Page 73 of Over the Emerald Valley
“Were you and Niut…?” Temaj let the question linger. Solon tended to blush when he spelled things out.
“Yes. He was my first. Older than me by two years, a gentle soul, and clever, like you, though he had dark skin and hair. Eyes of such deep brown, they looked like the silt soil that remains after the floods. Father sold him at auction. I never saw him again.”
“I wonder what happened to him.”
“I’ve often wondered that myself.” Solon’s wistful tone brought fresh sadness. “There have been others since. Slaves, that is. Friends only, not lovers. I learned my lesson. Or I thought I had.” He looked pointedly at Temaj. “You were impossible to resist.”
Temaj cuddled closer, tangling their legs together. “You resisted longer than most.”
They sat quietly, Temaj fingering the frayed hem of Solon’s shirt. Where should he start? How should he start?
“My earliest memory is of the lash.” Temaj had to look down to admit it. He couldn’t hold Solon’s gaze and talk about this at the same time. “I was a child. Maybe five or six. I’d stolen candied nuts. Wanted to try something sweet. They never gave the slaves sweet things. I knew I shouldn’t, but they smelled so good.”
Solon stayed silent as he spoke. Temaj appreciated his calm presence and the room to let the memory unfold gently.
“The lady of the house used a fistful of reeds to do it. She didn’t hit too hard. She meant to humiliate me, for it to sting, not to maim. She wasn’t a cruel woman, but she couldn’t allow a slave to turn into a thief, could she? But she was the closest thing I had to a mother. So it hurt.”
“That’s awful.” Solon’s words rumbled through him, vibrating where they touched. “I’m sorry that happened. You were just a child.”
Temaj sighed. “It only gets worse from there. Are you sure you want to know me?”
“Of course I’m sure. But I don’t mean to cause you pain in the telling.”
“Perhaps not all pain should be avoided.” Temaj wanted to share himself with Solon, even the shadowy parts, even if it was hard to talk about.
“I would spare you the pain if I could.” A sweet sentiment, but sentiment rarely mattered in a world so divided by the haves and the have-nots.
The next part came to Temaj with surreal clarity. “I was auctioned from that household several years later. I may have been ten. I don’t know.” He often wondered when his birthday was, but that secret was lost as well.
“It was frightening. Leaving the only home I’d ever known with nothing. The tentative hope that the next place would be better and the worry that it would be worse. The hunger as I waited, and no one thought to feed me.”
“No one deserves such treatment,” said Solon.
“Such treatment is all too common. My next master was cruel. A pompous man with no real influence who lived to lord what little power he had over those in his possession. You know the type?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I hate to think of you ruled by such a man.”
“It was impossible not to run afoul of his temper. For those miserable years, my life became a constant effort to avoid his attention. I was mostly successful, though my mouth got me in trouble more than once. He was dimwitted and easy to outsmart, but ultimately he held all the power. I was glad when he sold me, but I shouldn’t have been.
“I’ll spare you the years I was traded around like a prized goat and skip ahead to the brothel. Because if I hadn’t realized before then that my wants and desires held no sway in the world, then the brothel was the final nail in that coffin.”
“Oh, Temaj.” Solon’s voice was soft. Gentle.
“But it turned out I was good at all the things one must be good at to excel at life in a whorehouse. On occasion, I even found the work enjoyable. I wasn’t there long before someone with more money than sense discovered my talent and bought me for an ungodly sum. He then promptly lost me on a poorly judged bet.”
“Senet?”
“Dice.”
“Ah.”
“That’s how I came to be in Abasi’s possession. As a gift from the man who won me to the viceroy. Who knows what he got in return? I was carted to Sikait like a criminal. Holed up in a wooden cell pulled by donkeys. I could hardly see the world go by through the slats. Most of the trip I spent sick to my stomach, so it was almost a boon that they fed me so little.”
Temaj took a deep breath and forced muscles that had grown tense in the telling to relax. Solon’s arm around his shoulder was a comforting weight. He hated to leave it, but he needed to see Solon’s face for what he had planned.
Temaj pulled out of the embrace and faced him. “Can you see now why I liked it here? Why I liked my master before I knew what he was?”
Solon nodded. “Yes, it makes perfect sense.”
