The King of Talbos (The Eastern Slave Series Book 6)

by Victor Poole

  "What?" Philas demanded. "You can't tell her things like that!" he practically shouted at Ajalia. "You can't do things like that to me!"

  "Yes I can," Ajalia said. "I will do things like that if I want to. And you're lucky that I did tell her, because Delmar knows, and all of the other slaves from the caravan know by now, and if I didn't tell her right away, someone else would, and then she would never forgive you. She's already not that upset about it."

  "Yes she is!" Philas said angrily. "Look at how angry she is right now!"

  "I am not angry about you kissing Ajalia," Fashel said. "I am angry that you are lying to me, and I am angry that you are not saying what you did with Sun."

  "I did not do anything vitally important at all with Sun," Philas said, vibrating with emotion.

  "Yes, you did," Fashel said, "or else you would not be so worked up over this. It would not be such a big deal," Fashel said, "if you would just tell me about it."

  "Delmar had a little secret second wife that he didn't know about yet," Ajalia told Fashel. "And I found out that his mother was trying to arrange for him to father a baby on someone. I haven't found out who the girl was yet."

  "That's disgusting," Fashel said. "I hope he was not stupid about it to you."

  "Delmar has been perfect about the whole thing," Ajalia said pointedly, looking at Philas. Philas looked between the two women, his mouth gaping open.

  "Stop cooperating!" he shouted.

  "Stop lying," Fashel told him.

  "Yes, stop doing that," Ajalia told Philas. "I would not have been so angry at you," she told him, "if you had been honest with me, back when we lived in the little house."

  "I did not lie to you!" Philas exclaimed, his neck and face red. "I am not lying to anyone. No one is lying! You are making up all these things about lying, and liars!"

  "Delmar was just the same way," Ajalia told Fashel. "He still lies to me, but he has the sense to admit to it quickly now."

  "I am not lying!" Philas insisted. "Tell me how I am lying!" he demanded, looking wildly from Ajalia to Fashel and back again. Ajalia looked at Fashel, who waved a hand at her.

  "Proceed," Fashel said, and sighed.

  "What are you sighing about?" Philas demanded, his eyebrows rising up in fury.

  "Ajalia is going to make you look like a fool now," Fashel said. "Then, I think you are going to apologize to me, and I think after that," she added with the hint of a smile, "you are going to ask me to marry you."

  Philas looked stunned. He stared at Fashel. Then he turned and stared at Ajalia.

  "What is she talking about?" Philas asked Ajalia.

  "Fashel said that I am going to make you look foolish," Ajalia said promptly. "Then I am going to explain—" Philas burst in with an interruption, saying that he had heard perfectly well what Fashel had said, but Ajalia pushed on. "Then I'm going to explain how you are lying to her now, and then you will feel truly ashamed of yourself, and you'll say that you're sorry, and hopefully, Fashel is saying, after that you will realize that she is a smart cookie, and you'll ask her if she'll marry you. But I still want Ossa trained," Ajalia told Fashel. Fashel waved a hand, and nodded.

  "Yes, yes," Fashel said. "I will not live with Philas, or marry him, until I trust him, so you have got me for a long time yet."

  "But I have not asked you to marry me yet!" Philas exclaimed. He looked as though Ajalia and Fashel were stealing all of his thunder. "And I don't think this is very fair," he added, as if this had just occurred to him.

  "Why?" Ajalia asked. "Because it's fair for you to lie to Fashel, and to trick her, but it isn't fair for her to get help unravelling your lies from me?"

  "Well, I don't want to marry you!" Philas burst out.

  "You asked me if I would come and be queen of Saroyan," Ajalia said. "Does that offer still stand, or were you lying then, too?" Fashel looked around at Ajalia with interest.

  "Did he really say that?" she asked.

  "Why aren't you angry about Ajalia and me?" Philas shouted. He looked as though Fashel and Ajalia's calmness was driving him to the edge of his self-control. His eyes were wild, and his hair was beginning to fling outwards with the whipping of his face from Fashel to Ajalia and back again. "And why can't you just be a normal girl, and not ask questions like this?" he added pleadingly to Fashel. Fashel's mouth snapped up into a line, and she kicked her horse into motion. Ajalia began to laugh, and Philas, watching Fashel ride away, flung his arms up into the air with an exclamation of disgust. His horse flinched, and tossed its head nervously. "Where are you going, Fashel?" Philas cried after her, and then he looked around at Ajalia. "Stop laughing at me," he commanded. "And then tell me why she is angry."

