by Kate Elliott
Night Flower
A Court of Fives Novella
Kate Elliott
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Esladas stood at the railing of the ship that had brought him across the Fire Sea to the land of Efea. In the distance lay the noble city of Saryenia with its twinned royal hills and the gleaming roofs of monumental temples and expansive palaces. The famous lighthouse, clad in marble, shone in the afternoon sun from a promontory at the mouth of the harbor. The city was magnificent—and daunting.
“Cities shouldn’t be this large,” griped one of his companions, a tall youth named Cahas. “Where will we find a place to stay? What if people cheat newcomers like us on the price of food and lodging? I spent all my savings to get here. I can’t go home if it doesn’t work out.”
The young men around them murmured anxiously in agreement: they were eight in all who had met and stuck together during the course of the long overland and overseas journey. Esladas had their same fears, but he had ruthlessly trained himself to show an impenetrably serious facade to the world no matter how nervous he was feeling. “You know why we came. As the poets say, in Efea a man from Saro can be anything he wants. Even lowborn men like us.”
“Sounds like Esladas has an idea,” remarked one of the twins mockingly, and his brother added, “More than I can say for you, Beros.”
“Hear me out. What if we eight enlist in the army as one group? So we can stay together? We can give ourselves a name and even a badge to mark our fellowship.”
“Wouldn’t it be impious to give ourselves a badge like lords do?” Cahas asked.
“We have flown from Saro and the laws that choke men like us while rich lords profit off our work. Why shouldn’t we give ourselves a badge? We’ll call ourselves the Firebirds, for everyone knows they are courageous and never tire, no matter how far the journey. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have familiar faces around me. Like Cahas said, the city looks cursedly big and strange, and I wouldn’t want to find myself lost and alone.”
He paused, hoping his voice disguised how intimidated he felt by the colossal splendor of the city they were about to enter, for it was utterly unlike the single main street, modest temple to the gods, and market held only once a week in the town where he’d grown up.
But they all agreed eagerly. They were scared too, even though not one of them would ever have said so out loud.
The newly pledged Firebirds disembarked into a harbor of wonders that included sailors from all around the Three Seas as well as men of Saroese ancestry who had made Efea their home generations before. Esladas tried not to stare; he really did. But there were people with skin in shades like every color of soil: yellow, red, brown, black, and even a few as white as goat’s milk. Never in his life had he seen people without straight black hair like his own, and yet here walked folk with hair that was coiled or wavy, hair the color of ripe wheat, of fire, of tree bark.
The heat was tremendous, but it was the light that really staggered him: so strong and so pure.
He asked directions to the customhouse. This two-story building stood at the midpoint of the wharves, where its wraparound porch and big open windows gave a full view of the harbor traffic.
“Why are we going in here?” asked Cahas as they climbed the steps and got in line.
“Because the ship captain told me it’s the only place we can change money.”
“What’s wrong with our Saroese money?”
“The laws are different here. We have to use the local money.”
When Esladas’s turn came he stepped up to the counter, where a clerk waited beside a slate board with the exchange rates. The clerk was clearly Saroese by ancestry, but he looked unmanly with his clean-shaven face and his hair cut short.
“Greetings of the day. I want to change my money. Can you also direct my friends and me to the office where we can enlist in the army?”
The clerk blinked several times, then laughed. “Good Goat, man! I can barely understand you with that thick accent. Where are you from?”
“The town of Heyeng in the province of Everlasting Janon.”
“Never heard of either. Which kingdom?”
“Saro-Urok.”
“Ah.” He began counting out coins, making sure Esladas saw every part of the transaction so he would know he wasn’t being cheated. “A piece of advice, if you want it.”
“I’ll always listen.”
The man smiled. “Don’t take rooms in the Harbor District, because prices are much higher. If you are determined to enlist in the army, then you can find accommodation by the East Gate that will be cheaper as well as closer to the camp where you’ll train.”
“My thanks.”
“Another thing. With that long hair and those beards, you and your friends might as well shout that you are fresh off the boat and ripe for getting taken advantage of by dishonest people who prey on newcomers. If I were you, the first thing I would do is go to a barbershop and get your hair cut and beards shaved off.”
“It’s an offense against the gods for a man to cut his hair!” objected Cahas from behind Esladas.
“We’ll be struck impotent,” muttered one of the twins, and his brother added, “I thought you already were, Beros.”
Esladas raised a hand, hoping they’d listen. “If I’d wanted to stay in Saro, I’d have stayed. This is a new land, and they do things differently here. We have to let go of the past.”
Yet as blithely as the words rolled off his tongue, not long after, in a barbershop two streets away, he had to fix his hands to his knees to avoid swatting away the razor that a local barber set to his throat. All his life he’d been taught that if a man cut his hair or beard he would lose his potency and strength. Yet the hair fell away painlessly and he felt no different. Let it be the past cut from him. He was a new man now.
