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“The malja isn’t much farther,” said the lasiim girl Kay as they walked the calles of Centro.
Malja.
Diego knew the word. His lasiim wasn’t the greatest, but it was serviceable enough for him to understand. From what he knew of the private lasiim people, in times of great danger they secluded themselves in a secret location unknown to anyone but themselves. This they called the malja.
They hadn’t needed one since the siege of Alderas hundreds of years ago.
“Sanctuary?” he asked. “Have things truly gotten as bad as that?”
“When was the last time you were actually in the city? Lasiim are careful. They would have seen the signs going on and have gone there by now. You would do the same if you’ve gone through what they went through....um, señor.” She glanced over and gave a small bow that seemed as contrived as Diego’s newly shaved head.
She referred to the lasiim as they, not we, he noted. She thinks of herself as an outsider even to them.
“I suppose you’re right. And I’m not a señor any longer by any standards. Call me Diego.”
“Okay, Diego.” She shrugged.
The two moved through the alleys with a precision that surpassed anything he could have managed by himself. It had truly been a long time since Diego had gone through these back city corners. When once he had gone unfazed by the smell of piss and garbage, he now found himself wrinkling his nose whenever they would cross a particularly pungent stench.
Had it been that long since he had left the castillo? Had he let himself become so indifferent to these people?
As much as I hate it. I have become one of them. A noble.
He pushed those thoughts away and focused on what they came to do. All that mattered was helping Isa and Victor. Everything else was unimportant.
But the going was slow. He wished they didn’t have to leave the horses behind, but there was no better way to go recognized than riding expensive horses through crowded calles. Although his leg and hip were improved from the night he left the castillo, they were still painful, and he was forced to use—of all things—a walking stick.
Still, it wasn’t long until his muscles relaxed. Walking through the calles of Centro even became enjoyable.
When they found themselves on the main calles, the air became crisp and clean, and with Diego’s disguise, people paid him no attention. This past week he had cultivated the beginning of a thick beard to hide his once clean-shaven face. Combined with his shaved head he looked like a different man entirely.
He ceased becoming the Old Fox and simply became Diego. It was as if he met a forgotten friend.
Only, that wasn’t completely true. Before he left the brothel, he saw himself in one of Mari’s mirrors, and what he saw went beyond hair and beard. It was in the hollowness of his eyes and in the deep lines of his face that really held the difference. Diego hardly recognized himself in that mirror, and it scared him.
The same anonymity could not be said for Kay. If she noticed the sidelong stares, she ignored them admirably, but every so often there would be a frown from a passing civilian, a shopkeeper would grip his wares tighter, a woman hurried along with her kids, and there would be a look in on her face that she couldn’t hide.
He hadn’t seen stares like those in a long time.
“My akhi looks up to you,” Kay said after they left the open calles for a smaller alleyway again.
Brother.
She gave him a sideways glance as if uninterested in any response he could give.
“That quiet boy at the brothel? He seems too smart for that.”
“He looks up to you,” she repeated.
“I’m not anyone worth looking up to. He should find someone more...honorable.”
Diego noticed two guards patrolling the calle they found themselves on. Their long varsetos could be seen poking above the crowd like sails on the ocean’s horizon. Everyone gave them a wide berth, except for a lasiim woman that had the misfortune to cross into their path to reach a chicken that had escaped from its cage.
“Oiga! Look at what we have here.” One of the guards gripped the woman by the arm.
She twisted in his grip but went slack when she realized who they were.
“Apologies, señores. I was only fetching my chicken.”
“You mean our chicken,” the other guard responded.
She paused at this. Her face went unreadable.
“Yes, of course. Your chicken,” she said.
“Now be a good cabrena and fetch it.”
The guard pushed her away, and she stumbled but caught herself from falling at the last moment. Diego saw the look of complete loathing on Kay’s face. He suspected something similar might have been on his. He knew the type of men these two guards were, cowards at heart with only enough power to make themselves feel large. These were the type of men Antonio had in his Order of the Guards.
“Come. It’s over. They won’t be causing any more trouble. If we get involved, it will only make things worse for her.”
Kay slowly nodded, as if fighting to break from her thoughts, and led them away.
She circumvented them by cutting through an empty alleyway that smelled like garbage. He followed close behind her.
“Things have gotten much worse than I thought,” Diego said.
Kay mumbled under her breath and ignored him for quite a while until she finally spoke.
“Gad says you’ve done a lot for the lasiim. Says you’re a hero. So, I trust you to keep true to your word and pay us the coin I asked for.”
