The Slave from the East (The Eastern Slave Series Book 1)

by Victor Poole

  Ajalia began to wonder if there was some connection between the horrible woman with brown hair, and the setup between Gevad and Lasa and Lasa's old mother, and the strangely unique innocence of this young man. Did the two types feed upon each other, the wealthy and powerful preying upon the childlike innocence of the latter category? That scenario seemed impossible to Ajalia; the overwhelming majority of people in Slavithe that she had seen thus far were normal enough, aside from their penchant for having good hearts, and the two monsters she had met were only two.

  "Does your family work for Gevad?" Ajalia asked blandly. She followed the young man back up the stairs to his door, and followed him into his room.

  "Yes," he said. He pointed to the thick blanket that lay over a narrow wooden bed. The bed was made of a bright yellow wood that Ajalia had never seen before. It looked soft, and parts of the posts had been carved with rough designs. Ajalia picked up a corner of the blanket, and felt the thick fabric. The young man had been right; the blanket was extraordinarily thick; Ajalia could tell that it would be very warm and soft.

  "Did Gevad take your house?" Ajalia asked. "In payment for what your parents owed him?"

  The young man moved his toe over the floor. "How did you know that?" he asked.

  "I own that house now," Ajalia said.

  The young man laughed. "You can't be serious," he said, but his eyes were looking over her anxiously.

  "I am serious," she said. "I own all of his houses now." She went back down the stairs. "All but one," she added. "I left him the house of Eccsa's mother."

  The young man was following her closely. His energy had shifted; he was studying her now, trying to figure out how to be best friends with this strange young slave from far away.

  "Can you own things?" he asked her. She ignored the question. "How did you get him to trade?" he asked.

  "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse," she said blandly. "Do you have a job?" she asked the young man. He began to hem and haw, and Ajalia cut through his incoherence. "Then you work for me now," she said. "Here," she said, pushing him at the piles of broken furniture. "We're going to sell those."

  "Okay," he said blankly.

  "So fix them," she said pointedly.

  Ajalia moved into a deep corner of the room, and began to sort through a series of heavy paintings that were shoved into the back. These had been in the room before she had unlocked the door, she was sure. they were coated with a thick layer of dust, and had a film of dirt over the paint.

  "Were these in the room before I unlocked the door?" Ajalia asked the young man. He looked over at what she was standing near, and shrugged.

  "Probably," he said. "I didn't see them before."

  Ajalia had a sudden vision of what had happened in this room. She imagined the young man lurking in his room, hearing the door beneath him opening, and then stealing down when he had been sure she was gone. She imagined him going from room to room in the tenement, knocking on doors and collecting garbage to stack in her room. She was sure that he was the sort of young man that would have seen such an act as a joke, or as a clever way of hazing the newcomer. She did not particularly mind, but she thought he was a very stupid young man.

  He was standing over the heap of furniture, tinkering with a small table whose legs had cracked. She did not ask him how he was going to fix it; she took it for granted that he would be able to figure out how to do it, if he did not already know how. She began to tell herself a story about him, as she pulled the heavy bags of soiled trash away from the corner of the room. She found a wide stone bowl leaned against one wall, and dragged it onto the floor near the window. She emptied out one of the bags of trash into the bowl, and used a strip of fabric to get a flame from within the lamp.

  "What are you doing?" the young man asked. Then he added, "That's dangerous."

  "Yes, it is," Ajalia said. She dropped the flaming strip of cloth into the stone bowl, and a tidy fire caught among the bits of garbage. The two of them watched the licking fire catch onto the different pieces of trash, and a ruddy glow began to light up the room.

  "Aren't you worried about setting fire to things?" the young man asked.

  "Stone house," Ajalia said carelessly, and added a few more pieces of garbage to the fire.

  "Well, yeah," the young man said. "But, still."

  "I think you're from a wealthy family," Ajalia said, as she watched the fire climb over the fluff and dust among the garbage. She added another bag, and the fire grew hot.

  "You shouldn't burn stuff inside," the young man said.

