Solomon Stone- Survival

by Diana K Potter

  “You’re right. I would be living in endless sorrow,” she said back.

  Together, they pushed their way through the crowd of people gathered inside, eating and drinking at ramshackle tables with mismatched, wooden chairs.

  Alexis approached a woman carrying several empty tankards of ale to be refilled from some of the barrels in back. If this trader truly frequented the tavern, a woman who worked here should know his name. She cleared her throat, unwilling to startle another woman with an unexpected touch. The maid turned around in the midst of filling the tankards; she was at least as young as Lyra.

  “I’m looking for a man called Kyrios, a trader captain who often travels to Greece. Do you know him?”

  The girl nodded, and without speaking a word, pointed out a man sitting in the far corner. He was older than she or Stone, but younger than her father would have been. She pegged him at forty. There was grey in his long, loose hair, but his face was nearly clean-shaven.

  “Thank you,” Alexis said. She pressed a small coin into the girl’s palm, and was pleased to receive a shocked, wide smile in return. They had little, but the girl was far too thin and looked too much like Lyra.

  She nodded at Stone and led him most of the way across the room, before pausing in the middle and covertly pointing out the man he was to speak to. Stone nodded. It would be far safer, far less noteworthy, for him to take the lead here. But she would remain by his side nonetheless, ready to step in and offer up words of her own if need be.

  “Right,” he said, holding out his arm in the way that husbands often did for wives. “Let’s do this.” It was so much easier than she had thought it might be, pretending to belong to him. He felt strong and solid beside her, someone that could not be made to bend.

  Once they were before the man, unimpeded, Stone cleared his throat, causing the trader to look up from his ledger with two raised brows. He looked more shocked than angry at the fact that Stone had the gall to interrupt him.

  “We’re looking for a man called Kyrios,” he said.

  “Well,” the man replied. “You’ve found him. Unless you have cargo to sell me, I’m not interested.”

  He began to look back down at the ledger, but Alexis, unable to compose herself, had gasped at his accent. He was plainly from Greece, based on his coloring and language, but the cadence of his words, the spaces between his syllables, told her that he was close to home, perhaps even Spartan. The sound of it made her vision go blurry with tears. At the small noise, he looked at the two of them more closely.

  “From where do you come?” Kyrios asked.

  “I come from far away,” Stone said. “A land called America.” He nodded toward Alexis. “My wife comes from Greece. Sparta,” he clarified.

  The captain’s face broke into a broad smile. The harshness of his face abated, replaced by something much friendlier. “It is good to see a fellow countryman in these strange lands. What are you called, girl?”

  He was not so much older than her that she was willing to let the use of that word slide. She lifted her chin. “Alexis,” she said. “And I am no girl.”

  The trader held up his hands. “I meant no offense,” he said. “If you’re not selling cargo, then what can I do for you?”

  “We need passage,” Stone said. “We’ve suffered some misfortune. Alexis wishes to return to her family in Greece—or as close to Greece as you can get us.”

  Kyrios nodded, stroking his scant beard in consideration. “I am going that way. I’ll be stopping at one of the southern ports.”

  Alexis gave Stone a nod. A southern port was not ideal, but under the circumstances it would do.

  “I cannot give you free passage,” the captain went on. “I have a crew to pay, after all. What can you offer?”

  In answer, Stone placed their very light coin purse on the tabletop between them. “This is what we have,” he said. “If you choose to grant us passage, we will sell our camels. The coin from the sale would be yours as well.”

  Kyrios took a drink from his tankard, his eyes meeting Alexis’s as he did so. She had practice when it came to reading people, especially men, and there was nothing dangerous within them that she could see.

  “I will grant you passage,” the man said. “But you will be expected to pull your weight. Have either of you worked on a ship before?”

  Alexis snorted, doing her best to disguise it as a cough. “I have,” she answered. “My husband has not, but you will find that we both learn quickly.”

