3
Enlisting Tajir
Year of Sultani Rule 121, May 11
"Adira, my dear! Is that really you?" Tajir studied the Mahryn girl standing before him, not at all uncertain, knowing it was. His expression was nearly comical, so pleased was he to see her while at the same time astonishingly stunned and frighteningly alarmed, the emotions all meshing and contorting about on Tajir's face to produce the most befuddling mixture of pleasure and fear. Sadiq had sent word a week ago that she had a surprise for him down at the warehouse, but this wasn't a surprise. It was a thunderbolt.
"Such an unexpected wonder," he said staring wide-eyed at Adira. "A pleasant one of course," Tajir hastened to add in contrast to his warily concerned countenance.
"The last I heard you had been hurried away by the Witch of Alsijn to be trained as a domestic comfort slave. Have you been given your release? Did you run away? Are the secret police searching for you?" The latter of Tajir's rapid questions reaching the crux of his unease.
"Tajir, my old friend," Adira said smiling broadly at the merchant, avoiding answering his question, "it has been a while. Ten years. It's good to see you as well. I hope the years have been kind to you."
"Kind enough, Adira, kind enough," Tajir assured her, "but tell me, please, how did you come to be here? I've seen one or two comfort slaves return to the barrio after they've lost their luster. They're sent back to serve as mothers for the bosses. Your Jadda, I remember, served this way before she was slain by the deadly blow of a Wasak guard's cudgel. Most though are thrown into the mines, or the slaughterhouses, or the factories once they are no longer of value to their owners. Yet here you stand, and if I may be so bold to say, as lovely and striking as ever. Still in your prime. Please then, if you would be so kind, can you tell me how this is so?"
Tajir had liked the girl once, many years ago, but her arrival, he feared, might be heralding genuine trouble, and he had his crew, his business, and his own skin to protect. Adira and Sadiq had anticipated Tajir's concern when considering how to tell him. How to elicit his cooperation. Or better yet, his collaboration. But at the very least, his blind eye. Of course, they expected he would be worried. It was his nature. An attribute that had served Tajir well all these years in a land where only the most cunning and cautious survived for very long. Tajir's sly and clever wiles had afforded him more than simple survival in this brutally cutthroat world; he had prospered.
The girls had enjoyed a week together, getting reacquainted and figuring out how to approach Tajir. They considered telling him the truth, at least at the beginning of their scheming, but in the end they believed that simply wouldn't do. He would have a conniption if they told him that Adira had been the comfort slave caring for Sadi Sultani's brother and that she had run away after his unexpected death. As much as Sadiq preferred to be honest with her long-term patron, this was a situation that they thought called for the elusiveness of a strategic lie. The truth, no doubt, would come out over time, just not this time.
"The wife of Adira's master had granted her freedom after the untimely death of her husband," Sadiq lied. "She didn't want the object of her husband's lustful attention reminding her every day of her limitations. Adira was kicked out the door with only a few koyners in her pocket before the Wasak's body was even cold. Fate had us find each other at the kelp stand in the market... and here we are." At least, Sadiq thought guiltily, the part about the master dying was the truth.
"Hmmm. Very well." Tajir muttered, knowing full well he had been lied to and was being played. "I guess helping an old friend get her footing before she's on her way is the hospitable thing to do. When will you be leaving us, Adira?" Tajir didn't want to be unwelcoming, but clearly something more was going on that was being kept from him, and he didn't like it.
Sadiq jumped in as conspired, "Well about that, Tajir. You remember the conversation we had the other day? About ferrying khat fatar upriver from Shareiin to Madina? About whether I'd be in? About finding us extra help? Well, I'm in, Tajir, and serendipity has shined on you once again. Just as we were discussing the need to find an extra pair of hands, those extra hands found us in the form of Adira. She would be a perfect addition to our team. How about it? What'd you say?"
