"Many times."
"Did I ever tell you that you're a cute asshole?"
Kitznin, Affrankon, 5 Shawwal,
1530 AH (4 October, 2106)
Besma was awakened by crying. Worse than crying, really; what she heard was a brokenhearted sobbing severe enough to shake her little bed. Tossing the covers off, she put her feet on the floor and walked on cat feet to the source, an even smaller bed at the foot of her own.
"Petra, are you all right?" she asked. The sobbing grew, if anything, worse.
"I m-m-miss my mommy. I m-m-miss my daddy. And I w-w-want my brother, Hans. They didn't even let me take m-m-my d-d-dolly!"
Besma wasn't much older than Petra. She hadn't a clue about any clinical theories on what to do with a child who's been dragged from her home and sold as a slave. She did, however, have a good heart, a naturally kind and sympathetic heart. She spent some time stroking the hair of the weeping slave, then laid her own dark head down on Petra's lighter one. Finally, when those things did no good, she just wrapped the little Nazrani in a hug and joined her in her sobs.
The next day Besma cornered the groundskeeper, another slave though he was a Moslem from Mauretania, and asked him, "Ishmael, will you escort me to the town my new friend came from? She left some things behind and I'd like to get them for her."
"Ohhh, Miss Besma," Ishmael shook his brown head, frowning, "I don't know about that. I've still got hedges to trim and the garden plot needs weeding and . . . "
From a fold in her garment Besma drew out five silver dirhem, a gift from her father on the last Ramadan and all the money she had. She knew Ishmael had been working to buy his freedom for years, for as long as she could remember, in fact. She also knew that her father was quite liberal about letting his slaves buy their freedom, subtracting a percentage of the value of the work done from the purchase price and asking only for the difference. Lucky was the slave that found his way to Abdul Mohsem's household.
"I can always ask Rafi to fill in for me," Ishmael announced, his frown changing instantly to a smile. "Tomorrow, though, all right? Rafi's so stupid it will take me half a day to teach him what he has to do over a single day. And then I'll have to work half the night to fix the mistakes the idiot boy will have made before your father sees them."
Besma nodded quickly. A deal was a deal and she was certain Ishmael would keep his end of the bargain.
In a different part of the city, back at the auction house, Rashid counted out the additions to his wealth.
"It's a dirty business, Rashid," the slave dealer said, "you setting the jizya so high these people can't pay. Aren't you worried about getting caught?"
"Why should the caliph care?" Rashid asked. "It's not like these Nazrani filth have any value."
"But they do," the slave dealer said. "Other than the zakat they're virtually the only ones who pay any tax. It's only their sons who are suitable and legal for the corps of janissaries. If you haven't noticed, they do most of the work."
Rashid shrugged. "If Allah wants them to disappear, they'll disappear. If he wants them to continue to exist and to continue in their heresy, they will. Nothing you or I can do will change that."
"As you say," the slave dealer conceded. "Do you have any special plans for the extra money?"
"No, not really. Why?"
"I've got a line on some truly prime females from Slo but the price tag is a little high for me."
"Halvsies?" Rashid asked.
"That would be acceptable."
Room 217, Olson Hall, Fort Benning,
6 October, 2106
"My, that was nice," whispered Hamilton to the ceiling.
"About time you showed up," had led to a bear hug, Hamilton picking Hodge up and swinging her around in full circle before setting her on her feet again. A bear hug had led to talk. Talk, as it will, led the two lieutenants downstairs to the bar almost directly beneath. That had led to some serious drinking, the more serious after four years of the anally tight control of the Imperial Military Academy and two months, in his case, and three, in hers, of far worse deprivation in Ranger School. Drinks were there. Rooms were there. Bodies were there. Attraction, apparently, was there as well. It had seemed only natural to put two and two, or—more technically speaking—one and one, together. Several times.
"I wonder if we'll be in the shit over this," Hamilton mused further.
He didn't expect an answer but got one anyway. Speech still a little slurred, Laurie Hodge answered, "No, dipshit, we're lieutenants, not cadets. We can fuck if we want to. Be unnatural if we didn't. I mean, Jesus, 'a man who won't fuck won't fight.' Don't you read any history?"
Grolanhei, Affrankon, 7 Shawwal,
1530 AH (6 October, 2106)
"I have read the histories," Ishmael said, "but Il hamdu lilah; the Nazrani actually live like this?"
Ishmael led a cloth-wrapped Besma to the front door of Petra's family's home—hovel would have been more accurate—in the town. The slave had a point. The town, whatever it might once have been, had grown decrepit over the years. The asphalt of that portion of the road they trod was sufficiently broken up that the cobblestones underneath it would have been an improvement. The houses were small, dirty and unpainted. Animals—to include disgusting pigs and dogs—wandered free. Worst of all were the people. They, walking with uncertain, shuffling steps, kept their heads down. Even the grubby-faced children seemed to understand their second-class status.
Or do they look and act like that because we're here, Besma wondered. An unpleasant aroma reached the girl's nose. They might look and act like that because we're here, but that smell is something that was here already. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad that Petra is with me.
Ishmael stopped a passerby and asked, "Where can we find the house of the little girl who was taken as a slave recently?"
Still keeping eyes carefully focused on the ground—yes, Ishmael was obviously a slave but he was equally obviously a Muslim slave and thus far above any Nazrani—the townsman pointed with one hand, saying, "Down that street. Just before the old train station. On the left."
"Shokran, sayidi," Ishmael answered. From his point of view; well, yes, they were stinking Nazrani but he was a slave. And politeness cost nothing.
"Come, Miss Besma," he directed, leading the way.
"Is this the house . . . the former house . . . of Petra bint Minden?" Ishmael asked.
The door, hung on leather hinges, was only slightly ajar, just enough for one eye to peek through. The door started to open, then stopped.
"Wait," said a woman's voice, closing it again.
When the door opened again, fully this time, the woman had covered her hair and the lower half of her face. "What about my daughter?"