by L-J Baker
Zobeide ignored, or didn’t notice, the looks she received from almost every man she passed. “It stinks and I am fettered. But I can feel the salt wind on my face and I know home is out there. I really am going back. You’re actually taking me to Emeza.”
Adijan strolled past piles of cargo and along the shops fronting the dock. Instead of a sign for Ma’ad Enterprises, she spied a faded banner with a crudely painted bunch of grapes on it.
Zobeide gripped her arm and pulled her to a stop. “You have a vow.”
“One lousy little drink won’t hurt. Just a mouthful. A taste. It’s been over two weeks since my last drink. I deserve one after that caravan trip.”
“Your ex-wife –”
“Leave her out of this. My hands are shaking. Look. I need –”
“I was under the impression your ex-wife was the reason –”
“Shali would understand. Just a bowl. I won’t even have half a jug.”
“The decision is entirely yours. If you feel it fulfils the spirit of your oath to remain sober to win back –”
“Camel crap.”
Adijan jammed her fists into her pockets and kicked a stone.
“Perhaps we ought to enquire where my father’s warehouses are,” Zobeide said. “I can see no sign that might be his.”
Adijan grunted. She scuffed the dusty ground.
“You’re behaving like a scolded child,” Zobeide said. “We have a purpose –”
“You’ve no idea how badly I need a drink.”
“As badly as you want your wife back?”
Adijan speared a glare at her and stomped off down the dock.
“Once we get seaborne,” Zobeide said, “it’ll take your mind off your weakness. Now, where are my father’s warehouses? His business was so large he must have considerable premises. Someone will be able to supply us with directions.”
Adijan asked a couple of men who stared blankly when she mentioned Ma’ad Enterprises. She began to have an uneasy feeling. “Are you sure your father had a branch in Pikrut?”
Zobeide stalked to a man with a grimy red sash of a custom’s official. Adijan, with a lifetime’s caution at approaching custom’s men, waited and watched. He shook his head and pointed. Zobeide’s whole body tensed rigid. Adijan didn’t like the look of that.
Zobeide walked off in the direction he had indicated. Adijan followed. Zobeide halted at a large run-down warehouse near the end of the dock. Through a hole in the wall, Adijan could see it was empty and probably had been for some time. Her uneasy feeling deepened.
“No,” Zobeide said. “This cannot be the correct warehouse.”
Adijan saw a fallen sign propped against the side wall. She tilted her head. The peeling paint letters said: Ma’ad Enterprises. “Oh, Eye.”
“I don’t understand,” Zobeide said. “My father is a highly successful business man. He is astute. And has the best connections. This business has been in my family for many generations, yet my father built it to its greatest glory. It is his pride. He has countless ships. Caravans carried goods from all over the world to his warehouses. Hundreds of employees and servants.”
“Not any more. Not here.”
“Perhaps he has relocated to larger premises,” Zobeide said. “Or ceased business in this city in favor of a more lucrative location.”
Those weren’t the directions Adijan’s thinking had taken. If Zobeide’s father’s business was no longer as she expected, what else had changed? Were they going to find Baktar? Or an empty, abandoned house?
“Years and years ago it was.” The old man shook his head. “His lordship died, I heard. No son to take over. Lost my job. And my nephews. Bad. Very bad.”
“Thanks,” Adijan said.
She dug a couple of copper curls out of her pocket. He snatched them and signed a shaky blessing of the Eye at her.
“How many years ago?” Zobeide asked. “It’s very important that we –”
Adijan tugged her away. “He won’t be able to tell you. His past is lost in clouds of mistweed smoke. We’re lucky he could tell us what he did. Did you not have a brother?”
“I had cousins. But – my father dead?”
“I’m sorry. But it does happen.” Adijan frowned down the busy street. She could see some of the countless masts of ships in the harbor. “We need to find a ship going to Emeza. And pray that Baktar is still breathing.”
Zobeide stabbed a startled look at Adijan.
Refuse and seagulls bobbed in the green water lapping around the stout pier posts and the hulls of the boats.
