by L-J Baker
Honey Petal looked around before finding a place to perch. Adijan stretched her legs out and propped her feet up on a water urn. As they had for the last three nights, each slipped away in her own thoughts.
Adijan could feel Shalimar’s warm weight against her. Her skin tingled as if stroked by the trailing ends of ghostly hair.
Honey Petal sighed.
Adijan started and looked around guiltily. Honey Petal absently plucked at her shirt sleeves. She looked far from happy.
Aware of scrutiny, Honey Petal looked around. “Yes?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I was just… Honey Petal isn’t your real name, is it? I’ve known some working girls who adopt names like that. But every Silky Thigh started life as a Bagrat or Fetnab.”
“I am obliged to answer to Honey Petal.”
Adijan nodded. “The scab who did this to you didn’t miss any way of squeezing every last drop of humiliation out of it, did he? So, what is your real name?”
Honey Petal lifted her chin. “I am – or was – Zobeide Ushranat il-Abikarib il-Sulayman Ma’ad.”
“Wow.” Adijan sat up straight. “You really did have thirty-eight under-cooks, didn’t you?”
“My father did, yes. So, you need not concern yourself that I shall default on payment of a generous reward for your services. Even in the highly unlikely event that Baktar –”
“You little turd!” The wagon creaked as the cook clambered up onto it near the seat. “Swiving when you should be on watch. Lash for you, girl.”
Adijan grabbed Zobeide’s wrist and jerked her backwards. The cook reached a beefy hand for her.
“Hey!” he called. “Come back!”
Adijan dove under the back flap and heard the tie snap. Zobeide slid after her. Adijan broke her fall before she landed on the ground.
“Get her!” the cook bellowed.
“Vanish,” Adijan said.
Zobeide disappeared. Adijan scrambled to her feet. The cook’s hand thrust under the flap and grabbed her shirt. He pulled her back against the rear board of the wagon. The fingers of his other hand clamped around her neck. After a brief struggle, Adijan sagged and fought instead for air.
“I came back to get the dice I’d forgotten,” the cook said to the overseer. “Caught her. In the back of the wagon with another woman.”
The overseer smiled down at Adijan. He didn’t ask for her side of the story, and she knew there wasn’t any point saying anything.
“I was warned to keep an eye on you,” the overseer said. “The master knows his business. Get her ready.”
Stiffly, Adijan picked her way past the oxen to a small clump of trees. She peered across the sleeping camp to spot the other man on watch. The lump of rendered fat in her hand softened and began to melt as she waited, so she scraped it onto the tree trunk.
“Zobeide?” Adijan whispered.
Zobeide appeared as a ghostly figure in white.
“I’m on watch,” Adijan whispered. “Come closer. They’ll kill me if they see you again.”
“Perhaps darker clothes would help.”
“Yeah. Good idea. Wear a black shirt. And black pants.”
Zobeide all but vanished. “This is the same night?”
“No.” Adijan propped her spear against the trunk and groped to find her handful of fat. “That was three days ago. I need you to –”
“Three days? Have I not told you I need time outside? I know you can’t begin to understand the complexity of the challenge of breaking the enchantment crafted by one of the foremost masters, but is it too much to ask that you at least grant me –”
“Look. This is the first chance I’ve had. They’ve been watching me.”
“Perhaps, if you had not been of that kind, no one would’ve suspected you of committing any perversion. Eye, my skin crawls that anyone could even think I have anything in common with you or that vile creature you refer to as your wife –”
Adijan grabbed a fistful of Zobeide’s shirt. “Say one more word about Shalimar and I banish you and never call you back. Ever.”
Zobeide’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Good,” Adijan said. “For your information, it wouldn’t have mattered if I swived half the women of Yabri or I’d spent all night in prayer. They were always going to do that to me. It was just a matter of when. Hadim had given them orders. One more thing I owe him for. Now, make yourself useful.”
