The Barbarian Slut
When her eyes opened on her first morning in Xar anKebbal’s house, Qanath knew where she was. Her repose had been short-lived, troubled by muddled dreams of failure and her mother’s disinterest. She gazed at the ceiling as she wondered if the dreams were prophetic. The plan made sense on paper: that she acquire a list of accomplishments so impressive the woman simply couldn’t refuse to acknowledge her worth. Whether it was feasible remained to be seen.
She had never been a physical person, being naturally small of stature and having grown up mostly indoors. With only one parent present, and lacking the wherewithal to hire help, she had passed her childhood in her father’s shop. When he needed an extra pair of hands, she helped him. When he didn’t, she read.
As a result, she had nimble fingers and a nimble mind, and she had used the latter to secure her degree. The former was useless: completing an apprenticeship in a craft would mean consenting to the premise that she belonged where she was. The only other option was to go to seminary, but ordination and politics didn’t always mix. Some people found it vulgar, and what if your god got into a feud with one of its peers? If the god in question was popular, your career was over.
A solid line of reasoning that had led her onto shaky ground. She rattled around in this big empty building; here and on the floor above were rooms enough to accommodate upward of twenty students. She’d dined by herself last night at a long table with empty benches on either side. She had received a bowl of legumes and a glass of water, but she had seen the silent servants passing the door of the room where she ate bearing platters of more succulent-smelling food. Her bed was small and hard, her room so empty even quiet noises echoed. At a guess, she was meant to embrace a lifestyle of austerity, but it would have been easier to cope with had there been other students to whom she could complain.
Heaving a sigh, she made herself sit up. It wasn’t the lack of luxury, which was foreign to her anyway, but the lack of explanations. The Avatethura Master had dismissed her after accepting her plea, and she hadn’t seen him since. She had heard him last night over dinner, the rumbles of his deep voice suggesting conversation, but he hadn’t shared the meal or his thoughts with her. Even the servant who gave her a tour of the premises had dispensed with her duties with the fewest words possible and promptly disappeared.
She crawled from the bed, reminding herself that she had known going in that everything about this experience would feel strange. That was just another trial. She donned a change of clothes that wasn’t her own, a loose shirt and knee-length linen trousers. She assumed it was a uniform, but since there were no other students, she couldn’t compare.
Once dressed, she straightened her shoulders and let out a breath. She felt a little more martial already; this outfit had been made to breathe, to allow the body to move, and the feel of it resting so lightly on her almost made her want to jump and spin. She still ached with weariness from last night’s inadequate sleep, but it would pass. She was also hungry, and let herself out of her bedroom, making for the stairs in search of food.
When she finally found the kitchen, she drew up in the doorway: the bed-bonded was there. He leaned back against a counter, holding a cup of tea in a saucer, and he was less dressed than he had been the first time she saw him. He had another pair of those scandalous underpants on, scarlet and decorated with what looked like nacreous bits of shell. He’d done away with the pointless see-through shirt but wore a necklace that was a rope of gold, long, looped around the neck like a noose with beads of brilliant green stone bumping on his midriff.
Qanath had frozen in the doorway. She had no idea what to do with him or how to feel about his existence. You only ever found the bonded in the largest plantations out in the country or the houses of the mighty, neither of which were her milieu. There weren’t all that many of them anyway; the Hakam in its wisdom had decreed that all Tabbaqerans were free, and a person could sell their labor but never their citizenship. This meant that a citizen who found themself in acute financial distress could go to a broker and negotiate the sale of their right to receive a wage but could not sell the future of their children or even their own ultimate fate. Kids born to the bonded must be housed and fed by the parents’ owner. Once they reached their majority at the age of seventeen, they would leave.
The nearly-naked barbarian watching her watch him couldn’t be a year beyond twenty. The bonded could buy themselves free again – their owners weren’t allowed to refuse to let them go – but it would be hard to manage. The whole point was that they didn’t have to pay you. It was almost always a one-way journey, and people knew that going in. If you chose to sell yourself into bonding, one of the essential topics you must discuss with the broker was: what work are you willing to do for the person who might purchase you? That meant he had volunteered for skimpy underpants. As for the fact that he wasn’t Tabbaqeran, that baffled her.
Within thick lines of kohl, the barbarian’s eyes were blue and cold; they made her think immediately of ice, rather than forget-me-nots or a sunny sky. She had the impression that he knew he made her uncomfortable. His eyes latched onto hers, thoughtful and sardonic, gaze trawling down and then up in the most insulting manner possible, taking his time to make sure she’d noticed him doing it. The blankness of his face was carefully calculated to make it clear he didn’t think much of what he’d seen.
Qanath made herself move forward into the room. There were two older people there as well, both of them dressed in modest linens that left their lower legs bare. The woman was kneading a lump of dough while the man washed dishes, and both of them ignored her as though staking out a position: dealing with her was not going to become one of their chores.
