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

by Victor Poole

  "You have to be nice to me," Philas pointed out, "if you want to ravish me."

  "I was not going to ravish you, Philas," she snapped. Her face was burning. Philas unpacked the bundle of her things, and took out the brush. "I don't need your help," she added in a whisper.

  "I'm not helping," Philas said calmly. "Sit down."

  Ajalia knelt in front of her things and began, with trembling hands, to apply her paint. Her hands were shaking, and her breath was coming in and out of her body in throbs. She was afraid that she was going to cry.

  "Give it to me," Philas said, and he took the brush out of her hand. Ajalia began to cry. She bit down on the sob that was threatening to burst out of her.

  "Why do I keep crying like this?" she demanded, her breath shaking out of her. Ajalia's shoulders were quivering. Philas took her chin in his hand, and began to paint the black shadows over her eyes. "I'm sorry," she added fiercely. "I don't know what is happening to me."

  Philas crushed against her face with a kiss, and she smelled sun and soap on his skin.

  "You don't have to love anyone," Philas told her when he pulled away. He went back to putting on her makeup.

  "You keep kissing me," she complained. "It isn't fair."

  He kissed her again, briefly. "We should hurry," he said.

  "Then stop kissing me," she said.

  "I can't help it," he said. She glared at him.

  "Really?" she asked.

  "Really," he assured her. She smiled.

  "You do not play fair," she told him.

  "All done," he said lightly, taking up another color. Ajalia picked up the brush and tried to run it through her hair. "Leave it," he said, taking it away from her. He put his fingers through her hair, and spread it out to dry over her back. She was wearing the simple cream shift that was the standard garment for slaves, and the water from her hair made wide wet spots in the cloth. Philas finished painting her face, and moved to sit behind her.

  Ajalia felt the warmth radiating from his torso; she wanted to lean back against his body. "I want to sleep with you," she commented. Philas's hand holding the brush faltered. "I have nightmares," she added. "I think I wouldn't have them if I was touching you." Philas moved the brush smoothly through her hair.

  "I thought you meant the other thing," he said lightly. Ajalia turned and looked at his face. Philas looked as though he were about to cry. She could not kiss him because her face was covered in paint, but she put her hand against his mouth. Philas took a shuddering breath, and Ajalia put her little finger between his lips. Philas closed his eyes, and bit gently down on her finger. The tip of his tongue touched the point of her finger. "I love you," he said softly.

  Ajalia saw, for the first time, that he did. She had not realized before that he meant it; she had thought that he was toying with her, or experimenting with his power. She had thought that she was a warm body, or a challenge. She looked now at Philas, and saw pure adoration in his eyes.

  "Oh, Philas," she said.

  "Don't," he whispered.

  "We have to hurry," she said, and stood up. He put down the brush, and looked at her.

  "You go without me," he said. Ajalia looked down at him, and for the first time she saw a little boy who had lost his parents, and been taken to a strange land. She had never looked at Philas and seen anything other than a crusty drunk, but now she saw fresh light, and hope pouring out of his face.

  "Come with me," Ajalia said. She held out her hand.

  "I don't want to come," he said. She reached down and grabbed his hand.

  "Come on," she said, pulling on his arm. "I have to get dressed."

  He looked up at her. She stared down at him.

  "So help me get dressed," she said firmly. Philas wandered up to his feet.

  "You feel sorry for me," he said.

  "No," she said. "I trust you now."

  She saw his eyes flick instantly up to her face, and then away. "No, you don't," he said, but he was smiling. "Anyway, why would you trust me?"

  She picked up the robes she had folded away under a cover and shook them open.

  "Well, now I don't," she said. "Hold this," she added, thrusting the robes at Philas. She stopped, and glared at his face. "Are you going to act drunk again?" she asked. Philas met her eyes.

  "Probably," he said.

