Fate, as water
Being the first adventure of Lamiana
By August Renfelt
Of Evilbedtimestories.com
3. Smashwords Edition
Copyright August Renfelt October 2011
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Household of Haydar
Chapter 2: Cook, wash and serve
Chapter 4: All Manner of Business
Free samples from other short stories by Renfelt
Prologue
Eye of the Hawk
Behold Al Kidr, the Land behind the Veil. Here lies the City States along the great and bountiful river Sebque, like pearls on a string necklace around the neck of Lady Desert. A land of learning, civilisation and trade. Yes, most of all trade. For the spices and silks from the Empire of Secrets in the deep south passes through along the Sebque on its way to the Blue Ocean, making the merchants of Al Kidr fat and rich. Al Kidr itself also produces: from its desert mines comes the best steel in the world, and Al Kidr’s smiths work it to the most wondrous swords and scimitars known under the sun. And here originates coffee, almonds, dates and figs and much else by the grace of the gods.
This land is ruled over by the Caliph, the Emir of Emirs, and Son of the Gods, from the temple city Medina al Din. All the emirs and sheiks of the land bow to him, at least in so far as the find something shiny in the dust at their feet.
One can regale endlessly on the wonders of this land, but let us dive, like the hawk, at a spot on the ground. Any spot, say the city state of Touruqe, jewel of the delta, guardian of the Blue Ocean, ancient rival of its neighbour Kustir, the dam-city. Closer we must dive. There is the fishmonger gate in the outer wall; there is the dirt track that leads to it. In the light of dawn, along that dirt track rumbles a wagon with its cargo of four slaves who Fudail the slave trader, and his henchman Falih, hopes to sell. Four slaves, four fates. Let us pick the young girl Lamiana for our tale, for she will go far and do much, blessed and cursed by Kismet as she is. Also, she is good looking. A good choice indeed.
Who will buy this beauty when the market opens? A fool, that’s who.
The Household of Haydar
The Household of Haydar had fallen on ill times. Haydar had been a great man, a warrior, and his achievements against Kustir and various desert raiders had in turn brought him enough loot to buy a house, a Grant of Monopoly on selling raisins in Touruqe and an arrow through the brain.
Now his widow Ghusun languishes in bed, sick of heart and body, and his son and only heir Iayd wanders through life unmarried, more dedicated to the wine bottle than the somewhat marginal business his father had left him.
It is also a household of but a single slave, Khelbe, an old, wiry scribe, beardless and bald, who minds the raisin store and as such the income end of the business. The servant girl has recently died in labour; Khelbe was beaten for making her pregnant, though no one thought he did.
What loving words might pass between mother and son in times as these? "If I had a wife, she could take care of the chores, but you drove all marriage brokers from our door!" And "You drove them away yourself with you wasteful ways!" And "Go, go! And use these our last money on a new servant slave to take care of me"" And "What! You kept this money hidden all this time?" And "How dare you!" And "It’s all your fault!" And so on.
Iayd walked, foul of mood, on his long thin legs down the dusty streets of Touruqe. He lacked his father’s girth, and made up for this lack of frame by wearing a gigantic white turban when out and about. His plans were initially vague. He needed a servant girl to take care of his mother when Khelbe minded their small shop inside the greater wall. The gods knew that he would not do it himself. But he also needed a drink, and some extra bottles to have at home, and a visit to the temple prostitutes in the mosque of Sebque-Ra. Perhaps if he brought cheaply at the slave market? So it was to be, he thought.
~*~
The slave market was a cramped and smelly place, surrounded by tall, white buildings, whose windows turned elsewhere, as if ashamed. It lay close to the bazaar proper with its winding streets of wares and merchants, so there were always pedestrians aplenty, even if they bought little, slaves being expensive in times of peace. Weary of pickpockets, and trying not get accosted by the slave sellers, Iayd kept to the centre of the oblong plaza, inconspicuously checking out the wares on display along the walls. Many a "pfft", "bah", and "are those boils or flies on her?" later, he drifted by the stall of Fudail. There on a raised wooden platform stood a single girl. Tall and slender, thick straight black hair in a page cut. Her eyes were large, long lashed and slightly slanted. Her nose was pointed, indicating a drop of foreign blood. But her most arresting quality was her skin, for she had been truly blessed by the Cow goddess, lady of Milk and Galaxies, covering her with white, unblemished skin glowing with a softness almost beyond the comprehension of man. Her most arresting quality that is, until after some minutes of discreet gawking, pure happenstance caused her miserable rag of a dress to slip her dainty round shoulder to reveal a breast quite large for such a skinny girl. A pointy breast. A breast with a swollen nipple more than the length of a little finger across.
