by Victor Poole
The old woman changed in an instant; she grinned conspiratorially at Philas, and took him by the arm. "I probably would not sell, handsome stranger from the far places," the old woman cooed, "but I do have some lovely antiques."
"Antiques make life worth living," Philas said. Philas winked at Ajalia as he passed with the old woman out of the room, and Ajalia shrugged at him. Ajalia set the two slaves to work in the room, moving the furniture around to clear the walls. She had a vague notion of cleaning the walls of the room, but when Chad and the slave boy appeared at the door, Ajalia changed her mind. The night was growing darker outside. Ajalia did not know how long it would be until dawn, but suddenly she knew that what she wanted more than anything else was to be quiet and alone.
"We are moving all this," Ajalia said, gesturing at the junk all round her, "to the little house."
It was lucky, Ajalia thought, that the room was so small, because it had been jammed with as many things as would fit through the narrow door. She set the women to work tying loose pieces of chairs and tables together into bundles, and carrying them down the stairs.
"What are you going to do with all this?" Philas asked, when he came to the door again. He had been gone for some minutes, and when he came back into the room, Ajalia thought she could smell dust and warm food on him.
"Did that old witch feed you?" she asked.
"Let us not disrespect our elders," Philas said, and stretched out his arms. "Are we moving all these things?" he asked, and went to the back corner where the big paintings lay. "I'm going to move these," he said.
"I'll help," Chad said, and abandoned the boy, who was struggling with a series of boxes, to help Philas heave the heavy painting towards the door.
"How did these get into the room?" Philas asked, as the two of them jammed them sideways into the stairwell.
"They probably came in the same way they're leaving," Ajalia said. She stood in the center of the room, and watched the things gradually empty out into the street. When the sun was the most absent from the sky, and even the moon had closed up shop for the night, the room was bare, except for the narrow bed and the stone basin. Dust, and the remains of dried beetles lay in the corners. The room was oddly bright and large when empty. Though the room was narrow and short, the proportions were well suited to each other, and the window made a charming eye out into the street. Ajalia held the lamp aloft, that the old woman had lit. The light was beginning to burn low, and when Ajalia leaned out of the window to see the sky, there were not many stars visible through the fog that lay like a blanket over the city.
"That's all of it," Philas said, coming into the room. Ajalia thought it was very odd that Philas was working so hard. He usually did just as much as was needed for him not to look like a complete slacker, and then stood about managing the other slaves.
"This city," Ajalia said to him, "does it seem odd to you?"
"I don't know," Philas said. "Where are we going next?" He was not bouncing anymore, but his weight was a little too buoyant. He was not his usual self.
"Something's in the air here," Ajalia said. "I don't know what it is. I don't like it."
"You should drink the poison juice," Philas advised. "It would help you calm down."
"I'm calm," Ajalia said, and she went down the stairs.
The heap of items looked much smaller in the street than it had done against the walls of the room. Ajalia ran up the stairs again and locked the door to the little room where the bed lay alone against one wall. She did not want to clear out the room again, and she had a suspicion that the walls would magically beckon to the other residents of the tenement, and she could expect to find another pile of discarded junk when she returned again.
Ajalia rattled the locked door, and ran back down the stairs. "Let's go," she said.
The little group moved the pile of things from street corner to street corner. Chad said many times that they could have hired some people, or at least a cart, but Ajalia ignored him. She wanted the quiet, and the dark. The movement of the stack calmed her.
The sun was rising by the time the stack of broken furniture, and broken crockery, and torn clothing, and heavy paintings reached the little house, and Lim was outside the door of the little house. His face was angry.
"What have you been doing?" he said. His eyes took in the heap, as it came slowly around the corner.
"Furniture," Ajalia said shortly.
"Garbage, more like," Lim said, but Ajalia could see his eyes travelling speculatively over the heap. "Not a bad haul," he told Philas, and Philas nodded, his breath coming heavily as he pulled the first of the great paintings over the smooth street. "What is that?" Lim breathed, touching the painting.
