Dark Empress (7 page)

“Father, what is it? Please talk to me?”

When the man spoke, he voice was hoarse and cracked, his shaky hands gripping the edge of the table hard enough to whiten the knuckles.

“Asima… my dearest, darling girl. The light of my life and the song in my soul. You are your mother in all things and it breaks my heart to see it.”

“Father?”

“Asima, I just don’t know how to tell you this; how to explain.”

The young girl bit her lip nervously.

“Whatever it is father, we can get by. You know that. We are strong.”

“You are strong, my love.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, his fingers detaching themselves from the table and sliding away the pen and the ledger over which he had been hunched.

“Asima, I have nothing. We have nothing.”

“I do not understand, father.”

“My business, Asima. My business is as a factor for a Pelasian trader. But I have received word that, with the withdrawal of Imperial support, the market in M’Dahz has collapsed and my esteemed colleague will no longer trade across the border. He has no further use for me. I had other interests with Imperial traders, but they have now fled across the sea to the north, taking their business with them.”

Asima shook her head.

“But father, you have stores of goods still in M’Dahz. Your wares will keep us until you can find new sources.”

The tired-looking man shook his head sadly.

“I believed so, but the boat I have a part interest in has been commandeered by the militia with no recompense, the traders at the oasis that owe me small monies will not venture close enough to the town to see me, and my store of fruit and perishables that is still worth a small fortune has been looted and devoured by the mob of waifs and strays at the port. There are no guards there to protect such interests now. I have been through all of my logs for import and export. I have nothing, my dear; only what is in this house. We have no more than those people who stole my food. We cannot leave M’Dahz. I cannot pay passage anywhere and we have nowhere to go.”

Asima stood stoically, her jaw set firm, and folded her arms.

“You are seeing only disaster, father, but remember this: we are both alive and healthy. We have a good house and clothes. You have possessions that are beyond the means of many that we may be able to sell, given enough time and investigation. You still have a solid reputation, and the future is not set in stone. Who, apart from the Gods, knows what lies around the corner? In a few days, a new Emperor could appear and bring peace and prosperity once more to M’Dahz.”

Her father stared at her. Such insolent words went against everything he had taught her. And yet it was sense; it was also precisely what her mother would have said to him had she still lived. Without a word, he reached across and wrapped Asima in a bear hug that almost crushed the wind from her.

“You are brave, my little jewel.”

Asima laughed.

“I was not looking forward to Calphoris anyway, father. The boys there are said to be pigs.”

He pulled his head back for a moment and stared at her in surprise. Then, suddenly, in a burst of unexpected and rare emotion, he burst into raucous laughter. As he laughed, he rocked back and forth, still gripping her tightly. Slowly the mirth subsided and he released her and sat back in his chair.

“Very well, my dear. I can see that in recent months while I have been chasing gold coronas with open hands, my little girl has grown wise and strong. Where I have failed alone, we shall now succeed together. If we are to make a go and survive in M’Dahz, we will have to work hard and I shall need you.”

Asima nodded thoughtfully.

“Do you trust me, father?”

For a moment the man’s brow furrowed as though he failed to understand the question. Finally, he nodded and smiled.

“I have always trusted you, Asima. Enough to allow you to make your own entertainment around the town without my supervision. But now? For certain, I trust you more than ever, my girl. What have you in mind?”

Asima gave an enigmatic smile.

“It is time to work out what we have; an inventory of everything.”

Her father nodded.

“I shall do so…” he raised an eyebrow at his daughter.

“I, too, have my sources” she replied.

Still with that enigmatic smile, she turned and left her father in his study while she ran down the stairs and out into the street. Padding through empty alleyways and down numerous flights of steps, she made her way to the house of Nadia and her boys.

As was her custom, she approached the house from a rear street, climbed a ramp to a second tier of buildings and sidled along a ledge formed by ill-planned housing until she finally reached the window of Samir and Ghassan’s room. The boys were sitting on one of the beds, throwing small darts carved from cedar wood into a cork board. They looked up at the noise from the window and smiled.

“Asima? We thought you would be packing. We were going to come and see you after dark.”

The girl grinned.

“You were worried that I would sneak away to Calphoris without saying goodbye to the boys I love?”

She ignore both the looks the boys gave her at those words and the small wicked feeling of satisfaction they elicited from deep within her. Smiling, she took a deep breath.

“I shall not be leaving M’Dahz. Father and I are to stay here.”

Ghassan blinked.

“But your father’s business…”

Samir grasped his wrist.

“… has failed, hasn’t it Asima?”

She nodded. Of course clever Samir would be a step ahead as always.

The smaller brother nodded thoughtfully.

“Looters or the military?”

She shrugged.

“A mix of them both, unfortunately, along with some bad luck.”

She straightened and folded her arms.