Iayd lost all awareness and wisdom (a modest loss, thank the gods), and memory of much, such as what he was doing and who he was. He did recall his childhood wet nurse quite vividly in that moment, and his mouth made whiny sounds and sucking motions unbeknownst to him.
“Praised be! Is that not the tower of a man, Iayd, son of Haydar, he of the most stylish and easily recognisable turban, who stands so above the common crowds? Might he be at least a little interested in a slave girl like, say, Lamiana, for sale here right now?” Fudail cried out, hoping to make a deal.
“I have no interest in a pleasure girl… ahem… I have no interest in a pleasure girl. None! I might take a servant girl off your hands at half price, but I see none here,” replied Iayd.
“A servant girl you say? Well, Lamiana is both helpful and skilled… tell you what: all of Touruqe owes its life to your father many times over, he the slayer of legions of Kurstite scum. I would but be repaying a debt if I sold Lamiana to you for the price of a servant girl. The full price, that is. What say you?”
“The price of a servant girl?” Iayd considered himself a shrewd merchant, and something here aroused his suspicion.
“Why is she not already sold?”
“We arrived late in the day, and have just set up shop.”
“Yet you rush to sell your only ware?”
“It is late in the day, and we want to go home.”
Iayd could find no fault with this logic. Instead he tried a different line of inquiry:
“How is her disposition?”
“Meek as meek can be; we tried training her in the care of sheep, but they bullied her, and drove her to tears.”
Iayd turned to Fudail’s henchman Falih. Falih was a bald, fat man charged with keeping the slaves in line. His face bore scars that seemed to indicate that he had just recently tried to rob an eagle nest whilst the eagle mother was still at home. His legs stood knock-kneed and he held his groin as if something serious was amiss with the heirlooms entrusted him.
“I swear to you, she is an angel sent to earth to spread kindness,” Falih said, his voice somewhat out of pitch.
Something must be wrong, thought Iayd.
“Girl, come here!” he cried out, and waved at her with annoyance. Fudail and Falih both winced, something they ate, no doubt. The slave girl looked at Iayd, as she walked casually to the very edge of the platform. There she stood, looking down at him. She shifted her wide hip to the side, its pale slope protruding through a tear in her rags. Protruding widely, for Lamiana was very agile.
“So,” Iayd said sternly “do you know how to cook, wash and serve, girl?”
“Great Emir, I have been cooking and washing since before I could walk, and it is my greatest joy in life,” Lamiana said mildly. Fudail and Falih’s eyes bulged in unison. Then she learned forward, one hand on her knee, so that her face hung a mere foot above Iayd. Wide-eyed, he craned his neck backwards in tune with her movement.
“As to serving: for you, Great Emir, I would kiss each fig in the bowl, before I placed it at your mighty feet.” To avoid confusion she demonstrated: while holding Iayd’s gaze with her steel grey eyes, she slowly kissed the tip of her index finger, her middle finger and then her ring finger. Iayd gave a sound like a suppressed sneeze.
~*~
Fudail stood looking at the purse. Iayd had placed it in his hand without counting the contents.
“I plan to use some of these coins on sacrifices to each and every god that have temple in the city,” Fudail said in an awed voice.
“I, for one, will invest my share in a codpiece of boiled elephant leather,” said Falih.
Chapter 2
There was better room outside the old wall, and therefore the houses and their grounds were bigger there than those up in the old town. The Household of Haydar was a large, traditional white blocky adobe house with a flat roof. It lay in a quiet, some would even say dead, neighbourhood, close to the lesser, outer wall and it was surrounded on two sides by the royal granaries, currently empty, and on one side by a warehouse that had burned down last year. The house itself faced the mostly empty street, and behind lay a yard encircled by a white wall. The yard held a large garden gone to weeds, a private well and a couple of wooden sheds. The main building contained a somewhat random set of rooms and stairs, some in use, some not. Iayd had taken his purchase to the receiving room, a big room with large pillows along the walls, a room meant for entertaining guests, and as such the only neat place to be found on the premises.