  "Good luck," Ajalia told Philas, laughing still. "I think I'm going to get to keep my cook." She turned her black horse, and followed Fashel down the road. Ajalia could see Delmar sitting astride his white mare just outside the gate to Talbos. A gatekeeper was standing in the road, and talking to him.

  AJALIA WARNS FASHEL

  "Ajalia," Philas said, irritation cresting in his voice. He moved his horse along to follow her. "Don't just leave me here. Tell me why she's angry, and then I'll fix it."

  "No," Ajalia said. "I like Fashel."

  "And you don't like me?" Philas demanded. Ajalia looked around at him, and laughed again.

  "I'm not going to answer any question like that ever again," she told him, and moved her horse into a gallop. She heard Philas exclaiming again in disgust behind her. Ajalia's black horse overtook Fashel's, and Ajalia slowed her black horse again, because Fashel's mare looked eager to run along beside the black horse, and Ajalia did not know if Fashel would be able to keep her seat astride a suddenly-running horse.

  "That was very rude of him to say to me," Fashel said primly. Ajalia's horse was ahead of hers, but Ajalia could hear Fashel easily. She waited for Fashel to catch up to her.

  "I didn't know if you would want to talk about it," Ajalia said.

  "I'm not going to marry him," Fashel said vehemently. "I don't care how much he wants to marry me. I don't like him."

  "Good," Ajalia said. Ajalia didn't say anything after this, and Fashel, after a few moments, looked curiously over at her.

  "I thought you wanted me to marry Philas," Fashel said tentatively.

  "I don't care what you do," Ajalia said honestly, "as long as I get to keep eating your food." Fashel's mouth folded in a pleased smile, but her eyes were still clouded.

  "You told me he would get what he wanted, though," Fashel said.

  "I'm creating obstructions," Ajalia said. "I don't like liars, and I don't like men who lie to women, and trick them into falling in love."

  "Oh," Fashel said. "So you think that if you hadn't said anything, he would have gotten me to love him?"

  "Do you love him now?" Ajalia asked. She glanced back, and saw that Philas was some way behind them still, glowering murderously at his brown horse. Ajalia and Fashel were very near the gate; Ajalia could just hear the sound of Delmar's voice as he spoke to the gatekeeper. The Talbos gate and wall were very low, compared to the elegant and spacious white Slavithe walls. Ajalia rather liked the Talbos wall better; it was constructed of crudely-fitted black stones, and felt honest somehow. Ajalia suspected that the sheer perfection and grandeur of the white Slavithe wall rubbed her the wrong way; she could make a clear picture of people building the Talbos wall, but when she looked at the Slavithe wall, she could make no image at all of workmen laboring over it. Which, she told herself, made sense, since the wall had apparently been constructed with magic.

  "I don't love him at all," Fashel said, thinking carefully of what she said, "but I can see that he would be valuable to me, if he were an honest man. I think I could get to loving him, if I trusted him." Ajalia nodded.

  "That is what I thought," Ajalia said. "If I did nothing, and said nothing, which is what he is counting on me doing, he would have spun a very gradual and tender story about his hurt feelings, and about how misunderstood he is
, and about how fine a man he thinks he could grow to be, if only such a perfect specimen of womanhood as yourself would invest yourself a little in him."

  Fashel was staring with open interest at Ajalia, and listening closely to what she said.

  "And then what would he have done?" Fashel asked. Ajalia laughed, and shrugged.

  "Gotten you into a corner, probably, and tried to kiss you," she said.

  "Is that what he did to you?" Fashel asked. Ajalia's expression sobered a little; she was remembering the time when Philas had been taking the poison tree juice, and had transformed into an entirely different man.

  "I don't think he meant to lie to me," Ajalia said. "Which is why I still speak to him," she added.

  "How could he have lied by accident?" Fashel asked.

  "I think that Philas says things that he wishes were true," Ajalia said. "I think he hoped that I would pretend that things were the way he wished they were."