“Hey, darling.” A sailor with his sweaty, hairy chest bare, stepped in front of Zobeide. “How much?”
Zobeide, still looking stunned from the news about her father, merely leveled a disgusted look at him.
“I have silver,” he said. “From Idrakir. Good coins. No clipping.”
“She’s with me,” Adijan said.
“I like boys, too.” He grinned and edged closer to Zobeide. “Both together? How much?”
“We’re both women, dung-head,” Adijan said.
“Two girls?” His smile broadened. “I would like that even better.”
“That makes one of us. Look us up when your poker drops off and you grow teats.” Adijan grabbed Zobeide’s hand and tugged her past him.
They found a grizzled, leather-skinned man sitting on the deck of a ship near the gangplank, smoking a foul-smelling pipe.
“May the Eye bless you and your craft, oh glorious sir,” Adijan called down. “You know of any ships bound for Emeza?”
He removed his pipe, spat, and squinted at them. “Blessings. Yeah. We are. What about it?”
“I don’t suppose you need crew?” she said.
“Knew he’d get himself killed one day.” He shook his head. “Stupid little turd. Never left the bottle alone. Eye watch whatever hell he ended up in. You look like a bruiser, too. Captain don’t want no more of that aboard.”
“I fell,” Adijan said. “I’m such a puny thing, you can’t imagine I’m a brawler? And I don’t drink – not a drop. I’m a hard worker. And quick to learn. And so is my sister.”
He looked Zobeide up and down, then spat again. “She’ll be trouble. The men will be fighting each other for her.”
“She’s not really my sister.” Adijan patted Zobeide’s hand. “There’d be no point men looking at her. And though she is normally peaceful, she can take care of herself if anyone tried anything.”
“Like that, is it? Well, even so, captain don’t want two. Just one. One bunk. That’s all.”
“We share,” Adijan said. “Everything. We’ll eat only the ration of one man. Sleep in the space of one. And take the pay of one. But we’ll work enough for two.”
He blew a long plume of smoke from his nostrils as he peered narrow-eyed up at them. “Wages of one for two of you? What crewing you done before? Captain won’t thank me for taking on raw meat.”
“We’re quick to learn,” Adijan said. “I’ve worked caravan teams, and warehouses, and couriering. You name it. I’m not afraid to sweat.”
He grunted and drew on his pipe.
“We’ll work for nothing,” Zobeide said.
Adijan stared at her. So did the seaman.
“In return for our labors,” Zobeide said, “we ask only food and passage to Emeza.”
“Nothing?” he said. “For two of you? All right. You’re on.”
He whistled and beckoned them down. He directed the skinny boy who appeared from the cabin to show them where they would sleep. The boy nearly tripped over himself as he contrived to clamber down the steps which led beneath the deck while keeping his gaze on Zobeide’s chest.
Below deck engulfed them in windowless gloom and the gut-churning stink of rank sweat and rot. Barrels packed about half of the hold. Crew accommodation comprised what looked like a set of narrow shelves built against one side of the hull. Each afforded its occupant about the same space as a coffin. Most had a hide sleeping bag or blank
et. The cabin boy pointed to the empty one for them.
“Thanks,” Adijan said. “If we need anything else, we’ll shout.”
He reluctantly withdrew, with a lingering look back at Zobeide.
“This is appalling,” Zobeide said. “Surely they don’t keep animals penned in such conditions.”
“Nothing? Are you out of your mind? No one works for nothing.”
“The tactic secured our passage, did it not? The pittance you might have earned is irrelevant to the fifty gold wheels I shall provide. Although, I’m not now convinced it was such a wise idea. There must be better ships than this. This living arrangement is atrocious.”
“Just wait until it’s crammed with cargo, half a dozen sailors, and night buckets.”
Zobeide curled her lip in disgust.
After assuring the mate they’d return before dark, Adijan and Zobeide strolled back along the pier.
“How much money do you have?” Zobeide asked.
“Why?”
“We should investigate the cost of a passenger voyage.”
Adijan shook her head. “The coins I have are to get me back to Qahtan.”
