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

by Victor Poole

  Ajalia wanted to ask Lasa what the city did when it rained; most of the windows she had seen, as well as most of the windows in the little house, and in the tenement room she had rented, were open to the air and sky. There was no snow this far south, but she was sure that there was plenty of rain.

  Lasa led Ajalia through a back door to the house, and showed her a steaming heap of garbage. Oozing dribbles of black decomposition bled out of the pile, and filled shallow basins that had been cut into the stone that lined the ground. Ajalia recognized the stench of the black fluid; this was the juice of the poison tree, the drink that Philas had been using.

  Ajalia wrinkled her nose. "Where does that come from?" she asked, pointing to the thick black sludge.

  "There is a special tree outside the city," Lasa said. "It is the only one of its kind, and it is very old. One bit of bark from the tree will rot away any kind of trash, and transmute it into this black water. We use the black water to clean our houses."

  "Yes," Ajalia said, "someone told me that."

  "You can find these in the back of most houses," Lasa said. "There's one behind the house you're living in now." Lasa's voice faltered a little before she said "living in", and Ajalia suspected that the shorn woman had come very near to saying, "renting from me."

  "Do I have to get some bark, then, for my house?" Ajalia asked. She did not emphasize the "my" part of "my house", but she saw Lasa's face wince a little at the words.

  "No," Lasa said. "It is there already."

  Ajalia didn't ask if Lasa had put some there, or if the previous tenants, however long ago they had lived there, had left a heap of garbage in the back. She folded her arms, and examined the heap of steaming things behind Lasa's house. Bits of food and discarded fabric were in the pile, as well as the sharp edges of a metal pot, and many bits of unidentifiable flotsam. Ajalia doubted that the bark of the tree, however special it was, would eat away metal. She wondered if the residents of these houses ever went through the garbage, to dig out the things that would not dissolve.

  "What about that?" she asked, pointing to the visible piece of pot. "Won't you have to take that somewhere else?"

  "What?" Lasa asked, following Ajalia's finger. "The pot? No, the bark will eat away anything. Even stone." Lasa must have seen the look that passed over Ajalia's face, as she looked at the basins of stone that were filled with the black sludge, because she said, "the stone here is treated. The poison tree blood will not cross a barrier of magic."

  Ajalia blinked. "Okay," she said. "Thank you."

  "What are you cleaning?" Lasa asked.

  "So you got married this morning?" Ajalia asked. Lasa's face broke into a smile.

  "Oh, yes," she said. "The whole ceremony was deeply satisfying. I can grow this out, now," she added, patting the bare sphere of her skull.

  "How did you get him to agree?" Ajalia said. Her fingers itched; she wanted to clear out that nasty room, and get air flowing in through the space, and she wanted to make the old woman more comfortable. She tried to imagine Lasa as a girl, and the old woman as a woman of Lasa's age and situation, and she could not. Lasa was too real and vivid, and the old woman was too old, too invisible, and too fragile to seem as one who had stood up firm and strong, with youth in her bones.

  Ajalia began to edge back into the house; Lasa followed her, her words pouring out in a stream of description. Lasa told Ajalia a series of complicated tit-for-tats that stretched, it seemed, over many years, and had somehow culminated in a situation that morning, early in the day, when Lasa had told Gevad something about money, and Gevad had hit her, and Lasa had lied, and told Gevad she had saved her hair, although she confided in Ajalia that she hadn't really, she had burned it—by this time, Ajalia had inched into the hall, and through the closet, and back to the place where the old woman's room lay. Lasa continued her saga, and Ajalia shuffled, nodding assiduously, into the open room, and began collecting the basket of heaping, fuzzy plants.

  Ajalia saw Lasa's eyes flick over the basket, but her mouth did not stop, and she made no movement to stop Ajalia from hefting the basket. The saga of her manipulations continued, and Ajalia listened politely to the maneuvers that Lasa had used to trap Gevad into, first, a confession of love, and second, into an agreement to marriage.

  Ajalia walked stealthily back through the hidden passage, and towards the heap of steaming refuse. Lasa followed along behind her, a babble of sound filling the airy rooms.

