“You don’t have anything, then?” Adam’s countenance fell despondent.
“Of course I do. They don’t call me the Man of Six Fingers for nothing. Marble, wood, fruit, glass, whores, and spice—I’m the one supplier in all Najmah Janoob. Ah, see? I’ve found an opening already. We are in need of a server of your kind.”
“And it will pay enough that I can get the medicine?”
Hassan scratched his curly, black beard. “Perhaps. Such things vary wildly in price,” he came out from behind his desk with a book in one hand and a quill in the other, scribbling something in Tsaazaari, “but this I can promise. If you do well serving meat and wine, and entertaining our customers, there is another task we need done that I’d be willing to offer you—one that will pay enough in just one night, I am certain.”
“Him?” spat Ashaya. She was sitting up now, straight-backed as if she’d been struck by lightning. “You can’t mean him for Yasmine. Do you want to ruin my reputation, Hassan?”
“I mean him for you, Ashaya. We’ll need some of your girls to clean and clothe him; and do any of them speak Messaii well enough to tell him what to do?”
“You know that they don’t,” the woman answered as she rose and strode before Adam, glaring, critiquing. “Fine, I’ll work with him. I suppose he doesn’t look so bad—but don’t think for a moment I’m going to offer him to Yasmine.”
“We will cross that route when we get there,” smiled Hassan as he held the book for Adam to see and handed him the peacock quill freshly dipped in ink. It was a ledger, all illegible Tsaazaari, with a line drawn in for him to sign. “A record of the contract. It says that you will work for one day and receive one day’s wage, two demidrakes and whatever extra coin you can charm from the patrons. And of course, we shall provide clothing and food for you while you’re working, as is the law under our good King Solomon. I hope you find this arrangement fitting. You won’t find a better deal in all Najmah Janoob.”
What would Father think of me working in a place like this? Adam mused at the price of the pastor’s disappointment. He didn’t even know how much a demidrake was or how many he’d need or if there was an apothecary who sold the medicine that could treat Magdalynn. Again, he scanned the ledger and its mysterious script and felt as though he was about to make a deal with the Devil. “I don’t know,” he answered; and so Hassan sweetened the deal: three demidrakes, a basket of bread, and a private room for the girl to stay in while the pastor’s son served—if he signed right then. The Messah froze, quill in hand. He wanted to trust the Tsaazaari merchant. Hassan had only been kind to him, warm and honest, and there were the tapestries walling of his office—Adam began to wonder if they weren’t a holy omen. “Hallowed are those who walk amongst the dark, in the shadow of doubt, and pass through its valley.” He scratched his name onto the ledger and felt a weight lift off his soul.
Not long after, a pack of servants were summoned and given instructions in Tsaazaari—to groom him, the Messah was led to believe by a glaring Mistress Ashaya. Her bitterness unnerved him, as did the servant women’s grins as they took Magdalynn to her room and hurried him down to and through the common room, into a special corner of the kitchens where their tools laid shining. They were bottles of oil and ointment and fragrant salts, combs and brushes, sheers, razors, and a polished copper tub the steam from which wafted thick with lavender. Just the scent of it relaxed Adam so that he almost didn’t notice the servants trying to strip off his weatherworn clothes. Almost, but then he felt the prick of their fingernails graze the surface of his skin and flinched. For an instant was returned to the smuggler’s cabin—to jaundiced claws and a wormy grin—then he called his consciousness back from that waking nightmare. Eyes in the present, he sought out an anchor, something to drown his fears in an ocean of experience.
He looked to the servant women and smiled thinking how any one of them could have been his mother. They were passed their prime, the beginnings of wrinkles showing in the creases of their cheeks and where their bosoms showed behind low collared robes. He must have seemed half a babe to them; his own mother had not been so old when he’d known her. Adam tried to recall the contours of her face, the color of her eyes, the shape of her hair. It was too long ago—he had been too young. Suddenly, it dawned on him.
He apologized to the women and disrobed on his own, then climbed into the tub pink with sunburn as he was with embarrassment. As he eased into the water, his skin flushed deeper, but beneath the blush he saw something that had eluded him until that moment—that he had become a man grown. His limbs were no longer the reeds they were in Babylon. There was strength in them now, thew and muscle; and on his chin and lip were the buddings of beard, blonde and wispy, yet enough to want a blade. That, the servants gave him, and as the razor skimmed across his face, Adam felt his heart beat braver. He let out a groan of relief. The devil dancing on his back had left him in peace, if only for the moment. And so, beaming, he sat upright in the tub and relished the hands working balm into his blisters, combing his hair and cropping it about his eyebrows and earlobes.
Too early, it was over. They rushed the Messah out from the tub