  He studied them for a moment longer, looking between them, seemingly studying their dynamic. Kyrios shook his head and took a final drink from his tankard before slamming it down rather hard on the table, making the rickety wooden surface vibrate.

  “My crewmen will say I’m getting sentimental, but I won’t leave a fellow Spartan on these shores if they do not wish to be here. My ship leaves this afternoon. It has three masts and a dragon on its prow.”

  Her relief, as they walked from the tavern hand in hand, was so great that Alexis felt as though she were floating, walking atop the waves of the sea.

  ❖❖❖

  They stumbled across the auction entirely by accident. They had left their camels at a stable upon entering the city and were doing their best to make it back there with time to spare.

  She was still walking arm-in-arm with Stone, enjoying the novelty of it, but had to release him when they made their way into a crowd of people. In the center of the square, a voice shouted out prices in Persian. Hands raised and men stepped forward to collect their purchases. The crush of people was too thick for her to see through. Alexis was rather tall compared to most women she had known back home, but just now, the extra few inches were not enough to allow her to see what all the fuss was about.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Stone was quiet for a moment. Alexis tilted her head back a bit and found that his face was growing pale. His jaw and his fists were clenched tightly.

  “They’re selling slaves,” he said.

  Alexis moved forward, squeezing between men and women with fat coin purses and curious expressions, leaving Stone behind somewhere near the back of the crowd. She had no doubt that he was coming after her, but with his larger size, he might have trouble catching up.

  The man being sold looked to be near Stone’s age. His hands were shackled, his feet free. She could still feel the heavy coldness of metal fastened around her own wrists, though she knew nothing of the sort remained. Prices were called out, along with descriptions from the auctioneer regarding his strong back and agreeable disposition. At last, a price was agreed upon and he was led into a building opposite the square, a man from the crowd following. She knew nothing of such things but assumed this was the place where documents were signed and money was exchanged—where sales were finalized.

  “Alexis,” Stone said, nudging his way into place beside her, and drawing several dirty looks for doing so. “We should move on. This doesn’t seem like a place we should linger.”

  She agreed with him of course, but she could not force her feet to move. It was as though she’d stood in the surf too long, the incoming tide burying her feet in the sand until she could not easily pull them free. One of the men standing at the opposite side of the square, near where the slaves were dragged after they were sold, looked familiar.

  He looked more than familiar. He was half-hidden by those surrounding him, and Alexis, frozen as she was could not speak up to inform Stone of the fact that the quartermaster was in their midst.

  A young boy was brought forward, perhaps the age of Tadaki. He had hungry eyes, and his collarbones were so prominent that they seemed to cast shadows. Watching him, as he was led to the front of the crowd, Alexis felt hate begin to rise in her—a hard, all-encompassing feeling that was greater than any anger she’d ever known. She allowed Stone’s hand to close over her shoulder and let herself be pulled away.

  She was not sure why she was so affected by the sight. She’d had plenty of time t
o dwell on her experiences, how close she and Stone had come to such a fate.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Stone said. “I wish there was, but we’re only two people.”

  His words were all too true; there was no argument she could make, but that did not make it easier for Alexis to loosen her grip on the hilt of her sword. She hadn’t realized she’d been clutching it so tightly and forced her fingers to release their hold. Her hand was left aching just as badly as her chest.

  Stone saw the pain on her face and did his best to alleviate it. “What do you need?”

  “I need to sit for a moment,” Alexis said. Just then, it was true. She felt as though she might vomit. “Could you handle the camels?”

  “Sure,” he said. His hand was warm and solid at the back of her neck, holding her steady. “I’m an experienced haggler, remember?”

  She remembered everything he told her but did not say that aloud. Alexis dredged up something like a smile, hoping to allay any suspicion. “I recall. I will meet you at the docks within the hour. There are some herbs I know of that I may help your seasickness, if I can find the right merchant.”