  "It is really thanks to you that I am married at all," Lasa continued, watching Ajalia empty the basket into the pile of garbage. An explosion of steam flew up towards the blue sky, and the fuzzy white mold made a puffing sound, and melted away. The plant matter soaked into the top of the heap, which made a kind of hissing noise, and slopped a little to the sides as the plants settled in. Ajalia went back towards the house.

  "If you had not come along," Lasa said chattily, "and shown me how to manage Gevad, I don't think I would ever have gotten him to marry me at all."

  "Are you really married?" Ajalia asked. Lasa's eyes flashed, but her mouth did not fold out of its happy smile.

  "Yes, I am," Lasa said, and Ajalia believed her. "I have married the man who meant to keep me under him as a servant, and now I am mistress of my own house. You left me this house, or you left the house to Gevad, and now that I am his wife, it is my own again."

  "What about your mother?" Ajalia asked. She had reached the room again, and was lifting down more rotten plants. The hanging things clustered like overgrown fruits from a square-shaped tree. When Ajalia lifted them down, the others rustled. The old woman was awake, her eyes turned towards Ajalia and Lasa. The rest of her body was still prone, and in the attitude of death.

  Lasa shrugged dismissively, and a crease of a frown marred her joyful looks. "When a man discharges a woman's debts, the discharge applies only to her, not to her relatives," she said. "And anyway," she added, throwing a look of scorn at the figure of her mother, "it was my mother got us into this mess in the first place."

  "Was it?" Ajalia asked. She did not press the matter, and Lasa, after making a few more comments about the finery of her wedding, and offering to help Ajalia carry the dead plants out to the garbage heap, vanished up the stairs. Ajalia was glad to see her go, and moved more swiftly, clearing the hanging clusters of plants with an urgency that grew as the rafters were revealed above them.

  Ajalia was grateful that the garbage heap had not been very large when she had started, because once she had cleared away all of the plants, and begun to rip the shredded covering from the floor, the steaming pile of refuse had begun to lap the edges of the shallow circle in which it was contained.

  "You can burn those," the old woman said. Ajalia turned, and stared at the old woman.

  "What's your name?" Ajalia asked. She went to the narrow bed, and knelt down on the floor.

  "The dried rushes make a sweet odor, and will clear the dust out of the air," the old woman continued. "There is a tinder box near the fire."

  Ajalia went to the low hearth, and searched. Soon she found the box, and tore up pieces of the carpeting to stack up into the pile of old ashes.

  "Take out the ashes," the old woman advised. "If you don't, the ash will spread out with the sweet smell, and smudge up the walls."

  Ajalia swept the hearth clean, and scrubbed out the fire basin with a ragged scrap of cloth. The old woman sat up, and watched Ajalia work.

  "Why are you cleaning up this room?" the old woman asked. "Did they tell you about me?"

  Ajalia made a tiny pyramid of rushes, and lit them on fire. The dried carpeting caught the spark quickly, and an aromatic smoke rose to Ajalia's face.

  "I don't like messy places," Ajalia told the old woman. She fed the torn bits of carpet into the fire. The day was warm, and beads of sweat began to form on Ajalia's skin.

  The old woman stood up, and hobbled to the chair near the fire. "I'm always cold," the old woman said, "but Eccsa does not think of me."

  The old woman d
id not sound bitter; she spoke of her daughter matter-of-factly.

  "Do you know that Eccsa is married?" Ajalia asked, watching the dried pieces curl into smoke. The rushes left little behind when they burned; they seemed to vanish into clouds of air vapor. Ajalia had never seen anything like it. She fancied that she could see shapes of animals in the steam and smoke that rose from the flames. She stood up to get more carpeting, and the old woman caught her by the wrist.

  "Can you see them?" the old woman asked. Ajalia kept her face neutral.

  "See what?" she asked, and the old woman released her. Ajalia's heart pounded as she tore up the covering on the floor; the stone beneath was coated with stains of dirt, and odd silhouetted impressions of the rushes. Ajalia moved the tables carefully aside, mindful of the jostling bottles and jars on the tops, so that she could reach more of the carpeting. The rushes extended below the tables, along the wall, and ended just before the space where the narrow bed lay. Ajalia was glad that she would not need to move the bed.

