by Victor Poole
"Trade route," she told him. They were still speaking in the Eastern tongue. Ajalia glanced at Delmar. He had sat down on the corner of a chair, and was twiddling his thumbs.
"How are you going to establish a trade route if we run away like this?" Philas hissed. "They'll probably do something horrible to you."
"They won't," Ajalia said. "We already sold a lot of silks."
"We'll make more money in Talbos," Philas said, "even with what is left."
"I know," Ajalia said.
Philas stepped closer to her. Delmar looked up. Philas put a hand on Ajalia's shoulder, and gazed earnestly into her eyes.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Philas asked her. "This seems like an awfully silly risk to take. Come with me."
"No," she said. "I would never be able to look master in the face again."
"Then don't look him in the face," Philas said. "If you think the Thief Lord is as dangerous as all that, come away with the rest of the caravan."
"No," she said simply.
"Why?" he asked angrily.
"Because I told master I would give him a trade route, and I will give him a trade route." Ajalia met Philas's eyes easily; her conscience was clear enough to look at him steadily. His brow had wrinkled into a mesh of anger and concern.
"Master didn't know the city was like this," Philas argued. "It was a gamble to come here."
"He wants a trade route," Ajalia repeated.
"Well, what if you get yourself killed or something?" Philas complained. "What am I supposed to say to master then?"
"I don't know," Ajalia admitted. "I wasn't planning on dying."
Philas glared at her. His jaw was clenched, and an unhappy curl was in his lips.
"I don't like it," he told her. "I don't think you've thought this through."
"Don't worry," she said lightly. "The dead falcon is in love with me, and I can use him as a shield."
Philas glanced with distaste at Delmar.
"Don't trust him," he warned her. Delmar had wandered to a window, and was watching the air lighten.
"You've got to leave," Ajalia said.
"Be careful," Philas said. He lifted the bundle of robes. "I'll wait for you to join us," he added. "They'll want to meet master at some point."
"Tell them," Ajalia said, "if they ask, that I have been detained by the barbarians in Slavithe."
Philas grinned. "I guess they'll believe that easily enough," he admitted. "Here," he added, passing her his keys to the little house. "Send the boy, if you need anything," he added.
"Take Darien with you," Ajalia said. "I don't want to lose him here."
"I will," Philas said. "Come on," he said to Delmar in Slavithe. Delmar jumped at the familiar sound of the Slavithe words.
"Where are we going?" Delmar asked.
"Take Leed," Ajalia told Philas, "and send him back when you reach the northern pass."
Philas nodded, and went out of the room. Delmar stepped close to Ajalia, and tried to put his arms around her. Ajalia sidestepped his embrace.
"Goodbye," she said.
"What's wrong?" he asked blankly. His eyes were vague, and his mouth was unhappy. His jaw had softened, somehow, and he looked once again as if he possessed very little chin.
"You should have given me my knife when I told you I was going to look for it," Ajalia told him. "I said I was going to look for it while we were still in Talbos. You should have given it to me then. And," she added, "you should never have left me in the mountains with those men."
"I didn't know you'd mind," Delmar complained.
"Go with Philas," Ajalia told him. "I'll see you later."
"But we just got here," Delmar told her. She pushed him towards the door.
"Shoo," she said.
"I don't like it," Delmar told her.
"Okay," she said.
"Well, as long as we're clear," he added, his hand on the doorsill. "Bye," he added, and went down the stairs after Philas.
LIM'S SECRET BOX
Ajalia sighed and stretched. In a few moments, she heard the clatter of many footsteps below; she went to the window and saw the long chain of the slaves, burdened with leather goods and bundles of silks and spices, passing down the long white road. The streets were still almost deserted; the sun was only just beginning to show over the edge of the city walls. Ajalia watched Delmar and Philas follow along behind the line of slaves; at the front of the line were the two small figures of Leed and Darien. Leed was jostling the other boy, and telling him some animated story, his hands flying expansively through the air.
