Jack Cloudie

CHAPTER TWO

The Empire of Cassarabia — Haffa Township

There was only one upside to being a slave, Omar considered, from his vantage point on top of the desalination tank. Why, if he had been born a freeman like Alim, he too might be wearing a perpetual frown of worry across his face all the time. Freemen in Cassarabia always had something to worry about, it seemed. Politics. Religion. Trade. The weather. Alim was probably worrying why the salt-fish in the tank below Omar weren’t being released into the next tank down the line, ready to go about their profitable business of separating the salt out of the sea water, leaving pure clean drinking water behind them, before disgorging pellets of table salt onto the beds of the third tank lined up under the shade of the water farm.

But nobody expected initiative from a slave. Indeed, it was very carefully beaten out of them. Omar had been ordered to scrape the salt residue out of one of the drained tanks, readying it for a new batch of salt-fish. Omar hadn’t been instructed to then open the lock gates and set the desalination process in motion again. A freeman would care about having fresh drinking water to sell at market. A freeman could have their wages docked. But a slave? Slaves weren’t encouraged to show their initiative, for such an attitude led to escape attempts across the desert.

‘Omar Ibn Barir,’ shouted Alim, spotting the young man lazing on top of the water tanks. ‘Do you expect the water farm to run itself?’

Well, miracles do happen, master. But failing that, how about you just shout at me until I do it for you?

Omar pushed himself up and off the water tank. He could always tell when Alim was annoyed with him, because he used his full name. The ibn to indicate he was property, and the house-line of Barir to indicate where all his devotion should rightly be directed. ‘I was resting, Master Alim. Saving my strength for my next duty.’ He indicated the parallel run of desalination tanks in front of them. ‘Have you ever seen the bottom of a filter tank scrubbed so clean of salt? There are chefs in the souks of Bladetenbul who will say twenty prayers of thanks to the one true god that there was a boy called Omar so diligent that the sacks of salt they buy from us are as plump as a caravan master’s belly.’

‘It is you who should say twenty prayers,’ said Alim, ‘for being so fortunate as to be born a slave into the house of Marid Barir, for no other master would spare you the floggings you so richly deserve.’

Omar did not risk the old man’s ire by noting that few other civilized masters would have employed a grizzled freeman like Alim, either, his rough nomad manners barely softened by the decade he had spent inside the town of Haffa. Bred a slave, Omar counted the russet-faced Alim as much a father as he had known in his young life. The only male company he was familiar with, the only man he had worked alongside for years. Such as it could be divined, the good opinion of Alim mattered to Omar. Often he was gruff, but when the old nomad could be roused to humour, his laugh would explode like a thunderstorm, his body shaking and jolting almost uncontrollably under the shade of the water farm. Omar had noticed the old tribesman seemed to find less to laugh about these days.

Alim looked up at the tank where Omar had been lounging. ‘A fine view of the caravan road.’

‘There is no sign of the water traders yet,’ said Omar.

‘It is not water traders, I think, that you were looking for.’

Omar tried not to blush, affecting an air of nonchalance, as if he had no idea what Alim was inferring.

‘Shadisa will not come by today,’ said the old nomad. ‘She has gone down to the docks to inspect the fishermen’s afternoon catch for the great master’s table.’

Omar shrugged, as though the news made no difference to him.

‘Ah, Omar,’ sighed Alim. ‘If you were a comely female and she the son of a freeman, rather than a daughter, you might have a chance. But what fortune or alliance does a male slave bring to an honourable family? The stench of salt-fish and the fifty altun it would cost to purchase your papers of ownership from Marid Barir?’

‘My smell is not so bad.’ And I am born for more than this, you grumpy old goat. I can feel my greatness like the burning fingers of the sun, trembling and ablaze within me. A pity you do not see it.

‘You have worked here so long that you have lost your sense of it,’ said Alim.

‘Whatever my smell, Alim, you cannot fail to admit that I am handsome. When I catch my reflection sometimes, I believe that the one true god must have sent an angel from heaven to bless my cradle.’