What she had asked for was a hundred crown. It was enough gold for someone to start a new life. And if it helped them rescue the people he loved, it was worth it.
“You have my word,” he said.
She seemed satisfied by this.
“In that case, we’re here.” She gestured at the new calle they exited.
It was large but not overly so. People came and went through stalls, but it wasn’t crowded by any stretch of the imagination. The cobbles had lifted in some corners of the calle like rotten teeth, and the fountain in the square was sealed off in desperate need of repair. But Diego still recognized the telltale signs of Centro by the way people walked a little taller and appeared a little fatter.
Throughout the city there were pockets of outcasts that would stick together for no other reason but safety. There were places where people worshiped not the One God of the lasiim or the Mother and Father, but many gods. There was a place where you might be able to find a person or two that dabbled in illegal magia.
Here, there was none of it.
This was Ori Corner, named for the white drink served hot that was popular among both the common and the rich. Predominately a lasiim community, here they were in sight of El Gran Iglesia de Alfonso the greatest church of the tripudium faith converted from the greatest lasiim temple.
Its golden dome stood contemptuously from a hill for all lasiim to see.
“Ori Corner? Where do we go from here?” Diego asked.
Kay’s eyes darted back and forth.
“I–I don’t know.”
Diego, not at all surprised that an orphan wouldn’t have the exact location, nodded his understanding. The malja was a deeply kept secret that not all lasiim knew. It was supposed to be a place used for the most important lasiim elders to hideaway in times of trouble, because of this only their most loyal followers knew where to find it. He was frankly surprised she had even known how to get him this far.
“Then we look for it ourselves,” he said.
“I knew you would say that.”
The two walked the calle. The air was heavy with the earthy smell of ori. It was something filling and bitter. It brought back memories of sitting around a table with friends at a time when his biggest worry was how he was going to sneak a kiss to Victor and Isa. He remembered the way Isa’s eyes crinkled in satisfaction as she drank big gulps of ori, and the way Victor always added too much grain into his drink but drank it anyway.
That was a time when Mari and Daeve, outcast even to other outcast, found companionship among friends. Mari had looked at him with affection then.
It made his heart ache in a way he forgot was possible.
“Do you know what we’re supposed to be looking for?” Kay whispered out of the corner of her mouth as two giggling girls in blue silks passed them.
“No, but do you have a better idea?” he whispered back.
“Not yet...”
They walked slowly down Ori Corner. People paid them no attention. They were just another man and girl strolling the blue calles of Centro. He knew he was wanted for treason, but there was something about walking in the open, unrecognized, that made him feel free. He had been Señor Santiago De la Costa, Comandante Mayor of the Crown for so long he had forgotten how good it felt to be simply Diego, a man with no expectations.
Although both were searching for something they didn’t know how to find, they still took care not to look suspicious. Diego had a lot to lose if he was caught, and he suspected that Kay had just as much.
Lasiim customers came and went from the shops, and even a couple of Low Landers, but most were unmistakably Alderian city folk in their colorful hemmed clothing. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and after a while, he wondered if they were ever going to find the malja.
Judging by Kay’s look of annoyance she must have felt the same.
As he avoided a man leading his cabre and cart full of brown Ori root, he spotted a face that he recognized among strange faces. It was brief. It could have been a trick of the eye, but for a moment he thought he saw the face of Amaan, one of his Crown Men, disappear into the crowd.
He moved as quickly as his lame leg could take him, accidentally bumping a man headed into a shop. The man shouted at him, and he sputtered out an apology. He didn’t know if Kay was following him, but he didn’t want to take his eyes off the last place he spotted Amaan, afraid that it would somehow make it untrue that he was ever there to begin with.
He hadn’t realized how much he needed to see a friendly face, the face of one of his men, almost as much as he needed another drink of wine. It was a visceral burn in his belly that ached for any sort of information.
Finally, he reached the corner of the calle. It was empty except for him and a confused Kay.
“What is it?” she asked, staring at him as if he was the crazy old man he probably resembled.
“I thought I saw...” he began.
And there he was. It was Amaan, easily recognizable by his crooked nose, going into a shop–one of the last on the calle–with a shingle of a crescent moon hanging above the entryway.
“We found it,” he said, smiling.
“What? How do you know?” She stared blankly at the empty calle.
“An old friend just showed me the way. Don’t you see there?” He nodded in the direction of the shop.
Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned. “It’s a little obvious; isn’t it?”
“Only for us.”
