew in her heart, or she thought she knew, that nothing she could do would change how she felt. She was convinced that she would never be able to shift the heavy burden of guilt and ire that lay over her like a shadow. She forgot about the frightening maw that had followed her around like a cloud of engulfing darkness; the blackness had moved within her now, and her mind had withdrawn inside of itself, like a wounded wolf hiding in a deep crevice. She could not see about herself as she usually did; she felt the change, and would not emerge long enough to label it. She knew that Delmar was gone, and that she didn't want him to come back, and she knew that she was growing closer and closer to eliminating the possibility of hope. Ever since Ajalia had been a girl, and since her father had left the family behind, she had dreamed of finding some place that was different, some way of living that cut away the pain that throbbed in her heart.
She had thought first of becoming a lone wanderer, but slavery had ended that thought soon enough. Then she had thought of being some forlorn heroine, but the realities and sordid nature of her first owners disillusioned her of this notion very quickly. Then she had told herself that the fabric traders in the East, and their rigid ways, would create the structure she need to reform the chaos in her heart. She had thought, for some years, that she had done it; she had expected the darkness to remain always behind her. But Slavithe, and the trouble here, first with Lim, and then with the Thief Lord's wife, had awoken a kind of fuse inside of her soul. She was burning up, and ever since she had met Delmar, and Philas had moved in on her and tried to seduce her, she had felt more and more as though she were about to explode. She could not find peace; every way she turned presented more and more the reality of her inner life, and her past. The darkness was materializing in ways that Ajalia did not want to see. She was running of out dampening things to try. She had been sure that forming Delmar into a political monarch would occupy her mind; she had been sure that arranging the household for her master would do the trick as well. Everywhere she turned now, she saw images of her laughing father, and the strange, cold smile that Gabriel had worn.
I won't think of them, Ajalia told herself dully, but she was beginning to slip. It was nearly becoming impossible to keep the pictures out of her mind. She could feel the blows on her arms and her face; she closed her eyes, and reminded herself of the black horse that lay stabled some distance away in the center of the city. I could go and ride my horse, Ajalia told herself, and she thought she was going to die. All the world spun around her with irritating regularity. Her feet were moving in a shuffle through the streets; she was walking still towards the Thief Lord's house. She couldn't remember why she was walking that way. The night was growing deeper; it was early still. Ajalia half expected to see the stars begin to drop out of the sky, trailing fire behind them. She wanted something to happen, to break the awful tension inside of her chest. She could not breathe. She felt tight and full. I wish, she thought to herself, that I could stop being alive. The streets were unnaturally empty; in other parts of the city, there was a constant drifting of pedestrians, up at least until the deep hours of latest night and very early morning, but here, in the stretch of streets around the Thief Lord's house, no one stirred out after nightfall. Ajalia tried to remember the expression on the Thief Lord's wife's face before she had died, and she conjured up only a dizzy sense of unreality. I dreamed that, Ajalia told herself. Her ribs seemed to be crawling all over with mealy worms. She wished she could go back to the time when Philas had argued with her. Sh
e wished she could go back to talking to Delmar, so that she could hurt him. She told herself that she never did hurt Delmar; she always meant to, she reminded herself, and instead she was kind, and gentle. I'm not kind or gentle, she told herself in disgust, and shook herself.
I'll go to the Thief Lord's house, Ajalia told herself, and I'll start a fight with whoever answers the door. A strange feeling of fatalistic anger was building in her bosom; she wanted to hit things, and to break things down. I'm going to hurt someone, she told herself, and she smiled. She came at last around the last corner before the Thief Lord's house, and she saw the smooth white edifice of the building. A long muffled feeling, like cotton in the shape of an invisible cloud, settled over the whole street. Ajalia sat down in the shadow at the corner of the street, and watched the Thief Lord's house. She forgot that she had been about to go in. She couldn't recall where she had been headed. A blankness filled up her mind; she stared at the door, and waited. She was sure that something would happen. The door was closed, and the windows were darkened. That woman, she told herself, will never go home, and she was thinking of Delmar's mother, and the way she had sunk down into the garbage pit. She remembered the tall poison tree, clustered round with bleached bones, and she told herself that she ought to have dragged the body there, to have put the Thief Lord's wife's skull into the heap of bones that lay around the trunk.