‘He sent something, boy. A lazy joker to swell my workload here.’

In one matter the old nomad was correct, Shadisa would not come by today. Omar knew. There had always been a connection between the two of them. He could sense when she was coming or when she was near. Sometimes when he was in the great house of their master, he would imagine she was in a certain part of the house and if he ventured close to there, he would find that his sixth sense was proved correct. Old Alim had laughed when Omar told him about this ability. There were men whose bodies had been twisted by womb mages who had such abilities, the nomad had explained, scouts in the elite regiments of the caliph’s army — units such as the imperial guardsmen — the cutting edge of the caliph’s scimitar. They hunted by smell, or perhaps the unseen magnetic patterns of the mind’s thoughts. A mere slave boy had no such illustrious heritage, Alim had laughed. Just the unrequited longings of what he would never have.

But Omar knew better. He only had to meet someone once, take note of them, and then he could then feel their presence if they were near enough. It was as if an invisible thread connected him to them, a tingling warmth he could feel in the depth of his being. Alim was the only one he trusted enough to tell of his gift. It really was not a wise thing for slaves to reveal such abilities, less they be judged a threat and culled. Wild blood, the same as the nomads who haunted the dunes. Too many changes by womb mages and the witches of the desert, percolating through undocumented bloodlines. Who knew what changes had been wrought in the past, what gifts were hiding in his flesh? He hadn’t even spoken to Shadisa about this matter.

Ah, Shadisa. Omar still recalled the first time he had noticed Shadisa. She had been a young helper in the kitchens of the great house, her bare elbow balanced on one of the tables as she challenged the other children on the staff to arm-wrestle her. Barely nine himself, he had taken up the challenge and asked Shadisa what she would give him if she lost. ‘A kiss,’ she had brazenly answered. One Omar had sadly never claimed, for her long perfect arms had proved disconcertingly muscular, and he had lost to her in seconds.

He was a lot stronger now, of course, a titan among men as he imagined it. It had been so much easier when they were younger. While it was true that the life of a freeman’s daughter in the town was little better than that of a slave — always subject to the arbitrary whims of her father — when they had been children so much less had been expected from either of them. There had been time enough for Omar and Shadisa to sneak off to the beaches along the south. Empty golden sands, the two of them climbing palm trees and casting dates down into the sand drifting like mist along the surface where the ocean winds stirred it. Building fires from driftwood and making palaces and castles from sand mounds. Their favourite tree was an old betel palm that had embedded itself along the back of the shoreline, its feathered leaves perfect for hiding them as they waited to ambush other children. In its mottled shade they would sway and discuss who were the bigger tyrants among the great house’s staff and the water farm’s workers, quickest with the switch and harshest with the load of duties. Spending time larking about the sands with Shadisa seemed the most natural thing in the world — the one thing he had to look forward to, the one thing he could count on.

That time seemed so distant now, like remembering a lost age of magic. As they had grown older, he had vowed to let nothing separate them. Certainly not the growing differences in their bodies, swelling in increasingly interesting fashions. The way his heart would jump when she held his hand. The way he would find himself looking for excuses to seek her out, or invent chores to bring her out to the water farm. But as they grew older, so did Omar’s awareness of the relative differences in their position. He was a slave; she was the daughter of a freeman. When they had both scurried around under the threat of the switch as children, that difference had seemed academic, simply a word. Nothing in it. But as adulthood beckoned, with each new season their relationship threatened to widen into an unbridgeable canyon. With the passing of every year, they got closer to the point where Shadisa would be expected to meet no man socially save with the company of a chaperone, and a mere slave, never! Omar knew of Shadisa’s father, a very hard man who never smiled, with a reputation for greed and cheating in his dealings. Eyes as cold as ice, and a dry pockmarked face that seemed as seared as the cruelty of the desert. He had once ordered his wife flogged on the flat roof of his house when she miscarried with a son inside her belly. A punishment for whatever she had done to offend the prophets and cause the loss. He had killed a slave too, in a drunken fit, beating the boy’s head in with a piece of firewood one night. Why? Who knew: just because he could, maybe. And what would he do to me if I dared to present myself as a potential suitor, a lowly slave come calling, and without a dowry to boot?

