He glanced at her again. ‘And the binding, did you do it yourself?’ His long fingers ran back and forth over the indented, burnished leather.
‘I did, Lord.’
‘It is unusual to pursue such work. Surely the work of men.’
‘Indeed, but I found I had an affinity with the pen and with paper and binding.’
‘So I have heard. It seems half the well-to-do women of Ahmadabad crave your journals and herbals. Even in the Court. Did you know the Valide Sultan was presented with an illustrated herbal? Ah, I see you are surprised.’ He took the book off the lectern and weighed it in his hands. ‘In Fahsi, the paper and ink makers speak of your skill with an admiration they would normally use for a Master.’
‘I am grateful for their praise, Lord.’ Even though they are men and you believe I exist falsely in a man’s world.
‘Do you think you could scribe A Thousand and One Nights in a month?’
Lalita’s spirits soared and as quickly plummeted at the fragile chance dangling in front of her. A month!
‘She could do it in two weeks with some urging.’ Kurdeesh’s voice dropped like a stone between Lalita and the official.
The Grand Vizier turned and snapped at him. ‘Khatoun, you are not a scribe, not even close. Let the woman speak. Your chance will come later.’
How so? Lalita stood perplexed, wondering what on earth her uncle could add that would make a commission more likely. ‘Lord, there are many stories …’
The noble turned away.
‘But yes.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back. ‘It will be close run but I believe I could do it.’
The Grand Vizier carefully returned the book to the lectern, opening it to the page of houries, his eyes meeting hers. This is how a mouse must feel under the scrutiny of a cat. She could almost see a tail swinging mesmerizingly from side to side. His gaze slipped from her face, skimming over her person, quickly at first and then more slowly, examining every inch of her being until a blush burned its way to her cheeks. She was reminded of the earlier touch of fat fingers and as she glanced at Kurdeesh she almost choked to see a look of complicity in his eyes. The word trust danced before her as surely as if she had picked up a reed pen, dipped it in ink and written it on a piece of blank parchment.
‘Lalita,’ Kurdeesh ordered as if he were the Sultan himself and she jumped. ‘Go to the inn and purchase the best wine available. His Excellency and I have business to discuss. And we shall do it over a repast.’
Don’t, Kurdeesh, you will lose this commission. She scowled at her uncle but he turned away and fingered some of the blank sheets she had piled up and suddenly she wanted to walk out and keep walking because intuition began to whisper. But she chided herself. Don’t be ridiculous. There can be nothing but good business at stake, that’s all. Please Aine, let it be the Sultan’s commission, nothing less.
‘Lalita, this is your big day, is it not?’ The innkeeper’s mouth twitched at her, his eyes as lascivious as any she had seen this day.
‘It is.’ She passed over some gelt and his fingers caressed it off the counter.
‘Kurdeesh told us how he inveigled the interest of the Royal Court. He did well. Imran should have done the same but he hasn’t got the drive. I’ve always said Kurdeesh has what it takes; he is the wilier of the two brothers.’
‘Uncle Imran runs a remarkable business with a valuable reputation. He has refined knowledge that Uncle Kurdeesh does not. I imagine that is what brings the Grand Vizier to the emporium, nothing else.’
‘You think?’ The innkeeper wiped his hands through the oil in his hair. ‘Pity he’s away then.’
‘A shop does not stock itself and in any case he and Aunt will be back tomorrow.’ She picked up the wine and headed for the beaded curtain at the entrance.
‘And they’ll have missed all the fun. Such a shame.’
Lalita deigned not to answer. The innkeeper was part of Kurdeesh’s coterie and it could only tarnish a day that had potential. Back in the emporium, she took a tray and made an arrangement of pleasant things for the Grand Vizier and her uncle to nibble on, her hands shaking as she assembled the dates and fine nougats, the wafers and pastes and the decanter of wine. Carrying it in to the two men who had seated themselves on coffers between a selection of her bound journals, she wished she was covered in a burqua from neck to knee because she sensed their eyes upon her — every move she made, every gesture. She felt as naked as one of her illustrated houries and chafed that she hadn’t left the book open to a more commonplace illustration.