  "I think your father doesn't know how to make good deals, and I think clever merchants took advantage of him, until your family was on the brink of poverty."

  "That's just dangerous," the young man persisted. "The whole room could catch on fire."

  Ajalia fed a sliver of shattered wood from a chair into the fire, and waited until it was thoroughly aflame.

  "Then Gevad, or someone like Gevad showed up, and started lending your father money in speculation. Or your mother sold her things. And both of them planned on life getting better soon. You had wealthy friends, and you were sure something would turn up."

  "You're very rude," the young man commented, but he was not angry.

  "And then the idea was that your sisters would marry."

  "I don't have any sisters," he said hotly, but she was sure he was lying.

  "And you were going to go into business with one of your father's friends, and when it was too late, Gevad, or someone like him, took your house, and sold your family into slavery."

  "We don't have slaves here," the young man contested sharply.

  "And you escaped because you were too useless to sell, and now you live here, and you can't find work, and you don't have any friends, and you're alone, and scared, and ashamed that you're free."

  "My family is free as well," the young man said. "They didn't need me anymore."

  "No one wanted you," Ajalia said. "It's okay, life is easier when no one wants you."

  "How would you know?" he said bitterly.

  "Well, someone wanted me," she said.

  "That's different," he said.

  "Not much," she said. "And I'm pretty sure someone wanted both of your sisters."

  "I don't have—"

  "Yes you do," Ajalia said. "And you'd be lucky if they were married, wouldn't you?"

  "I don't want to talk about it," the young man said. "What's your name, anyway?"

  "You can call me mistress, if you like," Ajalia said, and she smiled. She piled a heap of scraps onto the fire, and then stamped the smoldering flames out. The acrid smell of dirty smoke filled the small room, and Ajalia peeled a long robe off the pile of garments and waved the smoke out of the window.

  "Well, I won't call you that," he said.

  "Good," she replied. "It would make me uncomfortable. If I buy you," she said, "I would be willing to move into your old house with you."

  "It's no use," he said, "our house was rented out a long time ago."

  "Oh, sweet child," Ajalia said.

  "What is that supposed to mean?" the young man demanded.

  "You didn't hear what I said," Ajalia replied.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said, if I bought you, I would be willing to move into your old house with you."

  The young man stared at her. "Why would you do that?"

  "Because no one wants you," Ajalia said. "I could use a man like that."

  The young man stood a little straighter, but he was not aware that he had done so. His lips twitched a little, and his eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Look," Ajalia said. She took the big stone bowl and tipped the ashes into the floor. "Wipe this out," she added, holding the bowl erect. The young man got a ragged bit of tunic, and wiped the ashes out of the bowl. "I'm going to make a fireplace out of this," she added thoughtfully. "Now," she said. "I am in this city to make a great deal of money. You are a completely useless piece of nobody."r />
  "Thanks," the young man muttered, but Ajalia waved him aside.

  "You have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no friends, correct?"

  "Well," the young man said, but he could not think of anything more to say.

  "And so," Ajalia said, "I will use you as a front. You will do what I say, and at the end, when I have amassed great heaps of money, you will have learned to bargain, unless you are far stupider than I suspect you of being."

  "What good will that do me?" the young man asked suspiciously. "I wouldn't have the house, or my family back."

  "You don't need your house," Ajalia said. "You need knowledge."

  The young man chewed over what she had said. He was still suspicious, but he was more interested than scared.

  "So you would teach me to do stuff?" he asked guardedly. Ajalia used the tunic he had used to wipe away the ashes from the bowl, and she scrubbed the ash more deeply into the stone floor. "Why are you doing that?" he asked. "You're making a mess." He watched her scrub. "Why are you making a mess?" he asked.

  A new Slavithe woman appeared at the door. "Oh, Malkos," she said, "you're here. I smelled smoke."

  "She was burning garbage," he said, gesturing to Ajalia. Ajalia stood up and went to the door. The Slavithe woman was of middle age, but trim and well-cared for. She wore her hair short, and had clear blue eyes.

