by Victor Poole
"Why is Philas here?" she asked. This time, the word "Philas" came out all right.
"He came to see your man," Delmar told Ajalia, "about the yurl. He brought your black horse."
Ajalia turned her head, as though if she glanced to the side, she would be able to see her scruffy black horse standing right there in the hollow. She saw nothing but trees and leaves.
"Where?" Ajalia croaked.
"Out farther, by the road," Delmar said. He put his hand against her cheek. As ever, his touch relieved Ajalia's pain somehow; she sighed.
"Keep touching me," she said, and closed her eyes.
"You're turning sentimental," Delmar informed her. She breathed in the smell of his palm. An acrid scent, not like Delmar's own musk of sunshine, tickled her nose.
"What happened?" she asked him, her eyes shut fast. Delmar crouched down, and kissed her. Ajalia felt a difference in his skin at once. Before the incident with Lim, and with the white magic, and before even the kiss Delmar had given her before she had blacked out, his kisses had been like flower petals pressing lovingly over her face. Now his mouth was like fire that licked the life out of her mouth; she felt a curdling burn in her heart, and between her legs. She pulled away from him with a gasp.
"What happened to you?" she demanded. Delmar's kiss had quite woken her up. She realized that she was wearing clothes again; her cream outer robe, the robe Delmar had folded away into the bag, was creased over her chest. Her arms, she saw, were still bandaged. She did not know how long it had been since she had killed Lim.
She examined Delmar's face. She had thought, at first, that the bruising and dark marks she had seen there were a creation of her dreams; she saw now that he was, indeed, roughed up considerably. He looked as though he had had an encounter with death.
"What happened?" she asked, touching his hollowed cheeks. Delmar laughed; his laugh was clear and strong.
"You passed out for a while," he told her. "Leed brought Philas down the road, and then Philas followed Lim's tracks through the trees. Lim was clumsy. Philas helped me," he added, "with Lim. He showed me how to empty the clothes."
Ajalia knew what Delmar meant; Philas would have taken apart the clever seams and the second pockets. Most of the slaves from the East imitated the same hiding places. Philas was senior in experience to Lim, and it was unlikely that Lim would have tricks Philas would not know. Ajalia noticed that Delmar had a curiously fat look about him; she recognized that look. It was the way poor slaves looked when they first realized how to obtain their own money. She smiled at him weakly.
"You are a grave robber now," she said.
"Hardly," Delmar said. "And they were my mother's things, anyway. She'll be glad to have them back."
Not quite like a slave yet, Ajalia reflected. A true slave would never think of returning found spoils.
"Where's Philas?" she asked. She had thought that she had imagined him; she was not sure where in her waking her memories had changed into reality. She half-looked around to see if her father was crouched within the hollow as well. Delmar followed her gaze, but he said nothing of the ghostly pallor that creased her cheeks, or the shiver that passed over her arms.
"Philas is gone to see about the horse," Delmar said, "and Leed. Card's made a deal with Philas about some of your young women, your slaves."
"They're servants," Ajalia said wearily, closing her eyes again.
"Not anymore," Delmar told her. "Card sold them all for you. You have money for them now, I guess."
"What?" Ajalia snapped. She sat upright, and fell over hard. An immediate line of breath tangled out of her lungs. She began to cough. Delmar waited patiently, and stroked her back.
"Stop touching," Ajalia said peevishly. "You make me feel better."
"I like making you feel better," Delmar said peaceably, but he withdrew his hand.
"Slaves?" Ajalia asked. She kept her eyes closed. A horrific pounding was in her skull. She wanted to lay quietly again, but it was too late; she had shaken loose a tumbling avalanche of unbearable pressure, and it was winding all through her torso and her neck. "Oh, good grief," she said between her teeth. She breathed in slowly, and blinked away the tears of pain that raised up behind her eyes. A sickening nausea reared up in her throat; she swallowed.
"How long have I been like this?" she asked. Her face was pressed into her legs.
"A few weeks," Delmar said seriously. Ajalia made such a dreadful face at Delmar that he laughed out loud. "I'm kidding," he said. "Only two days," he amended, and kissed her again.
Ajalia had every intention of pulling away, but Delmar's mouth relieved the pain in her head so thoroughly that she wound herself willingly into his embrace. Delmar made a species of grunt, and slipped his hand more deeply around her ribs.
"Hello," Philas said loudly. Delmar ignored him, and finished kissing Ajalia. Ajalia pushed at Delmar's neck; he bit gently at her lip, and let go of her. "He can't marry you," Philas told Ajalia. She closed her eyes, and settled into Delmar's lap.
"Why aren't you in Talbos?" she asked Philas, her eyes open a crack.
"Yurl," Philas explained. Ajalia sighed.
"I was about to take care of that," she admitted. "Things happened."
"I can see that," Philas said, looking with benign interest at the two of them.
"Oh, stop," Ajalia said wearily. "You can see that I am having a difficult time." The long bandages on both of her arms were stained black and red with earth and blood; her hair was loose and wild around her cheeks. She could feel the pallor in her face, and she knew that her lips trembled when she spoke.