“Well, girl. We should dress you better than those rags, when we present you for Mother,” Iayd said, his eyes shining, his face set in a grin or possibly a wince.
“I have one of Mother’s old dresses. You can put it on. Right now.” He fondled his mother’s old dress with incessant little movements, the threadbare fabric rubbed between his fingers.
Lamiana let slip the old rag from her shoulders. It fell quite easily to the floor, leaving her naked. Iayd saw no great reason to breathe just then and so skipped it. Big, pointy, large-nippled breasts. Narrow waist, broad hips. Arms and legs both long and slender. And the skin. Oh, The skin. (At this point Lamiana considered that her master might have missed his calling as a pearl diver, such was his ability to go without air). The black triangle was thick and dark, it pointed down, it let the eye to…
Iayd screamed and staggered back.
“Wha… I…. It… *sputter* I have been cheated! Robbed! Girl, you are not circumcised!”
“That is true, Great Emir,” Lamiana explained matter-of-factly, “the river people who snapped me as a child because they could not be bothered to bear children, also could not be bothered to have me circumcised.”
“Fudail, you spawn of unholy union between two male goats! You have brought an unclean pussy into my house! Such scandal! What will the neighbours think? Families with potential brides? Mother?“ His voice was broken by a sob.
“Are these rhetorical questions?” Lamiana asked.
“You!” Iayd pointed at her with a trembling finger “You whore! You unholy, unclean sinful whore! Khelbe, my cane!”
Khelbe, the thin old scribe appeared with a large cane.
“Foul hussy! I shall beat you within inches of your life!”
“Master, as your money counter,“ Khelbe interjected, “may I suggest you keep the girl unblemished by scars? Our finances are poor, and we might sell her to a buyer notoriously depraved or someone too foolish to check his wares before purchase.”
Eyes and veins bulging, Iayd looked at Khelbe as if he was a camel turd that had taken up song and dance. Then he grabbed the cane out of the old slave’s hand, and started beating him, all the while screaming at the top of his lungs.
~*~
The servant quarters most of all resembled a stable, being dark and furnished exclusively with hay. There, Lamiana washed Khelbe’s bloody back as best she could.
“I am eternally in your debt for saving me from such a beating. I would be glad to call you friend,” Lamiana said.
“It was no great thing,” Khelbe replied, “for it is true what they say: our young master is not half the man his father was.” Examining the many old scars crisscrossing the elder slave’s back, Lamiana perceived that he was telling the truth.
“Still, I fell responsible, as if my entry into this house has brought with it misfortune.”
“Blame not yourself, blame your foster parents and wards for neglecting to have you cut and sown in a proper manner.”
“I must profess my ignorance, friend Khelbe. Having been brought up by the river people, the mud tribe to be exact, I fail to understand the significance of these matters. Would you share your wisdom with me?”
“I am a money counter not a lover, so my wisdom is but what all should know: that the circumcised vagina is prim and proper, on account of it being painful for the woman to have love, and so she will not seek it from strangers. And that the uncircumcised vagina in turn is sinful and seeks out men like a lamprey to deprave them. Thus women’s circumcision is always to be preferred.” Khelbe thought for a moment: ”Though, truth be told, it helped your predecessor little to be mostly sown together when she was to give birth. Both she and child perished. But such is the price of purity, it would seem.”
“But if I keep my dress on, no one need ever know, and our master would be safe from gossip, scandal and public stoning, would he not?”
“Perhaps. But once one is aware of a sinful pussy, one can smell it. It lacks the normal pent off fishy smell decent women have, but is more… deep and musky. Not strong, perhaps, but very much there.”
Lamiana was sceptical: “You just claimed no great knowledge, so how do you know all this about the smell of the sinful entry?”
“Because I smell one now,” Khelbe said sadly.