  "I thought there might be something afoot," the old woman said, nodding towards the ceiling. "I could hear the dancing from here."

  Ajalia wanted to know if the old woman was angry that she had not been invited to her daughter's wedding, and if she minded being forgotten.

  "Would you have liked to go upstairs?" Ajalia asked.

  "I cannot leave this room," the old woman said. "I have lived in here for many years. Eccsa prefers that I do not cause her embarrassment."

  Ajalia slid the tables back into place. One of the scraps of paper drifted off of the tabletop, and Ajalia bent down to pick it up. The paper had old writing, the kind that Delmar's books had contained. Ajalia studied the letters; they were different, more elegant than the Slavithe she had learned before she came here.

  "How old is this writing?" Ajalia asked.

  "How did you learn my language?" the woman asked. Her voice lifted with interest for the first time since she had begun to speak. The old woman's eyes drifted over Ajalia's robe, and her pinned-up hair.

  "One of your people visited my country," Ajalia lied. "I learned from him."

  "Who was it?" the old woman said.

  Ajalia imagined suddenly a vast list of names within the old woman's head; she wondered if the old woman knew all the people in the city. Ajalia was sure that this was impossible.

  "A man," Ajalia said. "He had strayed far from home."

  "That is impossible," the old woman said. "No one leaves."

  "Maybe he didn't tell you he was leaving," Ajalia said.

  "No," the old woman said. Her eyes were piercing through Ajalia, and her mouth was drawn in a narrow line. "No one is allowed to leave."

  Ajalia knew this was not true, because she had learned Slavithe from a slave, a man who had been born in Slavithe and had run away. Her master had bought the slave two years before the caravan left for Slavithe, and Philas and Ajalia had studied the language from him.

  "Was it that dirty boy?" the old woman asked suddenly. "The boy who ran away?"

  Ajalia nodded. "It might have been," she said. "He ran away."

  The old woman's green dress dragged around her bare feet.

  "Why do you stay here?" Ajalia asked.

  "People don't want me," the old woman said. "Did they tell you about me?"

  "No," Ajalia said. "No one has told me anything about you."

  "Good," the old woman said. She stood up partway from her chair, and shuffled forward to expose the last bit of carpeting beneath it. Ajalia burned the last pieces, and an aromatic steam filled up the room. Ajalia went to the window, and pulled open the curtain. The curtain was a ragged piece of cloth. She wanted to take it down, but she thought that she better leave it.

  "Burn it," the old woman said. The old woman was watching Ajalia. Ajalia ripped down the curtain, and put it into the basket.

  "I'll be back," Ajalia said, and she went out into the back of the house, where the garbage heap lay. The vegetables that she had put onto the top of the pile were smelly and thick with flies. Ajalia gingerly dipped the curtain into one of the shallow basins of black fluid, and put it into the basket. The black dripping fabric made a stinking foam against the side of the basket.

  Ajalia carried the basket back to the little room. She made sure not to touch the black juice of the poison tree. She picked up the side of the curtain that was dry, and put the wet part of the fabric against one of the stains on the floor.

  "That magic is too strong," the old woman told Ajalia. "It works too fast if you use it like that."

  "Why shouldn't it work fast?" Ajalia asked. She was watching the stone release a satisfying cloud of yellow steam.

  "Because people don't believe in magic," the old woman said. Ajalia had touched the black juice when she had cleaned off the paintings in the little house, but now that she had seen where the black stuff came from, she was loath for it to touch her fingers.

  "Why doesn't it eat my skin?" Ajalia asked. She did not take the woman's words about magic seriously. Ajalia was sure that magic, when it was mentioned by the Slavithe people, was really them using a catchphrase they were used to using to explain things that they didn't understand. "If the poison tree bark will eat through anything, even metal, then why doesn't it eat me?"

  "The bark will only dissolve what is in the circle," the old woman said. "Once the juice passes beyond the first circle, it will eat away only what is a lie."

  "Dirt is not a lie," Ajalia said.