  "Then get out," she said. She opened the door, and he hung back with a sorrowful expression. "Go!" she shouted, and Philas shuffled out. She closed the door with a snap, and began to dress. She did not know what she was going to do about Philas. When he was his new self, he was someone to whom she did not want to say no, but when the light shifted in his eyes, and the crazy loop came into the very edge of his face, she could not speak straight to him. She realized that she would never be able to trust him. If she did choose him, she would always have to keep one part of herself open, and watching. She did not know if she wanted that. She did not think that he would ever change. Her heart was wobbling on a steep divide; a part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and face the aftermath later, and another part of her knew that such a step would bring her nothing but grief.

  Ajalia finished adjusting the top of her robe, and opened the door. She went out onto the landing, and Philas was all at once around her. She slapped his arms away, and he whimpered.

  "You're pathetic," she snapped. "What do you think you're doing?"

  "I don't know," he whimpered. "I feel very strange."

  Ajalia went down the stairs, and bellowed for her boy. At some length he appeared, and she looked him in the eyes.

  "Is my face straight?" she demanded of the boy. He nodded, and reached out to smudge one edge of her cheek. "All right?" she asked. The boy studied her critically, and nodded.

  "Philas is drunk," Ajalia said. The boy glanced behind her, and took in the form of Philas, who was wandering like a lost soul down the stairs. "Take him out," Ajalia told the boy, "and feed him." She took a few coins from the great stash that she had taken off of Philas the night before. Her waist was sagging with the weight of the money, but she wanted the cash on her for now.

  Ajalia handed the coins to the boy. "Those are for you," she said, "if you deliver Philas to the market by two. He's got to be sober. I'm meeting the Thief Lord there."

  The slave boy nodded, and grabbed Philas by the wrist.

  "But I'm not drunk!" Philas cried. "I'm not! I don't know why you keep saying that I'm drunk!" His protests trailed out of the door, and Ajalia looked about her. The silks and clothes had been tidied up from the room. She did not know where they were now. She called out to a slave that was coming down the stairs.

  "Where are the things?" she asked in the Eastern tongue.

  "Philas told Jenna to sell them," the slave said.

  "Have any Slavithe ladies come by this morning?" Ajalia asked. The slave nodded, and told her that some of the scarves had been sold. "Where's Lim?" she snapped, fussing with the part in her hair. The slave told her, and she sent him to fetch the shorn man.

  Ajalia looked over the room, and began to adjust the furniture. "Yelin," she shouted up the stairs. Lim came down the stairs first, dragging his feet and looking mutinous. Ajalia waited until Yelin appeared as well. The two slaves glanced uneasily at each other, before looking away. Ajalia had not kept up with the gossip in the house, but she thought it was clear enough that the two were no longer in a relationship.

  "Found anyone else to sleep with?" Ajalia asked Lim. She was not mocking him. He stared at her, his eyebrows bristling with suspicion, but he could see no malice in her eyes.

  "No," he admitted.

  "What about you?" Ajalia asked Yelin. The female slave glared at her, but would not say a word. "I'm going to take that as a no," Ajalia told Yelin. "I want both of you to clean yourselves up. You're coming out with me tomorrow."

  "Are you selling us?" Yelin demanded shrilly. Yelin's eyes were narrowed, and her mouth was pinched up into a knot.

  "No," Ajalia said easily. "I am not going
to sell you." She smiled at Yelin, and Yelin's face clouded with suspicion.

  "You're up to something," Yelin told Ajalia. "She's up to something," Yelin told Lim.

  "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" Lim snapped. His face was coloring into a shade of purple.

  "I don't expect you to do anything at all," Yelin said scornfully.

  "Well," Ajalia said. "Clean up, and dress yourselves well. Be ready for anything."

  "What does that mean?" Yelin demanded.

  "I haven't got anything to wear," Lim said at the same time. His voice overlapped Yelin's, and he glanced uneasily at his former lover. Lim had been stripped of everything. He was below even the slave boy in rank now, and had only the plain shift that all the slaves wore.

  Ajalia looked straight into Lim's eyes. "I guess you'll have to borrow something," she said.

  "Jenna has my clothes," Lim blurted out. "I saw her. Let me have something to wear."

