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

by Victor Poole

  Ajalia knocked at the back door that led into the merchant's home. When the merchant's wife came down, Ajalia told her that she had finished for the day.

  "Things have gone too well," Ajalia told the Slavithe merchant's wife. "I have sold all that we kept for the day."

  "What good fortune," the Slavithe woman said.

  "I am wondering," Ajalia said, "if you would accompany me to our home. I would like to present you with a gift."

  The woman's eyes woke up with a sparkle. "You are too kind," she said. Her face crumbled into a smile.

  "Has your husband been in the fabric business for a long time?" Ajalia asked her new friend, as the two came out into the now-empty stall. The Slavithe woman turned and locked the door behind them.

  "He is not my husband," the Slavithe woman confided, "but we pretend, for the children's sake."

  "I see," Ajalia said. She kept her face neutral, and when the Slavithe woman asked her not to tell anyone, Ajalia assured her of her silence. "My parents were not married," she lied, and the Slavithe woman's smile came out again.

  "I felt I could trust you when I saw you," she said. "Someone like you would understand my position." They walked in silence for many minutes through the darkened streets of the market. The flames of the torches lit up swaths of the street, and sent ruddy tongues licking up the sides of the market stalls. The shadows within the cavernous openings of the stalls looked like so many open maws, and the spaces between stalls, where the eateries, and the coopers, and other tiny merchant holdings were concealed, were like deep cracks into the infinity of night. Ajalia thought that these places would be where the thieves lay. Her knife was concealed in its sheath, and it made a comfortable crease against her spine. She loved to imagine the knife's edge dripping in blood, as it had dripped on the night when she was nine, and her father had let her have it, and the robbers had come in the night, and she had stabbed one of them through the neck. Thinking of the blood running thickly down the blade, like a stream in the forest, and the burbling, crumbling noises of the robber as he had died, made Ajalia feel free, and strong, and fearless in the dark. She always hoped, halfway, that someone would attack her in the dark. She had been followed before, but her wish of being attacked had never come to pass. She suspected that violent men could sense the joyful anticipation of death that roiled over her body in the dark, and chose to wait for easier marks.

  "I worked for his father," the woman said, "and my man and I had an arrangement. He promised to marry me, but it is forbidden to marry a servant, and I have never saved enough money to get out of debt."

  Ajalia did not ask why the fabric merchant did not buy his pseudo-wife out of bondage. She knew how these things went.

  "Have you any children?" the Slavithe woman asked. Ajalia said that she didn't, and the woman nodded soberly. "It is probably better that you don't," she said. "But I am not sorry that we have some. I have two," she said. "They are getting old enough to know better, but they pretend, and I think they may pretend for a long time still."

  They came out of the market entrance, and into the broad white street.

  "Have you always been a slave?" the woman asked Ajalia, and Ajalia nodded.

  "For as long as it matters," Ajalia said. "A long time."

  "Is it hard, not to own yourself?" the Slavithe woman asked. Ajalia said that it was, because that was what everyone expected to hear, and she did not enjoy getting into the politics of the transaction of human bodies.

  "I am not a slave," the Slavithe woman said meditatively, "but I am not as free as I would like. My man cannot buy me out, you know," she said suddenly. "I suppose it may be done that way in other places, but here debts are seen as a matter of honor, and must be gotten out of by the person who inherits the debt. I have no other family that can help me, and I have not made enough money. I do not think that I ever will."

  "Are your children going to inherit your debt?" Ajalia asked. The woman shrugged, and her mouth folded up into a worried smile.

  "There is not much I can do about that," she said.

  "Yes there is," Ajalia wanted to say, but did not. "Why doesn't your husband set you up in business for yourself?" she asked the woman. "Couldn't you earn your way out?"

  "I could," the woman said, "but he is so busy, and he is afraid that I don't understand sums."

  "Do you?" Ajalia asked.

