by Kate Elliott
“Maybe so.”
She waited, but he shook his head.
“I told you already,” he went on. “I told you honestly. I’m going for Bai.”
Her face would never be beautiful, but she had eyes as lovely and expressive as a doe’s, wide and almost black. “You can’t,” she said, trembling. “You can’t possibly be able to buy her free from the temple.”
“A treasure fell in my lap. It’s now, or never.”
She choked down tears, but he did not comfort her. He had told her the truth all along, and probably she had never believed him. Hope is a cruel master.
“Master Feden hoped we might tie the binding,” she whispered. “He gave permission.”
“And give him our children’s labor to fatten his purse, and more debt for us to pay off? No.”
“If you can hope to go for—her—you could buy off my debt instead. You could.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Did you ever love me, Kesh?”
“I never told you I did. I like you, that’s all.”
“I got—I got—” She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “They made me drink the herbs. I lost a baby.”
Eiya! Nasia had gotten pregnant. Maybe with his child. Or maybe with the child of one of Master Feden’s customers. No matter.
“A child born to a slave is better off not being born,” he said. “Would you want that? To begin a child’s life when it’s in debt already? It was for the best. You’ll see that, in time. Anyway, this is the end of it, Nasia. You’re a good girl. If I can ever help you, I will, but now I have to hurry. I can’t afford to pay a whole day’s stabling charge.”
She began to cry, but silently, as slaves learned to do. Old Sushad slid into view from around the corner. He said nothing to Kesh, just a look with that half-frozen face and his little finger flicked up. Kesh turned his back. He counted the water skins and satchels hanging along the wagon on either side. He took two days’ worth of the remaining flatbread and smoked meat, not at all tasty. The rest he left for Tebedir, who must make a return journey south over the pass to the empire, a good long way even if he got a hire. By the time he looked around, Nasia and Sushad had vanished away into the courtyard, where the ordinary noises of folk at their labor sounded again. Not one person, people he had known many years, came to greet him. Nasia was better-loved than he would ever be. No doubt they hated him for her sake, but he did not care.
By the time Tebedir returned, Kesh had unloaded the two chests, leaving only the treasure inside. Tebedir remained behind to guard the wagon, and Kesh hauled the chests to the wing door. It was a struggle to get them inside, as the door had been weighted so it easily swung shut if not being held. His fellow slaves passed him, going in and out. Not one stopped to help. No one looked him in the eye; not one person said a single word to him.
Aui! News of Nasia had traveled quickly.
But they were only bodies, moving in the monotonous dance of servitude. Their feet shuffled along a wood floor smoothed by generations of barefoot slaves walking quietly, as they must. They grunted, or coughed, or cleared their throats, and if they wept, they wept silently, as Nasia had. The men walked with heads bent. They went mostly bearded, trimmed tight along the jaw, and in general without the luxury of a mustache. Their hair was cut close to the head, easy to care for, nothing to get in the way of work. The women, depending on their station and age and what labor they were set, wore their hair shorn or pulled back in a ring and bound with slender iron chains so that the length of captive hair swayed along their back and buttocks.
He was well rid of them all.
He dragged the chests, one with each hand, and halted panting beside the rear door into the lesser exchange room, the only one he was permitted to enter without permission. He propped open the door and got the chests in, closed and locked himself in, and unrolled a colorless silk viewing cloth over the larger table. Dust motes spun where light poured through windows not yet closed for Shade Hour. It was hot, and getting hotter, but Master Feden would not quite be done for the day, not if his routine had remained unaltered in the last many months. Not if these windows were still open.
On the silk he arranged combs and mirrors and oil and saffron and shell dice, the handsome little items that he had picked up in southern markets on his journey. When he had all arranged to his liking, he rang the bell three times, twice two, and thrice again.
He was too unsettled to sit. He paced, wiped his brow, and rearranged the combs, liking the new pattern better, liking how it set off the richest among the lesser. Feden would want the best for his own family, to show off their long, glossy black hair, the pride of every man and woman who was neither hireling nor slave.