  This was true as well.

  Stone took his hand away from her, and the warmth with it. “I trust you won’t get yourself killed without me,” she said.

  “I’ll be careful,” he replied. “And if disaster should strike, I’ve been told my swordplay is improving.” She had learned his voice and all the facets of it; he was speaking in the tone he used when he wanted very badly to make her forget her worries. This time, it did not work, but that did not mean the sentiment was unappreciated.

  As Stone walked away, leaving her leaning against the side of a market stall, she banished the cold, sinking feeling of fear from her gut. It had no place here; in this instance, it was not useful.

  When she was a girl, much younger even than Lyra was now, her father had taught her to hunt. Alexis knew how to track an animal through the forest, reading the ground for hoof-prints and broken twigs, checking trees for claw-marks or scrapes. She knew how to make her feet silent as they fell upon the ground. It didn’t do her much good just then, as she wove back through the crowd, but she found herself slipping into a similar mindset. There were other ways to escape notice. Alexis let her usual confident tread drop away and replaced it with something more rushed, more befitting of a servant headed from one task to another.

  On the slave ship, in the course of carrying out her duties, she had grown quite good at keeping her eyes on the ground. She remembered the Quartermaster’s boots. It was nothing to pick them out and keep her eyes upon him. It was nothing to follow him to the building in back of the auction, where he had gone to collect money for the woman he’d just sold.

  There were just the three of them in this room, as Alexis stood in the doorway: the Quartermaster, the slave, and the buyer. The quartermaster wore the same sneer she had often seen him wearing on the ship. The buyer was tall and handsome. His shoulders were broad, and he looked strong, but carried no sword that she could see. As Alexis watched him, he took the slave’s chin in his hand, and tilted her face up to examine it further. Something was said in a half joking tone about how beautiful the woman was. Her eyes shifted to the woman’s face and she found this to be true. The cheekbones were high and her eyes were large and amber-colored. The buyer kept joking, bright-eyed and laughing with the Quartermaster.

  Alexis had not entered the room with plans to kill the men within it, though it seemed obvious now that this was why her subconscious had driven her to seek them out in a place of relative solitude. She was one person. She and Stone were two people. Either way, they did not have the strength or the skill to free every slave in the market. This though, she could do. She could kill two men, and leave the world better for it.

  The woman saw her but did not announce her presence. Alexis moved closer, toward the two men still facing away.

  This would only work, she knew, if they had no chance to raise an alarm. She went for the handsome buyer first, closing the distance between them and slipping her knife into his spine. He wore no armor, and it passed through the linen of his shirt with ease; his legs gave way as she pulled the knife free. He was not dead yet, but he would be shortly, the damage done irreparable.

  The Quartermaster was a trickier task. He turned toward her as the buyer fell, his sword half drawn from its sheath. Alexis planted a boot in his stomach, leather armor giving way, in an effort to steal any chance he had to call out for help. He doubled over, coughing so hard that Alexis nearly winced at the sound. The floor was already slick with the buyer’s blood; Alexis lost her balance stepping forward, missing the slim window of opportunity, and her hopes of ending the fight quickly were dashed. The Quartermaster was not an incompetent warrior. He freed his sword from its scabbard in the midst of his coughing fit, as Alexis gripped the edge of a table to steady herself. There was scant space between them; the sword was jerked upward, the pommel cracking her beneath the jaw and knocking her to the floor. She landed hard, her dagger rising up to block the sword that swung downward, toward her head. She did not miss, but the blades locked, and the Quartermaster bore down upon her with his entire weight. Her arms trembled with the strength it took to keep the blade from her throat.

  The second at which he recognized her was not one she would forget. Something sparked within his eyes, bright as torchlight, and his mouth stretched into a smile. His laugh tore at her ears.

  “We looked high and low for you,” he said, in the broken Greek she remembered so well. “Smart little thing. I know you killed the Captain. Now that you have found me, I can make you pay.”

