26. Wandering (Patreon)

There was only one word to describe Aaliyah-al-Ydaz's eyes: gemstones. Her two eyes shone like the most perfect and beautiful amethysts in the world, yet a totally different word came to Aloe's mind.

Malevolent.

Those weren't the eyes of beauty, but absolute malice.

The sultanah didn't utter a single word, the corridor had grown into a damning silence. Before the sounds of imperial life could be heard, the hurried steps of servants, the loud banter of sultanzade, even the afternoon breeze filtering through small windows and leaves. Yet now all life had disappeared from the sound. Only the hastened breaths of the petite scribe could be heard.

The attentive and silent gaze of the woman scared her to no end.

She wanted to be anywhere else but here. A quarantine, a brothel, inside a latrine pit, anything would have been better than this.

Aaliyah moved the arm that wasn't holding the wheelchair forward and Aloe reacted violently. Such was her aversion that she pushed backward with such force that her body fell from the wheelchair and into the ground. She couldn't even care about her previous wounds now, only about the towering figure overlooking her. The scribe yelped and crawled away from it.

That thing.

Air blew from the nose of the impossibly attractive person. Her lips curved into a shape that plagued the scribe's dreams, or rather, nightmares. A dry whimper escaped the crawling woman's lips.

The figure approached.

No… One step at a time, slowly. So slowly… yet it easily overtook her crawling pace. No! Aloe panted heavily, her chest hurting from heaving up and down so violently. The images of those hands, those movements, that violence… It all came back to her.No… Bile gathered on her throat as her body reminisced the caresses. They only had taken, never given. The scribe's hands slipped on the floor, making her barely raised back collapse.

There was no escaping her.

The sultanah stood directly on top of her, her eyes colder than the most frigid desert night. Another whimper escaped Aloe as their eyes met. Then the woman moved. She was fast, but there was quite a bit of vertical distance between them, and even then, it was almost not enough to shift into toughness. A blink later and she wouldn't have been in time.

Not that it mattered.

The strong, thick, bronze fingers lay on top of Aloe's neck, slithering on her skin like snakes. Only to constrict like those very animals. Toughness wasn't enough. TOUGHNESS WASN'T ENOUGH.

Aloe coughed as it became impossible to breathe, but the sultanah didn't stop there. With a casual wrist movement, she pushed the scribe's body upward until they were at eye level. Aloe hanged in one hand, the woman carrying her without breaking a sweat, barely a doll in her eyes if not less. The petite woman's jaw and neck began to hurt from the chokehold, all the weight of her body falling on them as her feet didn't touch the ground, no matter how much she kicked around with her legs. She didn't even have the strength to lead her arms to the hand that was choking her.

"P-please…" Aloe whispered with the little air she had in her lungs, her own eyes tearing up as those of the woman looked at her with contempt.

"Please what?" Aaliyah's voice was slow and potent.

"P-plea…" A dry cough escaped beyond her control. "Ple-ase. Please."

It was hard to think. Aloe never had felt like it, even a single thought was hard to formulate. Her brain became a mushy mess and her vision blurred, almost blackening. No blood or air reached her head.

"You are duller than I thought." The sultanah spoke at a glacial pace, the scribe's vision blackening more with each word. "Did you think I would not notice how you were wasting my daughter's time? Did you believe yourself intelligent and resourceful?"

"P-please." The only thing that came from her lips was the same repeated word. Broken, nonsensical from the reiteration.

"You are nothing, girl." The harsh words didn't matter to her, she was used to hearing them in a more familiar voice. Yet the dimming light and the ferocious light scared her. "If you thought I desired something from you, you are very wrong. You are but a whim I decided to let live, an untied knot. Yet you decided to bite my hand and meddle with my children." There wasn't hate in her words. No. There was… nothing. Nothing at all. It would be an overstatement to call Aaliyah's voice stern, for they were devoid of anything. That was all she was to her, a nuisance. Yet the woman's eyes shone brim with malice. "You will never achieve anything. You are a waste of space. A waste of time. A waste of life."

The sultanah released her grip and Aloe fell to the ground.

A nasty crack filled her ears, but she didn't feel any pain. She doubted how she could even hear at this point when splotches of muted colors were the only thing that her eyes could see. That didn't stop her from whimpering.

"Killing you would be a waste." The sultanah's voice felt near, personal, even if she was standing at her towering height. The meaning of the words didn't fly beyond Aloe's comprehension, as dazed as she was. A waste of time. That was what killing her would be. "If you are so hellbent on being but a leech for everyone that has roamed the earth, do everyone a favor and end your miserable existence yourself."

A step. And another.

Aaliyah slowly walked away, her steps sounding so close to Aloe that she felt as if she was stepping on her head repeatedly. A thing that she might as well have done. Not that she would have noticed.

"Do not." The sultanah's words echoed through the corridor, to whoever they were directed. "Leave her there to rot."

Then more steps, simultaneous and plural. Ah…There had been an entourage of servants around the woman, yet Aloe had miserably failed to focus on them as her attention was solely placed on that monster of a woman.

The corridor grew quiet.

Not like before. Before it was the silence of dread and terror, now… it was the silence of solitude.

Aloe didn't know which was worse.

She just knew that it hurt.

Everything hurt.

Her thoughts were a tangled mess, only whimpers came out of her mouth. Her neck hurt. Her legs hurt. Her arms hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her chest hurt. It was dizzying and maddening. Every part of her being was numb. Her own cries echoed in her mind in a muted manner. Far away and low, as if she herself was in another room. Locked too…

Why? That was the only question Aloe could formulate. Why. Why it had been her? Why did this happen to her? The whats and hows tried to make their appearance, but her mind was too exhausted to formulate them.

Aloe stood there writhing in the cold corridor tiles, her misery her only companion.