  "Well enough," the woman said lightly. Ajalia did not ask anymore. A bubble of indignation was growing beneath her collarbone, and she did not think that it would be wise to act on it. She had not made a habit of helping people who would not help themselves. She would have advised the woman to steal, but it was not politic to suggest such things to strangers, and the woman was blinded by her own kindness. Ajalia wondered if the woman knew how it would end, how her figure of a husband would turn on her, when she was old enough to be in the way, and how she would be shuffled from her children's houses under some excuse, and how she would end as a servant in some poor place.

  "Would it be worth it to be married?" Ajalia asked.

  "Oh, yes," the Slavithe woman said. "Marriage in our city is very honorable. Married women wear their hair long."

  Ajalia thought about this. She examined the woman beside her, whose hair was cropped short and tucked just behind her ears. She wanted to ask the woman how she could pretend to be married, if she was visibly and obviously not married at all.

  "Do many people pretend?" Ajalia asked. She tried to keep her voice casual, but a strange thumping was growing in her chest. Married, and with long hair? It seemed absurd. It seemed fantastic. She had seen so few women who wore long hair, and here was this Slavithe woman telling her that those who were married wore their hair long. It seemed utterly unbelievable to Ajalia that in such a great city, only a handful of women would be married, while all the others openly pretended to be allied to their partners. Where Ajalia had come from as a child, and in all the other places of Leopath that she had seen, marriage was ubiquitous. Even slaves could marry, so long as they saved the purchasing price of a spouse, and so long as they were not utterly noisome about children and sex. It seemed terribly strange to her that such a place as this could be.

  "I have not seen many married women, then," Ajalia said.

  "No," the merchant's mistress agreed. "Few women have bought themselves out of their family's debt."

  "What about the sons of such families?" Ajalia asked. She was genuinely curious. The pair were drawing near the little house, which was sending forth a warm and inviting glow, and the leather pouch was growing temptingly heavy in Ajalia's hands. She wanted to throw the coins at the woman, to shout at her to free herself, to free her children.

  "Men are not as valuable as women," the Slavithe woman said. "No one is interested in male slaves, unless they are very clever."

  Ajalia stared at the Slavithe woman. She wanted to know if the fabric merchant's mistress realized that she had used the word "slaves", but she didn't want to frighten her into reticence. Every person Ajalia had spoken to on the subject was adamant in the extreme that there were no slaves here, only servants who were paid.

  "Do you earn any money?" Ajalia asked. She opened the door to the little house, and noise and light streamed out. The Slavithe woman stood on the threshold, and put her hands together.

  "I can't come in," the woman said.

  "Lim," Ajalia bellowed into the house, and the Slavithe woman jumped.

  "What do you want, you scamp?" Lim shouted from upstairs.

  "Come and pay for the market stall," Ajalia shouted back.

  Lim came bustling down the stairs. He was still wrapped in his market finery, but his wild brown hair had been washed, and was sticking to his neck in a thin wrap. He often tried to straighten his stubborn curls, but Ajalia had yet to see it work. She wanted to tell him to just cut it all off, but his dream of imitating his Eastern masters would not die so easily.

  "Why should I pay more, when I have already paid for the use of the stall?" Lim asked aggre
ssively, staring down at the Slavithe woman, who shrunk a little under his gaze.

  "I put a clause into the contract," Ajalia lied, "saying that if we closed out within a week, we would pay extra."

  "What are you saying?" the Slavithe woman whispered to Ajalia. Ajalia translated what she had said, and the Slavithe woman frowned. "There was no such clause," she said.

  Ajalia smiled. The woman had read her husband's contract. Ajalia was sure that the woman was tremendously clever, under the cover of her mousy exterior.

  Lim eyed Ajalia. His lips pushed out. He knew perfectly well that what Ajalia had said was quite fair. He knew that such clauses were often used when stalls were rented from foreigners. He had often, Ajalia guessed, found ways to avoid fulfilling such contracts in the past.

  "How much?" Lim barked at the Slavithe woman.

  "What did he say?" the woman whispered to Ajalia. Lim was, as ever, speaking in the Eastern tongue, and the oiling, twisting snakes of sound passed through the air, empty of meaning for the Slavithe woman.

