A Thousand Glass Flowers (The Chronicles of Eirie 3) (5 page)

The wind strengthened by degrees, the sky darkening and he planted his feet to find the rhythm of the sea, the deck rising and then falling away and a loud laug
h bubbled up from deep inside.
The Harpies screamed through the shrouds and the sailors made the protective sign of the horns but he urged the Shriekers on as they played with mortal sensibilities, shredding n
erves.
This was
life
and even though he was mildly drunk, he knew his mood had more to do with escape than anything.

The Captain did indeed keep his crew leashed tight, allowing neither storm nor Others to shatter concentration as excess sail dropped to the deck and dra
gged at Finnian’s booted feet.
The storm-rig was trimmed, the men springing to orders as if a cat o’
nine tails lashed their backs.
As the action increased and the deck became slick with wash, Finnian glanced down the stair and caught sig
ht of a white face.
The cabinboy’s bleached visage stared back, te
eth tearing at his bottom lip.
The wind grabbed his blonde curls and lifted them skyward where they stayed, vertical corkscrews, as if
he had the fright of his life.
A familiar emotion chimed in Finnian’s memory when he saw the pale face and with barely a thought he jumped down the stair, hustling the boy in front of him to his cabin.

‘Here,’ he said.
‘I need some help getting
out of my wet coat and boots.’
The silent boy took the weight of the saturated oilskin as Finnian shrug
ged it back off his shoulders.
Sitting himself in the chair he thrust out a booted leg
and bade the young chap pull.
‘What’s your name?’

‘Gio, sir. Gio Poli.’
He cringed as the boat shook.

‘Do you like being at sea, Gio?’

‘Most times, sir.’
He pulled and the boot came off with a rush, the boy fetching up against the planks.

Fi
nnian shoved up the other leg.
‘When you’ve got this one off you’ll find a dry pair in the chest
, you can help me put them on.
Tell me, have you family?’

‘Oh yes, sir.
My Mama and Papa and me, we all live in Veniche and my Mama is a sought afte
r lace-maker, really good too.
The nobles often
ask her to do things for them. And my Papa…
’

The boat pounded off a wave and the boy
lurched sideways.
Finnian grab
bed him and set him to rights.
‘Are
your family good to you, Gio? Do they beat you?’
Anything to keep the boy’s mind away from his fear because Finnian knew fear.
Does it burn into your gut, Gio, until you feel more scared if your heart stops its frenzy – as if worse things are around the corner?

‘Lor sir, wh
y would you ask such a thing?’
The bo
y held tight to Finnian’s leg.
‘I know there’s some who beat their children and it’s a terrible thing and my Papa who is the most gentlest person, he reckons they should be drawn and
quartered for such behaviour.
But I’ve the
best
family. I’m the luckiest boy ever.
My Mama says she loves me more than life itself, which is lovely but a bit embarra
ssing if you know what I mean.
But anyway when I come home, she cooks my favourite food and tells me all the doings that I’ve missed and even though I give her my earnings, she’ll giv
e me a coin to do what I want.
But I’m saving it ‘cos I want to buy her this tiny cameo I saw in a goldworker’s shop and she can hang it from a chain that my Pap
a gave her when they married.’
Gio propped the wet boots against the walls where they promptly fell again
under the weather’s onslaught.
The light swung like a dervish and the hammock creaked as i
t moved in unison.
Weaving his way across to the chest, Gio grabbed the other boots and advanced at a run on Finnian who plucked
him close as the ship slewed.
‘And my Papa has the best stories to te
ll because he’s met all kinds.
Mortal and Other.’

‘Has
he indeed?
What Others then?’

‘Oh Færan, Hobs, a goblin once, some tiny Siofra who hid in a boat he was working on at the time.’

‘Anyone malicious?’
For the world is full of malicious folk at every turn, young Gio.

