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

by Victor Poole

  "Then I will send you away," Ajalia said. "I will give you a task to do in some faraway place."

  "That's stupid," Delmar said furiously. "Stop trying to ruin everything."

  "I'm not trying to ruin everything," Ajalia said, "I'm trying to make a picture for myself of how we could ever actually live together steadily."

  "But aren't we doing that now?" Delmar asked anxiously. Ajalia tried to keep herself from laughing, but a few chortles slipped out. Delmar looked deeply offended at her mirth. "I take our future seriously," he told her sternly. "I am not going to go running off, even if you try to tell me that it's a good idea."

  "Just a little while ago," Ajalia pointed out, "you said more than once that you didn't want to marry me, and that marriage was too scary for you."

  "Yes, but I took that back," Delmar said boldly.

  "And when I told you I wanted to trade back souls, you did it," Ajalia said.

  "So?" Delmar asked. He sounded defensive.

  "So you leaving for a while is probably a good thing for you, and maybe even a good thing for me," Ajalia said. Delmar stared at her.

  "You make no sense," Delmar said finally. "I don't care what you say about it. I'm not going to up and leave you. And we came here to do important political-type things!" he added, growing suddenly indignant. "I think it is very upsetting for you to say things like that right before we go and see my extended relations, many of whom hate my guts."

  "Do they really?" Ajalia asked, interested.

  "Of course they do," Delmar snapped. "I'm interesting, and the people here all like me."

  Ajalia blinked, and stared in wonder at Delmar, who did not seem to notice at first the change in her expression.

  "And I'm good-looking," Delmar added moodily, as if good looks were a sort of curse. He sighed. "I really hoped that you would be on my side," he told Ajalia. "And you're usually right about everything," he added. "And I like having my soul back," he put in.

  "Me too," Ajalia said.

  "I was trying to make you mad," Delmar said suddenly, looking askance at Ajalia. "That's why I said yes to the soul thing. You and I can do it again, if you want."

  "No," Ajalia said, thinking of the power that Denai had shown over Ullar. Delmar sighed.

  "It's not real marriage, anyway," he said. "It's more like pretend."

  "Is that why you never seem interested in things?" Ajalia asked, perking up. Delmar shifted guiltily.

  "What things?" he asked. His voice was dodgy. Ajalia laughed.

  "You liar," she said. "You said you were going to be gone for three days, and then you said you were going to come back, and you hinted that other, more interesting things would happen." Delmar's face was completely overcome with blushes.

  "I don't remember any of this at all," he muttered, but he was smiling a little.

  "Liar," Ajalia said matter-of-factly.

  "Optimistic person," Delmar replied tartly. Ajalia met his eyes.

  "Liar," she said again. Delmar huffed a little. He was very like a child, she thought, when he was talking just to her. She would never have believed how vulnerable and almost infantile he could be, if she had seen him acting as the Thief Lord before she had seen him on his own, without the mantle of his position on him.

  "And anyway," Delmar said, watching the gate, where several Talbos guards were approaching, "I'm not running away without you. And I'm going to be a king, and kings can't run away."

  "They can if they have a responsible queen at home," Ajalia said composedly, and Delmar grinned, and looked over at her.

  Philas had seen the approaching guards, and he took hold of Fashel's horse's bridle, and rode over to Delmar and Ajalia, leading the horse that Fashel sat on. Ajalia saw Fashel glancing with some pleasure at Philas's face, when the young woman thought that Philas wouldn't see her. Ajalia thought that Fashel's decision not to like Philas had made the young woman feel secure, and her feeling of security had made her relax. The relaxation had led Fashel to be more herself, and Ajalia thought it was plain from the expression on Philas's face, that he was more smitten with Fashel than before. She wondered how they had talked through the issue of Sun, or if Fashel had decided to ignore the episode entirely, in the name of friendly and neutral relations. Ajalia rather suspected the latter, as the young woman's face did not seem to have experienced any great passage of emotion, either of anger or relief, in the last few minutes.