  "I apologize for the inconvenience, caring stranger," Ajalia said, and pressed several coins into the woman's hand. The woman's face broke into a wide smile.

  "You are a thoughtful one, and a welcome addition to our building, isn't she, Malkos?" The young man grunted, and shrugged. He moved the chair leg idly up and down.

  "Malkos is a very unusual name," Ajalia said. She moved the things away from a chair, and placed it so that the woman could sit in the room. The Slavithe woman sat, and placed the coins in her pocket. Her calloused hand rested gently over the pocket, and her fingers traced over the shapes of the coins within. Her face had a look of deep serenity over it, and her mouth was stretched in a wide smile. Ajalia felt as though she had acted as some sort of angel of mercy. She certainly seemed to have made the Slavithe woman's day, and she intended to take full advantage of the woman's good mood.

  "Yes, Malkos is not a Slavithe name," the woman said happily. Malkos moved uncomfortably. He began to jam a loose leg back into a table with loose bits of wood. Ajalia could see the tips of his ears were turning red. "His mother wanted him to marry into the Thief Lord's family, you see, and when Malkos was born, he was named after a legendary rogue from the sea. His mother thought this would help him develop a wild side. Well, we can see that her plan did not work."

  The woman chortled good-naturedly, and the young man's jaw worked. He replied in kind to the Slavithe woman, and Ajalia listened to their banter with partial attention as she moved among the items in the room, straightening them out, and making clean stacks against the wall. She unearthed a narrow bed against one corner, that was similar in build to the bed in Malkos's room, but made of a rich red wood. There was no blanket on the bed, but a plain mattress of some soft plant matter was tucked over the frame.

  Ajalia had heard of the Thief Lord before she had come to Slavithe, but she had not been sure how much of what she had heard was in the same vein as the tales of magic. Apparently there was a Thief Lord in the flesh. Ajalia had been told that the city of Slavithe was ruled over by an official called the Thief Lord. The position was hereditary, and had been passed down from father to son since the very founding of the city. She had heard that the first Thief Lord had been so called because he had stolen away the hearts of slaves from all over the continent of Leopath, and tempted them into the desert, far away from their masters and their homes.

  Ajalia had never believed in the story of a mass exodus of slaves. It was supposed to have happened long ago, but Ajalia thought it was nothing more than a fancy tale meant to pass the time before a night fire. The Thief Lord was supposed to be a sort of figure of legend, that led the people of Slavithe with some sort of common consent. It was the last part that made Ajalia the surest that the story was utterly made up. No one led anyone by common consent. She did not believe there was any place in the whole world where someone with power looked out for anyone below them.

  The young man was arguing with the middle-aged woman about the proper discipline of her children.

  "There is no excuse for the screaming," the young man was saying earnestly.

  "And you shouldn't be at home to hear it," the woman said placidly. "Why don't you get out and find a job?"

  "I have a job," the young man said. "I work for her now, she hired me." He pointed at where Ajalia was heaving a stack of boxes into a corner.

  "Do you really?" the Slavithe woman asked. Ajalia felt the eyes of the woman move over to her, and look at her with new curiosity. "Does Malkos work for you?"

  "I have need of a discreet worker," Ajalia said.

  "Well, Malkos isn't that," the woman said with a laugh.

  "I thought you wanted me to get a job," Malkos said sourly.

  "I do," the woman said, "but I like her, and you aren't discreet. I have a cousin," she confided to Ajalia, "and he wouldn't be nearly as cheap as Malkos, but he knows how to keep his mouth shut."

  "Unfortunately, I can pay very little," Ajalia murmured, and the woman tutted in sympathy.

  "Malkos is the cheapest you will find," the Slavithe woman said. "You won't find anyone else bothering you for his time, will she Malkos?" The woman laughed, and bid them farewell.

  "See?" Ajalia said, as soon as the middle-aged woman was out of earshot. "When people don't take you seriously, you can learn things."

  "What's the use of learning things?" Malkos muttered under his breath.

