The Sultan's Spy

Chapter 8: Auction

The purple silk of her caftan whispered around Eliska's calves, the rich material embroidered with delicate pink and white flowers, the colour matching her trousers and undershirt. With a pink headdress of the same shade as her pants instead of her usual veil and wearing a heavy necklace of gold as well as a matching belt, the outfit was far more opulent than Eliska usually wore, even in the harem.

But she walked with her head up, her steps the gliding walk of someone trained since childhood to portray grace and elegance. She joined the small stream of people heading into the well-lit courtyard, fanning herself delicately with her black feather fan, studying everyone she passed without seeming to do so.

She glanced briefly at the squat stone buildings that enclosed the courtyard on three sides, their wooden roofs flat and well kept up, as she knew from previous runs through the city. The blocks that made them up were clean, even the stone of the courtyard was free of dirt. Not that she was surprised. This was the best slave market in the whole city.

In her guise as a rich merchant's wife, Eliska mixed in with the crowd moving around the courtyard without notice. The well-dressed men and women of the city's elite talked and laughed quietly sticking mostly to the edges of the courtyard and not the centre where the wooden auction platform lay. With an hour yet remaining until the sale began, even the slaves hadn't been brought out.

Not that half the crowd was there to buy. No, this was as much a social event as it was a financial one. While hamams might be great places to catch up and socialize with your own sex, it didn't give people the opportunity to interact with the opposite. And with the rich, showing off and being admired by both sexes was important to their status among the others.

Eliska rarely had much to do with these people, it took a long while to properly work yourself into their circles, to be included in their gossip and machinations. That was the job of a different shadow though Eliska didn't see her. She wondered what her sister Inas was up to that was keeping her from here, but knew she'd have things well in hand. It wasn't as if the auction was the only event in the city going on now.

She began slowly circulating the room, listening to the soft conversations around her. Whether in the marketplace or slave auction, people talked just the same, and while it might horrify those who believed themselves to be elite, the same themes of gossip ran rampant through both.

Listening to yet another back and forth about the possibility of one man having relations with his wife's friend while she was pregnant, Eliska fanned herself to hide the boredom and disgust she couldn't quite keep out of her eyes though her face remained pleasant. Spending so much time among the darker sides of the city, investigating the worst situations and moving among those who regularly stained their hands both literally and figuratively, made it hard for her to think well of people. Especially people who spoke of other people's live with such malicious glee on their faces.

Eliska glided towards the far side of the courtyard. Her eyes swept all around, studying those she passed unobtrusively, just another face in the crowd. At least, she thought she hadn't been noticed until someone moved in front of her.

The man wore silk trousers in dark blue with a shirt in a lighter shade had a gold sash tied to one side over them while everything was overlaid with an open kaftan of red embroidered with gold. She looked up into dark brown eyes that were starting to become disturbingly familiar.

Tariq raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her. "Are you following me? Or are you going to pretend not to know me again?"

Eliska smiled, keeping the expression locked onto her face even as she said, "Don't flatter yourself. It's a coincidence. And you had better stay out of my way, my work is too important to be interfered with by someone who seems to believe the world revolves around him."

He choked, his eyes going wide. "What kind of work are you doing that's so important?"

She repressed a grimace, already cursing herself for letting her shock at running into him yet again loosen her control over her tongue. "None of your business," she replied coldly, shifting so she could pass him by.

It took several steps before Eliska felt safe enough to glance back at Tariq. He still watched her. She turned back to what was in front of her, keeping her pleasant mask on. Whoever Tariq was, he wasn't anywhere near as important as her work, so it was best just to ignore him.

Though she had to wonder if he wasn't involved with the slavers. He kept showing up in places she expected to see them, and while he'd saved her niece, for all she knew he could have been preparing to kidnap her to sell himself. She made a mental note to look into him, to see if any of their people in the city knew anything of him.

She circulated the courtyard three more times, doing her best to ignore the feeling of Tariq's eyes on her though he didn't approach her again. Elisa only stopped when the slaves were brought out. The crowd all leaned forward, many people eyeing them eagerly, expressions ranging from satisfaction to desire to contempt.

The slaves stood in two lines, every one of them naked as the day they had entered the world. They were clean, and all of them looked healthy, strong. There were fifteen men and five women, most looked resigned thought one of the women looked terrified and two of the men bored. She wondered about the latter, thinking they must be veterans of the marketplace.

While everyone else made their way towards the slaves to examine them before the auction began, Eliska moved slowly slid through the crowd, heading towards the exit. While she understood the reasons behind having slaves, she still didn't much care for the practice. Her family certainly didn't hold with keeping slaves, and freed any they did buy.

Escaping the courtyard and stepping out into the cooler, quiet night, Eliska couldn't help a small sigh escaping her lips. She hadn't heard anything about any underground slave markets, local slaves, or anything of any use. Add in crossing paths with Tariq again and her whole evening had been worse than just a waste.

Still, at least she was finished and could go back to her house. Once she stopped at the hamam and changed back into the clothing she'd left there, the private room ensuring no one questioned why her sudden change. Owned by a distant cousin, it was one of the few safe places she had to change identities in the city. After all, everyone visited hamams, no matter their station.