Adijan plonked the gooey lump of fat into Zobeide’s hand. She turned her back and managed to tug the bottom of her shirt loose from her pantaloons, but soreness prevented her raising her arms above her shoulders. The skin from her shoulders to the back of her thighs felt as stiff and unyielding as a poorly tanned hide. “You’re going to have to help me.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Rub that stuff into my back. There’s no one else I can get to do it.” Adijan leaned against the tree and waited. “If you don’t do it, it’ll take me much longer to heal. The longer I can’t work properly, the more excuses the turds have to pick on me. Do you really want me unable to walk? They’d leave me in the middle of nowhere rather than let me ride to Pikrut.”
After another pause, Adijan felt a tentative tug on the back of her shirt. Cool air stroked her exposed skin as Zobeide lifted the cloth up to Adijan’s shoulders.
“Eye,” Zobeide muttered. “What did they do?”
“Three lashes of the demon’s tail whip. Standard punishment for watch violation. I’ll get twenty if they find you here with me again. No amount of fat would cure that.”
Adijan flinched at the first touch on her back. In anticipation of worse to come, she clenched her teeth and dug her fingers into the tree bark. Zobeide proved gentle as she spread the fat.
“Is that it?” Zobeide asked.
“Backside.”
Adijan unknotted the belt holding her pantaloons up.
After another long pause, Zobeide tugged Adijan’s pants down. “Can you lie down?”
Teeth gritted, Adijan eased herself to the ground. Zobeide softly worked the fat over the lash marks. Against all expectation, Adijan found herself relaxing.
“Adijan?”
She opened her eyes on darkness with Zobeide leaning over her. She lay with her head pillowed on her folded pants and with her shirt draped over her back.
“It must be close to the end of your watch,” Zobeide said. “I daren’t let you sleep any longer.”
Adijan grunted. Her skin tugged when she moved, but it felt better than it had.
Without needing Adijan to order her to do it, Zobeide helped her dress. Then she handed Adijan the spear.
“The other man came out and saluted periodically,” Zobeide said. “I waved the spear. That appeared to satisfy him.”
Adijan’s replacement called to her. Zobeide vanished of her own accord.
“Thanks,” Adijan whispered to the necklace.
Chapter Thirteen
Six days after the lashing, Adijan’s back still ached fiercely as she helped load fresh food supplies. She bit her lip as she staggered across to the cook’s wagon with her arms straining around another sack. The cook sat in lordly splendor on a mat in the shade of an awning with the warehouse manager. The pair drank beer and smoked while their underlings sweated in the scorching heat.
To her surprise, the drunk cook let her go with the others to visit the town. She hurried away before he could change his mind.
Her reputation as the cook’s whipping girl ensured all the others avoided her, so she walked alone under the crumbling gateway and into the town. She ducked into the first narrow alley.
“Zobeide?”
Zobeide appeared a few paces away.
“Late afternoon of the next day,” Adijan said. “Gassan. A cross-roads town in the middle of nowhere. It’s the sort of place where you expect brigands to drink and get laid before they go back out to rob the next caravan or group of pilgrims.”
“W
here are you going?”
“I need a drink.” Adijan picked her way over festering garbage and turned into the main street.
“I thought you had voluntarily undertaken a vow of abstinence,” Zobeide said. “Given up drinking.”
“You haven’t had the week I’ve just lived through. If you’d put up with half the – here’s one.”
“I can understand,” Zobeide said, “that the punishment might have –”
Adijan leaped backwards and banged into Zobeide to avoid the man who erupted, head first, from the doorway of a wine shop. He flew past them to crumple in the street.
“Maybe we’ll find somewhere quieter,” Adijan suggested.
She continued down the street to a large square. The market consisted of drooping awnings and a few desultory shoppers. There wasn’t even a chattering queue of women waiting with jars and urns at the communal well. The sleepy atmosphere confirmed her suspicion the town relied on the caravans and other traveling people for its survival rather than thriving trade with the surrounding area.