There had been a brief interlude in the inevitable after a disastrous plague had swept the region, carrying away both Omar and Shadisa’s mothers in the same sickening outbreak: a freeman’s wife and female house slave equalized at last by death’s cold touch. So many had died that the old ways and social codes had briefly tottered. There hadn’t been enough hands to do half the work of the town, let alone bother with the strictures of society. The prices of slaves had tripled, along with the wages of freemen; food had become ever more scarce, with insufficient hands to work the fishing boats or keep the irrigation channels clear of sand. Commercial concerns had gone bankrupt all across the province. With one solitary consolation. The grieving over the loss of their mothers had briefly brought Omar and Shadisa even closer. By then, they were of an age where their presence together would be remarked upon, and the beach had become unsafe as a rendezvous; too much danger of being spied upon by a passing townsperson looking to supplement a barren larder by collecting the last tide’s seaweed.

Reluctantly, Omar had abandoned the familiar fan of their palm tree’s leaves, trading it for an ancient ruin in the desert. There was a place ten minutes’ walk from the town, a failed oasis and its collapsed wellspring. There had been a construction there once, as old as time, now with only seven pillars left to make its presence in the world. Shadisa had called them the ‘Pillars of Nuh’ after an old children’s tale, a little bowl of sand offering the shade of its cracked marble columns to rest in. You couldn’t always find it, as the drifting sands sometimes covered it over, before reversing its passage a few weeks later and revealing the dried up watercourse again. When you were inside it, nobody could find you, not unless they stumbled over the top of the basin by accident.

Omar had missed the sound of the sea lapping against the beach and the cry of the gulls, but along with his advancing years, there were other consolations to capture his attention. Like the way Shadisa would flick and curl her golden hair across her soft smooth skin as she gazed up at the clouds, or bump him playfully when he made her laugh with some boast or sly observation. His mimicry of the cooks, gardeners and water engineers working at the great house had been particularly useful in that regard. She would roll about laughing, her teeth flashing as white as the mysterious arched bones they occasionally found jutting out of the dunes, allowing him to pull her close and taste her lips with his. He hadn’t even needed to arm-wrestle Shadisa to claim his prize.

But in all lives there comes a time when the laughter must end, and for him that had been one evening after they’d been staring up at a sunset together, the hot ancient peace of the desert interrupted by a woman’s wails. He and Shadisa had crawled to the top of the dried-out wellspring to see someone fleeing across the sands, a young woman wearing an ivory scooped-neck abaya, her body weighted down with dozens of leather water bottles. Shadisa recognized her first, whispering her name to Omar. One of the staff at the great house, a raven-haired beauty called Gamila. She had been promised in marriage to a water trader, a man of such exceptional ugliness that it was said none of his other three wives could bear him children. Despite his advanced age, or perhaps because of it, Gamila had been promised to the merchant as a cure for his other wives’ infertility — hardly an attractive fate for one so young and vivacious. And here she was, sprinting across the dunes in the cool of the evening, enough water sloshing about her person to follow the caravan road all the way to the next coastal town.

He had hardly needed to hear the distant shouts of a pursuit to know that she wasn’t travelling with her family’s blessing. Shadisa had made to jump up and signal to Gamila to hide with them under the watercourse’s crags, but Omar has pulled her back. If they were discovered out together, Shadisa wouldn’t have needed Gamila’s presence to condemn her in sharing the errant daughter’s fate. Shadisa had struggled and kicked, but the days when she’d been a physical match for Omar were long gone. With his fingers clamped over Shadisa’s mouth, Gamila sprinted past, following the crescent-shaped mound of a sand dune without spotting the dried-up oasis. Then she was gone, the shouts of the chase growing louder, men’s voices hooting and calling to each other, before passing and fading under the darkening sky.