‘No…’
But then the boy’s face
brightened. ‘He saw an urisk once.
The fellow just sat on a rock in the middle of one of the marsh ril
ls and played a tune on pipes.
Terrible enchanted it was and Papa was going to stuff his ears with some cheese Mama had given him for midday but the urisk saw him and asked
what he thought of the music.
‘
Plain wonderful,’
says my Papa.
‘
As if Aine has kissed the pipes you blow.’
And the urisk bowed and asked if he could share Papa’s meal and Papa knew that to deny such a request was to bring down all manner of i
lls so he welcomed the urisk. Do you know what his name was? He told Papa.
Can you belie
ve it?
Cos name-swapping is
bad with Others, so they say.
But not
this
time.’
Gio’s face had brightened, a rosier tint creeping across the wretched shade of earlier.  His eyes shone as he told his little story.  Finnian nodded his head and the boy conti
nued blithely.
‘It was N
olius although he likes Nolly. He was kind enough to my Papa.
Said good things wou
ld happen to his son one day.’ He gave a grin of sorts. ‘That’s me.
I’m the son.’

Your father met Nolius?
Well, well.
Finnian remembered the redoubtable urisk who had visi
ted Castello for a short time. A very short time.
As he left he said to Finnian, ‘This place is a pustule, a
boil on the backside of Eirie. I would get you gone, Finnian.
Bigger and
better things await outside.’
He had thought then,
I would but I can’t get past her.

Gio push
ed on the last boot and stood.
‘There, sir, I’d better go to the cook and see if the
Captain’s meal’s ready.
He eats in any weather.’

The boy’s smile lit the shadows of the storm-tossed cabin as he departed, bravado on the small face
.
A thick and insidious thread of jealousy floated after him because Finnian envied the chi
ld the familial love and care.
Something he had craved all his lif
e, something he had never had.
It invoked the sour taste of memory and he grabbed a pewter goblet an
d flung it against the planks.
No one would hear; it was just another thump amongst many.

Chapter Five

Lalita

‘Lalita t
he Mad.  Lalita the Confused.’
The afrit grabbed his t
oes and rocked back and forth.
‘They thi
nk you’re insane.
And do you know, little scribe, the
odalisques are scared of you.
They pass by your apartments in threes and fours or with a eunuch to guard them for they think you will come leaping from your room, frothing at the mouth.’

Lalita tried hard to ignore the little Other who seemed to spring out of the lattice work at his leisure, an edge to his manner, like the sharp bite at t
he end of mouthful of sherbet.
She had never forgiven him for the cruel mention of her brother and yet she was sure
he underlined what she knew.
As he rocked on the windowsill above her worktable, he knocked her pens and they cascaded over a quire of papers, narrowly missing the sheet on which she currently worked.

‘Mind, afrit.’
She grabbed at the quills and placed them back in their jar, her hands g
entle with the goose-feathers.
Unlike her fellow scribes who preferred swan-feathers, she persisted in the use of the domestic feather because she felt swans represented something distinctly Other and should be respected as such.

‘Wo
uld you like to know my name?’
The afrit gave a sly grin.

‘Name-giving means obligation and I have no wish to be
obliged to you or any Other.’
She spoke quietly, her attention on the sliver of gold leaf she lay over the letter that began the story of
Abu’l Fawaris and the Pearl Merchant.

For a week she had worked.
On that first day, the day she sat in front of the initial leaf of paper, she closed her eyes and breathed in the fragrance of the sheet, running her palm over its surface, allowing the touch to settle her sensibilities, waiting for the inevitable connection between herself and the fibre.
She could barely wait to begin so that her work could transport her away from t
he reality of her predicament.
As though she traveled on some magic carpet with
Aladdin.

Her only time away from her table in subsequent days was when Phaeton needed walking and then she had kept to the outer reaches of the gardens, away from the sarcenets and silks.  Her happiest times were when she was with the dog or when she had her head bent over a piece of paper, her mind lost in the text
or the rendition of a design.
She thanked the djinns of good fortune and Aine the Mother that she had a friend in her dog and a task that directed her emotions away and allowed her to accept the unacceptable.