~*~
As night fell, Iayd lay in his bed unsleeping, his mind in turmoil. All that he had hoped for, all that he had striven to achieve, his business, his prospects. All could be brought low if it was to be known that he housed an uncircumcised woman. If people thought that he was the kind that liked such a thing… he thought of her naked, there before him. The sight of what was between her legs. The smell. He remembered the smell so vividly as if she was here now in the room with him. Iayd sprang from his bed, and ran to his window, a large opening with neither glass, shutters nor curtain, showing the old garden just outside, on the same level as his room. There stood Lamiana. She was bend forward, away from him, her legs placed far apart. She wore her old rag again, full of holes it was, and unable to cover her legs when she stood so bent over.
“Girl! What are you doing just outside my window, ass practically at my windowsill?”
“I am pulling weeds, oh Great Emir.”
“It is the middle of the night!”
“I toil for you night and day, Great Emir.”
This was intolerable. He should demand that she turned and face him! He was in effect talking to her ass! Her ass covered with thin, holed fabric that could scarcely contain its soft resilience. The pale moonlight falling on her roundness. He really should stop grasping the windowsill with both hands and rubbing his groin against its edge. And he would. Any moment now.
She shifted weight from one foot to another.
“It would please me greatly, oh Mighty Lord, it you were to call Lamiana, instead of girl.”
“Lamiana…” Iayd croaked.
Still pulling weeds, Lamiana began singing a soft lullaby. He staggered back to bed to lie down. With her still right outside his window, a cool night breeze blowing into his bedroom, the lullaby going on and on, he drifted off to sleep.
Lamiana, Lamiana, Lamiana.
~*~
Early next morning, Khelbe instructed Lamiana as to her daily duties before he was off to mind the raisin store in the bazaar. Among her duties one was more important than the others: to restock their stores of purple wine, which the son of the house went through with alarming rate. She made breakfast and took care of chores, looked in on Mother and Son of the house (both incapacitated by drink and various ills) and then went uphill, towards the bazaar and old town, great basket on head, and a small purse hidden in her cleavage.
But she did not go to the bazaar straight away. Instead she found her way to the greatest temple in the city, the mosque of Sebque-Ra. The river god’s abode. The largest building in the city, the temple was a complex affair surrounded on the outside by colonnades, where many citizens found shade and time for discussion and leisure. Above rose blue domes and half-domes in tiers to terminate in the Great Dome, its azure splendour covered with a pattern of white waves.
Lamiana walked into the main chamber, a large room of tall pillars and carpets on the floor, where many rituals were in progress, priests and many people attending each. Men and women also came to pray for the river god’s favour on their own. The kneeled here end there, or went form statue to statue to pay their respects.
In the wings, different acts commenced: here the sacred temple prostitutes conducted their business for profound theological reasons and cheap prices. That was where Lamiana went.
She looked for a niche with open curtains, and found Malakah unattended by customers at the moment. Malakah was called The Monkey, on account of the distance between her nose and upper lip, her sizable ears and special gait.
“Peace upon you, honoured servant of the our beloved patron god. I would have word with you.”
“Talk costs the same. It is all other things that costs extra.” Lamiana handed her a coin.
“I seek your wisdom in regards to men.”
“All men are pigs. That is the extent of my wisdom. There. I am ready for my next customer.”
“I would hear specifics, how are they pigs, and why?”
“As to why I cannot say, but the how is simple: each and everyone of them are driven by their own bizarre private urges. One likes to pretend to be a bear whilst soiling a woman’s hair, another one likes feet and is a faggot. They should control themselves, but then I would be out of a business.”
“So bear pretending and hair soiling goes together?” Lamiana asked, trying to make sense of it all.
“No, no. Nothing goes together. It is like throwing bones: one gets a five, a null and a star. Why? One just did. Some of their compulsions are caused by something they have experienced, but many are there from birth for no reason but the caprice of the gods.” Malakah raised her hands to the skies: “Why must you torture us so, is it for your own petty amusement?”
At that very moment a brick loosed from the ceiling above; it fell a mere foot from Malakah’s head to smash her coffee set to smithereens, sending shards everywhere.
“Or one could allow the gods a little fun. No need to be petty,” Malakah added mildly. “We really need to get that ceiling fixed.”