“It’s small wonder people of your class remain at the bottom,” Zobeide said. “You think only of your stomachs and fleeting, dubious pleasures of the moment. You have no vision of life beyond your own grubby, wretched lives.”
“Is that so?” Adijan frowned to the left, where a street curved away between rows of dusty, red-tiled buildings. “Then how come I’m dragging myself across the known world?”
“For enough gold to keep yourself perpetually inebriated.”
“Actually, I need the money for something much more important.”
“You astonish me. I would not have guessed there was anything in creation you value more than wine.”
Adijan halted a few paces from a doorway with a faded and peeling outline of a wine amphora painted on the wall next to it.
“Your behavior all points to the contrary,” Zobeide continued. “Now being yet another case in point.”
“I’ve been as sober as a priest’s sandal for a week and a half. I deserve a drink. I don’t deserve you nagging me.”
“There’s a well back in that market square. I assume the water is potable.”
“Wine,” Adijan said. “I need wine. It’ll help me relax and forget some of the rubbish I’ve had to put up with. Including from you.”
She turned to the doorway.
“Did your wife also indulge in such sodden habits?” Zobeide said.
“Leave my wife out of this.”
“I was merely curious. If she were not as dissipated, I can understand, after having witnessed your deplorable displays, why anyone would divorce –”
“Shut up! You know nothing about my marriage. Or Shali. She –”
“In or out?” a man asked.
Adijan stepped aside to allow him to enter. She could smell wine: that acidic underlay to the smoke oozing out of the wine shop doorway. Her body craved a taste. Her mouth watered in anticipation. And yet – Shalimar. She had decided she needed to stop drinking to get Shali back, and, perhaps, to keep her. But she really, really wanted a drink – to feel that reassuring bite as it slid down to her stomach. And the warm fogginess creep over her.
“Turd.” Adijan jammed her fists into her pockets. She stomped past Zobeide and back down the street.
In a rotten mood, Adijan wandered around the market stalls. She didn’t look back at Zobeide but could feel her smug smile.
“Beautiful and ripe.” The fruiterer pushed a handful of figs at Adijan. “Too ripe. I have to sell them at a ridiculous price because they won’t last much longer.”
Adijan reached for an orange. “How much are these?”
Not all the thieves lived in the surrounding countryside, she decided, as she carried a wickedly over-priced orange to the shade of a palm tree. She sat in the dust and turned the orange in her fingers. She held the smooth skin close to her nose. Most people had a distinct odor, be it rank sweat, perfume like her Aunt Takush, or beard oil like Fakir. Oranges were the smell of Shalimar.
Adijan could see Shalimar’s smile when she accepted a gift orange. Shalimar always dropped what she was doing to carry the orange to their bed. Always bed. Shalimar stroked the orange and cradled it in both hands to lift it to her nose. She closed her eyes when she inhaled, just like when they kissed. Then she peeled it, starting with a nail indentation near the top. Slowly and as intently as if she were stripping Adijan before sex, she peeled the rind away. Discarded peel dropped to the floor. She sniffed each segment before sucking it into her mouth. Sometimes a dribble of juice escaped her lips to streak her chin. Her tongue recaptured every drop. Adijan’s stomach and lower parts often did back-flips watching Shalimar eat an orange. Which was why the bed proved a convenient place for the operation.
Adijan let the orange fall to her lap. Four weeks and five days. “I’ve been thinking. Are you sure this Baktar is going to be in Emeza when we get there?”
“He will be there. There are many and varied ties which bind him to the city. Not least of which is the legacy – which he may or may not have by now. You need not doubt him or me.”
Adijan rolled the orange in her hands. “Time worries me. You don’t keep track of it, do you?”
“Your return to your city should –”
“I meant your time. How long has it been since you were enchanted?”
“It was the fourth year of the reign of King Ishtar, the son of Adi.”
“So, how long has it been?”