When the line of slaves and bundles vanished around the corner, heading to the northern corner of the city, Ajalia sighed. She felt a great burden fall from her shoulders. The little house felt enormously empty now. She thought that she could hear the dust motes floating serenely through the air. Ajalia went up the stairs to the top of the house, and looked around the little attic. She pried up a corner of the floor, where one piece of the stone had been chipped away, and retrieved a small wooden key.
Ajalia carried the key down the stairs and into the kitchen that lay at the back of the little house. She unlocked a cupboard that nestled in the very corner of the room, and climbed up onto the table. She put her hand into the back of the cupboard; she removed a pile of bowls, and another pile of cups. Straining to the very edge of her fingers, she laid her hands on the old leather book she had hidden there, and pulled it out.
She replaced the cups and bowls in the cupboard. Locking the cupboard again, she carried the slim leather book to the top of the stairs, and replaced the key under the loose piece of white stone. Settling on the floor near the light from the open window, she took the stone rectangle out of her clothes, and opened the book.
The Slavithe tunic she had taken from Delmar began to grow hot; she pulled it over her head, and threw it into the corner of the room. Rolling onto her stomach, she flipped the stone rectangle to the side that showed the old Slavithe letters, and examined the first page of the leather book.
The very first letter on the first page was a wild tangle of short, stiff marks. Ajalia traced her forefinger over the painted marks, and then placed the stone rectangle on top of the page. She easily found the same old letter on the rectangle. Keeping one finger on the stone rectangle where the letter was painted, she turned the stone piece over, and examined the other side. In the same place where the old letter was, the wide letter 'B' was painted.
"'B' for Bakroth," Ajalia murmured, and looked for the next letters. In a moment, she had found the corresponding letters for the rest of the first word; it did, indeed, spell Bakroth's name. A thrill of accomplishment swelled in Ajalia's chest. She turned through the pages of the leather book, searching for another occurrence of the ancient name. She found another two instances of Bakroth, written in the old Slavithe script, before a loud rattling and knocking at the door echoed up through the little house.
Ajalia leapt to her feet; she regretted this instantly, as rods of splitting pain travelled up through her ribs, and over her neck. She rubbed the back of her skull, and concealed the slim leather book in the folds of her clothes. Putting her fingers through her hair, she went down the stairs and answered the door.
Chad was standing in the street, looking irate.
"You were gone for a really long time," Chad complained.
Ajalia wanted to laugh, but she reflected that such an expression of emotion would hurt her ribs too much.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"The servants are awful," Chad told her. He came into the little house, and sat down on the makeshift couch. "I don't know what to do with them. They don't mind me at all. They finished the sewing," he added, "and then there wasn't much else for them to do, so I had them go and help the others with the cleaning you had them doing."
Ajalia had set several of her Slavithe servants to scrubbing and sweeping out the few unoccupied houses she had taken from Gevad.
"Is the cleaning finished?" she
asked.
"I don't know," Chad said with an aggravated sigh. "This is very difficult work," he told her. "You have to watch them all the time. Some of them," he added, in an aggrieved sigh, "have tried to steal."
Ajalia nodded somberly.
"This time must have been very hard for you," she said. She did not add that she had only been away for one day.
"Well," Chad said. "I came here, because I thought you might be back. I checked yesterday, too, but you were still gone, and Jenna kicked me out of the house." His face made a curious snarl when he said Jenna's name. "And another thing," Chad said harshly. "That Jenna woman is awful. I hate her."
Ajalia smiled to herself.
"I'm very sorry," she said. She did not feel sorry at all. "Go and get five of the young women," she said, "and bring them here. And bring me all of the little boys."
Chad emitted an exaggerated sigh.
"All right," he said. He had the look of a martyr in his eyes. "Is there anything else you want?" he asked.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "Tell the Thief Lord that I want to meet him here."
Chad sat bolt upright; the tiredness vanished from his eyes.
