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 grante