How Shadisa had cursed and damned him for stopping them going to the girl’s aid. He was a fool and a coward and a timid fraud. She couldn’t believe he could be so selfish. Shadisa simply didn’t see how he’d been protecting her all along, saving her from her own thoughtless, reckless actions. Shadisa’s father’s temper would have been volcanic if she had been discovered out in the dunes with a male slave, aiding a girl in dishonouring her family’s name. Gamila had called her own fate down upon her; every slave knew there was only one crime worse than running from your master, and that was getting caught in the attempt. Shadisa didn’t deserve to join the careless house girl in her punishment, and frankly, although he had never voiced it, neither did Omar.

And a wantonly cruel punishment it proved to be. After Gamila had been dragged back to town, the old merchant quickly decided to break off their betrothal in favour of one of Gamila’s younger sisters. Her family then paid for a master womb mage — an expert in the honour-sanctions demanded by wealthy families — to travel to the town from the distant capital. The spurned suitor rejected the lighter punishment of giving Gamila two extra arms and sentencing her to a life of hard labour as a baggage carrier. Instead, the womb mage had buried her in the sand up to her waist on the outskirts of town and inflicted a changeling virus on Gamila, twisting and mutating her form into a cactus-like taproot. What had been her arms and head warped into fleshy green pads, the outline of her face barely visible as lumpy veins of spines. No eyes to see, no mouth to scream; Omar had often prayed there wasn’t enough sentience inside her barrel-like trunk to feel the cuts of travellers’ knives as they sliced wedges out of her body and sucked on the rubbery green flesh for her water. The desert wastes nothing, the travellers would mouth, before discarding the sucked-out flesh in the dust and continuing on their way.

But more than Gamila’s body had changed that day. Ever since then, Shadisa’s attitude towards Omar had cooled. No more walks. No more time together in the old oasis or on the beach. She barely smiled when he approached, and made every excuse to be out of his presence as quickly as possible. Perhaps she was frightened of receiving a similar punishment from her father; perhaps she had seen the price of flouting society’s rules and judged the potential cost of continuing to see Omar too high? Surely she still can’t blame me for what happened to Gamila? It was hardly my fault. You would think that given the time we’ve spent apart, on reflection, she could now see that it is only my quick thinking that saved her. Show me a little gratitude at least. The town’s hunters wouldn’t have just given up looking for Gamila. They would have kept on searching until they found her alongside us, and there wouldn’t now be one body twisted to serve as a taproot outside the town, but three. No, Shadisa’s scared, that has to be it. She’s seen what happens to those who defy their family and she’s fearful. Shadisa just had to be brought to see the greatness burning within her suitor, the infinite potential, then she’d realize that he wouldn’t always be fetching and carrying on a water farm.

‘Hey there,’ ordered Alim, flicking a pebble of limestone rock at Omar, ‘stop mooning over girls too fine for you and open the locks to the next tank. If the fish don’t purge soon, you’ll have a tank of spoiled water and a school of sick salt-fish.’

Omar nodded and made his way to the lock wheels. The last slave who’d killed a batch of salt-fish had been made to eat the sickening black things for a week and almost died of salt poisoning. Yes, the arbitrary punishments, just another perk of being a slave in Cassarabia. Alim helped the young slave in his task, walking down the line of water tanks, twisting the rusting wheels that opened the lock doors, the sloshing water sweeping the fish away to the next stage of the filtering process. The fish were biologicks, of course: the product of womb mage sorcery. Only the House of Barir and the other houses that worshipped the Sect of Ackron, all members of the guild of water farmers, understood exactly how to create and nurture the salt-fish. Adding special vials of hormones to the water supply through their complex life cycle to keep them thrashing and thriving.