She removed herself to the back patio where she sat hugging Phaeton, taking deep sustaining breaths. To be sure the Grand Vizier had surveyed her work in detail and his questions had been knowledgeable and pointed but his gaze had been bold and suggestive. Phaeton licked her chin as she went to bury her face in his velvet-smooth neck and he turned and pushed against her hand, anchoring her with his comfort so that she found she could think beyond the odd exchanges of the day. She remembered the copy of A Thousand and One Nights in the Academie Library and she knew as sure as a dust storm preceded the Symmer wind that she could do it so much better. A tingle fizzed through her — nerves, excitement, fingers twitching. She wanted to hold a pen to frame the first word. Allow the sharpened end of the reed to sweep up and down; creating, shaping, to then fill the hollow parts of the capital with gold leaf and rich tint — ruby red, lapis blue, verdigris green. The pinnacle of achievement for any scribe.
She sat for a minute, allowing the humming of the bees in the oleander flowers to fill the peace of the arbor. But the insidious touch of Kurdeesh’s hand crept from behind the cover of her anticipation and she collapsed against her dog, sucking in a sigh and soughing it out through gritted teeth. ‘My chances will spoil through his covetousness,’ she muttered to her dog. ‘And if they do, I swear I shall make him suffer. I will, Phaeton. I swear.’
The doves cooed on the roof and the sun dropped golden coins between the shadows of the grapevine as Kurdeesh called her. At that moment every single thing engraved itself upon her mind. Kurdeesh was tucking a vast wad of gelt into his sash as she entered the shop and when his eyes met Lalita’s they were as cold as a storm on Mt.Goti. ‘Lalita Khatoun’ he said. ‘Pack your equipment and anything personal. The Grand Vizier will escort you back to the royal seraglio.’
‘Of course, but I need nothing personal, only my pens and inks and if I miss anything I can take it back tomorrow.’
‘No, Lalita Khatoun,’ the Grand Vizier spoke from where he was again looking at the page of houries. ‘Once you are in the seraglio, you stay. If you need anything it will be sent for.’
An unbelievable notion began to fill her head, dismembering her sense of achievement but she pushed it away. ‘How long am I to be employed within the seraglio?’
The Grand Vizier gave a glimmer of a smile, an oily lift of a mouth that would brook no disagreement. ‘You are not employed to work at the seraglio, woman,’ the words dripped on her from a lofty height. ‘You are to be one of the harem. Your uncle here has sold you.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Her knees began to buckle and she held onto Phaeton’s collar.
‘It is fortunate you are talented enough to take up the commission of A Thousand and One Nights as it will bring you to the notice of the Sultan that much earlier and we shall all benefit.’ The Grand Vizier flipped a flywhisk against his thigh with impatient fingers. Tap tap, tap tap; the sound punctuating his words. ‘Get your things, the guard waits.’
No, you can’t. But she knew he could and asked only one desperate question. ‘My dog?’
‘Bring him. The seraglio has dogs. Five minutes please.’ The Grand Vizier walked out of the door, taking her life with him.
Kurdeesh bustled around bowing and scraping and thanking the highborn visitor. Lalita wanted to stab her uncle with the paper knife that winked on the counter but she was numb, as rigid as a block of ice. She unfroze her limbs and with dignity she knew was only skin-deep,
she packed a satchel, called Phaeton and left.
Chapter Two
Finnian
‘What is it?’ Finnian of the Faeran’s hand closed around the chamois bag.
‘Yew bark and leaves, it’ll kill any living thing. You must want to kill someone pretty bad to use this stuff. Be kinder to garotte ‘em.’
The dealer’s features were blurred in the dark of the alley. The man was short but even so, gusts of his breath wafted upward — sour, smacking of rotting teeth, stale food and ale. He had been sentenced to hang in Veniche as a trader of poisons but escaped to Castello’s iniquitous surroundings and Finnian thanked Aine for it.
‘I have no wish to be kind.’ Far from it. ‘And I don’t like the garotte. How do I use this?’ He rattled the bag, the ingredients hissing like a basilisk as they slid around inside the leather.
‘Grind them to a powder then mix the dust in red wine. With some honey if you want. Warm it and it will be so much the quicker.’
‘How long?’
