by Victor Poole
The street was crowded enough, and a straight corridor of bodies had to be made for the wrapped silks to travel safely through the streets to the market. People moved to either side of the street, and pressed against the fronts of the houses, making way for the long sheets of covered silk. Ajalia heard a thousand words spring up into the air, each person asking someone near them what the cloth was, who the slaves were, where these strangers had come from.
Ajalia was not dressed as the chief today; her robe was plain white, and her hair was pulled into a bobbing knot at the nape of her neck that made her look as though her shining black locks were very short. Her face was plain and free of makeup; she looked nondescript, which was just what she wanted. Lim was at the head of the string of slaves who carried the silks and other goods. He had dressed sumptuously today. Today was his fine day, his chance to shine at his best in the new city, and to draw all eyes to himself. The chief, as far as the Slavithe people would be able to guess, was a recluse who stayed deep in the confines of his rented house, while his slaves made trades for him. Ajalia would dress as her master several more times in the city, but the Eastern master would only appear at very important functions, and when it was necessary to please vital clients.
Philas was still trailing behind Ajalia.
"What's the matter with you, sleepy head?" she shouted behind her. She turned to see him. He was scowling at her.
Ajalia stopped walking so that he would catch up. He slowed down, but she waited patiently. The line of slaves slipped ahead into the streets, and a clutter of people began to fill the space between Ajalia and the last of the slaves.
"Have you asked for liquor?" she asked Philas, when he at last reached her side.
He threw her a dirty look.
"Would you like me to find you some?" she added playfully. She had been speaking in Slavithe the while, and she could see people near them looking at her curiously. Her clothes were plain, but they still were of a very different texture and color to their own, and she had not seen any Slavithe women walking plainly in the streets in feminine robes. Her own shift was drawn snugly around her waist, and her figure showed. She was not adorned in any particularly obvious way, but she was very clearly female, and some of the men in the street stared at her. It took her some time to realize that some of the men who were staring were actually women with short hair.
She thought that they must be binding their chests; they looked male, and it was not until she examined the lines around their eyes and the shapes of their necks that she was able to see that they were, in fact, women.
"Had you heard of this cross-dressing before we came?" Ajalia asked Philas in the Eastern tongue, and he shrugged.
"Does it matter?" he asked. His eyes looked dry and foggy.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I'm just peachy," he said.
"Do you want me to find you liquor?" Ajalia asked again.
"They don't have any," he growled, and shifted the packages in his arms.
"But do you want me to?" she asked again.
"No," he snapped.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Ajalia wanted to catch up to the others, but Philas was beginning to bother her. She had not thought he would be grumpy for so long. She eyed him for a moment, and then left him behind. She had learned not to care too much for any of the other slaves. She would be sorry if Philas fell to pieces, because she thought he was nice enough, but she was not going to miss the trading to cater to his mood.
"No liquor," he grumbled at her back, but she ignored the bait, and went forward to the last of the slaves.
They were coming to the entrance to the marketplace now. Ajalia had not arranged for a market stall, and she was looking forward to watching Lim arrange this detail. She liked Lim less than ever, and wanted to find out what he could do without her help. She had been assisting him for much of the caravan's journey, without being asked, and without being noticed or thanked for it, but after the episode of the pink silks, she felt rather like letting him crash and burn without her jumping in to save him from accidents and his own ineptitude.
She went forward, passing the heavily laden slaves, until she could see Lim clearly through the crush of bodies in the market. He was wearing a shimmering black silk robe, and a brilliant red turban that had been fashioned into the shape of a heavy crown. It had red and gold stars plucked out in slivers of glass, and the center was twisted over so that the red material glittered like the sides of a fish in the sunlight.