“Could it happen that a man’s urge could be to, say, die?” Lamiana asked.
“Rarely would you have such luck. I had a client once who liked to be strangled. Now there was something I could get into. Unfortunately, I got carried away. The temple had to pay compensation to the family, I was reprimanded. What a circus. But to answer your question. Your real question.” Malakah rolled her eyes. “A man’s good sense can be severely clouded, to the point where he will ignore obvious danger, when matters of flesh are on the table.”
They went on to discuss many technicalities and practicalities, which would no doubt bore the reader here to sample the rich ambience of Al Kidr, not to delve into matters of fornication. As Lamiana stood to go, a final question occurred to her:
“If men are such depraved pigs, why do they insist on women being circumcised so as to be less sinful of nature?”
“The answer is simple; they do not. Circumcision may be preformed by some butcher’s apprentice, but he is summoned by women, paid by women and women holds the young girls arms and legs whilst he does his deed. Men, being weak hypocrites, play along, but that is all.”
Lamiana left with much to think about. A small man passed her as she was walking out of Malakah’s niche. Behind her she heard him announce with great pomp:
“Behold, woman! The Catapult! Now starts… the Siege! ”
Malakah replied with a moan.
~*~
Having wasted some of her owner’s money on Malakah’s advice, she went to get groceries. She entered the narrow, paved streets of the bazaar. Not a big city girl, she was soon lost, and had to ask for directions many times. But it was by no means an unpleasant experience; there was much to see, smell and hear in the bazaar: here the silk-colourers’ street, there the sellers of cinnamon, yonder the instrument sellers’ alley where the merchant sought to show the quality of their wares by playing them with zeal. Coloured cloth and stone arches shielded the streets from the sun, and the pavement was cool and kind to her bare feet. Through a stunningly attractive girl, she went unmolested, the people of Al Kidr being both polite and pious.
Going about the business of shopping, purse rapidly dwindling, Lamiana began to understand just how many different delightful things one could spend money on, something her life among the mud tribe had taught her little of.
There must be some free pleasures to be had, Lamiana thought and made her way to the slave market. There she picked up a large rock, and threw it above the crowd, across the square at that one thing she could always hit: the groin of Falih, the slavedriver. Alas, the stone just bounced off, and instead of the watery eyes, cries for mommy and the vomiting that had so entertained her in days past, he merely smiled, padded his codpiece and said:
“Best money I ever spend.”
Heart heavy with melancholy, purse light of coin, Lamiana left the slave market, for the most important stop of the day: the wine shop.
Qasim’s shop was in the souk, a large stone building that, like a vault, housed countless tiny shops in niches along its narrow walkways. Lamiana stepped into the narrow confines of the premier seller of purple wine, a shop with walls covered with clay flasks from floor to ceiling. Qasim, a fat man with a large moustache and oiled hair stood behind the counter.
“Be greeted, fabled Qasim, I am Lamiana, new to the household of Haydar, here to buy your best wine at your cheapest price.”
“The household of Haydar! My most stable customer. And with a new slave? Your master must have come to money, and so be prepared to pay his debts.” Qasim looked her over. All the way down.
Lamiana stood still, keeping her face blank. Eloquence and empty purse would gain her nothing she sensed, so she led the pause get slightly uncomfortable and said:
“My feet are dirty.”
“What?” Qasim’s eyes went wide. She looked at him calmly and said:
“My feet are dirty.”
Qasim broke out in a sweat.
“Well… it’s…I…”
“My feet are dirty.”
“Well, we can’t have that…” Eying the shop entrance nervously, he waved her around the counter. She sat herself on the desk, and waited quietly as he poured water in a large bowl. At first Qasim glanced over the counter all the time. Then infrequently. By the time he had planted the bowl under her feet and had found the oil and a little towel, he had forgotten his caution. His eyebrows were raised as high as could be. Sweat ran down his face. He took her foot and poured water over her instep. His hands were rock steady.
~*~
Lamiana’s feet were of course heavily calloused on the underside, as she had gone barefoot all her life. But her toes were small and her angle slender. Qasim washed her foot very thoroughly, one toe at time, not an inch left untreated. He then dried her foot with exquisite care. Finally he rubbed it in oil, and scraped it off, mindful not to tickle.