Ackron was the fifty-third sect of the Holy Cent, informally known as the trader’s face, and those who embraced the sect often prospered as traders and merchants. That was the theory, at least. The rusting wheels on the water farm’s tanks spoke of a different reality, though. When the plague had spread through the northern provinces of Cassarabia, it had killed over two-thirds of the House of Barir’s people, leaving their coastal water farms undermanned and in the care of the house’s slaves and vagabonds-for-hire like Alim. The bones of the house’s faded glory were laid out in the sand dunes alongside the farm, a handful of metal arches that had been constructed to hold a water pipeline which had never been completed; pipes for fresh drinking water that should have reached all the way to Cassarabia’s capital, bypassing the water traders and the caravans.

It was through the broken arches of the house’s half-finished pipeline that Omar noticed the first visitor rising out of the baking sands, the dark silhouette of a scout atop a saddle raising a long spindly rifle in friendly greeting as the chattering of the sandpedes’ bony legs grew louder in the distance. The insect-like creatures that made up most of the caravan came slithering out of the desert with the dazzling white enamel of thousands of water butts tied to their segmented bodies, flashing towards the water farm.

‘Not good,’ murmured Alim.

‘They are early, old master,’ said Omar, watching the line of water traders coming down the dunes towards them, ‘but so are we. We have enough tanks to fill all their butts. The salt is counted and bagged.’

‘It was I that bagged most of the salt, Omar Ibn Barir,’ spat the old nomad. ‘It is not the traders I talk of. Look …’

Omar shielded his eyes from the sun and turned his gaze to where Alim was pointing. By the silver gates of heaven, the old nomad still had the keen sight from his desert days. There was a keeper on the dune line — one of the respected priests of the hundred sects — riding a camel, breaking away from the main caravan and threading his way through the pump heads that brought sea water up from the harbour. He was bearing straight for the great fortified house overlooking Haffa’s harbour — Master Barir’s residence, as well as that of the beautiful Shadisa, of course. Her olive skin, golden hair and wide green eyes be blessed.

‘It’s just a keeper,’ said Omar. The priests of the Sect of Ackron are always coming and going. The tithes from the House of Barir were important to the sect, and the holy men that received them no doubt said many prayers for the soul of Marid Barir and his profitable water farms.

Alim rubbed the stubble on his old chin. ‘Just a keeper? Have you no eyes to see with, young pup? Look at the green edging around the number fifty-three on his headdress. It is the high keeper of the Sect of Ackron himself.’

An emir of the church, one of the hundred keepers of the Holy Cent of the one true god! What business could he have so far beyond the capital’s comforts? There were no politics here, no court, no temples of note. Just the margins of the desert, a sea breeze, a distant fishing town and the house’s many water farms.

Omar ran a hand through his dark, slightly curly hair. ‘Clearly, my eyes are as perfect as the rest of me. Are you sure it is the high keeper?’

‘Yes,’ sighed the old nomad. ‘I am sure.’

‘He probably wants more money.’

‘Keepers are sent to demand extra tithes from their flock,’ said Alim. ‘Not the high keeper himself. This is bad. In a strong wind, an innocent man’s tiles are blown off a roof the same as the wicked’s.’

‘Is that one of the sayings of the witch that used to travel with your clan?’

‘It is but common sense,’ snapped Alim. ‘Even a town-born slave may drink from that well.’

Omar shrugged and went back to opening the rest of the salt-fish locks, leaving the old nomad to mull over his concerns. Yes, that was the only good thing about being a slave. When you had nothing to lose or hope for, you had little to fear. Worries only came, it seemed, when you had property and status to lose; as a slave, there would be a worker-sized dish of food on his table this evening — because when you owned a beast of burden, it made good sense to feed it and keep it working. And if I am lucky, tomorrow morning might even bring a glimpse of Shadisa’s heart-stopping face. Yes, something will come along for me. Fate will surely accommodate the wittiest and most handsome slave in the empire.

Omar began to hum one of the wild nomad ballads that Alim had taught him.

If he had known what the evening was to bring, he might have changed his tune.