Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 15 - Anestan

We are one and the same.  The closing words from Helen’s last letter echoed in Anestan’s mind.  At first she’d been surprised, and then vaguely affronted by the parallel that Helen had drawn between them.  But she could see it now, the tiny threads of similarity that tied them together.  They each had the same ambitions, the same calculating cleverness, and the same gift for pulling the strings of the people around them.

And each of us would kill the man that loves us for a Seat?  She closed her eyes and listened to the creaking wheels and muffled clattering of the carriage.  Whether or not Joram had loved Helen was not something that she knew.  She’d been a child when they were married, but she did remember his penchant for keeping tigers, bears, and other dangerous, exotic beasts.  A man like that would find Helen irresistible.  But he had made a mistake in not keeping her caged. 

And Farahd?  Anestan stole a glance at her husband.  He had his back to her and his chin in his palm as he gazed out the carriage window.  Love would be too strong a word to describe what was between them.

The carriage ground to a halt at the inner city gates.  Anestan leaned over to look out of Farahd's window.  She’d been through the outskirts before when traveling with her parents to the provinces.  Her parents had kept the carriage windows covered, but despite this, the smell had crept in, rank and rotting.  The curtains had only been drawn aside once they’d entered the flat and rocky plains well outside of the city.  When she’d looked behind them, there had only been a shimmering golden image in the distance, looking more like a mirage than an actual city—no outskirts and inner city definable.

“I want to show you where I lived,” Farahd said, his chin still in his palm.  Despite the clouds overhead, the day was bright, and he squinted as he looked out of the carriage.  “It’s still there, and about ready to fall apart, but it’s someone else’s home now.  My parents sold the hut when I was a child so they could get the money to pay for my apprenticeship and the bribe necessary to slip me into the inner city.  It took everything they had as well as some loans I’m not sure they could pay back.”

The carriage began to move again, and Anestan could see the red-clad guards at the gate waving them forward.  “What happened to them?”

Farahd shrugged.  “I haven’t seen them since I left the outskirts.  Maybe they’re ashamed that I became a soldier instead of finishing my apprenticeship and becoming a smith.  They paid dearly enough for that.  But more likely they died a long, long time ago.  It’s hard going in the outskirts without a roof over your head. There’s no one out here that I know anymore.”

The smell crept in through the open window as they passed through the archway and into the outskirts of Hajinn.  Piles of filth hugged the sandstone walls—scraps of leather and parchment, rotting food, broken carriage wheels, and what smelled like human excrement.  Down along the wall, in the distance, she could make out the outlines of people digging through the trash.  Anestan gagged and covered her mouth.

Farahd lifted his chin from his palm and turned, giving her a rueful smile.  “Yes, well, it’s better than it used to be.  Nessor has been able to spare me some men and carts.  We’ve been carting all this,” he gestured to the filth piled at the wall, “to the flats outside the city and burying it.  It’s a rough job, made even rougher by the fact that some of the outskirters don’t want us doing it.”

Anestan pinched her nose and cast him an incredulous look.

“It’s how some of them live.  They eat, wear, burn, and sell the things that we throw away.  They have nothing.  No homes, no clothes but the ones on their backs, and no families.”

A twinge of pity rose in Anestan's chest.  How does he do that?  She’d always had an idea of what life in the outskirts was like, and it hadn’t ever bothered her.  It bothered her now, coming from Farahd.  Maybe it was the fact that he was born in the outskirts, or maybe it was the passion in his voice, but he made the plight of the outskirters uncomfortably real.  Anestan shifted in her seat.  “Why not just leave the garbage there if that’s what they want?”