Tajir's expression hardened, unsmiling, "I say this, Sadiq," his tone unmistakably offended and indignant, "I don't like being taken for a fool. Particularly by a colleague who I consider to be a friend. If you're wanting to have a conversation about this, about Adira joining the group, you had better start by telling me the truth."
Adira knew that this conversation fell to her. That their ploy to bring Tajir slowly along had just gone up in smoke. Contrite and honest, she settled in to tell the truth.
"You are right, Tajir. We were not being candid. I'm afraid that's on me and my circumstances. Sadiq was only trying to help me, protect me. She didn't want to lie to you and had planned on telling you the full story in due course, just not so suddenly. We were worried that so much truth, dumped on you all at once, would be a bit too alarming and a bit too much for you, or for anyone for that matter, to take in and not be unnerved."
Pointing to a comfortable mat near the stove, Adira forewarned Tajir, "You might want to sit down for this tale."
Situating herself down next to him, Adira began telling the story. The complete unblemished account. Slowly, carefully, leaving nothing out of the narration. This time Tajir would know the full unvarnished truth. Adira related how she had been dragged away from her home on her mission day by the Witch of Alsijn and her Wasak lackeys. She related with teary eyes her hazy remembrance of the murder of her beloved Jadda. Of passing out fully in the transport lorry only to wake up in the lightless dungeon of what she was to find out was the bowels of the training abbey. How she had met Talib there suffering in similar circumstances.
"Whether it was due to finding ourselves in the same dreadful situation, or by whatever chemistry that attracts and binds friends together, we formed an unbreakable bond in the few short days we were together."
"So, you also knew Talib from your past as well, Adira? Not just Sadiq?" Tajir spoke his rhetorical thought out loud, surprised at their mutual acquaintance and at the chance occurrence that brought the three friends together here at his dock.
"Yes," Talib joined in the telling. "She did, Tajir. At different times in different places, Adira knew us both. Sadiq and I just never made the connection. There was no reason that we would. We didn't know we both had a close sisterly attachment to Adira. Not until she rolled up in the wagon the other day and shocked us both.
"As for my affection for Adira," Talib continued, "Adira said it well. In the short time we were together we formed a fierce unwavering bond strengthened by a protective love. That's why I was recklessly willing to sacrifice my own life to save my dear friend."
Talib then related the sordid details of the near rape of Adira and how she, Talib, had slain the captain of the Wasak royal guard by plunging the mortally sharp edge of the soldier's own blade deep into his lungs, slicing through his pulsing, yielding vessels, even as Sadi Sultani, the supreme leader himself, looked on.
Tajir listened incredulously. He was horrified by the sickening immorality of the abusers while also feeling satisfied and pleased with Talib's lethal defense. Good for you, Talib, he thought to himself, admiring the girl's audacity and nerve. Fully drawn in by the repugnantly lurid imagery that Talib was relating to him, Tajir was outraged and appalled, but also mesmerized. The merchant could feel the revulsion churning in his gut as the tale wore on, the taste of bile rising to his mouth. How dare they, he thought.
He knew of course that such abuses took place. Took place routinely via the highly trained comfort slaves who were missioned to Alsijn, or much more frequently by way of the abduction of helpless young Mahryn girls who were kidnapped off the streets and sold into bondage by pitiless sex traffickers. Tajir recognized this was a loathsomely routine part of the debased and disheartening world he lived in, but not until now, not until hearing Talib's horrific recounting of the violent imprisonment and molestations that she and Adira had endured, did its reality hit home for him. He knew these two mistreated girls, cared for them. How dare they!
By the time Talib had finished sharing the horrendous accounts of what she and Adira had endured, Tajir was incensed. The sickening intent to torture and kill Talib at the hands of Sadi Sultani and her astonishing escape, despite the injuries she sustained. The ten long years Adira suffered through caring for and gratifying Sadi's brother Baht, then her battering and near rape by the sex trafficker Alaitijar. Both these girls, Tajir admitted to himself, had proven to be braver by far than he, fighting back and slaying their assaulters. Good for them,...