  "You need a new name," Ajalia said. She had finished clearing out the room. There was garbage, but it was neat now, and there was plenty of floor visible in the center of the room. She went to the deepest corner of the room, and dug her goatskin saddle from behind a dusty stack of old books, where she had hidden it the previous day.

  "What's wrong with my name?" Malkos asked. He sounded defensive.

  "It's a stupid name," Ajalia said. "No one will take you seriously. Take this," she said, and handed the goatskin saddle to him.

  "I thought you said it was good if no one took me seriously," Malkos complained.

  "Don't contradict me," Ajalia said. She looked over the room, and straightened a few more bits of furniture.

  "It looks nicer," Malkos offered.

  "Chad," Ajalia said.

  "Is that my new name?" he asked.

  "You need a haircut," Ajalia said. "Go get one."

  "It's the middle of the night," the young man said.

  "You need to change your attitude," Ajalia pointed out. "Now show me where your old house was."

  The young man she had renamed Chad was still clutching her black saddle to his chest. Ajalia pushed him out into the tenement hallway, and pulled the metal door closed behind her. She locked the door this time, and added the strange black key to her cluster of white ones she had taken off Gevad. Chad stared at the rattling mound of keys, and Ajalia could hear him breathe a little more heavily.

  "You really have all those houses?" he asked, and Ajalia could hear throbbing desire in his voice.

  "I am but a slave," Ajalia said, her voice bubbling over with laughter. "Can I really own anything?"

  She began to walk down the stairs. She had brought the silver lamp with her, and the flame lit a strange metal glow against the walls of the staircase.

  "Can you?" Chad asked. He was coming close behind her, and his feet were loud on the stairs.

  "Look," Ajalia said, stopping. "You walk like a horse. Walk like a shadow. You'll have to move out of the room here."

  "Why?" Chad asked.

  "Because I told you to," Ajalia said.

  "That's a dumb reason to do anything," Chad scoffed. Ajalia moved more quickly down the stairs, and she smiled in the half-darkness. She
thought that this young man was exactly what she wanted.

  "Where is your family?" she asked.

  "They live in the old house," Chad said, "at least my mother and my aunt do. My father sleeps there, but he still works at market most days."

  "Is he a porter?" Ajalia asked. Chad responded with a chilling silence, and Ajalia refrained from laughing at him. "Where are your sisters?" she asked.

  "They are maids in the house of the merchant Lamper," Chad said. He sounded moody. Ajalia came to the entrance to the tenement and stood to one side, to wait for Chad and the saddle. Chad came out behind Ajalia and stood in the street for a moment. His face was clenching slightly. Ajalia waited.

  "How do you know so much about my family?" he asked. "About my father, and that I have sisters?" Ajalia stared at the young man's face. He was really asking her. His eyes were more sincere now, more earnest than they had been before. He wanted to know. She thought that there was a chance that he could become quite useful, though she would not bet much on the chance.

  "Which way to your old house?" Ajalia asked. The night was dark, and the hour was very late. The moon had grown cold and stale, and some of the lights in the city had gone out entirely. The streets were empty, and the air was chilled. Chad began, after staring at Ajalia for a moment, to walk to the south, and Ajalia fell into step beside him.

  "People are all the same everywhere," she said as they walked. "No one is different."

  "You are different," the young man said, and Ajalia nearly laughed at him. He had begun to anticipate a quaint romance. She could see his well-bred head turning over schemes of love; she would be swept away by his charms, and he would rescue his family by sacrificing himself to the wiles of the foreign woman.

  "No one is different," Ajalia said. "I am no different than you." She thought that the market day may have been closed by now, even for the exotic display from the East. The market itself would have wound down shortly after dark, but she knew that Lim would have milked every moment of the blue light of the moon that he could get. It was dark and cold now, and she was sure that the silks would have been put away inside the merchant's house. Lim, she suspected, would stay the night with the merchant, to watch over the silk, but as she had this thought she realized that he was not likely to do such a wise thing. He was too vain, and too caught up in his own importance to think of the silks as he ought.