Somewhere else in the kitchens clattered a platter on a countertop—the prelude to a voice imperious. Adam spun about at her command, saw Mistress Ashaya’s contemptuous face scrutinizing him as he scrutinized the steaming plate of buttered flatbread, seasoned meatballs, and a fist-sized dollop of hummus. The Messah’s stomach rumbled. It must have been loud enough for the mistress to hear, for she paused midsentence before Adam noticed she’d been talking at all. “Are you listening?” Ashaya asked, clicking her tongue. “You didn’t hear a thing, did you? Eat then, if you’re so hungry, but I’m only going to say it once more.”
“Wait,” begged Adam while gorging himself, “before you start, can the rest of this be brought up to Mags’s room?”
Ashaya clenched her teeth, her temper fuming, the flush red enough to show through her dark Tsaazaari skin. “I swear, if it weren’t for the law of good King Solomon, I’d have you bound and left out for the Black Beast to swallow.” She uttered some Tsaazaari curse. “Hassan wants me to teach you for the first few hours, before the big spenders arrive tonight. I can’t. I won’t. I have my own work to do, and I’m not letting you ruin my reputation with our wealthiest patron!…What?” she asked, gasping, choking down her frustration as the pastor’s son stared back at her, baffled. Then the mistress continued, “Fine! It’s true! It’s not your fault that Hassan is a shortsighted buffoon. But I have a right to be angry! I’m the one who has to clean up after his disasters, so I don’t need you going and making more work.” Adam nodded, and Ashaya clicked her tongue. “Lying Messah, you understand nothing. Look at you, gawking there like a newborn child. You’re a server now. Learn how to smile and to remember the orders to tell the cooks. It’s not difficult. Keep their cups full. Sit with them, sit on them, whatever they ask of you. Let no one leave unhappy. Do you understand now?”
The Messah nodded again, understanding only that he was being thrown to the wolves as the mistress rushed him barefoot from the kitchens and into the common room. The human-maze chamber had transformed from when he left it last. The music was dead, the odors stagnant, the tables and cushions vacant aside from a few wasted parties and the artifacts left from previous revelers. It was an excavation, Adam surveyed, by young treasure hunters clad in cerulean blue, of cups and bowls, of plates and bottles. This, he could do. This, his training in the parish of Babylon had prepared him for—countless hours of toil the mornings after holyday feasts, sweeping the sanctuary, scouring the trenchers and scrubbing the plates, rearranging the great tables. This was nothing compared to his father’s chores, thought the pastor’s son as he joined in with the rest of the servers; and for the first hour, all was well.
Then came the encroach of evening, and with the descent of the desert sun fell hordes of hedonic prospectors. They flooded the doors like a contingent of soldiers, regular and organized, as if every patron recognized his place and her favorite server. The same could be said for the workers as well. Their movements, their expressions, their disdainful glances toward Adam all spelled the same message—that this was their domain, that he was an invader—and as the room became saturated with foreign blood ordering foreign fare in foreign tongues, the Messah became suddenly aware that he was the foreign one—and he wasn’t the only soul to notice.
Out of the corner of his eye, in a corner of the common room sectioned off by screens and screened in smoke, he caught a salacious eye peaking and noticed it noticing him, a sinful grin on its master’s lips. Not a second passed before she called to him, a raspy, “Messah!” to which he answered, frightened and eager to receive his instruction. Yet he didn’t. The four patrons—two grizzled Tsaazaari men, fat and sweaty in Mephistine silks, and their respective women, the sinful grinner with black lips, crown braids, and crow’s-feet, and her Gautaman friend painted pale as a doll whose hair hung long and dark as jet—needed nothing from him. Their table was already overflowed by whole flagons of sweet-scented red and pungent rice wine, and a dish for each reveler: skewered bits of lamb and fowl, cuts of beef wrapped in grape leaves, white custard and cucumber, and a big bowl of orange curried rice.
“Looks like Hassan’s finally bought himself a golden cock,” coughed one of the men with a pipe in his mouth. His three companions laughed. Adam blushed, and the Tsaazaari woman commented,
“Forgive my husband. He’s jealous because his Hibernis girl quit, so now he’s stuck clutching his manhood like an Iisah virgin.” There was another round of guffaws, the husband excluded. Then the woman spoke again, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. A year, I think.”
“Waiting for me?” the Messah blurted.
She smiled, her deep brown eyes sinking into a shadowy lining. “Sit down. I’ll tell you all about it.” As directed, the pastor’s son sat where the woman patted a cushion between her and the Gautaman, and no later than he did, the other men stood and muttered something in Tsaazaari. The women replied likewise, waving happily to their men as they climbed the open stairwell, the pains of loneliness lingering in the dark woman’s fingertips—till she turned her attention back to Adam.
Sweat gathered at the Messah’s palms. He felt his