Why? Coughs assaulted her between questions. Toughness wasn't enough. It hadn't been, nor it was currently. The scribe's ear rang and her muscles screeched. She grabbed her chest as she coughed, the violent jerks making even more damage to her hurt body.

"Uh…" She groaned in pain as her body was drawn to stillness, completely spent and devoid of strength. She tried opening her eyes, but her eyelids proved too heavy for her. And even if she could open them, the light was too oppressive. Oppressive like… "Ah…" Aloe whimpered, her body rocking in whiplash from the memories. It had been barely a few moments ago, yet it felt like an eternity. "P-please…" The same word left her lips.

The same meaningless word.

She didn't even know what she meant with it. No matter what the veritas said, that woman wasn't human, she didn't know of mercy and pleads. The sultanah of Ydaz was but malice in the vague silhouette of a human. A task that Aaliyah failed at because no woman had ever looked like that.

Why… The question returned to Aloe's mind. Why am I still going? But twisted. Why am I… living?

She no longer had living relatives. Infusion was no longer only her. Her body was torn asunder. After the repeated beatings, only downs in her life yet never ups, a question blossomed in her mind.

Why continue?

"Yikes." A voice cut through her darkness like a sword, enlightening her reality. "I've seen many things, but that one… hmm, not a first, but certainly different. Are you still alive, girl?"

Aloe turned to face the voice. It was difficult to open her eyes – mostly a mental effort than a physical one – but curiosity pushed forward. What her eyes found wasn't anything she had expected. There were many peculiarities about the man. His traveling clothes were made of thick leather that made her dizzy just imagining the heat and sweat they accumulated. His fair skin wouldn't be seen in this place of Ydaz. Or the fact that she went against the sultanah's orders.

But all of that paled in comparison to the man's eyes. If the imperials had gemstone-like eyes, then his eyes were metal. The man's eyes were two pools of molten gold.

He offered her a hand.

She didn't take it.

The man ignored her and grabbed her, carrying her like a potato sack and depositing her in the wheelchair.

Only once he started pushing the wheelchair did Aloe dare to speak. "W-what are you doing?" Her voice was weak and she coughed more than once. She led a hand to her neck, the finger marks still remained there, seared in the flesh.

"Looking for medical assistance." He responded as a matter of fact.

"No, that's not what I meant." Aloe coughed again, the violent attacks making her thrash around.

"Watch out, otherwise you are going to fall off the wheelchair."

"Why?" The question was weaker than any other word she had uttered before.

"Why are you going to fall?"

"No." The scribe growled. "Why did you help me?"

"You were asking for help. What was I supposed to do? Leave you there to actually rot on the ground?"

"Yes," Aloe responded without thinking it twice. "Maybe that would have been better."

"Regardless if becoming human compost was better or not, it was because you reminded me of my daughter." Even when he spoke right behind her, the man's voice was far away but impossibly clear at the same time.

"Huh?" The sudden answer gave the woman a shed of clarity back.

"I couldn't leave a young girl dying on the ground. Not my style, even though my whole schtick is neutrality."

"I wasn't dying." The woman growled as more memories came in. As she remembered that she was in pain.

"Didn't seem like that to me." Aloe bit her lips at the man's words.

"Who are you?" Using that faint clarity, not allowing it to escape her weak clutches, Aloe focused on the identity of her mysterious savior.

"A wandering trader, nothing more, nothing less."

"In the middle of the palace of Asina?" The scribe frowned even if the man couldn't see her face, gritting her teeth against the pain.

"Precisely because of that." The man chuckled. "I come from far, far away. I got interesting trinkets. And monarchs like people like us. A toy you could buy in one place for a bowl of stew might cost a horse somewhere else."

"Was the sultanah interested in your trinkets?" Aloe grinned darkly. The thoughts of that woman making her sick. Why am I talking with this man in the first place?

"Eh, some." She could feel the man shrug through the handles of the wheelchair. "But I was more interested in yours."

The sudden change of subject hit her like a slap. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen about your products, quite interesting. It has been a while since I've seen something like this." Through the corners of her eyes, Aloe saw a single drop of a yellow liquid. Grace's Exaltation nectar.

"Who are you?" Her voice contained unrestrained violence.

"Like I said, a wandering trader." He chuckled again.

"What do you know about the aphrodisiac?" Aloe didn't hide her animosity.

"Not much, though it's not my first time seeing it. Weird to find it here." Not his first time?

Confusion flash-flooded Aloe's mind. Her mouth remained agape; her mind too occupied to close it. She turned to look at the man.

"How do you know of it? Where have you seen it before? Who are you, really?" She tried a more diplomatic tone and approach, though her perplexion betrayed her.

"No one, really." He responded noncommittally, focusing on the last question and ignoring the other more prominent ones. "And besides, we are already at our destination."

"What's this?" The wheelchair-ridden woman pointed at the door before her with her head.

"An infirmary. The palace's. I doubt you are as healthy as you appear to be." The man rushed forward to open the door and Aloe got a better look at him.

He was… average. If the man were in Loyata instead of Ydaz, he would have merged with the multitude. The was nothing highlightable about him. Nothing except his eyes. Aloe was pushed forward, the infirmary and Zeeshan entering her view.

"Well, our journey together ends here. Don't think about seeing me again. I'm sure the physician will take care of you." He departed from the wheelchair and put a hand on the doorknob.

"Wait!" She extended her arm toward him. The man hadn't been a savior, a helping hand for sure, but he raised more questions than helping her. Maybe – because of that – it was that Aloe was even sane right now. The right distraction at the right time. The man stopped to look at her. "What's your name?"

"I don't do names." And just like that, he vanished. No names, no farewells. He just was a wandering trader who so happened to wander on her and help her. Nothing more, nothing less.