‘Two days at most and it won’t be nice. There’ll be fast breath, probably a galloping heart like they’d run for their life. And if you give ‘em a second dose, the heart’ll slow right down. There’ll be vomiting, body cramps and a violent and bloody flux. Eventually there’ll be convulsions and death.’
The gelt jingled as Finnian passed it over.
‘The body’ll empty of everything, you know. An ugly sight if ever there was and there will be a stinking mess.’
A mess is nothing but just desserts. How many times had he soiled himself in fear as a child and then been beaten for it? Beaten, always beaten, for that and so much else besides.
The dealer turned to fade away into the sea mist crawling up the alley and Finnian mesmered. The need was great and his fingers tightened in excitement as he wafted his hand through the air as if he wiped moisture off a windowpane. The shadowy man froze and he squeezed past. The dealer wouldn’t remember him nor would he remember the transaction and his pocket would be filled merely with twigs.
Within his grandmother’s fortress, Finnian pulverised the yew with a mortar and pestle, his heart jumping as he thought of what he must do. He placed an empty goblet by the fire to warm as the old woman, Isolde, sat hunkered at the table. ‘Pour me a wine. I am in need.’ She rarely looked him in the face.
He took the goblet, tipping in the red Raji wine and the dust, stirring it with his stiletto and thinking on the audacious plan. She asks me to outwit her… ‘Do you want honey?’
Isolde of the Færan bent over one of her small aged grimoires, her knotted finger tracing the text. ‘Of course I want honey. I always have honey.’ Her voice still had the capacity to flay inches off his back as her whipping had done when he was a child. His hand shook as he added a scoop of the sweetener, the liquid falling into the goblet. He watched the thick gilded drop as it fell, seeing a lifetime of opportunities reflected, watching a lifetime of brutality dissolve. Isolde reached for the wine. ‘A good vintage,’ she muttered as she drained the goblet and held it out for more.
As the meal progressed he watched her covertly, sweating over every change in expression, every movement of a hand that eventually reached to rub a distended stomach.
‘By Aine, my belly! Get the maid, I need to go to my chamber.’ She stood and leaned against her chair, her goblet dropping to the floor. ‘It’s tainted. Tell the factor. There may be … oh,’ she held onto the maid, her hand white with effort. ‘I’m so dizzy. The room spins.’
Finnian watched her lurch on the maid’s arm out the door, heard her vomit as she went to climb the stairs and was happy. He poured his own wine, another decanter, his grandmother’s tipped through the window casement, and remembered other escape plans — so many.
As a boy — midnight, creeping down a cold stone stairwell in bare feet, heart thumping in a startled rhythm learned at birth. Out kitchen doors, through front entrances, across roofs high above rocks that would shred and ganch him to a pulp should he fall.
Always she would be waiting.
But he persisted. As an adolescent, cannier — daytime, hiding amongst the wine casks on a galliot, the smell of tannin and oak filling his nose. Or amongst a crowd, disguised with burnois amongst the camels, mingling, bending, tucking in a strap, smoothing the animal’s course hair with fingers that shook in expectation. Hoisting himself into the creaking saddle of a prone beast, heart singing a song of freedom. But on the camel’s other side she would wait and the song would cease abruptly.
‘Outwit me boy,’ she laughed before the beatings began again.
And despite her enchantments, despite her immortality, it seemed he had at last succeeded… by using the poisons of mortal men.
He sat alone in the dining hall next morning. Outside, the searing Raji sun fried the dust off Castello’s walls. The factor came in with a tray, breathless and disgruntled. ‘We’re a bit pushed this morning, sir. Lady Isolde’s very ill, there’s a filthy mess upstairs and we’re drawing straws to clean.’
Finnian contemplated the strange world he inhabited: a fortress town ensconced in the mortal Raj but filled with the seedy and disgusting, both mortal and eldritch. The inhabitants drifted in and out of each other’s lives, as they did in the rest of Eirie, but here it was a potent brew of the worst kind. His grandmother deserved this; she had created the place, she must die here.
He wondered at his own feather lightness of heart, whether he should care at all, maybe even a small measure of disgust at his own obscene actions. But he could dredge up nothing except satisfaction, his palm slapping the table with a whack.