"I know," Ajalia said. "I found them."
"Them?" Lim asked eagerly.
"There are three more, and two small ones," Ajalia told him. Lim ran around the corner to examine the remaining goods, and then darted back into the little house. Ajalia could hear Lim shouting up and down the stairs at the slaves, and in a moment, sleepy faced slaves began to trickle out of the little house.
"Get all this inside, quickly," Lim shouted. "Hurry, before it rains."
Ajalia did not laugh. It was not going to rain, but the paintings were very beautiful, and she did not blame Lim for feeling nervous.
"Did you pay the rent?" Lim asked Ajalia again, and this time Ajalia nodded.
"I did better than pay it," she said. "I got the house."
"We own it?" Lim demanded. Ajalia nodded.
"I do," she said.
"Fine, fine," Lim said, nodding and rubbing his hands together. Ajalia could have said again that the house was hers, but she did not think that Lim would notice her words.
"Key?" Lim demanded, holding out his hand. Ajalia smiled.
"You can ignore what I said," she told him, "and you can buy the house from me, but either way, I'm keeping the rent money."
Lim glared at her. "You'll regret this," he said.
"I won't," she told him.
"You will," Lim said again, and he followed the last slave into the little house.
Ajalia looked up at the front of the little house, and tried to decide if she ever wanted to go inside again. The room in the tenement called to her, and she thought longingly of the shadowy corners and the floor, empty but for the lonely wooden bed, and the stone basin. She reminded herself of the old woman that kept the tenement, and she remembered that Lim was less noisome than the cold night air. She went inside.
The slaves were bustling to and fro; Philas and Lim had taken charge of the heap of garbage, and it was being shaped into whole pieces of furniture, and piles of usable items.
"These can be made into blankets," Ajalia told them, holding up some of the rags. She told them what Chad had told her, and Chad appeared behind her, nodding solemnly. Lim stared at the young Slavithe man, but did not ask Ajalia where she had gotten him.
"Where did you start to learn the language of the East?" she asked Chad, when Lim had begun to turn over the piles of fabric.
"I went and found him," Chad said, pointing to Philas. "I bought him drinks, and he started to teach me." Ajalia nodded. She had not given Chad credit for being so enterprising.
"Are you ready to show me your old house?" she asked Chad, and Chad nodded.
"I went and told them," he said, "that there was a new landlord."
"Did you?" Ajalia asked him. She was not sure if she was pleased with this news or not. "And?" she asked.
"And what?" Chad said. "They were relieved. Everyone hates Gevad."
"Do you know others who belonged to him?" Ajalia asked.
"Yes," Chad said at once.
"How many?" she asked again.
Chad shrugged, but he looked interested. "At least a few hundred," he said, "at a guess. Maybe more. He worked a lot."
"You mean that he stole a lot," Ajalia said. Chad shrugged again, and Ajalia led him into a corner. "One thing that you have to learn," she said, "while you work for me, when
I say a man steals, you nod." Chad nodded.
"Why?" he asked.
"And don't ask me why," she said.
"Why not?" he asked. Ajalia stared at Chad, and decided that he was stupider than he looked.
"Do you want to earn your sisters' freedom from the merchant Lamper?" she asked him.
"I'm surprised you remembered his name," Chad admitted.
"Don't be surprised anymore," she said. "Do you want them to be honest wives?"
"Yes," Chad said instantly. "How could that be?"
"You are going to be my front here," Ajalia said. "You are going to pretend to be me."
"Why would I do that?" Chad said. His nose was snarled into a knot of confusion. "Why wouldn't you be yourself?"
"Because if you are me," Ajalia said patiently, as the servants went back and forth in front of her, and the wood furniture clattered and creaked, and the fabric ripped and shredded into bits, leaving fluff in the air, "then I can be in more than one place at the same time."
"Oh," Chad said. He thought about this for some time, and then opened his mouth again.