The Sultan had demanded the book be
octavo
, a smallish but very fat book that would ultimately be bound in t
he most exquisite red leather.
Lalita had ruled each page, meticulously pricking each quire with a braddle so the
rules were perfectly aligned.
Her ink lay waiting for her, mix
ed in stoppered glass bottles.
She preferred the dark gall ink made from oak apple and vitriol, so black that her heart beat faster as it burned into the papery surface and then darkened as
the air settled over it.
Even now she caught a glimpse of the bottle out of the corner of her eye, thinking it hovered on the shelf like a brooding, angry cloud.

The afrit stared at the lustrous goldleaf, reaching to press his finger on a tiny fragment that had broken off to float to the side of her work, turning it t
his way and that in the light.
‘Lalita the Confused should remember it is b
ad fortune to offend an Other.
W
atch your tone with me, woman.
I can make you life as uncomfortable as those lem
on-sherbets outside can.
Maybe worse, because I
am
Other.’

Lalita sighed.
‘I’m a
waste of your time and energy.
I have endless days and nights with a pen i
n my hand and no conversation.
Why do you not seek out the lemon-sherbets as you call them and p
artake of their company?’
She grasped the burnisher with its ivory tooth-shaped end and began to rub gently into the gold, polishing and brightening even more, flattening out the airbubbles until it looked as if the paper and the gold were one.

‘Because they surround themselves with all manner of protection an
d it is difficult to get near.
You however, are gloriously and naïvely unprotected and a
s vulnerable as a newborn kid.
Watch yourself, Lalita Khatoun, I can hurt you.’

Lalita blew over the ‘A’ and
laid down her burnisher. ‘I am aware of that.
But can you hurt me anymore than I have already been damaged, or worse than any kind of punish
ment the Sultan could command?
Indeed, little afrit, the very knowledge,’ she stopped as an image of houries and sultans filled her head and she sucked in a breath, ‘the very knowledge that at some point, my body will be offered up to the lust of a man who can do whatever he wants with me, touch me anywhere he wishes and expect me to touch him back is worse than any
thing you could do.’
Explicit images filled her mind so that she had to
slow her breath and keep calm.
There was a heartbeat of silence and then, ‘Again I ask you,
why
should you want to?’

‘I don’t at
the moment,’ the afrit sulked. ‘As it happens.
But it ta
kes only one slip, be warned.’
With that he was gone through the lattice as if it were an open door and she covertly thanked the Lady that she should finally be on her own.

She had patiently ground the minerals for her paints – azurite, lapis lazuli and verdigris along with tur
nsole, saffron and brazilwood.
Most times she considered herself a scribe but often as she patiently worked with mortar and pestle, she thought she could be an apothecary.
But no, I am an alchemist
she would think
as colours emerged magically from combination with glair or gum.

She valued her solitude, knew it was priceless in a place such as this which bubbled with a
potent mix of purulent women.
When she was required in the hammams, Salah escorted her, his conversation spiked with cruel a
necdote and barbed with threat.
He commented on her lack of looks, her dull skin, her marked fingers, her lacklustre hair, until she wondered why the Grand Vizier and the Kisla Agha had thought she might ever have
a place in this hornets’ nest.
She answered mostly in monosyllables, her image of herself cracked and broken and having no energy or interest to engage in reaction.

The bath mistresses ordered her around as if she was an imbecile and she noticed there was always a large eu
nuch armed with a whip nearby.
It suited
her, this fear they had of her.
They were quick to do what they must and then she would return by Salah’s poisonous side, coiffured and perfumed and clothed in softest oyster or grey silk and always with pear
ls entwined in her black hair.
This latest day though, he took a step back when he collected her from the hammam, the detestable golden head on the side, calculating, assessing.

‘It is a pity you are considered so unstable, Lalit
a, for you are very beautiful.
But the bath mistresses have told the Kisla Agha about your performance on that first day and some of the odalisques hear you talking to your imaginary afrit when they are brav
e enough to stop at your door.
In many ways, perceived instability may save your life because this new beauty would arouse all sorts of jealousies in the har
em.
Better the Kisla Agha believes you are too
dangerous to meet the Sultan.
But I tell you this, little flower. I would take a long time to finish your work because being ‘useless’ in the Sultan’s bed means His Bright Light may number your days accordin
gly.’
He laughed, the high-pitched gigg
le grating on Lalita’s nerves.
‘What a diffi
cult future lies ahead of you.
Dead by the hand of a jealous odalisque or retired to some cobwebbed corner of the se
raglio with the Valide Sultan.
For sure they won’t release you.’