  The guards approached, and greeted Delmar respectfully. Ajalia thought she recognized in their numbers the gatekeeper who had kept the wall when she and Philas, with Delmar and Leed tagging along behind, had first visited Talbos. Delmar, she knew, had been here many times before, though he had denied this when he had first met her, but she and Philas had never known of the existence of Talbos when they had first come to Slavithe, and Philas had taken a house in the city on their first journey here. Ajalia was looking forward to seeing the house Philas had taken, and she was looking very much forward to talking with the other slaves from the caravan. Many of the slaves had gone back towards the East, but Philas had kept back a bare household, to carry on trading in Talbos, and to ready the city for an eventual visit from their master, if he chose to come to Slavithe from the East.

  Ajalia thought that a journey from her master was becoming more and more likely; her master had hoped, before the caravan first set out, to negotiate a great canal with his neighbors in the lands to the north and west. He and many of the other great houses in the East had been talking secretly of such a canal for some time; it would open up trade all along the lower half of Leopath. The desert that stretched like a wide band through the continent had, from time immemorial, made travel and trade very difficult between the upper and lower halves of Leopath. The seas around the eastern side of the continent were passable, but the tides did not agree well with a journey straight around the coast, and though it was easy enough to get across north, or east, to the lands there, the coast and sea between Slavithe and the Eastern lands made a sea passage expensive, and dangerous. Ajalia knew that her master longed for a swift cut straight through the desert, so that barges would be able to be towed quickly and safely from the oasis down towards Slavithe, and down into the more established southern parts of Leopath.

  Slavithe, and the nearby Talbos, lay isolated in a corner of the continent. Leopath was a large and fair land, and the Eastern merchants had access to almost every corner of it that they desired to reach, all except for the sea of desert that cut off Slavithe and Talbos, and the deep southern cities, from the rest of the kingdoms and lands in the continent.

  Ajalia's master had first turned his attention to Slavithe when he had been reading over the old scrolls of his forebears; he had been meditating for some time on a possible return to the ways of his fathers, and to a restoration of the kingdom that his ancestors had held in the East. Such a restoration, he knew, would be risky, and likely to result in outright revolt from the other strong trading houses in the East.

  Ajalia's master was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a despot, but he did hold sway over the whole East, and influenced the ways and doings of the other great houses there. His estate was the ancestral seat of the Eastern kings, and he himself was descended from those men. Ajalia had thought for some time, when she had lived with her master in the East, that he wished to once again have kings in the East, but she did not think he wished so out of any avarice, or even a desire to rule over the other houses. The Eastern lands, as they were now, were a little in disarray. The houses did not cooperate with each other as smoothly as they could have, and the rivalries between the traders and their slaves often resulted in lessened trade for all. Ajalia's master had often done what he could to mitigate these rivalries and injuries to trade, but as each household held sway over their own lands and affairs, there was little he could do without holding a call to the old ways, and the authority that, in theory, he still held in the East.

  Ajalia had never heard her master speak openly of these things, but she had b
een with him constantly, when not away on face-bearing business, and she had learned to read his thoughts, and to be sympathetic to the longings of his heart. She could see that her master wanted order, and prosperity, and the more she saw of the state of Slavithe, and of Talbos, the more she began to think that her master would abandon his estate to his two sons, and come to Slavithe to play god.

  She thought that he would be like a child with a shining new toy, if he came. She could picture his face, and the absolute bustle his robes would make, as he swept in and out of the market gates. If her master came, and she thought, now that Delmar had suggested a partnership, that she could convince him to come, he would establish factories, and tear to pieces the predatory arrangements that currently stood in the quarries.

  Ajalia was an accomplished negotiator, but she was like a shark; she went into a situation, and got precisely the thing she wanted from that scenario. She often left a mess behind, but she nearly always carried off the information or the possession that she had been angling for. She was precise, and effective, and she was only ever as ruthless as she felt she needed to be to get what she wanted.