The master’s door opened, and the man himself walked through with a shaven-headed clerk in attendance. He was a man made powerful by wealth, stout but not flabby, with his uncut hair braided and looped back in a man’s threefold at his neck and shoulders.
Master Feden made no greeting, but walked slowly around the table while the clerk made a running tally and checked it against Keshad’s accounts book. The pen scraped in the silence. Outside, the sun’s light baked the stone plaza, seen beyond the thick posts where, soon, the slaves would unroll the cloth awnings over the wooden porch. So had Keshad done twelve years ago, when he was a lad sold into Master Feden’s service. Unroll the awnings; close the windows; haul water; beat carpets; sweep and rake and look away when some clumsy soul got a hard cuff on the cheek for moving too slowly or simply for looking at a customer the wrong way or any way. Watch the massage girl you fancied be traded away for a mare. Listen as your young friend cried when he discovered he had missed the debt payment and was indentured for another year, during which new debts for food, drink, oil, pallet space, training costs, and interest would accrue, with more added on if you got sick or injured and a healer had to be brought in from the temple.
Pride, swallowed so many times, became a rock in the chest, and it had filled him with stone.
“Impressive,” said Master Feden, with a contemptuous smile that made Kesh want to slap him because Feden never began his haggling with a compliment. “I congratulate you, Keshad. You have the gift. We need only set a price.”
“As I carried all my possessions with me, no holding space was required for my goods while I was gone, which means the debt set against my freedom in addition to interest accruing on the regulated basis during my absence stands at five hundred and eighty-seven leya,” said Kesh immediately. “Am I correct?”
Master Feden nodded at the clerk.
She tallied. “Yes, that’s right.”
“The goods you see before you are easily worth twice that on the market. But I offer them, to you, in exchange for the rest of my debt. Which is a bargain for you, Master Feden.”
The master picked up a comb studded with whitestone and walked to the windows to peer at the subtle wash of colors that, Kesh knew, played beneath the surface of the stones. With his broad back to Kesh, he spoke. “I’m surprised you act in such haste. I wish to offer you a post in my firm.”
The clerk actually gasped.
“You have promise. You’ve shown it time and again. I’ll free the massage girl—what is her name?—the one you show particular attention to, although we had to have the herb woman in a month or two after you left to rid her of what she caught in her belly. I’ve been thinking of trading her debt to Mistress Bettia, who has a pair of fine embroidered couches my dear wife has been coveting, but I’ll reconsider if you’ll take her in marriage—both of you free—and sign a contract to trade for my firm—fifty-fifty percentages, we’ll say—for ten years.”
The clerk’s mouth had dropped open, and this time she looked at Kesh and then at the master’s back. She ceased writing, waiting for his response.
He rested his hands on the rim of the table. All that restless energy fell away. He was clear and sharp and clean and perfect in his clarity.
“The rest of my debt. Which is a bar
gain for you, Master Feden.”
“Stubborn until the end.” He returned to the table. He had fleshy hands and sausage fingers, but a delicate touch as he set the comb down into its nest of silk. “Very well. Settled.”
The clerk stood stunned, gaping at Kesh as though he had been revealed as a deadly lilu.
“Record it!” Feden snapped with a burst of impatient fury that made the poor clerk flinch. “I have a meeting to attend. I must leave now!”
She spattered ink, blotted it up, and began scratching with her head bent in concentration and her shoulders hunched in case a blow came. But she was Sapanasu’s hierophant, not Feden’s slave. If he hit her, he would have to pay a fine to the temple.
Kesh lowered his hands to his side and tried not to twitch. Outside, a pair of lads stumped past; the awning creaked and dropped as they unrolled it. At once, the light through the windows muted to a less intense gold.
The clerk set down the accounts book. Feden glanced over the final entry, then made his mark. She turned it, and Kesh counted up the merchandise, saw that everything displayed on the table was accounted for, and with the pen marked the quartered moon that served as his seal.
“Sapanasu gives her blessing,” said the clerk. “And her curse to any who turn their backs on what they have sworn in her name. Let it be marked and sealed.”
“Let it be marked and sealed,” said Feden with a smirk.