When he left her, his words went round and round in her head as she lay
on her divan hugging Phaeton.
Surprisingly she found she could almo
st be reconciled to her death.
Freedom
would only eventuate that way.
She would never walk back out of th
e Door of a Thousand Promises.
But she would make sure she had accomplished one thing to leave behind.

Her book, rendered to the best of her highly skilled ability, would be the most coveted in the whole world of Eirie; something scholars from afar would want to see
at least once in their lives.
The name of Khatoun would live in people’s memory, her father’s name, her loved Uncle Imran’s name.
How that will annoy
you
, Kurdeesh.
And thus it was that she took inordinate pleasure in her work, every stroke of the brush or pen creating something of i
mmense and far-reaching value.
Just occasionally a little thought would emerge from the corner of her darkened mind that she could barter for her freedom with the completed work, the Sultan so impressed he would grant her anything.
But it’s a fool’s dream and I am surely a fool, for doesn’t everyone think so?

‘
Lalita, Lalita, open the door. You have an appointment.
Quickly.’

Wiping ink
-covered fingers back over her forehead as she sought to push falling hair from her face, she pulled the door ajar to greet the impatient Salah.

‘By afrits and djinns, Lalita,
we must get you to the hammam.
Quickly now.’

‘Why?
With whom do I have an appointment that is so important I must leave just in the middle of a transcription?’

‘With the Sultan no less.
You must hurry.’

Lalita’s heart thudded.  ‘The Sultan?  Why?’

Salah s
ighed with a roll of his eyes. ‘I am Salah the Eunuch.
If it was thought I s
hould know they would tell me.
As it is we must hurry faster than the su
n setting over the Amritsands.
You look disgraceful.’

He left her to the bath mistresses an
d they pulled off her clothes.
She was becoming familiar with being naked in front of others and being treated as a commodity. She would turn increasingly passive, allowing them to move her around like one of t
he pieces on a shatranj board.
They twirled a cotton gauze sheet around her body before thrusting her into a gardenia-scented bath to soak up the fragrance into the most intimate parts of her body.
She fretted with nerves, her concern pinpointed on her dog.
The reconciliation she had made with her death was retracted with haste.
Without
me what will happen to Phaeton?
Why am I to see the Sultan, what can I have done wrong?

‘Apart from being considered mad do you mean?’

S
he groaned as the afrit swung down fr
om his acanthus-leaf platform.
‘So you can read my mind I take it.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not.
Leastwa
ys, I can see you are worried. And well you should be.
I have never met any mortal
who attracts trouble like you.
You are like a magnet and it all began when you were a babe in arms and your parents died in the avalanche.’

‘Do
n’t talk of my parents, afrit.
Their memory need not be sullied in this place.’

He stood above her, his coffee-coloured skin disappearing and reappearing through th
e steam.
‘I have said before, Lady, beware how you speak or I shall truly hurt you.’

‘T
hen I shall not speak at all.’
As s
he turned her back on the afrit
the bath mistresses re-appeared, ordering her into the massage room where she allowed the smoothing of oils and creams to erase
her anxiety for just a minute.
She fidgeted in front of the mirror as they pinned her hair into a cloud, traili
ng curls on her bare shoulder.
They strung the ubiquitous pearls through and then made up her face with the finest maquillage and she submitted to their bland
ishments with growing anxiety.
Finally as her tension climbed higher, she stood and they slipped transparent silks over her body until she was almost complet
ely covered by a peach kaftan.
The silks rested on her lightly and she became conscious that this was what houries wore, these nonchalant garments that paid on
ly passing respect to decency.
At that moment she hated the disgrace, feeling unclean despite the work of the hammam mistresses.