  Her master valued her skills, and used her in moderation, which she appreciated. Ajalia's master worked in an entirely different way. Where Ajalia inserted herself, like a thin knife, and cut out the things she wanted, her master entered, and shifted the whole scenery. He was like a farmer of souls; her master, when he wanted a thing, seized control of the whole circumstance, and moved all the people about as if they had been pieces on a chess board. He ended by getting what he wanted, but he left behind him a tidy and orderly situation.

  Ajalia had witnessed her master going into other Eastern estates, and spending an afternoon rearranging the souls and emotions of those who lived there. He would not seem to be doing so, but a wake of peace and good relations seemed to trail behind him, like a rift of soft petals floating on a gently-rippling pond. Ajalia had seen how people's faces changed, when they spoke with her master, and she had seen how their expressions softened, and their eyes became lighter, and more focused on lofty things. She had also seen how people devolved quickly from their elevation after her master departed; she had been left behind several times, to see to details of transactions, and she had seen her master's effect wear off within two or three days.

  She thought that her master knew that what he effected in the hearts of people was not permanent, but he was like an old man who lines up grains of sand, knowing they will be washed away by the sea. Her master admired the aesthetic of harmonious souls, and his own household and estate was run in model fashion. The harvests were orderly, and calm, and the slaves within his house, aside from the occasional violence that spat out when one slave was jostling for position over another, was calm and clean. People were generally honest within her master's estate. Ajalia had not seen Lim's true nature until the caravan had set out, and even then, her master's calming and nobilizing effect on the former lead slave had lasted for several months, before Lim's avaricious and cruel streak had appeared.

  Ajalia thought that the city of Slavithe, and its inhabitants, would prove to be an ideal fit for her master's waning years. It was customary, in the East, for the master of an estate to pass on the inheritance in his lifetime, and Ajalia suspected that her master's idea of taking over Slavithe had sprung partly from a desire to give his two inheriting sons free scope, while removing himself to another land entirely, and occupying himself with tinkering over a new set of markets and economic tangles.

  Her master was not feeble, in any sense of the word, but though he was limber and vigorous, the marks of age were slowly gaining on him. In the year she had lived with him before the caravan had left for Slavithe, Ajalia had seen her master's shoulders begin subtly to stoop down at the edges, and his hair, which had been a thick mass of dyed black for as long as she had known him, had begun to recede at his forehead.

  Ajalia did not like seeing her master get old; he was the only mature man that she really respected. Delmar she loved, and liked, and Chad and Card she held at affectionate distance in her heart, but her master was like a second father to her, and a far better father than her own had been.

  Ajalia shook her head at this; she did not want to occupy her thoughts with her father. She followed Delmar, and the guards, who were being directed by Philas towards the house he had taken in the city of Talbos. Delmar, it seemed, had told the guards that he meant to visit the house of the Eastern slaves, before being escorted up the mountainside to his grandfather's palace.

  Ajalia had not been minding their progress through the streets of Talbos; it was, to her, a city, unremarkable as many other cities she had been through in her trading journeys. Slavithe was singular, and the lands of the East were particularly beautiful, but Ajalia saw nothing in the buildings and streets of Talbos that could not be seen in any civilized place in Leopath. Many of the structures were plain, though sturdy, and the roughly paved streets reminded her of a town she had visited in the far north of Leopath. That town had worn the same sea-battered appearance as Talbos did. The air in Talbos felt salty, and the wood was darkened with a kind of slick lacquer that Ajalia suspected had been painted on to preserve the wood from wet weather.

  As they came near to the house that Philas had taken, a misting rain began to fall. Ajalia had been wondering for weeks when she would see it rain. It had not rained in Slavithe the whole time she had lived there, and she had wondered, with increasing impatience, if it ever would. She hoped that Daniel thought to go up to the roof of the dragon temple, to rescue the cushions and rugs that had been laid there.