“Let it be marked and sealed.” Keshad extended a hand. “My accounts book. It’s mine now, free and clear.”
Feden lifted a hand, still smirking. He had rosy lips almost hidden within his luxuriant growth of beard and mustache. “We have other business. There’s a wagon and pair in one of my bays, and water taken from my trough. Stabling costs must be paid. With coin, or in labor.” He chorded.
Out in the hall, a door slammed.
What a fool he was! Kesh discovered his hands in fists and his skin flushed with heat. The clerk, seeing his expression, fell back a step. But he refused to move. He had meant to specify that the stabling charges be included in the final reckoning. Haste is its own trap. He had fixed the bait and walked into it himself. Damn damn damn.
After taking four breaths as Feden watched with intense amusement, he spoke in a flat voice. “The usual stabling fee in Olossi includes hay, grain according to the nature of the beast, and twice watering. For one night, one leya or a day’s labor in exchange. I have not been in this yard one night, nor has the pair under hire taken more than one watering. But I’ll accept one leya as a fair charge.”
“I am not a public stableyard. Nor do I charge piecemeal, but only by the night. My premises are more secure, indeed, you have now invaded them as an outsider, someone not of my clan or family and with no other claim or right for biding within my clearinghouse, so that will cost extra. And you know my policy about those cursed Southerners. I hate them, the thick-witted fanatics that they are, keeping women like sheep and slaves like pigs. I hear they say that once a man becomes a slave it’s the god’s doing, and he and any children or grandchildren he may ever quicken through his loins are marked forever with the slave’s brand and can never again or any they marry become free men. So because of my distaste for such a person, and the cleaning I’ll have to have my servants do after he’s left the yard to wash away any stink he’s left, I’ll have to charge triple my usual fee. He comes under your hire, I believe. Nine leya. Or eighteen days’ labor out of you, at the going rate, plus of course I’ll have to charge you lodging and for your food for that time if you remain here to do the labor. And you’ll have to stay here—you’re obligated to do so—in case you choose to run to escape your debt. Three leya a day for lodging and food, to accrue while you work, unless you want to eat more than once a day, in which case a fourth leya for the second meal.”
“It’s true,” said the clerk with a kind of dazed fascination, watching the exchange. “Sapanasu’s law supports Master Feden’s claim against you, on both counts.”
“You cheating dog,” said Keshad softly. “Nine leya is an outrage. As is three leya a day for costs.”
“Not in my house. I do not run a roadside shelter offering a plank floor to sleep on and nai porridge for supper. Do not think I gloat over your mistake, Keshad. I am a man of business. I must protect myself and my house.”
“You want me back. But I’m no longer your slave.”
“Do you expect me to believe you have any coin left after that trip? Have you paid up that southern driver? All your expenses? And yet you cast your throw so carelessly. I trained you better than that.”
Kesh let Feden keep talking. Indeed, he savored it, for the man did love to talk and did always believe himself to know more than others could.
“Sign on with me, and the stabling charge will be placed on your first accounts book as a junior partner. I’ll still throw in the girl. For nothing. As a gesture of good faith. Otherwise, I fear me, Keshad, you’ll be falling behind again. And if I choose not to allow you another trading venture, I am not one bit sure how you will overcome the debt.”
Kesh smiled. For the first time, Feden faltered, mouth pursing with doubt. Kesh slid a hand into the pouch sewn into his sleeve, careful to hide how much coin he had on his strings. He drew off nine precious leya, weighed them in his hand, and placed them each, individually, with a snap on the table. Feden’s eyes widened.
“One night, two waterings, hay and grain,” Kesh said politely to the clerk. It was hard not to gloat, even if he was furious at himself for losing these leya through carelessness. He had better uses for the money. “I’d like to get this settled. I have other business to attend to.”
“Where did you get that?” demanded the outraged merchant.
Kesh waited a few breaths, letting the other man stew. In his head, he tallied up the coin he owed Tebedir, a goodly amount. Everything now hinged on the treasure.
“Well?” Feden looked ready to burst.