  "Filth obscures the true nature of the stone," the old woman said. "What obscures truth is a lie. The blood of the tree will eat the lie."

  Ajalia looked up at the old woman. "My friend is drinking it," she said. She waited to see what the old woman would say. The old woman had closed her eyes, and did not say anything for some time.

  Ajalia lifted up the soaked piece of curtain, and a shimmering, golden-hued piece of stone was revealed on the floor beneath. "Why is it golden?" Ajalia asked. She touched her finger to the golden patch; it was smooth and bright, and shimmered like sunlight.

  The old woman got out of her chair. She was much more spry than she looked. She pushed Ajalia aside. The old woman gathered up the dirtiest part of her dress, and scrubbed the filth into the golden stone.

  "Magic upsets people," the old woman said. As she scrubbed, the golden light began to dim, and then to fade to a funny cream. "Here," the old woman said. She ripped away a scrap of her dress, and gave it to Ajalia. "Rub it in," she directed. The old woman struggled to her feet, and Ajalia saw that she felt for her way with her hands.

  "Can you see?" Ajalia asked. She had thought that the old woman was blind, but now saw she had been wrong.

  The old woman went to the cracked tub in the corner, and scooped water into an old piece of crockery. She shuffled back to Ajalia, and lifted the blackened rag into the water. The water hissed and steamed, and the black spread out through the water.

  "I draw my own water," the old woman said. "I feed myself."

  "How can you feed yourself if you never leave this room?" Ajalia asked. The old woman didn't answer. "How could you draw water?"

  "I go out at night sometimes," the old woman said. Ajalia was not sure that she believed what the old woman said. She had assigned one of the slaves to water duty, when they had first arrived in the city, and it was a long and heavy slog through the streets to the well that lay at the corner of the third block of houses.

  The old woman cackled. "No one's told you about the bath houses, have they?" she asked.

  "I know about the bath houses," Ajalia said defensively.

  "But you don't know that most people get their water there, do you?" the old woman said smugly.

  Ajalia thought of the middle-aged slave who had spent most of his time since they had arrived carrying heavy vessels of water to and from the well that lay some distance from the house, and her face burned. She didn't know why she hadn't thought to send him two doors down to the bath house that lay on their street.

  "Our
ancestors built the bath houses over natural springs," the old woman said. "There are natural springs all through this part of Slavithe. It's why the wealthy live here. Poor people live in the quarries, and carry their water through the mountains. No one wants to live in the quarries."

  "Is that why you stay here?" Ajalia asked.

  "No," the old woman said, but she didn't say any more. Ajalia had mashed the dirty cloth into the golden stone until it was dull and ugly like the rest of the floor. It was still a nicer piece of floor than the rest of the stones, but it no longer had any hint of gold.

  "Why was the stone golden?" Ajalia asked again.

  "Magic," the old woman said. She thrust the piece of crockery at Ajalia, and the blackened water sloshed noisily. "Use this," the old woman said.

  The old curtain was floating in the bowl, surrounded by murky bubbles, and Ajalia picked it up and wrung it out. She did not mind touching the poison juice now that it did not have the consistency of tar. She lay the wet rag over the floor, and the dirt steamed and rubbed easily away. A pure white was revealed, and the old woman sighed, and touched the white place.

  "It is not reality," the old woman said, "but no one will try to kill you."

  Ajalia looked up at the old woman. "Do people try to kill you?" she asked.

  "They do not know that I am here," the old woman said. "And many of them do not remember me anymore. I do not look the way that I used to. I don't think they would know me now."

  Ajalia rubbed the wet cloth in wide circles, and the dirt sloughed easily away from the stone. Her hands moved in wide circles, and she leaned with her whole body into the floor. The white color was satisfying, but it was not nearly as magnificent as the gold color, and she was losing interest in the project of the little room. It was not nearly so stifling and shabby now that the flooring had been torn up, and the plants and herbs had been taken down. The exposed rafters made long, hard lines against the stone of the floor above, and the open window let in a long stream of sweet evening air.

  "Well," Ajalia said, dropping the rag back into the black water. "I'll be going, then."