"What am I going to do?" he asked.
"First," Ajalia said, "You are going to learn my language." She sent him to stand near Philas, and help him with furniture. The slaves were breaking down much of the wood, making long slats and thin pieces that curved where the backs of chairs had been. Philas had been slave to a woodworking man in his youth, and he was showing the slaves how to take strips of fabric and bind up the pieces of wood into new shapes. Many of the legs and bases of the chairs and tables they left in place, and bound new tabletops and backings to them.
Ajalia watched Lim survey the garbage heap that was, fairly quickly, being shaped up into a pile of usable things, and she smiled at the pride that beamed out of him. He was not a bad man, when he was not lying and setting traps. She thought that it was a pity his heart was so narrow, and so dark. He might have made a good business partner, if he had not been so selfish.
Philas was shouting at the slaves, waving his hands up and down, and tearing up the woven back of a chair. He made Chad do the chair over again, and pointed at the young Slavithe man, lecturing the slaves on the finer points of industry and following directions. Ajalia could see Chad mouthing along to the Eastern words, his tongue practicing the shapes that he did not yet understand.
Ajalia went to the fine paintings, which were slathered in dirt and grime, and which looked as though they had lain forgotten in the tenement room for generations. She ran a finger along the surface, and found that the paintings had been rendered on a kind of beaten wood pulp that had been framed in some very thin slices of white stone. She did not recognize the type of paint that had been used, but she had an eye for quality, as much as Lim had, and she could see value when she found it languishing under a mountain of dirt and neglect.
She went into the kitchen, and found the leftover bits of water and soap in the bottom of a pail. She dug around in the other vessels, and found the black stuff that Philas had been using to clean the ceilings. He had had a rag, and she fished it out of the bottom of the pail. The rag and the black fluid stunk, and she wrung out a corner and took the rag to the paintings.
Ajalia chose a tiny corner of the smallest painting, where the dirt was thickest, and barely touched the rag to the paint. A hiss like a deadly snake emitted from the rag, and a lively steam rose up from the corner of the painting. A mist of filth rose up from the corner of the beaten pulp surface, and a tiny dot of brilliant red was revealed beneath.
A silence fell over the room, as all the slaves, and Chad, looked around at the noise.
"What was that?" Lim asked, and Ajalia showed him the clear area of the painting.
Chad whistled under his breath, but Ajalia did not take the bait. When she did not ask him why he whistled, she heard him grumble before saying, "Those are expensive paintings, probably."
The whole room erupted in laughter at him, and Chad blushed. He ducked his head, and went back to tying up bits of wood. The slaves began to mock Chad, and Philas, in a kindly spirit of erudition, translated their insults for the young man. Ajalia went to the kitchen and got the vessel of stinking fluid, and then sat with the paintings, and began, painstakingly, to clean them. The hissing and the steam filled the room, and after a while the rest of the slaves got used to the noise, and ignored it.
When Lim had put everything where he wanted it to be, and had seen that all the projects were well under way, he wandered over to the place where the paintings leaned up against the wall, and folded his arms.
"Got to be worth a lot," he said to Ajalia. She shrugged.
"They're Slavithe," she said. "That's all that matters."
"They're more than Slavithe," Lim said. "They're art."
"Whatever," Ajalia muttered, and Lim ignored her. She thought that he was about to wax philosophical about the merits of beauty, but instead he sighed.
"It's a nice city, this Slavithe," he said.
"Sure," she said.
"It would be a nice place to settle down."
"I'll think of you often, when you retire here," Ajalia said.
"I think you'd like it here," Lim said pointedly.
"Great," Ajalia said.
"Why don't you stay?" he asked.
"Why don't you?" she replied.
Lim laughed. "I couldn't," he said. "But I think you could."
Ajalia caught herself before she glanced up at him, but a stirring in her gut told her that the truce had been broken. She sighed. Lim smiled.