Ajalia stayed back within the Slavithe people, so that Lim would not see her watching him. He wound his way through the crowded market until he came to a cloth merchant's stall. The cloth in the stall was of the same coarse texture that the Slavithe people wore, but it was in many colors. Ajalia had seen the flags and banners hung from the roofs and over the walls of the houses throughout Slavithe, but she had yet to see this colored cloth on anyone's body. The cloth was bright orange, dark green, and rich purple. Ajalia had not seen any white cloth. The hues of the orange and green were varied; some were lighter, and bits of the rough brown fabric shone through, and some were vividly dyed. A few pieces of cloth had been sewn into the flags and large rectangles that the people used for hanging, and they lay folded neatly over the edge of the stall's tables.
Lim approached the cloth merchant, and began a solemn negotiation. Ajalia half expected to be called on to translate, but again, Lim seemed able to communicate ably with only gestures and facial expressions. Ajalia could hear echoes of his deep voice carrying through the crowded marketplace; she heard him talking in the Eastern tongue in a long, gentle stream, about profits and opportunities. At some length, the cloth merchant reached an agreement with Lim, and the two gripped hands. Lim began to direct the slaves, and they laid the heavy silks down on the tables in a long, pale row, and began to pull all the cloth merchant's goods down from the shelves.
Philas came up behind Ajalia. He didn't want to stand near Ajalia, but he didn't quite feel at ease standing anywhere else.
"He's bought all the things, hasn't he?" Philas murmured to Ajalia.
"We're to speak in Slavithe," she said. She was piqued at Philas, and didn't mind if he knew it.
"You aren't the boss of me," he said, but he said it in Slavithe, and he smiled at her.
"I am the boss of me," Ajalia murmured. She was staring around at the market, at the bodies that sweated and brushed against each other, and she longed to be free.
She was remembering the time she had been a child, and she had not yet been owned. She remembered the bold way she had walked, and the tilt she had carried in her chin when she looked at strange men. Her father had worked near a crossroads, at a training school for boys, and she had come to the school often, carrying his lunch in a pail made of reeds. The guard at the school had teased her when she came, and called her little bird, and told her that her father was going to sell her someday to the man who buys birds.
Ajalia remembered that she had always laughed at the guard, and told him that her father would not sell her for a wilderness of birds.
She had been right enough; he had not sold her at all. Her mother had tried to sell her, and she had run away and sold herself to the traders who were on their way East. She had not been able to come up with a better plan; she had been young, and she had been cold and hungry, and selling herself was the only way she knew to stay alive in the dark world that was her family's life.
She did not know why she was thinking of that now. She had locked away what remained of her family into a secret chest in her heart, and she never pulled it open or looked at it. She never thought of herself as a child, and yet here, in the crowd and bustle of the marketplace, and with the noise and the sounds of the chattering Slavithe people, she was remembering what it felt like to be free. She did not know why she was remembering things like this now. She did not want to think of herself as a little girl with the brands on her wrists.
Without thinking, her fingers touched the long
jagged scars that ran from her palms to the middle of her forearms, where she had cut the marks out of her skin. Her sleeves covered the scars, but she could feel the rough patches of skin under the cloth.
"What is wrong with you?" Lim shouted. He was close to Ajalia; she had not seen him come up to her. "We are taking these things back to the house. You and him," Lim said, thrusting his thumb at Philas, "arrange the stall. I will be back after I have signed agreements with the merchant."
"You can't read Slavithe," Ajalia said blankly. She was not trying to be clever; it was the first thing that occurred to her.
Lim scowled. "The man won't cheat me." He did not believe what he said, and Ajalia could see that in Lim's face. Lim's eyes flicked to Philas, and then back to Ajalia. "Fine," he said. "You go."
"I don't want to go," Ajalia said, but she went. It was a relief to get out of the glaring sun of the market, and into the dim shade of the market stall. The Slavithe merchant led Ajalia up a narrow set of stairs into a second floor.
She had been right about the merchants living above their market stalls. The cloth merchant had arranged a simple office in a small room that lay directly over his shop, and he took Ajalia now to a little desk.