“However, I look at this as not so much an end as a beginning. Where there is chaos and desperation, there is always an opportunity. Father still has some resources and inventory. What we need to do is build on that; to find a market for the things we have left. But father only knows of finance and trade, whereas you and I know M’Dahz; the real M’Dahz, not the one that rich traders know. I know that between the three of us we can turn a small store into a large profit.”

Ghassan smiled.

“So you need our help? You’ll have it, of course.”

Samir nodded emphatically, but Asima shook her head, smiling.

“My father will not understand such a thing, but employees he understands. I am here on his behalf to offer you a job. The three of us will work for father.”

She sighed.

“Of course, at the moment, he cannot afford to pay you. You would have to wait until we are successful for a wage, but I truly believe we can do this.”

Samir shook his head.

“I have no need of your father’s money. You both need it more than us.”

Their friend gave a short, light laugh.

“That’s not exactly true, is it Samir? Since your uncle left, most of the money has gone once again from this house. Come now, accept the deal.”

Ghassan nodded and proffered his hand, Samir following suit.

“You speak a lot of sense, Asima. What is the first step then?”

“We need to go and visit father. He is drawing up a full inventory of what we have. Once that is complete, we will go out into M’Dahz and find buyers for everything.”

Samir grinned.

“We shall crack M’Dahz like an oyster and collect the pearl from inside.”

In which tidings are brought

The town of M’Dahz languished hopelessly for the next few months, eking out an existence from the few desert traders desperate enough to sell their wares that they would brave coming this close to the troubled border, and from the occasional Calphorian merchant willing to face the possibility of pirates and Pelasian patrols for the high prices they could charge in the region.

It was far from a comfortable life, but it was a life, when all was said and done. After an initially hopeful start, when the seaborne section of the militia impounded two vessels and brought the navy’s strength up to eight ships, they soon encountered violent resistance from both pirates and a few Pelasian vessels that felt confident there would be no reprisals. Now, after four months of campaigning, the militia had achieved a few small victories, but were back down to a strength of four vessels and were beginning to lose heart.

The defences of the town had been bolstered by the land militia. The new walls were poor and badly-constructed when compared to the heavy fortifications from the height of Imperial power, but they enclosed the nervous population and were well-patrolled by armed militia. M’Dahz endures, the people said. It was the only positive thing anyone could really find to say, these days, and so the people said it often.

Asima and her two partners stood on the jetty waiting for the fleet of small two-man fishing boats to return. The flotilla speckled the water near the horizon and would reach the dock in ten or fifteen minutes, at which point the three children would fill the baskets in their cart with fish and take them back to the secure warehouse.

The past four months had seen an almost spectacular revival of her father’s trading interests. After a slow start, business had picked up rapidly for them and Asima had even talked of employing others, though had finally decided that the business should be kept between them. The girl was shrewd and, with the addition of Samir and Ghassan’s quick minds, her father was astounded at how rapidly his stores replenished and his coffers refilled.

Samir and Ghassan, as the months went by, were repeatedly taken aback by just how vicious and cutthroat Asima was capable of being in business deals. She showed no sign of sympathy or compromise in her dealings, despite the fact that the people they were trading with were often old acquaintances of her father and most were in a similar financial state to themselves, desperately trying to survive in the impoverished town.

Still, it was Samir and Ghassan’s knowledge of the city and their intuitive ideas, combined with Asima’s strength and wily approach to business, that had turned her father’s meagre surviving assets into a going concern once more. They may not like having to be hard on people with whom they sympathised, but it was doing so that was pushing them into a more comfortable position themselves.

And tonight their fish stock would go into storage so that tomorrow it could be distributed among the market traders and fill the ever-hungry bellies of M’Dahz.

Samir frowned and held his hand to his brow, shading his eyes from the late afternoon sun. Something was wrong.

“Ghassan?”

“Hmm?”

His brother turned from the warehouse wall at which he had been idly staring, counting the bricks.

“Ghassan,” his brother repeated, “look at the flotilla. What do you see?”

Ghassan, they had discovered, had the sharpest eyes of the three of them and was probably the most observant. He had spotted the bad dates they had been about to purchase last week, and a month ago had spotted a pirate vessel on the horizon in plenty of time to get word to the Calphorian captain with whom they had been dealing to bring his boat back in to dock.

Ghassan peered out into the bright light, trying to make out the many small shapes amid the glittering, sparkling waves, muttering under his breath. Finally, he removed his hand from his brow and shrugged.

“Twenty eight small fishing boats, all very heavily laden. Bodes well for us, brother.”

Samir shook his head tensely.

“I’m not so sure, Ghassan. Twenty eight, you say? And you’re sure?”

“I could count them again, but there are twenty eight. Why? Are some missing?”

Samir’s jaw hardened.

“Quite the opposite. There are only twenty three fishing boats in M’Dahz.”

Ghassan blinked.

“I know these things,” Samir shrugged. “I pay attention.”

He turned to find Asima, who was standing a few feet away from them by their cart, involved in yet more dealings with one of the dock workers.