  The muscles in her arms were screaming, but she did not allow herself to yield. He was growing cocky, and as she’d just learned, when you grew too sure of yourself, mistakes were quick to follow. Alexis readied herself, one leg spring-loaded beneath her, and ready to find its mark between his legs.

  Before she could, there was a length of chain around the quartermaster’s throat, and the slave was pulling him backwards with every bit of her weight and righteous anger. The blade was removed from Alexis’s throat. She scrambled to her feet, panting, to find the woman struggling to maintain her hold. The slave had been using the chain threaded between her shackles and the Quartermaster was already in the process of wresting away control.

  There were two of them now, and he could not properly fight them both. Alexis drove her dagger into him with every bit of strength she had remaining. She kept the blade sharp enough that it punched through the leather of his armor with shocking ease and into what she guessed to be his lung. The slave was thrown aside in the chaos, as Alexis fell atop the struggling man, driving her dagger in a second time for good measure. As the quartermaster died, he flailed about with knees and elbows and searching fingers. His right hand found her neck and tried to squeeze, but he had not the strength to grasp it; instead, his fingernails ended up digging into the unarmored skin of her shoulder, burrowing deeper and deeper. He did not die easily and had no more breath for threats. She watched the light within his eyes fade to nothing before allowing herself to breathe once more.

  When the dying was over, she sat back and surveyed the grisly scene.

  It felt like hours had passed since Stone left her to sell the camels, when in reality she knew it had been mere minutes. Soon, someone else would need this room, and when they did, they would discover the carnage. Alexis stood quickly and faced the slave who was already watching her skeptically. Alexis held her hands up and tried to make her face into something less frightening.

  “I mean you no harm,” she said. “You are safe.”

  She bent over the Quartermaster, removing his coin purse and dagger, holding them out to the slave. The woman accepted them hesitantly. Alexis turned her back to peek through the window. The next sale was going on longer than some of the others. Another strong man was up for grabs. She dug a cloak from her pack with hands that shook only a little, adrenaline slowly ebbing away. She fe
lt blood trickle down her back as she moved, hot and sticky, but there was not so much of it as to cause her worry. She turned, already moving toward the door as she did so, cloak held out to cover the shackles the slave girl still wore. She and Stone had only negotiated passage for the two of them, but the money from the coin purse would be more than enough to cover a third person.

  The woman had already left the room. Alexis rushed to the side entrance that she had come through herself and found the alleyway similarly empty of any human souls.

  It may not end well, Alexis knew, but she felt a rush of admiration all the same. The woman had a purse full of coin and a dagger. Perhaps she could pay someone to knock off her chains. Perhaps she would find her way home.

  “Good luck,” Alexis whispered, and went searching for a fountain in which to wash the blood from her hands.

  Stone

  It was a smaller vessel than the slave ship but a bit grander and less beaten down in appearance. The sails had not been patched nearly as often, and the hull looked freshly scraped and waxed. Initially, he’d been fascinated with the Persian port town they found themselves in. He’d read about such things, studied them even, and though this particular time period had never been his area of expertise it was undeniably amazing to see such things in person. Of course, these feelings had been dashed with one wrong turn, one shortcut, and he was forced to recall all the horrors that existed in this time in addition to the wonders. It wasn’t as though he’d forgotten about the slavers—the thin, white scars arising from the healed scabs on his wrists would see to it that he never did. He’d simply allowed himself to be swept up in the novelty of seeing such a place, filled with people and life, as opposed to long dead.

  The ship was nearly ready to depart when he spotted Alexis moving through the chaos of the docks toward him. She walked quickly, almost jogging, and he was glad to see that her eyes did not look quite so haunted. It had been disconcerting to see her look practically faint, and infuriating to know that there was nothing to be done about it. Slavery was entrenched in this society, and, evil as it was, it was not a problem that the two of them could fix.