"It is your first time in Slavithe?" he asked Ajalia. He spoke loudly and clearly, as though afraid she would not understand. She nodded, and he took a scroll of beaten parchment, and wrote on it for a few moments. He handed the scroll to Ajalia, and she read it. She took the pen he had used and crossed out a few phrases. She wrote in a new paragraph, and handed it back.
"You write clear Slavithe," the merchant said. He was no longer smiling. His eyes were taking in the details of the terms she had written. He took the pen, and made a slight adjustment to a number she had noted down.
He passed the parchment back to her.
"Twice that," she said.
"You're crazy," he said. He crossed out the number, and wrote a new number.
"Closer," she said.
"What would you like?" he asked her.
"I would like what I wrote the first time," she said.
He crossed out the paragraph and began again. She watched the words scratch out from beneath his pen, and she smiled.
"Better," she said.
"So we agree?" he asked. He was no longer making an effort to speak loudly to her.
"I will take it to Lim," she said, "and he will sign."
"Good," the merchant said. He held out a bundle of metal coins, and Ajalia put them into the folds of her robe. "It is a pleasure to meet a stranger who speaks our fair tongue so freely," he added.
"It is refreshing to do business with an honest man," she replied, and the merchant beamed.
"My wife would like you," he said.
Ajalia bowed respectfully, and went down the narrow stairs.
"Well?" Lim asked. He was waiting in the center of the now-bare stall, surrounded by bustling slaves and heaps of fabric and goods.
Ajalia read him the terms of the agreement, and Lim signed. He had set the slaves to work already; some of the slaves were busy carrying massive bundles of Slavithe fabric back through the streets to the little house, to store in the rooms and to take back to the East with them, and others were clearing the stall under Philas's direction, readying the walls and the tables for the display of silk that was waiting to be hung.
The Slavithe fabric would be a novelty in the East. It was soft and warm, and though it was coarsely woven, the colors were oddly pleasing to the eye. Ajalia suspected that the materials were very raw, but the final product had a surprisingly fine finish. The weave was coarse, but it was closely woven, and would keep off rain and chill well, and the texture took dye remarkably well. She was sure that the fabric would look very well when embellished with silk embroidery. She made a mental note, to remember to set some of the women slaves to working on the Slavithe fabrics as an experiment. If the embroidered fabrics sold well, she could open a side business while she was here, and sell it to an enterprising merchant when she left. If the Slavithe had never done fine needlework on their clothes, Ajalia stood to make a bundle of money, as long as the Slavithe people's lack of adornment in their regular clothing did not stem from any kind of cultural prohibition.
She was becoming curious about Slavithe fashion as it would show on the feast days. She suspected that the people would wear colored variants of the things they wore now, but there was some chance that they would show more refinement in their fancy dress than in their everyday clothes. The cut of the brown clothing they wore was absurdly plain and simple, and though they wore a variety of browns and tans, and some of the textures were more finely woven, on the whole they all wore variants of the same thing.
Ajalia hung the ebony chains around the stall. She was pleased to find that knobs of white stone had been installed at convenient intervals along the edges of the inside walls, and they each had a small hook. She hung the chains easily, and began to unwrap the protective white fabric from the silks. Philas took the silks from her, and began to drape them up and down over the tables.
Philas had a gift for displaying merchandise. He made the folded silks swirl up and down over the tables, and at a few places he made them twist up in thick ropes over the ebony chains. Ajalia moved back and watched him work. He was like a man directing the waves of the ocean; the silk shimmered and made exquisite bumps and swirls over the tables. At one corner, Philas pulled apart the folded silks and spun some of the bright colors up around the pillar of the stall.