He headed for the front entrance but a worn voice called him back. Isolde’s physician, a fallen man like the rest, stared at him with bloodshot eyes and pouches of loose skin beneath. ‘She’s dying,’ he growled. ‘She’s got blood in her shit and she’s shaking as if she’s got the deadly ague and her heart beats so light it’d barely keep a babe alive. She’ll be toes up by moonrise I reckon. I’m surprised she just doesn’t magick herself well again. D’you think this might be her bane?’ He scrutinised Finnian’s face. ‘Ah. But I can see that you don’t care one way or t’other. Not sure I do either really.’ He dragged a cheroot out and lit it. ‘Never liked being a mortal mixing with you Others. Seems odd. Your grandmother could click her fingers and I’d be dead. I’m leaving, Finnian. This place with its sordid mix of Them and us, it’s unhealthy.’ He began to make the sign of the horns but coughed on the cheroot smoke and ground the stub under his booted heel. ‘You should get out despite being of the Færan. This place’ll be a madhouse when she dies.’
It’s been a madhouse all my life and I am getting out.
He disguised himself in a longshoreman’s dirty clothes and leaped aboard a galliot, piling gelt into the bosun’s hands, affecting the persona of a mortal. ‘I’ll double it if we leave now, triple it for speed and every oarsman will be the richer for their loyalty and silence.’ He would have dived in off the gunwhales with the line in his teeth and towed the vessel if it would make it go any faster.
He didn’t bother to look back. Relief rolled through his body in waves. Oh she wouldn’t say as much, but Isolde of the Færan, his grandmother, had somehow fettered him by a mesmer as strong as links of forged iron and he’d done what he had to do.
The bosun called commands, the starboard oars feathering as the port oars pulled the vessel around the seawall and south toward Bressay. The sea stretched like mottled silk, the journey promising to be smooth and Finnian chafed for the vessel to fly so he could escape his memories.
The evening delivered a safe anchorage in one of the shoal of islands dotting the Pymm Archipelago. A massive hook of dolomite, its leeward waters gave shelter to smaller craft and the bosun ordered the anchor lowered close in. The crew hopped across a causeway of rocks to the shore, broached a keg of rum and lit a fire with driftwood and dried dulse from amongst the tumbled boulders. Bawdy songs drifted out to the roanes sitting on the furthest edge of the causeway
and Finnian laughed when their iridescent tails slapped the water in disgust.
‘Here, you want some?’ A sailor held out a tankard.
‘As much as you want to give me.’ He grabbed the mug of rum and tossed it back, then held it up for more.
The sailor grinned and splashed in another tot. ‘Now here’s a man, fellas, didn’t even wince as he downed the stuff.’ Heads turned in Finnian’s direction. ‘When folk drink like that, they’re usually runnin’ away from summat.’
Finnian tossed the next one back and the crew applauded. ‘You’ve seen Castello, anyone’d run from that,’ he said.
‘My oath,’ chipped in a voice. ‘It’s like Hades, all them Others driftin’ around with suspicious mortals …’
‘Take a look at yerself, Jack. You’d be as bad as the rest.’
‘Aye but there’s something sick in that place. And deadly.’
Finnian sipped at the third mugful and felt the edges of his panic blur. ‘Sick and deadly don’t cover it.’
‘Tell us what yer seen, mate, cos we all got some bad stories o’ that place. I tell yer, if the bosun hadn’t left when he did, I would’ve swum away mesself.’
Finnian surveyed the crinkled and tanned leather faces. ‘It’s full of murderers.’ As if I care.
There was a stretched silence and then the night exploded with mirth.
‘Well yeah, we’re all murderers. Every one of us, we all killed someone, it’s why we stayed away in that place fer so long. But just lately it’s got worse,’ one sailor said.
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘The old woman, that Isolde, she’s after summat. No one knows what, but she’s been haulin’ in people from Veniche and quizzin’ em and if they don’t answer her questions she tortures em by enchantment and it’s been frightful. She mesmered a man’s leg off the other day, they say. Split another’s head in half with a sweep of her hand. Left ’im looking at his brains on the floor.’
‘I poisoned her.’ Finnian reached the bottom of the third mug.
Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories Page 28