“The gold will be more than sufficient recompense for –”
“No. For once in my life, I’m thinking ahead and planning. You’re right. I stupidly leap into things without looking first. Like this trip. It’s a huge gamble. And the odds just got a lot longer, didn’t they? I know you don’t want to think about it, but there’s a real chance Baktar won’t be there. Going to Emeza might be a complete waste of time. I’m not leaving myself without a means of getting home for the wedding. This is too important. Even if I have to fight my way into the temple and throw myself barefoot at her feet, I’m going to ask Shali to marry me instead of that bearded money-bags.”
She stopped at the end of the pier to take her bearings.
“Besides,” she added, “if we had nothing to do but sit around and watch the sea for seven days, we’d probably end up throttling each other.”
“You may have a valid point.”
“Come on. I want one decent meal before I have to eat wormy rations again.”
Adijan followed the directions the sandal-seller had given her to find a backstreet eatery run by a large woman and her three daughters. The room was small and the tables battered, but the bowls and spoons were clean. Adijan stuffed herself with fish, crabs, dibis, and fresh bread, all generously dripping with sweet fennel butter, for a very reasonable price. Zobeide remained distracted.
Adijan sat back to lick her fingers and savor the last of her pomegranate juice. Her stomach felt happily distended, as if another mouthful of food would burst it. She smiled at the pretty girl who came to take away the used bowls. The girl gave Adijan a professionally polite nod before smiling warmly at Zobeide. Zobeide offered no acknowledgement.
“Even without the bedroom clothes,” Adijan said, “you make people drool. I don’t suppose there’s a way we can make you less attractive?”
“I’ve told you my appearance is dictated by your desires.”
“I meant your face and body,” Adijan said. “Those breasts. They’re far too… well, too…”
“Large.” Zobeide sighed, retrieved her attention from the middle-distance, and looked down at herself. “They have been this monstrous size since my first master. No subsequent man saw fit to reduce them. They can be quite uncomfortable.”
Adijan set her drink down and stared. “Are you serious? I can actually change what you look like and not just your clothes?”
“The enchantment grants license to my master to dictate my appearance to suit his desires.”
“So, if I said: breasts be half the size, they’d – wow. You weren’t joking.”
Zobeide lifted a hand to her reduced bosom. “Thank you.”
Adijan eyed Zobeide’s new outline. “How far can I change the enchantment? Could I make you into a man? Or a giant? Or a genie?”
“No. The enchantment imprisons my essential self but cannot pervert or bend me too great a distance from my true nature. Forcing me into whoredom is its absolute limit, and to do so Ardashir had to channel most of the power of the enchantment into that purpose. Not that I can imagine why you, of all people, would want me male.”
“Only to make life amongst a bunch of sailors easier. Certainly not for myself. If I don’t fancy you as a woman, making you a man wouldn’t do it.”
“Have you never experienced any normal impulses?”
Adijan couldn’t resist picking up one last crab leg to crack. “You mean have I ever wanted a man? Sexually? No. Never.”
“You were perverted in the womb?”
Adijan sucked the meat from the broken shell. “Doesn’t seem very likely. Not considering what was going on right next door, so to speak. My mother humping several beards a night until she got too big. Now, if she’d been sleeping with women, maybe you’d think some of it rubbed off.”
Zobeide averted her unhappy expression. “Conversations with you invariably lead to the gutter, don’t they?”
“Brothel.” Adijan licked her fingers then wiped them on her sleeve. “And, you know, to me, I’m normal. Eye, I wish I could do that clothing change trick on myself. This shirt stinks. And it isn’t going to get any fresher on that ship for a week.”
Zobeide shuddered.
Chapter Fifteen
Adijan worked the rope net from the hook and signaled to the waiting seaman. The hook and chain, fixed to one end of the yard, swung up and away to pick up the next load from the dock.
“How you doing, sweetie?”
Adijan turned to see Qaynu, the captain’s woman, grinning down into the cargo hold. Zobeide, the object of her question, stood to one side of the hold with both hands in the small of her back. Had she been fully human, she probably would’ve been crumpled in a heap on the damp cargo hold deck by now.