"Why?" he demanded. "Is it for an exciting reason? Can I be here?"
"No," Ajalia said. "Get me the young women, and the boys, and then go and see the Thief Lord." She could see Chad's chest beginning to expand with an idea of his own importance. He stood up.
"I'll see what I can do," he said grandly. "You know that the Thief Lord can be very busy sometimes."
"I think that he will see me," Ajalia said gently.
"What should I tell him?" Chad asked eagerly.
"Tell him what you like," Ajalia said, "but have him come here this afternoon."
"What if he won't come?" Chad asked. "What should I say then?"
"He will come," Ajalia told him.
"How do you know?" Chad asked. His eyes were shining like a child's.
"Go," Ajalia said. She opened the door, and pushed Chad out.
"I'll come back," Chad called through the closing door. Ajalia went back through the house and up the stairs, until she came to the room that Lim had stayed in, when the caravan had first come to Slavithe. She rummaged through the bare furniture of the room until she found Lim's hiding place. She had followed Lim before the caravan had left the East, and spied on him. She had known he was appointed to be the chief slave on the caravan to Slavithe, and she had wanted to know his secrets.
One night in the East, a few days before the caravan was due to depart, she had watched him sneak out to an orchard, and dig a small leather box out from under the roots of a fruit tree. The box had had a curious lock, and a strangely shaped pair of figures on the corners near the front. She had not seen where Lim had hidden his box among the packing of the caravan, but she was sure that he had brought it. When Lim had been stripped of his belongings, and then given to the Thief Lord as a gift, Ajalia had made sure that the former chief slave had had no opportunity to retrieve his special box; she had examined his things once, before he had left the house, and she knew he had not got the box on his person.
She combed now through the furniture of the room, until she found a loose piece of bedding within the straw mattress of the bed. She pulled a hole open, and put her hands through the coarse straw until she felt the edges of a box. Her heart racing, she teased the box out from within the bed, and drew it out of the hole. The box had been sewn over with a coarse piece of cloth; inside of the cloth was a bundle of human hair. Ajalia realized that the hair was Lim's; he must have taken it up from the floor sometime after she had attacked him with her knife. She tossed aside the hair, and pulled out an ugly block of mud.
Lim had coated the leather box in plain mud. She knocked the mud gently against the floor, and pieces of gold began to fall away with the dried mud. Gradually a corner of metal was revealed. She peeled the dried mud away from the metal surface. More coins were buried within the mud. She knocked these loose, and pocketed them. When the metal box was wholly revealed, she examined it. A curious edge of hardened metal was closed over the seam of the box. Ajalia pulled her knife from its sheath, and worked the blade's edge into the seam of the box. After some work, she pried open one corner of the metal box, and exposed the leather box within.
It took her some time to expose the rest of the leather box. Finally, she lifted the small leather box out of its metal casing. The leather was soft and supple; the curious shapes she had seen on the front corners were figures carved of amber wood. The two figures were identical; one was turned to the right, its face upturned, and the long wings growing from its shoulders spread wide over the sides of the leather box. The other figure was the same as the first, but its face was pointed left. Ajalia ran her fingers over the wings, which were carved with a curious kind of webbing in the joints between the feathers. She turned the lock into the light from the window, and examined it.
The lock was tiny, but strong. She looked at it closely, and reached for her hair before she remembered that she had dropped her hair pins in the road to Talboth. She patted over her clothes, and reached into an inner pocket sewn against the breast of her robe. Drawing out a pair of long hair pins, she put one between her teeth, and inserted the other into the tiny lock of the box.
Her lips working gently, she picked the lock of the box. With a small click, the lock sprang open. Ajalia put the box down in her lap, and twisted her black hair into a long curl. She pinned her hair in a complicated twist on the top of her head, and pulled another pair of pins from her clothes to secure it. When her hair was wound tightly above her head, she turned back to the box.