  "You mean that he pretended to love you, and he didn't?" Fashel asked.

  "Yes," Ajalia said. "He hates himself, you know. I think he assumes that everyone he likes also hates themselves." Fashel thought about this.

  "I don't think that makes any sense," Fashel said. "He's not a bad person. Why would he hate himself?"

  "Delmar does the same thing," Ajalia said. They were drawing near the gate, and Ajalia could hear the words that the gatekeeper spoke to Delmar. "Delmar's mother tried to destroy him," Ajalia said, "because she wanted to use him. I think that Delmar's mother thought that if he felt small enough inside, she would be able to do what she liked with him. It didn't work, but she did convince Delmar that he's about as black inside as a person can be."

  "But Delmar's an amazing man," Fashel said. She blushed a little at what she had said, but her eyes were turned earnestly to Ajalia. "Everyone likes Delmar. Doesn't he know that everyone thinks he's the best, and that they're all happy that he's the Thief Lord?" Ajalia shook her head.

  "That's why I'm still around him," Ajalia said. She halted her horse several feet from Delmar, and Fashel drew back on the reins, and her horse stopped as well. "If he really meant to lie to me, because he wanted to hurt me, I wouldn't put up with it," Ajalia said.

  "But why does he lie?" Fashel asked, frowning. Ajalia saw that Fashel was trying to wrap her mind around the moral dilemma, and Ajalia was sure that Fashel was as theoretically attached to truthfulness as she herself was.

  "Well," Ajalia said, and she waited for Fashel to work it out. Fashel turned in the saddle, and looked back at Philas, who was still glaring at the ground, his eyebrows drawn into a ferocious line.

  "So Delmar lies to you," Fashel said, "because he thinks he's bad."

  "Yes," Ajalia said. "He really does love me. I think he's trying to protect me."

  "Protect you from what?" Fashel asked, wrinkling her nose.

  "From himself," Ajalia said. Fashel turned again, and looked at Philas.

  "And you really think Philas might love me?" Fashel asked. Ajalia shrugged again.

  "I don't know if he does or not," Ajalia said. "I've never seen him like this before. I don't know."

  "When you say he's never been like this," Fashel said, looking at Ajalia with her lips creased firmly in each corner, "what, exactly, do you mean?" Ajalia thought about this.

  "Emotional," Ajalia said. "Irritated. On edge. Flustered. He usually doesn't care about things. He's been an inveterate drunk the whole time I've known him. Leed has sworn him to sobriety, but I'll believe it when I see it." Fashel's mouth was scrunched to one side.

  "We don't have strong drinks in Slavithe," Fashel said, her eyebrows drawn close together, "but I have a great uncle in Talbos who is supposed to be ill sometimes, and my father said it was like that."

  "Like what?" Ajalia asked.

  "That he was a drunk," Fashel said, glancing at Ajalia as though wondering if she would be judged for saying that she had a relative who was so afflicted. "I don't want to take a chance on Philas," Fashel said, "if it is all just dreams, or a lie."

  "I think it's cleaner, emotionally, to keep to yourself," Ajalia said.

  "So you think I should stay away from Philas," Fashel said.

  "It's none of my business," Ajalia said. "I think it's more fair to know what you're getting into, and I can see that he's trying to talk you into liking him."

  "So what should I do?" Fashel asked. She looked as though she was slightly irritated with Ajalia for not giving clearer directions.

  "It's not any of my business," Ajalia said. "I'm not in love with Philas; I'm not you. You do what you want to."

  "But I don't know if I like him," Fashel said, her voice aching with despair. "How am I supposed to make up my mind about things if I don't even know if I like him?"

  "Are you talking about Philas?" Delmar asked, coming over to them. The gatekeeper he had been talking to went towards the open gate to the city of Talbos, and vanished inside the wall. "I think Philas is much nicer now, than he was before," Delmar said. He reached out, and grabbed Ajalia's hand. Ajalia felt rather better about Delmar, now that he was not holding a piece of her soul hostage. She didn't feel as though she had to like him, and this made her like him more than she had before. Fashel stared at Delmar.