"You see how relaxed you are already?" he asked. He put a hand on her shoulder, and pressed gently down. Before he had properly settled his weight, Ajalia had spun around, and her knife was against Lim's cheek.
"I could take out your eye," she whispered, "and no one here would say a word."
Lim did not reply. He was only just beginning to register what had happened. His hands, plump as they were, had raised gently into the air. He was trying to back away, but Ajalia edged the blade against his skin, so that he was pushing his own flesh into the knife, and he stopped.
"Please don't," he whispered hoarsely.
"Give me a reason not to," Ajalia hissed.
"Um," Lim said.
Ajalia twisted the knife around Lim's neck, and chopped off the thick band that was his hair. Lim cried out as if she had cut his skin, and she saw that he was narrowly avoiding tears.
"Baby," she spat. She wiped the edge of her knife against her sleeve, and went back to cleaning the paintings. She did not look to watch Lim backing away, or to see Yelin gathering up the bundle of Lim's torn up hair. She heard Yelin, though, and barked at her to leave the hair where it was. Yelin scampered away.
The room had gone silent when the knife had come out, and the voices of the slaves gradually rose up into the air again. No one talked about what had just happened, and in a few moments, there was nothing to indicate what had happened, aside from the clump of frizzy brown hair that lay in a long, wrapped packet on the ground.
By the time Ajalia had finished cleaning the two small paintings, and most of the largest one, the sun had risen full into the sky. The rest of the slaves had finished their work in the house, and had been let off for the afternoon, to wander out in the city and explore. Trading trips were not always like this, but there were usually one or two periods of strange calm, when there was not much to do, aside from living, and waiting, and not wasting money or goods.
Ajalia reflected on the strange nature of this trip as she finished up the large painting. The two small paintings were portraits, one of a man's face, and one of a woman in a full-length portrait. Chad had gone out with Philas and the rest of the slaves, but Ajalia wanted to ask the young man if he recognized the faces of the two figures when he returned. The woman was wearing a fantastically colored robe, and her hair had been done up in a long, spinning fan that filled the top of the picture, and had been dressed with ribbons of bright flowers and feathered, pulsing knots. The robe was of the
colors that Ajalia had seen of the Slavithe fabric, but it was twisted into heavy bands and pleats, and it hung around her body with a wealth of color. The woman looked like a regal queen. The painting of the man's face was more muted, but beautifully rendered. The man's eyes had a heavy, piercing quality, and they shone out of the painting with a force that was almost shocking. He had heavy white brows, and a thick, tousled head of hair that was almost tan, but sprung against his forehead with a look like the mane of an angry beast. Ajalia wanted to know more about this man. She felt that the figures must be connected to each other; they were painted in the same style, and she was sure they had been painted by the same artist.
DELMAR
A crick was growing in Ajalia's back, and she went into the kitchen. She did not know what Lim was planning to do about food. There was nothing in the house. She picked up the rest of the poison tree juice, and sniffed at it again. She didn't know how Philas could stand to put the stuff into his mouth, much less swallow it.
As Ajalia cleaned the second large painting, the front door opened, and Philas and Chad came back in.
"You are too filthy rich," Philas was saying in the Eastern tongue.
"You aren't competent," Chad repeated. Ajalia smiled.
"Filthy rich," she said.
"Filthy rich," Chad repeated.
"Not competent," Ajalia said.
"They sound the same," Chad said.
"Have you drunk all the poison in the city?" Ajalia asked Philas.
"Not a drop since yesterday," Philas said. Ajalia looked at Philas. He had not tried to flirt with her all morning. He had not followed her around. He had not been clingy.
"Are you feeling yourself?" she asked him. She used the Eastern words, and she saw Chad staring at her mouth, moving his lips along with what she had said. He did not know what the words meant.
"Never so much," Philas said. "What are these of?" He moved the paintings away from the wall, and picked up the small ones.
"Where did you find these?" Chad asked in alarm. "Were they in your room?"