  "You'll have to talk to Jenna," Ajalia said. "And I doubt she's going to share."

  "I can't go out to be sold like this!" Lim shouted. His face was livid purple now. His hand crept up to the back of his head, and felt his cropped hair. He was wearing a simple cream robe, and the rings and necklaces that he usually wore were nowhere to be seen. Ajalia had seen none of these things in Lim's room; she guessed that Lim's jewelry had been stolen by the other slaves, as soon as she and Philas had been out of the room.

  "We're not going to be sold," Yelin said scornfully.

  "You said yourself she was up to something!" Lim shouted at Yelin. "What else could she mean?"

  "There aren't even any slaves in Slavithe!" Yelin replied.

  "I have somewhere to be," Ajalia said, opening the door. "Find something," she advised Lim. The two slaves shouted at each other, their voices rising shrilly through the house. Ajalia stepped out into the street, and pulled the door to behind her. The noise was cut off with a snap, and Ajalia heard a burst of giggles. She looked around, and saw a cluster of slaves gathered against one of the windows. This window had been filled with a wooden shutter that served as a barrier to the street, but they could hear the abuse of the two angry slaves when they stood up close to the window.

  Ajalia looked over the slaves. There were five of them, and they were well-dressed. "Come along with me," she said, and they stopped laughing, and fell into step behind her.

  Ajalia took a deep breath, and shook out her hair. She had put a straightening cream into her hair when she washed it, and it hung now, nearly dry, with razor sharpness over her shoulders. She was lucky that her hair straightened easily. She had not worn her own brown hair naturally for many years; she could hardly remember the color of her natural hair. Her hair had been dyed pitch black when she had fist been sold into the East.

  The five slaves walked behind Ajalia through the streets, and the Slavithe people watched the group of foreigners pass. Ajalia made a sensational spectacle in the streets full of people wearing bland brown cloth; she had put on her master's robe, which shone with irreverent brilliance in the high midday sun. Her face fell easily into the inscrutable mask of her master's face, and she walked through the streets as though they had been laid particularly for her.

  Philas slipped from her thoughts; she forgot the strange feelings he had awoken in her, and walked through the streets so that the air struck her face, and made her harsh bang of black hair flow back over her cheeks. She did not know what the Thief Lord was like; she hoped that he was not like his wife.

  She came at length to the market, and found Philas and the boy waiting for her. Philas had a look of intense shame on his face; he was not willing to meet Ajalia's eyes.

  "Did you spend the money I gave you?" Ajalia asked the boy. He said he had, and she examined him. She was sure that he had kept at least a coin back for himself. "Fine," she said, and gave him two more coins.

  "You said three," the boy protested.

  "Tell me you haven't saved one," Ajalia challenged.

  "Everyone saves money," the boy protested again.

  "Tell me why I should give you more," Ajalia said.

  "Because he's sober, and he's bigger than me, and I fed him, and made him drink the juice, and now he's here and ready," the boy said.

  "Good boy," Ajalia said, and gave the boy a handful of money.

  "You'll spoil the child," Philas said.

  "Don't start," Ajalia snapped. Philas bit his lips, but did not reply. He fell in behind Ajalia's right shoulder, and followed her as she walked through the market.

  Ajalia looked from side to side at the market stalls. Her chin was jutted forward, and her jaw was lowered, and clenched outward a little. She looked like a man, and walked like her master did. She saw that no one in the market knew that she was the slave girl that had made such a stir in the stalls. The Slavithe people stared at her as though she were a man; they whispered to each other behind her back, and watched her servants pass solemnly along, and she felt the effect of her image rippling out in her wake like a long ribbon of color. The arms of her robe opened out with the motion of her walking, and the wide back and collar of the silk rubbed against her back.

  Ajalia did not know where the Thief Lord was going to be, but she walked purposefully through the market until she spotted a thicker gathering of people. The energy around them was quieter, and more intense than elsewhere in the market, and she saw Slavithe children gathered around the edges of the group, peering and craning their necks to see.