  "Ajalia said that you lie a lot, and that you think you're a bad person," Fashel said. Delmar looked mildly interested. Fashel seemed to have lost her fear of Delmar, now that Ajalia had said so many personal things about him. Ajalia thought that it was hard for Fashel to be intimidated by Delmar, after the young woman knew about what Delmar's mother had done to him.

  "I guess I do, maybe," Delmar admitted. "Did you tell her that I lie?" Delmar said. Ajalia shrugged.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Well, you can't shrug and then say yes," Delmar said, sounding affectionate. "That's just rude."

  "You shouldn't lie to Ajalia," Fashel said. "And I'm not going to like Philas at all," Fashel told Ajalia. "I don't want to be around people I know are going to lie to me." Fashel did not seem to realize that she was saying this around Delmar, who she had just accused of lying. Delmar's lips twitched with good humor, and Ajalia squeezed his fingers gently.

  "Good for you," Ajalia said. She let go of Delmar's hand, and turned her black horse to the gate.

  "You people are very odd," Fashel told Delmar, who laughed, and followed Ajalia into the opening of the gate.

  "I think she likes Philas, whatever she says," Delmar told Ajalia in a low voice.

  "What were you talking about for so long?" Ajalia asked. They rode up into the gate, and then Delmar stopped.

  "We're waiting here for a royal guard," he told Ajalia. "It's customary to have an escort for an important person."

  "Like you," Ajalia said.

  "Yes, or the king of Saroyan, who never comes here, but the kings used to visit. I was getting the gatekeeper to send a message."

  "You were talking for a long time to just send a message," Ajalia pointed out.

  "He wanted to hear the gossip from Slavithe," Delmar said. "They've been hearing things about the purges."

  Philas, by this time, had caught up to where Fashel was, and their horses were standing together in the road. Ajalia suspected that Fashel was not very comfortable directing her horse around, and did not think she could start and stop her horse to get over to where Delmar and Ajalia were. Ajalia saw that Fashel was wearing a look on her face that was extremely determined, and shiny. She thought that Fashel looked like a young woman who was determined to be polite and affable. Ajalia told herself that Fashel was going to be mooning over Philas in a few days. There was a sort of nervous energy right at the base of Fashel's spine, and a tension in her fingers, that, to Ajalia, said that while Fashel was determined to be pleasant and distant, she would, in actual fact, become more and more sympathetic to Philas's plight as a self-hating and lovelorn man with dark eyes and a beard. Delmar followed Ajalia's gaze. He reached over, and nudged at her elbow.

  "You don't have to help them fall in love,
" he said.

  "I'm not helping them," Ajalia said, feeling a pang of annoyance.

  "You are, too," Delmar said, smiling. "Philas would crash and burn without your help, and Fashel would ignore him, and then be a little afraid of him. You're clearing the way for them to be very much in love with each other."

  "Then I'm doing it for cold-blooded reasons," Ajalia said. "And I'm not doing that."

  "You're sweet," Delmar told her. "It's nice that you care about people." Ajalia told herself that she didn't care about anyone at all.

  "You are not very nice to me," Ajalia complained to Delmar. Delmar laughed. "What are you laughing for?" she demanded.

  "I said exactly that same thing to you," Delmar said. "When you kept needling me about my mother, and I thought you were hurting my feelings on purpose. I am probably hurting your feelings," Delmar added quickly, "and I'm sorry for not thinking about what I say first, but I really am not going out of my way to do it."

  "I think you are," Ajalia said. "I think you're being mean because everything is going so well, and you want to drive me away."

  "I don't want to drive you away!" Delmar said, but his voice, to Ajalia, was not convincing.

  "You are, too," Ajalia said. "Just wait until you're the king of Talbos. I predict that you will first want to marry me, and then want me to go back and live in Slavithe, to manage your affairs there."

  "I would never try to send you away!" Delmar protested, blood rushing up into his face. "I want to stay wherever you are."

  "You are going to end up going away on your own, or trying to get me to go away," Ajalia said, and she was sure, in the moment that she was saying it, that it would happen. "You can't just go from being deeply unhappy, and thinking you're the worst, to getting everything and more that you ever dreamed of. I think you'll marry me, and then you'll disappear."

  "I would never do that," Delmar said. His voice had dropped into an authentic vein; Ajalia believed what he said, now.