“I believe you have customers,” Lamiana said. Qasim sprang up, wide-eyed.
“Why the lady Fadwa, first wife of the captain of the religious police, Ubaid the Merciless! What a pleasure!”
Fadwa looked at Qasim as if he had taken leave of his senses.
“This poor girl have gotten a thorn in her foot. A tiny little thorn. Frightfully tricky. Heh heh. How may I serve the honoured wife of his sternness?”
When Fadwa had left, Qasim stood pale, fingering his throat as if it was a most priced possession, one he was very reluctant to part with.
“It must be time for you to leave,” he said in a voice without force. Lamiana still sat on the counter. She put forth her other foot, daggling it lightly.
“My other foot is dirty,” she said, her face without expression. A deep resignation passed over Qasim. Meek as a mouse he crept behind the counter and fell on his knees.
When he was done, Qasim seemed to have difficulty letting go of her foot. He sat holding it carefully, looking at her big toe a mere inch from his slightly open mouth.
“I will be needing five bottles of your strongest purple wine. Also, is that hashish I see behind the counter? Give me the strongest of those packages.”
Stumbling, Qasim rushed to fulfil her bidding. Soon all the wares were stacked in her basket, and she placed it on her head and walked out. Qasim called after her:
“But… you forgot to pay…”
She walked on without looking back.
~*~
That evening in the household of Qasim:
“Dear husband, have you redecorated our house-shrine? The topmost shelve once reserved for All-Farther Sun is now occupied with a bowl of dirty water, a damp towel and a half full bottle of oil.”
“Have no worry, dear wife. The theological reasoning for this is beyond the mind of a woman, but rest assured that it is profound in nature.”
~*~
The darkened room of Ghusun had a sour air. The thin, grey widow of the great Haydar lay in her bed where she felt she should be attended due to her sorrow and sickness. The exact nature of her sickness eluded the physicians of the city, but that only proved to the widow that no one understood her plight, her suffering.
Demurely Lamiana came in with a large tray of foods and wines for the widow to reject. Scornfully Ghusun looked her over, and made comment of her son’s ill use of slave buying funds. Then she proceeded to make clear how a serving girl should conduct herself in general, and in specifically around a Ghusun, a Grieving Widow. From that she moved on to explain at great length how the loss of her husband, jewel of her life, had cause such a blow as to leave her permanently bed ridden, unable to participate in chores and decisions around the house.
“But surely, a dumb houseslave cannot grasp such matters. In truth, no one understands.”
“That is not true, honoured widow. For while I do not comprehend half of what you say, the merchant of the bazaar often asks to the state of their old fellow’s widow. Why, today Qasim gave me this medicine, which he thought would relieve a tiny bit of your pain.”
Lamiana held out a small dark-brown lump.
“What is that? Hashish? I have no room in my heart for smoking pleasures. Only for sadness.” She held a hand to her forehead and looked away.
“Qasim did not mean it for smoking. When eaten, he told me, it but relieves pains and restores memories of better, sweeter times. He said it was quite mild.”
The widow Ghusun looked with disdain at the small lump.
“Leave it. I might try it later.”
~*~
Iayd was concerned, disturbed even. It was as if the very house was turning against him, him, its rightful master. When he looked in on his mother, he found her grinning from ear to ear, endlessly repeating the words “It’s horrible. Oh, so horrible.” What it was that was so horrible he had no idea; his mother and father had hated each other. While father was alive he had beaten mother as much as Khelbe, and mother had smashed every single piece of pottery she could get her hands on to the floor.
Then there was Lamiana. Lately he had been avoiding her. It was not just the thing about the sinful nature of her… he remembered the sight and licked his lips… but also her entire demeanour. He could not fault her performing of her duties, and yet her attitude lacked something. Respect? She always called him Great Emir. He blushed. Fear? Yes, that was it! He had to make her know that he was not just master in name but in gain! He would find something, anything and make an issue of it, to show her who was in charge.
Full of determination he stomped to the kitchen. He found Lamiana there, busy skimming the cream from a newly bought jug of fresh cow milk.