I suppose, Ajalia told herself, that I'm a terrible person. She thought about Ocher. If she had seen him going along the street, she reflected, she would have talked to him. I wonder if Philas has reconciled with his father the king, she thought, as a ludicrous bubble of hilarity burst in her chest. I bet he's married some awful princess, she thought, and smiled as she remembered the way Philas had sloped away from her with his head ducked down. Philas is ridiculous, she told herself. And Delmar doesn't care about me, she reminded herself. An absurdly strong feeling of angst and loneliness rose up in her gut; she wanted to find Delmar, and to throw herself into his arms. She told herself that Delmar was a mess, but her heart didn't listen. She said to herself that Delmar was a liar, but she couldn't muster any real anger. And he's gone, anyway, Ajalia told herself firmly.
She was sitting against a building just opposite and to the side of the Thief Lord's house. She was in deep shadow, and as she watched the door, a low murmur gradually came into her awareness. She realized that two people were standing near her, in the door of the building against which she sat. Ajalia wondered if she was imagining things. She moved a little closer to the doorway; she was in a double shadow, cast by this building, and by another just next to it, that protruded into the street; she was sure that she could not be seen. She did not know the voices that she heard.
AJALIA STAGES A RESCUE
"They aren't come this time," one voice said. It was a male voice, she thought. The speaker was breathing hard, and had a strangely familiar lisp over the ends of the words. She thought that she had heard the lisp before, but then she realized that the sounds were familiar to her; this was a dialect that she had heard used in Talbos.
"It's impossible," the second voice murmured. "Since the boy is gone, none here can track their faces."
"Someone has done it, though," the first voice said angrily. "Who is killing the witches?"
"Perhaps it is only Denai," the second voice suggested. "He is overeager."
"It is not Denai," the first voice said. "Don't use names."
"It hardly matters," the second voice said. Ajalia thought that the second voice might be a woman; she had heard at first too many low tones, but now she pictured a thick woman, with a heavy jaw.
"When they are gone, we will move into the temples again," the man said.
"We will see," the woman replied. "Ocher is not ready to join us."
"Then push him harder," the man said impatiently. "Why did you marry him, then?"
"He is stubborn," the woman said lightly. Ajalia had lost interest in her troubles; she was caught up now in the conversation she was overhearing. Ocher, and Denai, were quickly becoming more interesting to her than they had been before.
"Well, be harsher then," the man said impatiently. Ajalia heard a long, drawn out kiss. Her stomach turned over; she thought of Ocher, and wondered if he knew his wife was from Talbos. Ocher's wife did not have the same accent as the man who spoke, but Ajalia was sure that she was foreign. She recognized the way that two outsiders spoke together; it was the way she had talked to Philas, and even to Lim, before she had killed him.
"I'll see you in a week," the woman said finally.
"Don't give him any word about the Thief Lord's wife," the man instructed. "They'll find out soon enough."
"I don't think she's dead," the woman said. "I think it's a mistaken sign."
"The signs don't lie," the man told her.
"But there's no body," the woman said, "and who could have killed her?"
I could have, Ajalia thought to herself, and she crept out of the shadow, away from the two people who spoke in the doorway of the tall building. She came to the edge of the building, and went around the Thief Lord's house to the street that led to her own home.
The dragon temple loomed huge and white in the darkness; it seemed like a great grave. Ajalia felt herself entering a kind of muffled unreality when she went up the stairs. She had killed Delmar's mother there, she told herself, as she stepped beside the place where the blood had dragged up the steps, and that is where I sat with Delmar, she thought, when she came within the long empty hall.
Denai's door was ajar, and a thin light showed within. Ajalia went towards his door, and knocked on the wall beside the open place.
