Something Red, Bells, Papers & A Handful of Reasons

originally posted March 27, 2006

I purchased something red several days ago. Embroidered, fit to size. Sana the Six Girl, or simply 'Six', was with me. She attempted to have a look over the counter to see at what type of vendor I might have been shopping. To her consternation, the counter was a bit higher than would have been to her preference. It made it difficult for her to see the embroidery which was, like the object, red. I thought they looked rather smart. She would have liked to have seen them, but the vendor, considerate bloke, had wrapped my purchase for ease of carry. And though Six offered, quite graciously, to carry the item back to the tent for me, she unfortunately had other duties to be about.
"Go, Six," I told her. "It is approaching late afternoon. There are more fellows about eager to be separated from their coins."
A few days ago, I purchased bells for my Emily. The contest will start this afternoon and run through much of the hand with the prize awarded the last day of Fair. There are one hundred girls. It will take several days to see them all. I paid one silver tarsk for her entrance fee. The sponsor, the House of Clark in Thentis, retains half the entry fees for 'administrative' costs and the other half goes to the owner of the winning dancer. One silver tarsk, then, for a chance at fifty. This, then, was the second reason I came to Fair. I have much improved men's recollection of the Dancer, Emily. Before we left Glorious Ar, I danced her at the Braided Whip Tavern, which is located in the Teiban Sul District. I danced her at the Sa Tassna Inn during our stay in Torcadino. Each night earned a silver eighty piece. I would have danced her in Corcyrus and Argentum as we headed north and west where silver is in greater abundance nowhere else save Tharna, but we were diverted due north. In Jort's Ferry, then, at The Riverside Tavern which overlooks the Mighty Vosk, I commanded a sum of two silver eighty pieces for every performance. Further north in Rarn, at the Pilgrim's Respite Tavern, it was five silver eighty pieces. By the time we reached the Fortress of Saphronicus, a place we stayed only one night, for one performance, I demanded and received ten silver eighty pieces. It sounds like an incredible amount of money. I would tend to agree if I had never seen Emily dance. Have you? Have you seen men crowding the sand, emptying their pouches of coins? I have not heard a complaint from one proprietor of one tavern. Well have they all profitedfromthe having the Dancer Emily in their sands. It makes her arrogant and, to a degree, I allow it. For her insolence, I gagged her and bound her once. I threw her to the sands this way. The performance was exquisite. Her legend has much grown in the past hands. I waited my turn to register her, paying the entrance fee. The bells I purchased are not the dulcet sort, tiny silver bells on leather thongs. The leather is a wide strap that buckles in three places. In three rows are brass bells than jangle tambourine-style. The slightest movement will rattle them. When she stomps her foot defiantly, they will give men reason to clap her beat. Too, her wrists will be so belled.
Yesterday, because it pleases me to own literate women, no matter where they serve on my chain and under what modality, I purchased paper and a few glass wells of ink. On a previous trip to market, in Torcadino, I had purchased these things. There, too, I purchased a few cheap pens that they might share.
While we have been at Fair, I have been rather indulgent. I have allowed the women to beg prettily for pastries, doling out a copper bit here and there that they might have the excitement of choosing what treat they would like on their own. They have had few occasions where the normal diet of gruel and water has been adhered to. It is the first time at a Sardar Fair for most of them. For some, it may be the last. For others, it may be years before they again pad the trampled grasses, awash in the sensations and stimulations inherent in such an event. Will Samantha ever lay eyes on the scarred countenance of a man from the Land of The Wagon Peoples again? Will Nirah's pulse ever quicken at the gaze of a turbanned fellow of the Tahari? Where else might my earner, Portia, so readily query the mystery of her origin, her beautiful, swarthy skin, as the Sardar Fair? Before she was an outlaw in the forests as a child, the only life she'd known before slavery, did she come from islands south of the equator? Is she linked to the dark men of the Plains, the Kataii? Perhaps the jungles of Schendi? Who can say? I have seen peoples of all of these places over the past several days, however. Maybe she is simply of Earth stock. Perhaps her mother was a product of acquisition. I do not know.
Validation in the face of scandal.To increase the legend of a girl.To provide the women I own, all of them, a memory that will last them a lifetime.
For these reasons, I have come to Fair.