  "How much debt do you owe?" Ajalia asked. She saw the woman's eyes widen.

  "You mustn't," the Slavithe woman said hoarsely. "It is forbidden."

  "She does not want to say how much," Ajalia said. "She is embarrassed by your strange and intimidating hair."

  Lim smoothed back his wet and wrapped curls, and smirked with glee.

  "Tell her I am only a man," he said. He was preening. Ajalia watched him preen with cold and calculating eyes.

  "How much, quickly?" she asked the woman again.

  The woman named a sum, and Ajalia wanted to cry. It was a paltry sum.

  "Do you have sisters?" Ajalia asked, opening the pouch.

  "How much?" Lim demanded. His chin was quivering with manly pride.

  "Quickly," Ajalia said, looking down at the coins that she was drawing out of the leather pouch.

  "I have an old aunt," the Slavithe woman said. Her voice sounded weak. Ajalia was sorry that she had said this. She was sure the woman had some female relative, and that the woman was too frightened and embarrassed to ask for more money.

  "I cannot help you after the next ten seconds or so," Ajalia said. "There is no time for you to feel this way."

  The Slavithe woman's eyes tingled a little in the light from the house, and she swallowed. She named a sum that was three times what she had first said, and Ajalia repeated the number to Lim.

  "How did you get such a low rate?" Lim asked Ajalia, taking the coins from her hand and counting them over. Ajalia thought it was very funny that Lim, who had not yet learned to say hello in the Slavithe language, was proficient at counting the Slavithe money. The counting was strange, and the rates were different, but the coins were made of the same precious metals that were used throughout the continent; Slavithe money would be good in the East, and everywhere else.

  Lim passed the coins to the Slavithe woman with a patronizing smile. "It has been a great pleasure," he said, "doing business with you and your husband." Lim turned to Ajalia. "How do I say, 'Thank you'?" he asked.

  Ajalia told him, and he repeated the sounds after her. The Slavithe woman beamed, and her eyes fluttered over to Ajalia, as though she were asking permission to be alive.

  "Good night," Ajalia said, without winking or making any sign, and she went into the house and closed the door on the Slavithe woman. Ajalia hoped that the woman had the sense to go home, to pay off her debts and the debts of her loved ones, and to marry the fabric merchant. She did not know if things would work out the way she hoped, but she knew that she would have been irked if she had not done what she had done.

  The money was money that she could have kept for herself, but the woman's situation had made her angry, and Ajalia could not stand to be angry. She would rather be bleeding to death in an alley than angry, and when it came to the point, she would even go to great lengths to keep from feeling intense irritation.

  "What a lovely woman," Lim commented to Ajalia. He took the pouch of coins from her, and drew a sack from his pocket. He poured the money from the day's sales into the sack, and thrust the leather pouch back at Ajalia. She took it, and lay it against the wall. She would retrieve the coins from the lining in a few minutes. She did not know how many of the slaves in the house knew about the secret lining, but now that she had given away the money for an early release on the lease, she was taking no chances on the rest of the money.

  "I need some slaves to carry some things," Ajalia told Lim, following him through the house as he carried the coins up the stairs.

  "Why?" he asked. He did not sound as though he cared, but Lim wanted to know about everything.

  "I've taken another house," Ajalia lied.

  "Why?" Lim asked. He looked around at Ajalia.

  "Because this one is small, and because I wanted to," she said.

  "Waste of money," Lim said wisely, and Ajalia nodded.

  "Probably," she said. "But I've got a man to front a business, and it might work out."

  "Dangerous, not to do everything yourself," Lim said. Ajalia remembered the leather pouch, and went back down the stairs. She slapped away her boy, who had just laid hands on the pouch, and took it up the stairs again.

  "Do you care who I take?" Ajalia called into Lim's room.

  "No," he said. "Wait," he added, "take Philas, will you? He's driving me mad."

  Ajalia nodded, and went down to the kitchen.

  "Philas," she said.