The long walk with his friends to the East Gate both bewildered and astounded him. It should have been a simple enough trek: a street called the Avenue of the Soldier ran from the West Gate to the East Gate, so the barber told them, and they had only to follow it. But nothing had prepared him for how wide the avenue was, enough for four carriages abreast, now filled with a crush of wagons and pedestrians and more horses than he had ever seen in his life. Cahas stepped in horse manure and cursed, and it was all so confusing that none of them found the misfortune funny.
The local Efean people with their dark brown skin and coiled hair were easy to tell apart from the Saroese. Besides their looks, the Efeans spoke a language without a single familiar word or phrase in it. Esladas might as well have been dumped into the sea and told to breathe underwater. But he was determined not to panic, just as he’d learned not to panic at home when facing his volatile father.
Efean men were everywhere, pushing wheelbarrows and hauling carts, working on roofs and in bakeries, going about their business and always moving out of the way of Saroese men—even newcomers like him and his friends. There were Efean women too, more women than ever appeared out in public where Esladas had grown up. As numerous as stars in the sky, the poets sang, and he saw the truth of the phrase now. They walked in groups carrying bundles and baskets on their heads and usually with a gaggle of well-behaved children in a neat column behind them. The contours of their thin, sleeveless sheath dresse
s hugged their curves, leaving so little to the imagination that he flushed as they jostled past without any self-consciousness because men might be looking at them.
Cahas elbowed him. “Good Goat, are you blushing, Esladas? Look at this, friends!” He gestured to grab the attention of their companions. “A man who never cracks a smile or laughs, so serious he is, never flustered by one setback on the road, and here he is blushing like a dainty bride upon seeing her husband for the first time without a stitch of clothing.”
Esladas gritted his teeth.
“The poets say that Efean men let their women rule over them and that’s what made them so easy to conquer by the Saroese,” Beros chimed in.
His twin laughed. “Yes, Beros, I’m sure you would beg for a bit of conquering yourself. What do you say, Esladas? There are some pretty flowers here. You can pluck a fresh one now and get a proper wife later.”
Esladas let their laughter and teasing wash over him. He’d endured far worse from his five older brothers. Instead he studied everything around him, even if he did skip over the women as well as he could for fear of blushing again. Most of all he noticed the many soldiers marching in disciplined lines or loitering in the courtyards of taverns with mugs of beer in hand. None of them wore the haughty faces and rich clothing of the highborn. These were men like him, come from the kingdoms of East Saro, West Saro, and Saro-Urok to make their fortune in Efea.
As he would. He was determined on it.
By the time they reached the East Gate, they were exhausted and a little ill, for they hadn’t yet regained their land legs after the sea journey. Esladas liked the look of the second boardinghouse they saw, and once he had bargained for beds for a week his friends collapsed.
“Doesn’t anyone want to look around the nearby streets? Maybe find the closest market?” Esladas asked.
Cahas gestured toward the curtained door that led from their dormitory into the boardinghouse’s courtyard. “It’s almost dusk. It’s probably dangerous to walk around at night.”
But Esladas could not sit still. He paid a coin for a cheap bath, the cool water exactly the refreshing wash needed in the oppressive heat, then ventured out alone after the woman who ran the house assured him it was perfectly safe.
Here in a city of a foreign land he had the freedom to walk as he wished. No one knew he was a poor baker’s youngest son, the one with no prospects. Here he was free to join the army and, if he performed well, hope to rise to the exalted rank of sergeant. He might earn enough money to set up his own household, to live in a home with lively boys whom he would never scold and slap, not as his father had done. He would never mock his own sons as his father had mocked him for his aspirations.
As dusk pulled shadows over the world and eased the blistering heat, Esladas wandered, amazed by how many people could afford to hang oil lamps to light their gates. At home, at night, the poor huddled in darkness and even the rich could barely afford enough oil for a single lamp. Here an entire market blazed in front of him, and people laughed and chattered and shopped as if a night market was an ordinary occurrence. Beneath canvas awnings, local women spoke loudly in public, mingling openly with men as they sold fruit, vegetables, and freshly cut flowers so vibrant he had to halt to absorb the heady smells.
This place! Nothing in his dreams had prepared him for its intensity.
He gaped at a table on which sat baskets of ripe persimmons, their orange skins gleaming in the lamplight. Persimmons were the stuff of his childhood holiday yearnings, for he and his brothers had been allowed to share a single one at the Festival of the Sun, and as the youngest he had never gotten more than a single spoonful of soft flesh.
Buying one seemed like a risky gamble. Did the old woman selling them speak Saroese? How would he bargain? What if she cheated him, asked too much? He wouldn’t even know. Yet suddenly that shining orange fruit seemed to him to symbolize his entire endeavor, as if getting hold of the most beautiful thing in the market would become the talisman of his future success.
A splendidly melodic laugh rang out, causing him to turn.
A young Efean woman stood a few steps away from him, where three hanging lamps cast a glow over her face. Delight poured like an embrace from her smile, made the whole world seem to curve around her as if she had briefly become the heart of all existence.