With an exaggerated sigh, Kesh bent to close the chests, then straightened, fussing with his sleeves. “This is not the only merchandise I brought out of the south. You didn’t bother to look into my accounts book because you were in such haste to cheat me. But we have already sealed that these items settle my debt price.”
The clerk stared at the coins, which Feden had not touched.
Feden laughed. “Twice cursed, you are,” he said to Kesh. “None of your aunts or uncles made the least effort to hold you after the death of your parents. Did I ever tell you that? They were eager to take the money and sell you flat, whatever they could get for a boy of twelve. They couldn’t even be bothered to pay the temple for a legitimate debt mark, but only that botched tattoo from a back-alley vendor. That scar can never be altered, the mark of their dislike for you. What makes you think they’ll want you back?”
“What makes you think I’m going back to them?”
“But you must!” The stout man looked genuinely alarmed. “Every man must cleave to his family and his clan. So the gods have set down.”
“Settle the stabling debt,” said Kesh to the clerk.
She did not look to Feden for permission. Kesh was a free man, now. She acted at his orders. She wrote; Feden fumed; Kesh wiped his brow, thinking that he ought to be sweating but he was cool, collected, wrung dry. He was free.
As soon as she was done writing, and marks made and seal set, she handed him the accounts book, the mark of his freedom. He tucked it into the lining of a sleeve, offered her a half leya as a tithe, which she took. Then he twisted the bronze slave bracelets off his wrists. Their weight, in his palm, seemed so heavy that he did not comprehend how he had borne it all these years. Deliberately, looking directly at Feden, meeting his gaze, Kesh placed the bracelets on the table. Feden turned away.
It was done.
Kesh left by the customers’ door, which he had never once used in all the twelve years he had lived in this house. He did not look back.
“WHERE WE GO?” Tebedir asked as they rolled out into the plaza
. The heat made the beasts slow, and Kesh’s throat was already parched. “Here, we roast, like fowl in the oven.”
One slave trudged across the plaza, wearing sandals to protect his feet against the hot stones. He wasn’t carrying anything visible, but his shoulders were bowed nonetheless. Gates were closed and awnings furled along the long porches of the clearinghouses. Beyond the flat plain of Merchants’ Walk rose the inner city on its rocky bed, buildings pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tile roofs and white walls baked; heat shimmered off them. The sun made the air a furnace. Only a wisp of pale cloud floated off above the eastern high plains, where, in the Lending, the grassland herders might have hope of a spatter of cooling rain.
Kesh was sweating, and dizzy. I’m free. But she isn’t.
“We’ll go now to Crow’s Gate Field. I’ll pay off the remainder of your contract.”
“As agreed, the remainder, it is one hundred, eighty, and seven of leya. As agreed, in addition, my costs to stable at the hiring ground, for five days. There I seek hire for journey back to empire.”
“That’s right,” said Kesh absently, because his thoughts were already plunging ahead. “I’ll ask around and see who is hiring to go south before the end of the year and the rains. There’ll be a caravan south within the week, I would wager. There’s a particular chit I can see you get, so merchants know you’re an honest and loyal hire. I can never thank you enough for standing beside me at Dast Korumbos . . .”
Tebedir nodded. “The Shining One rewards his faithful worshipers. Do not despair unless your heart is dishonest. Do not despair unless you have broken the vows you make in the name of the King of King and Lord of Lords.”
Kesh barely heard him. Whatever calm had sustained him in Feden’s house evaporated out here under the sun. His ears roared with the tumult inside him; sweat dripped from his fingers as his heart raced. Do not despair. He had stumbled onto the two Mariha girls in a frontier town and purchased them for a desperately cheap price, and for a while he had played the numbers in his head: Should he hire a drover and two donkeys to convey them with the other, smaller goods? Should he let them walk the entire months-long road to the Hundred, carrying the chests themselves, knowing that the journey might kill them but that he would save coin? Alone, they could not gain him what he wished, and indeed, they had brought him a greater profit than he had expected, enough to more than cover the expense of hiring a driver and wagon for the long haul once he had stumbled upon the treasure. They had enabled him to travel in what was, for him, relative comfort with his chests of carefully chosen luxury goods.