The crescent moon was the ancient symbol of the lasiim faith. As another form of conquering, the church adapted it to also be the symbol of the Mother. In a way, it was ingenious to use it as a marker. Anyone unfamiliar with it would assume it was paying homage to the Mother.
They approached the entrance to the shop, and Diego’s instincts automatically told him he was being watched. This part of the calle was empty, almost eerily so, but that did nothing to stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling up in warning.
He found himself questioning the decision to leave behind his stolen sword at the brothel. A supposedly poor commons carrying it would have only made him look suspicious.
Kay, tense and silent, walked beside him.
He could easily see from the inside of the shop through its open shutters–glass windows being too expensive for such a place–that there weren’t many visitors. The first thing that he noticed was the smell. It was something stale and wet, something akin to the Alderian dungeons. The second thing he noticed was the reflection of light bouncing off the dust in the air making the shop noticeably darker than the outside. He had the suspicion that anything ordered in here would have the taste of the dusty air.
Amaan was nowhere to be seen among the few occupants.
“I don’t think this is it,” Kay whispered.
“We’ll see.”
Besides two men, who looked to be even older than him, sitting at a corner table silently drinking from their cups, the only other person in the shop was a man that had his back turned behind the counter. He was a squat man that moved methodically as he busied himself with whatever was in his hands.
The man didn’t turn around as they approached but continued to peel his ori root.
“Two cups, plain and strong, if you would do us the pleasure,” said Diego to the man’s back.
The man turned around.
He was dressed in the Alderian style of earth tone linen and colorful hems although he was lasiim. His shirt was stained in splotches of different colors, and he had day’s old stubble around a pointed chin. Diego wasn’t sure if the wet smell originated from him or if he only absorbed it like a soiled rag. The most noticeable thing about him was his cloudy eyes. They were two white, sightless orbs that stared over their heads into empty air.
“Humph,” the man snorted.
Then, quicker than Diego would have imagined, he pulled out two cups and poured steaming ori from a kettle on his stove. He pushed them forward with two steady hands.
“Six coppers,” the man said.
Diego, realizing that he had no coin, nudged Kay.
She raised one thick eyebrow but removed the coin and paid the man.
“That’s added to what you owe me,” she said as they took their drinks and sat at a table facing the door.
“You’ll get it.”
“What are we even doing here?” She took another look at the shop, unimpressed. “This isn’t the malja.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever taught you to sit and enjoy the ori?” asked Diego.
“No. People like me don’t have six coppers to be throwing away on a stale drink.” She stared at the opaque liquid and sniffed it cautiously.
He sipped his ori slowly and stared at her over the brim of his cup. The hot cup warmed his hands.
She was a peculiar girl. She had the dark features and long, wavy hair of a lasiim, but also eyes too light, practically grey, and the high cheeks of an Alderian. There was a fire to her. As if below the surface she was trying to hold back what she really wanted to say, but at the same time said exactly what she wanted by her silent glare.
Diego felt like he knew someone like her once. He used to be just like her at her age. He lived on the calles, fought for food, and was always on the hunt for a dry place to stay. And he was always searching for answers he didn’t know the questions to.
It was a hard life probably made harder for her by being a lasiim girl.
As much as he fought to break the cycle, nothing had changed but the faces in them.
“Try it,” he said at last.
She sniffed at the drink again and frowned deeper. “It smells spoiled.”
“It’s not.”
She took a sip and squeezed her eyes in disgust. “It tastes spoiled too.”
“I suspect everyone says the same thing their first time.” He smiled at her and handed her the small cup of grain on the table. “Add a pinch of this.”
“I don’t think it’s worth the copper,” she mumbled, but added the grain.
Diego couldn’t help but notice that she sipped at it again without squeezing her eyes.
They sat silently sipping their drinks. He noticed that the men in the corner no longer pretended to drink their ori but contented themselves with staring at the newcomers. He ignored them even as Kay stared defiantly back at them.
It didn’t take long for the blind shopkeeper to approach the table. He moved in the same methodical way he peeled the roots. If Diego hadn’t seen his clouded eyes, he wouldn’t have believed he was blind.
The man approached but said nothing as he stood near the table. Diego stared at him, and Kay stared at Diego questioningly until the man casually tossed a scrap of parchment on the table and left.
Diego unfurled it and read.
“Well, what does it say?” Kay asked, hesitant but curious. “Are the Elders here? Do they want to meet with you?”
“No...not quite,” he answered. “They want to meet with you.”