"You killed Lim," Philas said.
"He started it," Ajalia said, dragging herself into a sitting position. The world spun around her briefly, and then settled into a slow burn of incessant discomfort. The place in her side where the poisoned rod had pierced was glowing inside of her; she could feel a kind of loud white light emanating internally from that place.
"What did you put in me?" she murmured to Delmar. Delmar moved his head sharply to the side.
"You've had a lot of mush," he said. Ajalia did not know why he didn't want Philas to know about the magic, but she accepted his excuse without protest.
"I had a buyer," Ajalia told Philas. "A man from the wild places in between Talbos and Slavithe. His name is Rosk. Leed knows of him."
"All right," Philas said. He was watching her with a careful expression in his eyes. "I want to talk to Jay," Philas told Delmar. "Go away."
"No," Delmar said.
"Fine," Philas retorted, his lip curling, and switched into the Eastern language. "Do you want me to kill him?" Philas asked Ajalia, nodding to Delmar. Ajalia breathed carefully; she could feel a tearing movement through all of her ribs; when she breathed deeply, her insides made an unpleasant sloshing motion.
"No," Ajalia said in Slavithe. "And don't call me Jay."
"You're coming back with me," Philas said in the Eastern tongue. "I'm waiting until you're strong enough to take you with me. That's why I brought the horse." Philas glanced with dislike at Delmar. "He's a disaster," he said. Delmar was sitting near Ajalia, his body half curved around her, his shoulders turned towards her. He was like a stone statue, a living carving of a lion. Delmar watched Ajalia; she could feel his gaze on her cheeks, and the blood came into her face. She could see that Philas wanted to come nearer.
She watched Philas's face, and wondered if he had changed. She was sure he had been drinking again; the liquor hung about him like a great cloak. His eyes were sharp, the way that his eyes had been before Slavithe. Philas had run dry of his own private store of potent concoctions a few days before the caravan had finished coming through the desert to Slavithe; Ajalia knew he had been nursing his alcohol through the long journey, relying on the city to be plenteous with taverns. She had never seen him as he had been in Slavithe, deprived of drink. For a while she had wondered if he would change, but now the shield of inebriation was against Philas's eyes, and she no longer trusted him. She s
aw that he saw this; a particular hardness in his jaw told her he knew her thoughts. Philas glared at Ajalia, his lips pressed together. The slave glanced at Delmar. Distaste and dislike were creased between Philas's eyes, and his nose was wrinkled. Delmar could not follow the words Philas had said to Ajalia, but the slave's meaning was clear enough. Delmar moved closer to Ajalia, and put his arm protectively around her waist.
"Can I beat him?" Philas asked her quietly. Gingerly, she shook her head.
"I need him, Philas," she said in Slavithe. Philas's mouth turned down in anger.
"Speak to me," he demanded in the language of the East. "You owe me that."
"I owe you nothing," Ajalia snapped in the Eastern tongue. A sharp throb stabbed into the top of her head when she spoke; she ignored the discomfort. Red lights were beginning to flash at the back of her vision. "I promised master a trade route," she began to say.
"Again, with the trade route," Philas exploded. "If master cared so much about Slavithe, he would have sent—" Philas broke off, his face changing, an ashen tint creeping into his cheeks. "No," he said, his eyes digging into Ajalia, searching through the depths of her eyes. Desperation moved gradually up his face until it settled into his eyes. "No," Philas said. The slave's eyes flicked to Delmar; Ajalia saw that Philas did not trust Delmar not to understand, or not to remember the Eastern words he used next. Philas looked back to Ajalia. "Tell me master did not send you for that," Philas pleaded, his voice urgent and unhappy.
Ajalia gazed on Philas without answering. A regal expression, as though she were a friend to death and feared nothing, was in her eyes.
"What?" Delmar asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.
Philas swore violently in the Eastern tongue, and then again, more vehemently, in a language Ajalia did not know, the same language he had used before, to teach her the old sailing song about the lost prince. Ajalia watched Philas swear; the tall slave stormed out of the hollow. She could hear him ripping at grass with his hands. The swearing petered out into silence, and the flinging of torn verdure stopped. After a moment, Philas appeared again at the edge of the hollow. His face was white, but his eyes had turned hard, and his mouth was determined.
Philas climbed into the hollow. He came near Ajalia; Delmar tightened his grip on her, and Philas cast a scornful look at Delmar.
"Filthy foreigner," Philas spat in the Eastern tongue.
"Well, you're a liar," Delmar said viciously in Slavithe. Philas's eyes burned. He looked at Delmar, whose eyes were narrowed, his wan face drawn with suspicion, and the tall, dark slave barked with laughter.
"Fine," Philas said. "Fine." He stared at Ajalia. The intensity of Philas's gaze made a cascade of tiredness crest in her heart. She felt as though she could not breathe.
"You knew this trip was different," Ajalia said. She closed her eyes, and waited.
"We all knew it was different," Philas said, and it was true. The slaves had all been prepared for a strange trading journey on this caravan; no complete group of slaves and beasts, together with their goods, and packs, and fine clothes, had ever made the sojourn across the wide deserts of Leopath to meet with the legendary and reclusive people of Slavithe, the people of the rocks, who clung to life on the bare edge of the continent.