Moving further into the room had put her closer to the bed-bonded, and she swallowed. It was difficult not to stare. He wasn’t built on a scale with Xar anKebbal; no one was. He was quite a bit taller than her, though, and because he was nearly naked, there was a lot of him on display, muscles firm and perfectly outlined underneath his pale skin like sand cast across old cobblestones. His chest was completely bald, even the sizable patch of skin exposed below his navel free of hair.
He lashed out like a snake, and the move was so sudden she didn’t see it coming. He was incredibly casual about it, too. Didn’t even pause to set aside the cup of tea before he slapped her across the face. Qanath stared at him, one palm pressed to the stinging patch on her cheek. Neither of the other people in the room had turned around. The barbarian met her gaze briefly, and one eyebrow hitched as if he contemplated quirking it at her scornfully before deciding she wasn’t worth the effort. Then he dropped his eyes and took another sip of tea.
There was a tense silence while Qanath searched her mind for a response. She wanted to hit him back. Say something to put this barbarian slut in his place. While she glared, he sipped at his tea pretend-calmly, only his downturned eyes betraying his rage. Then the man at the sink said, gently chiding, “Havec…”
The bed-bonded let out an angry exhalation, casting his eyes to the side. Both of the older people were looking at him, engaged in a silent argument. Heaving another aggrieved sigh, the barbarian turned back to her. “You’re late.”
She drew back from him. “I’m sorry?”
He nodded at the doorway she had entered through. “For your first lesson.”
She wasn’t sure whether to be alarmed or annoyed. “Am I not allowed to have breakfast?”
“You would have been,” he replied, and his voice was as chilly as his eyes. His accent was strange, harsh but singsong. “You slept in too late, though, and now he’s waiting. He has been for a while.”
By this point, a word of well-meaning advice felt stranger than the slap. “H-how do you know?”
“I sleep in his bed, genius.”
She had been asking how he knew about her lessons, not how he knew when the master of the house got up. He didn’t give her the chance to say so, nodding to the door again. “Were I you, I would run.”
Qanath turned on her heel and ran. If this was a cruel prank, she had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. If it wasn’t, she had already begun her new life on the wrong foot. Not being thrown out on her ear one day into the undertaking was the higher priority.
Although she had detested and distrusted the bed-bonded from the instant her eyes fell upon him, it struck her that he would make a formidable ally. He had status here: he hit her in the face without hesitation when she offended him, and when the other servants took issue with his manners, they had asked him to be nicer rather than taking him to task. She had the impression that his happiness was one of the more pressing concerns of the household, and when he weighed in on the newcomer, everyone would follow suit. Maybe even Xar anKebbal.
How she was to get in his good graces was less obvious. She knew now he felt her gaze on his body and didn’t appreciate it; he’d made that as clear as a slap in the face. But not actively offending him and befriending him weren’t the same. He struck her as a prickly person generally, difficult to appease.
It was then that she arrived in the gymnasium, and there was no more time for worrying about barbarians: Xar anKebbal sat motionless in the middle of the floor, legs folded beneath him. He said nothing, and when his eyes latched onto her, he wasn’t angry. More… weighing. Taking his time to form an opinion. She was glad she had opted to run. Late she might be, but at least she was out of breath.
“I’m so sorry you had to wait, I—” She stopped. No one had given her a schedule yesterday ordering the hours of her days, but she worried that attempting to excuse her truancy might make her sound like the sort of person who always had an excuse.
Xar anKebbal didn’t wait to hear what she might say, beckoning her closer. “I will not lie to you,” he said as she settled to the floor before him. It was springy, woven from some scratchy hemp-like material that gave beneath her feet. “Because of your age, this is going to be more arduous a task than it might otherwise have been.”
Qanath wondered why he hadn’t pressed this point yesterday, when her father was still here and it would have been more convenient for everyone if he wished to chase her away.
Xar anKebbal held up one of his lion-paw hands, palm-out. “I don’t mean to discourage you. Just forewarn you: there will be setbacks. It won’t always come to you easily. There will be days when nothing I say makes sense, and you fail at every task I set, and the only thing that keeps you going is rock-headed cussedness and your desire to put me in my place.”
“I will try to remember that,” she said cautiously.
He chuckled, and she could feel his mirth through the floor. “It isn’t really the physical challenges. You’re old enough you can’t help resist the discipline.”
He stood, and she lurched back instinctively from his towering size.
As he walked past her, he said over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t worry. You won’t be the first green teenager I’ve tackled. And there is no way in any of Garba’s Seven Hundred Hells you could be more difficult than the last.”
Hefting a cylindrical bag as tall as her that stood on end, the fighting-master set it before her. “Hit,” he said simply, pointing at the bag.
“Um, how?”
“With your fists.”
She looked into his face and saw that he had no intention of elaborating. Tentatively, she made a fist and punched the bag. It wasn’t as hard as she had feared, but quite a lot harder than she’d hoped. She had her eyes peeled for signs of approval or distaste, but the Avatethura Master gave her neither. Just slung an arm casually across the top of the punching-bag and rested some of his weight.