“I have no clear perception, since I am ignorant of the current regnal year in the kingdom of Emeza.”
Adijan clutched her orange in both hands. “I suppose I should’ve asked about this earlier. How do you know Baktar is still alive? It could’ve been a hundred days or a hundred years since you were enchanted.”
Zobeide’s eyes narrowed. “That is a possibility. But I strongly believe the duration of my servitude has been no less than two years but no longer than eight.”
“How do you figure that?”
“From the length of my periods with my masters.” Zobeide stood. “Should you not be returning to the wagons soon?”
Adijan was in no hurry to get back, but she rose and dusted off the back of her pantaloons. “How many masters have you had?”
“You are the seventh.”
“Do you count Nabim? Two days seems hardly worth it.”
Zobeide subjected Adijan to a measuring look. “I count him one of my successes.”
“Successes?”
“The strictures that bind me are tight enough to circumscribe and obviate virtually all forms of self-defense. That was deliberately done. But not even Ardashir could craft an infallible enchantment. Given sufficient time, I have found a little room for maneuver within the constraints.”
Adijan frowned as she translated not only Zobeide’s words but her meaning. She could understand that, by being compelled to satisfy her master’s wishes, Zobeide couldn’t do much to preserve her dignity or, even, physical well-being. But how did that tie in with Nabim’s death after two days being a success?
“Eye!” Adijan gaped. “You killed him. But – no. Wait. You can’t have done. You’re not allowed to harm your masters, are you?”
“I am unable to perform any action that would cause any direct harm to the owner of the necklace.”
Adijan slowly nodded. “Direct harm. Pocked scab of a camel’s behind. He was a fat old man who broke into a sweat lifting honeyed dates to his mouth. Then along comes a sex slave. Two days later, his heart burst. You swived him to death.”
“Yes.”
Adijan blew out a silent whistle. Zobeide had just confessed to killing and yet Adijan couldn’t help a tinge of admiration. Seven men, starting with the supreme dung-eating dog who enchanted her, had used and abused Zobeide, but Zobeide had found a way of turning her slavery into a weapon.
“I’m glad I didn’t fancy you,” Adijan said.
“A relief to us both.”
Adijan grinned. She stuck the oran
ge in her pocket and started back across the square.
Lost in thought, including how Zobeide’s moral high ground wasn’t exactly a mountain now that she’d confessed to murder, Adijan didn’t hear the hooves until they were upon her. She leaped to the side and pressed her sore back against the wall. Zobeide vanished to immediately appear against the wall beside her as three riders brushed past. The arrogant bastards didn’t even glance down at them.
“That was a neat trick,” Adijan said. “You can come out whenever you like?”
“You granted me permission to do so.”
“Yeah. But I’ve not seen you do it before. How can you decide to come out if you’re not aware of what’s happening when you’re inside?”
“As I said, the constraints upon me are not infallible.”
A bark of male laughter drew Adijan’s attention to the three riders. All three bristled with knives and swords. She saw a familiar pattern of wild colors. The saddle blanket on the middle horse was hers. It was muted now, with age and dirt, but there could be no two like it under the Eye.
She clenched her fists and stalked after the riders.
“Where are we going?” Zobeide asked.
“He has something which belongs to me,” Adijan said.
The trio guided their horses through the gateway of a courtyard. A couple of men came out of a crumbling house to lead the horses into stables. The riders sauntered up a set of stairs to a first floor balcony.
“As insalubrious a location and collection of individuals as you’ve yet dragged me to,” Zobeide remarked.
“If you mean a den of thieves, you’re right.”
On the balcony, a woman came out to welcome the men. She wrapped herself around the one with the beard divided into two points. All four went inside. This looked too sophisticated a set-up for the robber who’d attacked her. It looked like whoever stole from her paid some sort of tariff to a bigger gang, and her blanket had been passed up the chain.
She stepped forward.
Zobeide grabbed her arm. “Those men are heavily armed. What, exactly, are we going to do in there?”