  "What?" he asked. He was standing on a counter in the kitchen, scrubbing the edge of the ceiling with a rag from a dirty-looking bucket.

  "What is that?" she asked.

  "That awful juice," he said. "It cleans stuff."

  "Okay," she said. "Come with me."

  "Why?" he asked, hopping down from the counter and wringing out the rag into the bucket.

  "That smells nasty," she said.

  "I know," he said, licking his fingers.

  "You're disgusting," she added.

  "Give it a try," he said with a smile. Ajalia stared at Philas. She had never seen him like this. He looked positively manic with energy.

  "I have work for you to do," Ajalia said.

  "Great!" Philas shouted.

  "Maybe you should lay off the poison tree juice," Ajalia said gently. She went up to the top of the stairs and got her things.

  "Where are we going?" Philas asked. He was bouncing up and down. "I'm very interested in working," he added, and rubbed his hands together.

  "Do you think you have the time for a side business?" Ajalia asked.

  "No," Philas said. "Yes. What kind of business?" Philas had a flushed face, and his eyes were too bright. Ajalia put her hand on his cheek, and it was not too hot. "Are you in love with me yet?" he asked her.

  "You're drunk," she told him, and carried her things down the stairs.

  "I'm not, you know," he told her, clattering down the steps behind her. Ajalia collected her boy, and two of the women, and led her little group out of the front door.

  "Where are you going?" Yelin asked, just as they were crossing the threshold. She was holding a mop and a set of sewing things. Ajalia did not look at her, and did not answer. "Can I come, too?" Yelin called after them. "I don't want to fix this mop," Yelin shouted into the street.

  "Has something happened to Yelin?" Ajalia asked Philas. Philas bounced a little bit more, and gnawed restlessly on the knuckles of his right hand.

  "Lim won't speak to her," Philas said. "There's a rumor she's loose."

  "Oh," Ajalia said. She wanted to tell Philas how strange she felt, but she did not think such a conversation would end well. She wanted the world to stop moving around her. She wanted things to stop. The night was growing deeper around them, and the torchlight moved around them with a sound like little sparks and snaps of consuming wood. It was the second night that she had spent walking the streets in Slavithe, and she did not think the next day would come soon enough.

  Ajalia led the slaves through the streets to the tenemen
t that she had rented from the old woman. She took them up the stairs, and knocked at the door of the young man's room.

  Chad opened the door. The expression on his face changed from annoyance to interest when he saw the people behind Ajalia.

  "What's going on?" he asked her.

  "Come on," Ajalia told him, and as he began to follow, she put a hand out. "Get your stuff first," she said. "We aren't coming back."

  "What's going on?" Chad asked one of the female slaves, and the slave shrugged at him.

  "Help him," Ajalia told the boy, and then she took Philas and the two women down to her own room, and unlocked the door. The old woman was inside, and a lamp had been lit.

  "What are you doing here?" Ajalia asked. She felt as though she were about to break. There was too much of everything; too many things were swirling around her, and tugging on her attention. She didn't think that she would be able to overcome a confrontation with another unfriendly face. She did not think that she was in control of herself.

  "Some of my things were left in here," the old woman said. The pile of clothes on the old woman's back shivered just a little, as though there were small creatures nestling just underneath the surface. Ajalia guessed that the old woman had come to poke around, to see what had been done in the room. She thought it was awfully convenient that she had come into the room just when the old woman was there. She did not suspect that the old woman had been waiting for her.

  "Get out," Ajalia said. She stood out of the way, and indicated the open door. The old woman smirked a little, and shuffled one step deeper into the room.

  "You have not paid rent," the old woman whined. The old woman's eyes looked over Philas, and then over the two slaves.

  "Move her out," Ajalia told Philas, and Philas moved towards the old woman.

  The old woman shrieked with fear, and shuffled backwards. "Don't hurt me," she quavered.

  "Good mother," Philas said, "will you not show me your room? I may be in the market to buy such a building as this. It is a fine building. How have you maintained it so well?"