"Come in," Denai called. Ajalia went into the room, and sat down on a corner of a trunk that lay against one wall.
"Tell me about killing witches," Ajalia said. Denai looked up at her; he grinned.
"I had a feeling you would find out," he admitted. He was holding a pair of leathers, and a dirty rag. Ajalia saw that he had been scrubbing a harness. She folded her arms, and looked at the gleaming buckles.
"Well," she said. Denai settled himself back onto his seat against the bedpost, and moved the rag in smooth motions over the leather. The smell of thick saddle soap filled the little room, and reminded Ajalia of home. Her father had been a teacher, but they had lived near a village where the horse traders stayed in the warm seasons, and she had been there often with her mother. She watched Denai work; his mouth formed into a circle, and his eyebrows fixed low over his eyes.
"What do you know?" he asked, after a long silence.
"Assume I know a lot," Ajalia said. He glanced at her. She saw that he was thinking of how much to say.
"Well," he said.
"Let's start with this," Ajalia suggested. "Whose side are you on?" Denai put down the rag. He sat up slowly, and looked at Ajalia. She met his eyes, and he met hers.
"How much do you know?" he asked.
"A lot," she said.
"That doesn't tell me anything," he pointed out.
"Nope," she agreed. Denai studied her, and then looked down at his hands.
"What would you like to hear?" Denai asked.
"Oh," Ajalia said, "why don't you guess, and then we'll find out if we are friends, or enemies."
Denai laughed, but then he saw that she was serious.
"Well, of course we're on the same side," he said easily. Ajalia regarded him solemnly. "I'm pretty sure we're on the same side," he said. Ajalia saw that he was trying to reassure her.
"Are you from Talbos?" she asked. She watched his face closely. He observed her eye, and then nodded. "And I know that you believe in magic," she added. He nodded, and then took up his rag again.
"I'd be a fool not to," he said.
"Was it difficult, to pass as a Slavithe man?" she asked him. He glanced up at her.
"Not very hard," he admitted.
"And how long have you been here?" she prodded.
"Since I was a child," he said.
"Why?" Ajalia aske
d. Denai smoothed the soap into the long strip of leather. His hands were marked up with dirt and sweat from the harness. Ajalia saw that his fingers were thick and sturdy, from handling the horses. "Did you come to fight in the war?" she asked. Denai did not move for a long time. His face darkened.
"How do you know about that?" he asked. He no longer smiled at her; his eyes were guarded now.
"The war between your priests of Talbos, and the witches here?" Ajalia urged. Denai stood up; he loomed over Ajalia, and his shoulders cast a shadow over her face. The leathers in his hands made long lines stretching down to the white stone floor.
"How did you learn of that?" he asked. He looked as though he were on the highest alert; Ajalia told herself that she would be lucky if he didn't try to kill her now.
"Why shouldn't I know?" she asked. Denai studied her carefully.
"No one knows," he said finally.
"Except for the witches," Ajalia suggested. Denai nodded. She saw that he was trying to choose between suspicion and camaraderie. "And so," she asked, "you are afraid I may be a witch?" She wanted to laugh, but Denai looked too much like an angry and frightened young warrior for her to laugh just now. He nodded curtly.
"I am not a witch," Ajalia said, suppressing the urge to smile.
"You come from a far land," Denai said, "and you speak of things that are kept very close here."
"And I am one who is confided in by the eldest son of the Thief Lord," Ajalia pointed out. Denai's mouth twisted into thought at this. "And one of my servants was a very old witch, who died when I was first in the city," she added. She considered whether she ought to tell Denai of the other old woman in the tenement, with the string of faces. "And I have met with Ullar, the mother of Bain," Ajalia said. She was not sure why she said this, but she had a feeling that Denai might know the woman.
She saw at once that she had been right; Denai's face went through a rapid transition; he looked first angry, and then afraid. His lips parted in a grimace, and then he smoothed his expression into a forced smile.