Plots & Facilitation

originally posted June 3, 2005

“Silver-haired, but young. Grating barbarian accent.”
”Really,” I replied, tipping back a bowl of paga to my lips.
Not infrequently, I can be found in the Anbar District. It is not always the friendliest section of my fair and magnificent city, but I am counted among those ‘not unwelcome’. No one, you see, is ever truly welcome in the Anbar. Cut-throats, thieves, vendors of merchandise with questionable origin and businessmen with less than impeccable reputation are but a few of a cast of motley characters you might tell your friends about after an evening in this dangerous district. That is, of course, if you made your way back relatively intact, limbs and extremities-wise.
“Very sure of herself, spoke as if she was entitled.”
“I see,” I told my fellow. There was a girl at our feet, stripped naked to the waist. The afternoon light streamed through an open window and bathed her about the head and shoulders. Her dark hair was conditioned with oil. It shone. It was fragrant and slick. She was unobtrusive and pretty. I was, however, more intrigued by the account of the other. I said to him, “Tell me more.”
Members of the Brigade, those whose names will not be spoken, those who reminded the citizens to be proud and indignant, are spread across the City of Ar. My fellow, odd though he is, is among those patriots to this day. Those dissidents. A good number, perhaps most, have chosen the Anbar District as their home. Unbeknownst to those in the area of The Central Cylinder, the Brigade controls much of the commerce here. Scarcely a transaction occurs; whether it is larma from a cart, a wager at the tarn track, the vending of a girl or the acquisition of a deed that goes unnoticed by the Brigade. There is no pretense in the Anbar. No posturing. It is rough. It is dirty. It is what it is and makes no apology for being so. I count that among the reasons I find comfort here.
“I considered robbing her myself when I saw the weight of her purse.”
“Approach her instead, if you would. Inform her of the safest times of travel and the most practical mode,” I requested of my fellow. The oil in the near completely nude girl’s hair dripped, dampened her tanned thigh as a light splash alit. The combination of scents, between her heated skin and that oil, was redolent…maddening. I was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the conversation at hand.
In the hands and months that followed, a certain ‘Lady Trinidad’, she who had difficulty keeping the stray silver lock tucked away in her peasant frock, was granted the deed to an insula. An absolute shambles of a place. She was permitted to follow the Watch during their rounds, making her way through alleyways a Taurentian Guard would give a second thought to, often with kajirae in tow, unmolested. I admire her, truth be told, though she was incredibly ignorant to be so smug about her success, because she worked so hard. She continues to work hard. She has spirit and determination. Two qualities that some men appreciate in certain types of women. While her insula would never rival a suite of rooms in the Tabidian Towers, it was not unremarkable. Not without merit. She even had a bathing pool, I was told. The Builder’s Apprentice, a man I evaded arrest with on more than one occasion, installed submerged energy bulbs in the pool, fascinating technology that, in addition to completing tile work that was sorely needed, at my request.
“She requires comeuppance. I would not mind her licking my feet.”
“Do not speak that way about my woman. My free companion,” I replied, a full measure of mock insult in my tone.
For the first time in years, my friend, my fellow dissident and patriot, disillusioned and odd, forgotten for what he once was, laughed until he cried. Great, fat, joyous tears streaming down his cheeks. I, too, laughed, for it was infectious. After a time, when our sides ached painfully from the fits of laughter, we said our farewells and I dragged the dark-haired girl to an alcove. She was thrown to a cushion, sent sprawling, but quickly recovered. She turned her eyes to me. She, too, was crying, but it was not from laughter. She, too, ached, but it was her belly, not her sides, that burned.
“Master, please,” the bare-breasted, slick-haired slave finally begged. Her voice was pitiful and heart-breaking. “Please.”
“Very well,” I told her.