Slavithe people in the market stopped to watch the growing piles of glowing silk. They murmured to each other, and pointed at the different things that Philas displayed over the rippling silk. He hung glistening golden necklaces that were worked in curious Eastern patterns, and arranged the white fluffy dolls within the deep folds of the heavy silks. He draped the figures round with colored robes, and hung colored glass rings in their eyes. They nestled like mermaids in the brilliant silk, and Ajalia saw the eyes of many of the Slavithe passing over the clever cut of the Eastern clothing.
When Philas was finished, the stall was heaped with an irresistible mountain of shining things. Skeins of colored silk threads hung from the ebony chains next to gold and silver jewelry, and lines of bright spices in bottles trailed exquisitely through the folds of the silk. The silk itself trailed like a living dragon through the edges and corners of the market stall, and made the white stone space into a kind of wonderland of warm reds, yellows, striking pale blues, and black patterned lavenders that folded over each other in layers.
Lim appeared beside Ajalia, and nodded in satisfaction.
"Philas is very good at that," he said to Ajalia, and Ajalia agreed.
"It's all right," Philas said, coming forward from the stall. His face was sweaty, and his eyes were glassy.
"I'm going to find him a drink," Ajalia said to Lim, and Lim did not object. "Come on," she said, and pushed Philas forward, away from the stall.
"I didn't place the robes well," Philas said.
"They're fine," Ajalia said, "they're great the way you did them." She took him by the crook of the arm and guided him through the hot market streets. The sun had climbed to its highest point, and the light that bounced off the white stone walls was blindingly bright.
Ajalia spotted an eatery tucked into the shadows of the market, and she pulled Philas into it.
"They haven't got anything to drink," he muttered at her, but she ignored him. She pushed him into a chair against the wall, and moved through the crowded room to the front.
"Dear stranger," she said loudly to a servant of the place, and the Slavithe servant's eyes caught on Ajalia's strange clothing and shining black hair.
Ajalia saw that she had gotten the man's attention. "Have you got medicine in the house?" she asked. "Something you would put on a horse's knees?"
The servant began to laugh. "Have you come with a sickness?" he asked.
Ajalia pointed out Philas, and the servant nodded in understanding. "Strangers come
sometimes with this sickness," he confided to Ajalia. "Wait here."
Ajalia wound through the tables and people until she came back to Philas.
"I told you," Philas said. His voice was getting raspy.
"You know it's all in your head," Ajalia said gently. Philas moaned.
The servant came out of the back carrying a dark vessel, and Ajalia stood up and went to meet him.
"Give your friend this juice," the Slavithe servant said. "When it is gone, ask for the drink made of the poison tree, and you will get what you need."
Ajalia examined the dark fluid in the vessel. It was purple, almost black, and it moved like sludge. "Thank you," she said, and did not know if she meant it.
"If he drinks the poison tree blood for three weeks," the servant said, "he will no longer be sick."
Ajalia looked at the servant, and dismissed what he had said as impossible. She asked the servant for the price of the drink, and the servant laughed again.
"This is what we use to clean out street corners, and to scrub the white walls of our homes," the servant explained. "It is garbage to us. You must not pay for garbage."
Ajalia thanked the man, and carried the vessel of evil purple liquid back to Philas.
"Here," she said, and held it out to him.
Philas turned his face away from her. "I don't want fruit juice," he muttered. His eyes were flickering vaguely over the feet of the eatery's customers.
"It's liquor," she lied, and Philas glared suspiciously at her eyes. He took the vessel, and sipped the sludge. A wave of relief came over his face, and he set the container down on the table.
"I'm fine," he said. "We can go."
"Drink the stuff," Ajalia said. She got up and went to the line that wound through the eatery. The shop was dark and close, and filled with the smells of steaming food. The food here smelled delicious. She had enjoyed the food the Slavithe had traded into the little house last night, but it had mostly been composed of baked pastry, and cold arrangements. This eatery was filled with steaming soup and piping-hot breads that were made from crushed seeds. There were great pats of wholesome cheese, and plenteous cuts of seared meat on narrow wooden platters.