  The people were gathered around the edge of a market stall near the center of the market. Ajalia could see the top of the white city wall, off to one side, and the very tips of the mountains beyond that. The sun made a long white gleam along the top edge of the wall. Ajalia wanted to go out, beyond that wall, to look at the sea. She felt distinctly aware of Philas next to her. She wished that the last two days had never happened. She felt as though Philas were cheating her, robbing her of a part of herself that had been, up until now, inviolable. She thought again of her father, and she did not know why.

  "What are you going to do?" Philas asked, putting a hand on Ajalia's elbow.

  "No," she said, shrugging him off. She did not want to remember his way of touching her. She was going to pretend that he had never kissed her at all. She wanted to take all of her words back, to go backwards in time so that she could disappear as soon as he had begun to close in on her. She could not imagine now why she had let him kiss her. She took an inner resolve to hurt him if he tried to kiss her again.

  The Slavithe people gathered around the stall had noticed Ajalia, and her entourage of slaves. They turned, and then looked away, and whispered to each other. She heard the words, "Eastern," and "trader," repeated through the cluster of people. They were men and women dressed as men. Ajalia did not see any women with long hair. It was still strange to her that so many of the women were wives without the dignity of the name. She reflected that Lasa, or Eccsa, had been a great fool to trust Gevad. It occurred to her in the same moment that she was behaving in a similarly foolish way with Philas, and took a second determination to shut him off if he approached her again. She had better things to worry about, she reflected, than whether or not Philas was going to go vague in the eyes, and whine about his homeland.

  Ajalia moved into the group of Slavithe people, and they parted for her. Some of them looked quite nervous to be near her. She did not look at their faces; she looked past them. Her slaves followed closely in her wake. Philas was tall, and he cast a deep shadow. Ajalia noticed the long line of his arms, outlined by the sun, as his shadow fell against the merchant's stall. She licked her lips, and raised her chin. She could see a group of men standing over a counter within the stall. She was shorter than the other people here, but her presence was larger. She worked her spine up a little higher, and stretched out her neck.

  She stood without speaking at the corner of the stall, and watched the group of men at the counter. One of them, she thought, must be the Thief Lord. She couldn't see anythin
g of his face, but his shoulders sloped easily over the table, and his hips had a jaunty tilt to them. The back of his body looked positively carefree. The man she thought was the Thief Lord was clothed in the same tired brown, but she could see good leather on his legs, and his shoes were well made. The other men were indistinguishable from the back.

  Ajalia waited like a statue made of stone, and let the gazes of the strangers comb over her face and clothes. Her hair was dry, and straight as a razor. The angled cut fell down sharply over her forehead, and made her cheeks stand sharply out from her face. Her lips were colored to match her cheeks, and her eyebrows made a harsh line over her hooded black eyes. She knew that the Slavithe people would not be able to read her expression, and she felt fearless under the layer of paint. Her hands were folded together, deep within her robes, and she idly twisted Lim's heavy golden ring over her thumb. The ring had been too large to fit over her other fingers without falling down.

  Within a few minutes, one of the men in the crowd outside shuffled into the stall, and tapped one of the men outside the group on the shoulder. Ajalia saw the two men murmur together for a moment, and then the man from the group at the counter glanced back at her. She kept her face impassive, and still as a pool of deep water. Her master was an excellent negotiator; she had studied him closely when he entertained, and when he wrought deals in their own home. She had never accompanied him outside the walls of his own estate, but within it, when she was at home, she was always by his side. Face-bearing slaves were expected to mimic their master accurately, in gait and mannerisms, as well as facial expression. The Eastern masters expected their most valuable slaves to go forth and trade as they would trade. Ajalia did what she liked in her own person, but when she was on official business, she changed. Philas stood beside her, and a little behind her shoulder. The five slaves had formed a quiet arrangement behind Ajalia; their bodies thrust into the crowded space, and took up too much room. Ajalia could hear soft murmurs behind her among the Slavithe people; they wanted to know what she wanted here. Ajalia and the slaves stood without a murmur, and waited.