"I knew master played a deep game," Philas said slowly, "but I did not suspect this."
"Well," Ajalia said. "You know we could have started back by now."
"Yes," Philas admitted. The caravan had been arranged to last anywhere from six months to a year; once the slaves had reached Slavithe, it had become clear that they could clear themselves of their goods in a month, or less. "And no one knew," Philas asked, "but you?"
"No one knows," Ajalia said. "Not in the East, not here."
Philas reached out and took Ajalia's hand. Delmar watched the male slave closely, but did not move.
"Are you all right?" Philas asked her. Ajalia nodded, moving her head very little.
"I am fine," she said in a hollow voice. Delmar shifted. The long conversation in the oily Eastern tongue was making a kind of glazed look come into his eyes. Philas glanced at the Thief Lord's oldest son, and then looked back at Ajalia.
"I will have to leave," Philas warned her. "I'll go east, to Saroyan."
"I know," she said. She had told him this would be so, some time ago, but he had ascribed her words to a fear of the Thief Lord, and to a nervousness about the trade.
"There will be war," he told her. She said nothing, her eyes on the twisted roots beneath her. Philas sighed, and pressed his lips against Ajalia's hand. "I am sorry," Philas said in the Slavithe language to Delmar. "She belongs with you. I was jealous. I wish only for Ajalia's happiness."
Ajalia smiled at Delmar, and at Philas. Delmar watched Philas like a hawk.
"You are sweet," Ajalia said to Philas in the Eastern tongue, "but Delmar is not so stupid as that."
"Does he know what you come here for?" Philas asked in the Eastern language. Ajalia shook her head.
"No," she said. "He does not know." And he will never know, she added to herself.
Delmar was watching them, his eyes narrowed, his lips moving slowly along with the sounds they made with their mouths. Ajalia touched Delmar's chin, and he smiled at her.
"I will come for you," Philas told her in the Eastern tongue. "When it is over, I will come."
"I will not live," Ajalia said. "I thought I might, before this." She gestured at the hollow, and the sunlight that was drifting cheerfully over the bandages on her arms. "Now," she said with a smile, and she spoke in the Slavithe language, "I am resigned to my fate." Delmar glanced at her sharply. Ajalia could see that he wanted to ask her what fate she meant; she was grateful that he kept his questions to himself, for now. Ajalia laughed. She inched away from Delmar's embrace, and moved onto her hands and knees.
"We are a fine picture, the three of us," she told Philas in the Eastern tongue. "I shall cut myself in two, and you can carry one half home to master."
Delmar and Philas regarded her soberly, their faces drawn into serious and grim lines. Ajalia set her limbs carefully down against a flat space in the tree roots, settling her back against the rim of the hollow.
"What did she say?" Delmar asked Philas.
"She doesn't like crying," Philas told Delmar. "I'll leave you the horse," he told Ajalia.
"Take Leed," Ajalia said swiftly in the Eastern tongue. "Put him together with Darien," she told Philas. "Things are moving faster than I thought they would," she admitted. "I don't want the boys caught up in this." Philas nodded. He took Ajalia's hand in both of his, and pressed his lips against her skin.
"I am sorry," he told her, and Ajalia's back hurt at the sound of his voice as it curved through the thick twists of the Eastern tongue. She shook her head, telling him not to be sorry. "I am," Philas insisted. His eyes caught her gaze, and the sincerity in his face made her lips tremble. "I am sorry," he said again. He pressed his forehead against her hand, and held it there for a moment. Delmar stared at the pair of them, his mouth a little open. Ajalia knew he was going to ask her what Philas was saying to her, as soon as the male slave was gone, and she did not know what she was going to tell the Thief Lord's oldest son.
"Goodbye," Philas murmured. He did not look at her again. Ajalia felt as though her heart were wrenching in two. She thought of the papers she had found in Lim's secret box, and said nothing.
THE EASTERN SLAVE SERIES
The Slave from the East
The White Brand
The Thief Lord's Son
The Dead Falcon
The Magic War
The King of Talbos
The Fall of Slavithe
Into the East
The Kingdom in the Sky
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victor Poole has a little gray cat and a penchant for sketching. You can read more about him and get updates about more of his books at www.victorpoole.wordpress.com.
Table of Contents
Th
e Old Book
The Offering
Ajalia Plans Ahead
Ajalia Meets Card
The Mountain Quarries
Talbos Near the Sea
The Secret Journey
The Scars
The Journey to Talbos Begins
Ajalia Bribes the Guard
The Golden Lights
Delmar's Affection Shows
The Old Pain Resurfaces
The Little Bird
The City of Talbos
Jerome and Bakroth
On the Road
Flight from Slavithe
Lim's Secret Box
Daniel and Nam
The Arrival of the Thief Lord
Calles Takes Three Girls
Ajalia Arranges Her Household
Delmar's Entanglement
The Strange Weakness
Into the Forest
Blood and Pain
Ajalia is Ill
Delmar's Secret
The Final Attack