Holding her breath, Ajalia lifted the lid of the leather box. A long piece of gold, shaped into a dagger, a sheaf of folded papers, and a long necklace made of carved bones and gems were exposed to the light. Ajalia lifted the bone necklace; she had seen a necklace like this only once before, when a leading slave of another house had lost his wife in a fire. He had saved her long thighbone from the burial, and had another slave carve the long bone into a chain that he wore about his neck. Ajalia did not know if Lim had ever been married, or if he had taken this chain from another slave. She thought it was likely that the bone was human; some of the pieces of the chain had been fitted with delicate gold filigree, and tiny precious gemstones were set into the gold.
The knife she lifted into the light; it was the length of her hand and wrist, and had a narrow blade that grew from the shape of the hilt. The hilt was carved with delicate swirls and flakes, like fish scales. The blade shone with a dull gleam. Ajalia turned the knife over in her hands; on one end was a knob that was engraved with the initials G. E., and the number 4. The letters were written in an ornate version of the common script of Leopath, and had tiny stones of gleaming white set about them.
Ajalia put the golden knife back into the box with the bone and jewel chain, and drew out the papers. Some of the papers were letters addressed to Lim; she set these aside without reading them. Two of the papers were a heavy cream parchment. The paper was expensive, and written over in an elaborate language that Ajalia did not recognize. She did not know what place the writing was from; the letters curled, and swung about each other like the rollicking of sea waves. One of the pieces of parchment had been folded up many times; creases were thick in a grid over the paper, and a corner of the parchment threatened to fall away. Ajalia examined the first paper closely. She turned it over, and studied the back. In one corner of the parchment was a clear watermark, showing the symbol of the Saroyan crest.
A flutter of interest rose up in Ajalia's chest. She laid down the paper that had been folded, and picked up the other one. The second parchment was clean and strong; it had not been folded. It was a half sheet of paper, and both sides were covered in a narrow, slanting script of the same language that was written on the folded piece. Ajalia took both of these pieces of parchment, and laid them carefully inside the slim leather book that she had tucked into her clothes. She put the coins into the hid
den pocket below the waist of her pants, and wrapped the bone chain up into a coil. She left the personal letters and the golden knife inside the leather box; she turned the tiny lock on the front of the box, and heard a solid click. She replaced the leather box inside the metal box, and stuffed the metal box partway into the hole in the mattress. She knew that Lim would come looking, when he got the chance, and she knew he would tear the house apart if he could not find his stash.
Ajalia went back up the stairs to the top floor. She wrapped the leather book into Delmar's tunic, and tucked it under her arm. The door downstairs made a loud bang.
Ajalia went down the stairs and into the kitchen. A raised chorus of voices filled the front room; Ajalia saw the group of young women she had requested coming into the house, followed by a dirty snaggle of boys. Chad was clapping his hands, and blustering along behind them all, his voice raised.
Ajalia concealed the wrapped book under a pile of clean dishes, and went out to the front room.
Chad was haranguing the last of the ragged boys into the house; a little group of the urchins had huddled together in the sunlit street. From what Ajalia could hear, they were playing a game with rocks.
Some of the Slavithe boys were nearly half-grown; their lanky legs and arms stuck out too far from their ragged clothes, and their faces had the awkward transitional look of a man coming out from a child. She guessed that many of them were on the edge of thirteen. The youngest boy was only about five.
Ajalia went out into the street, and helped Chad get the boys inside. Chad was flapping his arms uselessly, looking more and more like a deranged bird. His eyes were wide, his face was flushed, and his mouth opened and shut like a fish attempting to breathe out of the water. The sounds that issued forth from him almost lacked the form of words; they were squeaks and whining groans. Ajalia was not surprised that her servants were paying Chad little mind. Ajalia went and stood in the middle of the boys' game. She drew three coins out of her pocket, and tossed them up into the air. She caught the coins, and walked inside. The boys followed her like small animals on the trail of food.