“If you wanted something a little easier to do,” Qaynu said, “maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be working like a grunt.”
“Any conceivable occupation,” Zobeide said, “you might offer –”
“What did you have in mind?” Adijan stepped to Zobeide’s side and slipped a hand around the back of her waist. She felt Zobeide stiffen, but Adijan kept her arm in place and smiled up at Qaynu.
Qaynu grunted and frowned at Adijan. She turned and disappeared past the hole in the planking.
Zobeide moved away from Adijan’s touch. “You need not feel obliged to intercede for me with every objectionable individual or comment.”
“I won’t be able to with so many people around. But you can’t just disappear to get out of trouble. Piss off Qaynu, and the bitch can make our lives hell. Keep that in mind before you tell her, in all those big words, to go and poke herself. You’re back in the real world, not a bedroom.”
“It is the world to which I was born. It’s where I truly belong. I am capable of surviving in it.”
To the accompaniment of much shouting and swearing, they finished loading with little time to spare before catching the noon tide. Adijan had to help setting the sail. She was clumsy and slow to climb the rope stays up to the yard. The other seamen made fun of her. The captain bellowed at her. When she finally crept along the yard she couldn’t help noticing the deck and sea looked a long way down. Zobeide contrived to stand almost directly underneath her – at the furthest reach of the allowed separation between them. Qaynu blew Adijan an ironic kiss.
Between pulling on ropes and running across the deck whenever someone shouted at her for being slow or in the wrong place, Adijan barely had time to think. The huge square sail bellied in the wind that carried them out of the harbor. The ship creaked alarmingly, as if every timber strained on the point of splitting. The uneven silhouette of the city of Pikrut shrank as the ship slid along the rocky coastline.
The deck gently lifted and lowered beneath her feet. Water slapped at the sides of the hull. Her stomach moved to its own queasy rhyth
m. She swallowed back saliva in increasing amounts. The crew smiled knowingly at her. As the ship rounded the jutting finger of land, which blocked the last of Pikrut from sight, she dashed for the side. Her vomit splattered the wet hull and churned in the waves. Unlike when she was drunk, puking didn’t make her feel even the tiniest bit better. She needed the sea to stop moving, but the waves relentlessly lapped at the ship.
“Feeding the fish, maggot?” Qaynu grinned. “And I thought your girlfriend was the soft one. Still, if she –”
Adijan turned away to retch.
Qaynu laughed.
Adijan stumbled through the afternoon. Even though she had nothing left inside her stomach, she felt just as sick. While her hands clutched the wooden side of the ship, her overworked insides heaved up green, foul-tasting bile. When the mate told her she could go for her food ration, she slumped against the side, turned her face into the breeze, and prayed.
Zobeide crouched beside her. She smelted of cooking. “I’ve brought you some –”
Adijan twisted around to retch.
“I assume that means even this unappetizingly dry, twice baked bread is out of the question,” Zobeide said. “Can you drink water?”
Adijan accepted the cup and rinsed her mouth. Her teeth felt furry.
“I’ll fetch some more,” Zobeide said.
Adijan sank back to the deck and closed her eyes. That accentuated the swaying, so she opened them again.
Zobeide peered at her. “Perhaps you’d be better trying to sleep.”
“Not unless you want me puking in my blanket.”
Zobeide went below and returned with Adijan’s blanket. Adijan accepted Zobeide’s help to wrap it around herself. Three weeks and five days. She must concentrate on that. In three weeks and five days time she would be holding Shalimar again, not just Shalimar’s blanket. And the world would stay still beneath them.
During the night, Adijan woke in the confines of the sleeping bunk. She heard voices and saw the flash of a lamp. The world lurched beneath her, and her insides clenched. She rolled onto her side and retched. Her guts ached and her throat burned, but she couldn’t stop.
“Adijan?” Zobeide gripped Adijan’s shoulder. “They say there’s a storm coming. Can you –”