  Philas dismounted, and held Fashel's reins as she got clumsily down from the brown horse she was riding. Philas took the young woman's arm, and led her quickly to the door of the house.

  "I see that Philas does not mind if we get wet," Ajalia told Delmar with a smile. Delmar glanced at her, and she saw that his eyebrows were drawn together in ire. She saw now that the guards looked a little uncomfortable, and she wondered what had passed while she had been occupied with her thoughts. Ajalia wished again that she had had the time to teach Delmar some secret language; with her own master, she had often conferred privately in his curious dialect that he had inherited from the old kings. Ajalia spoke very little of this old language, but when she had become face-bearing slave, she had learned a smattering of it from her master, so that he could give her a few basic directions when they were surrounded by other people. Ajalia wished now that she had thought to do this with Delmar; she did not want to ask him before the guards what the matter was.

  Delmar dismounted from his white horse, and came near to Ajalia's horse.

  "They're not happy about you being here," Delmar murmured, looking irritated.

  TROUBLE WITH THE GUARD

  "The guards aren't?" Ajalia asked.

  "Yes," Delmar said, glancing at the group of men, who held their spears, and watched them both stonily. "They feel you are better off in Slavithe."

  "Why?" Ajalia asked.

  "They're superstitious," Delmar said. "They think you'll kill people here by looking at them."

  "Really?" Ajalia asked, thoroughly interested.

  "Yes," Delmar said, looking tense. "And don't look so happy about that. I don't want them to turn on us."

  "What are they going to do?" Ajalia asked. "You can fly. So can I."

  "This is serious," Delmar said. "Listen to me. I don't want you to get killed." Ajalia sobered her expression.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Aren't there witches here? Don't they have tests, and things?"

  "Yes," Delmar said.

  "Tell the guards that I am willing to undergo the test," Ajalia said. Delmar looked at her as though she was crazy.

  "You can't do that," he told her.

  "Why not?" she asked. "What's the test?"

  "You just can't," Delmar said.

  "Why not?" she asked again. Delmar's face worked with frustration.

  "Because I said so," he said. This, he seeme
d to realize after he had said it, was possibly a bad thing to say to Ajalia, because he immediately added, "and I need to look like I'm in charge here, don't I?"

  "Then you'd better go tell them to administer their witch test on me," Ajalia said, "because I'm not going home."

  A few of the guards had begun to inch closer throughout this conversation, and now, one of them turned to the others and began to whisper furiously. Delmar looked a little overwrought with the stress of it all.

  "You won't like it," he warned her. "And I told you so."

  "You are supposed to say that afterwards," Ajalia told him, "and if you'd rather, we could just fly away to the palace, and then the guards would have to get over themselves somehow."

  "We can't fly here!" Delmar hissed, looking around at the guards.

  "Why not?" Ajalia asked.

  "They don't do magic here!" Delmar said. He looked almost desperate. Ajalia thought that he was trying to find some way to get her to be quiet and follow his lead, but she remembered the way he had spoken of magic in Slavithe, when she had first been there, and she thought that he did not understand the real reason for the guards' discomfort. Ajalia nudged her black horse, and rode towards the cluster of guards, who regarded her warily.

  "My Thief Lord says you believe I am a witch," she said to the most unafraid of the guards. "Do you think this?" The guard met her eyes boldly.

  "I think you are a sky angel, and unfit for civilized places," the guard told her. His voice was turned a little in one of the dialects of Talbos, but she could understand him clearly.

  "My Thief Lord's people have told me much of a sky angel," Ajalia said. "Will you tell me what your people say the sky angel is?" The guard glanced at his fellows, and then looked up at her.

  "You will be angry, if I say," the guard said. Philas appeared at the door, and looked out at them. He saw that Ajalia was in talk with one of the guards, and that Delmar's face was tense and unhappy, and Philas went inside again. In a moment, another of the Eastern slaves appeared, and took the two brown horses Philas had left with a guard, and the white horse from Delmar.