She made a jesting comment to a person he could not see. Then, not looking where she was going, she took a step back to get out of the way of a man pushing a wheelbarrow, and tripped on a guide rope. She flailed, her feet slipped out from under her, and she fell backward toward a bucket full of liquid.
Esladas leaped forward and caught her around the waist, gathering her weight into the fold of his arm. Her mouth popped open in surprise. She tensed at first, then began to laugh again, relaxing into his grip. Her eyes lifted to his as her smile flashed as brightly as a thousand suns might rise to forge a blinding sky.
* * *
Nothing could have surprised Kiya more than to find herself tucked in the secure grip of a very strong arm attached to a young Saroese man.
An insistent thought wedged into her mind: Well! The Saroese are not all ugly. Not like I’ve been told all my life.
He hadn’t said a single word, standing so still with her held in the circle of his arm that she noticed the nicks on his chin and dabs of dried blood from where he had shaved that morning. He was stunningly good-looking in a way that struck her as exotic and entrancing.
“My thanks, Honored Sir.” She eased herself out of his grip a little reluctantly.
He let go immediately, his expression as grave as if he had just delivered ill news and was waiting for her reaction. An urge to speak to him overwhelmed every other notion in her head. He looked so serious. Maybe she could get him to smile! His smile was probably gorgeous.
“Just imagine how embarrassing it would have been if I had found myself and everyone around me splashed by that bucket of urine while people stared! You saved me quite bravely, risking yourself in such a way.”
Instead of answering, he stared at her. Efean men never gazed rudely in this way, as if they had the right to gobble up your face and form without permission. But then he took another step backward and glanced at the ground, at the wall behind her, at his hands, and finally back at her. He tapped his chest and spoke words in Saroese, which might as well have been jackals howling at the moon for all she could understand him. Unlike a jackal he had a nice voice, low, brisk, and tuneful.
And those eyes, so deep a brown that the shadows made them seem black. This was certainly the most amusing thing that had ever happened to her in her sadly dull life.
“Kiya!”
Uncle Wenru strode up like a storm coming in. He halted several steps away with a teeth-grating grimace that looked completely out of place on his usually good-natured face. It was an even greater shock to Kiya to see her proud uncle bend his head and speak submissively to the ground rather than eye to eye with the foreigner. He spoke words in Saroese, turned to her with a look like a splash of scalding water, and continued in Efean.
“I’ve given him our apologies for you troubling him. We must leave now before there is any greater disturbance.”
“But we just got here. You said the night market might be a good place for me to get work.”
“Don’t argue with me! I brought you to the city with the understanding that you would obey one rule. What is the rule again?”
She sighed. “Never, ever speak to Saroese men.”
The Saroese man’s gaze flashed between them, trying to sort out the exchange, and it suddenly irritated her that he might think she and Wenru were a couple; they were close in age because her mother was the eldest of many siblings, of whom Wenru was the youngest.
“What if I don’t want to leave the market yet, Uncle?” she said too loudly, although she knew better than to let herself be bothered about what a stranger might think of her. “Because I need to thank this man first for saving me from a most unfortunate fall.�
�� She turned to the stranger. “My thanks for your quick action, Honored Sir. I am called Kiya.”
When he shook his head with polite incomprehension, she finally realized that, unlike every other person she had ever known, he could not speak Efean.
She tapped her hand to her chest just above her heart. “Kiya.”
“Ah! Kiya.” With a crisp nod, he patted his own chest and added, “Esladas.”
Before she could reply, Wenru fixed a hand under her elbow, speaking Efean in a conciliatory tone meant to put the stranger off the scent; the man would hear nothing but a pleasant flow of words he did not understand. “Kiya, we are leaving right now. Imagine he is a rabid dog who hasn’t started foaming at the mouth yet, and you will understand my concern. Just smile and back away.”
How could Kiya do otherwise but obey the uncle who had agreed to give her the adventure of her life—a year in Saryenia!—against the rest of the family’s wishes? She flashed a parting smile at the stranger, who still had not moved, like he had grown roots right there. But Wenru hustled her away before she could see if the man smiled back.
“I should have known,” he muttered as he guided her through the market.
“Known what? I tripped and he caught me. That’s all. Apparently he doesn’t even speak a single word of Efean.”
“Listen, Kiya, you don’t really have any idea of how beautiful you’ve become in the last year. I know you’ve been busy trying out lovers and discarding them. It’s common among girls your age.”
“The boys my age are so boring, Uncle. I can’t even tell you!”
He chuckled. “Yes, I know. I was one once and slept with more than you have.” Yet even as he joked he did not relax his unyielding grip on her elbow as he guided her briskly through the streets without giving her time to soak up all the astonishing sights she hadn’t yet been allowed to see.
“You have grown up in a village so far from here and so lacking any riches that the Saroese never come there. So I will say this again, and this time you will listen to me. Do not speak to Saroese men.”
