The Pillar (9 page)

Faris did. First slowly and gently, but then faster, deeper. Boro took his own cock in hand and stroked himself in concert with Faris’s thrusts, and with every movement he made sexy little grunts that nearly drove Faris wild. And Boro was looking at him, seeing him, wanting
him
.

Faris came first this time. As the thrill was still shivering up and down his spine, he dropped to his knees—harder than he intended—took Boro in his mouth, and with just a few movements made Boro cry out and spill again.

Slightly stiffly due to his knees, but nonetheless as happy as he could remember being, Faris stood and smiled down at his lover. “So, what first—bath or breakfast?”

T
HEY
MADE
love twice more that day, and then again at night. By the time they collapsed into each other’s arms, sweaty and drained, Faris was barely able to manage a coherent thought. His limbs had stopped working altogether. “We’ll both be sore tomorrow,” he said.

“Don’t care.” Boro raised up on one elbow. Faris couldn’t see him very well in the dark, but by now that handsome face was permanently engraved on his mind. Boro’s voice was quiet, serious. “Every time you touch me, dusho, you erase a little bit of the bad. I have ten years of bad collected in my heart. I want all the touching I can get.”

“Me too,” Faris replied.

Boro lowered himself beside Faris again, pressing his body close. He kissed Faris’s cheek. “Who would have predicted a whipping could turn out so well? I should have earned it long ago.”

Faris was still formulating a response when Boro began to snore.

“Y
OU
AND
that woman are trying to make me fat.” Boro picked his way carefully down the Old Bridge. He didn’t need Faris to support him this time, but he winced a little sometimes as he moved. Faris didn’t know if that was from the punishment he’d received or from the pleasure they’d shared the day before. Faris had a few twinges of his own, souvenirs of the enthusiastic way Boro had fucked him with that big cock. Faris didn’t mind the twinges, but he stuck close to the other man in case Boro’s footing failed.

“You’re still too thin,” Faris pointed out.

“Three pieces of baklava she gave me. Three. I feel like a goose being stuffed with walnuts and honey.”

Faris laughed, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “I could stuff you with honey and then… lick it all out.” He blushed at his own daring; he wasn’t used to speaking that way.

Boro seemed to like it, though, because he gave a loud laugh. “I’m going to hold you to that, dusho.”

“Tomorrow, though. You need to recover today. So do I.”

“Mmm.” Boro deliberately bumped against him, his expression suggesting that recovery was not a priority.

After they stepped off the bridge and passed through the archway where a bridgetender had long ago demanded payment for passage, they paused on a small stone platform overlooking the river. When the weather turned warm, tables and chairs would be placed here and people could drink their coffee while watching the daredevil youths leap from the bridge. Today, however, the weather was cold, the youths were elsewhere, and the platform was bare.

“It’s a beautiful town,” Boro said thoughtfully. “Much more prosperous than my old village ever was.”

“Not everyone here is so rich. Some go hungry.”

“Like you once did.” Boro was looking out at the water, not at Faris.

“I haven’t missed a meal in years.”

“Does it ever go away, though? That… that doubt over whether the next meal will truly arrive?”

If Faris said yes, that would be a lie. “It fades,” he said instead, which was closer to the truth.

Boro turned to look at him. His eyes were sharp, piercing. “But you still worry, don’t you? Deep in your heart, you believe that someday they’re going to take your home away from you and… and tie you to that pillar again.”

“Nobody’s tying you to a pillar,” Faris said.

“I’m talking about
you
.”

Faris couldn’t meet his gaze. The river was a muddy green today. The yellow, red, and gray houses along its banks reminded him of soldiers in a line. When he was a boy, he’d dived off the bridge, not to impress girls but for that wonderful feeling of freedom while he was in the air. For those brief seconds, he hadn’t been an orphan who wore rags and slept in an alley. He was a bird, a wind spirit, a dream.

But he’d always fallen back to earth.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly.

They didn’t head straight home. They stopped at the baker, and then Faris had a brief chat with the neighbor who provided his firewood. “I’ll be needing more in a few weeks,” Faris said.

The neighbor nodded. “I’ll bring down a cartful soon.” For years Faris had given the man’s wife herbs to soothe a painful skin condition. And the previous autumn, Faris had treated the man’s infected leg wound. Originally the man had feared he would lose his leg, but now he didn’t even limp.

When Faris and Boro got home, Faris stoked the fire and then chose a few culinary herbs while Boro sat at the table, chopping potatoes and onions and throwing them into a pot. The butcher had given them a couple of very meaty pieces of bone, and Faris wanted to make another stew. He and Boro both needed some hearty food to replenish their energy.

The knock on the door was so strong it shook the frame.

Faris set down a jar of dried rosemary and hurried to answer. He hoped nobody was in distress. But when he swung the door open, he jerked backward at what he found: a large man in very fine clothes, flanked by two men with swords.

“Faris the herbalist?” demanded the man in the center. He was in his late thirties, perhaps, his dark hair now going to gray. His moustache and beard were neatly trimmed. He might have once been handsome, but his brightly embroidered tunic stretched over a too-large belly and his red nose and cheeks spoke of too much drink. Also, his nose was crooked and slightly swollen; it must have been recently broken.

“Yes,” replied Faris. But then he was distracted by a noise inside the house and turned his head to look.

Boro was backed into the far corner of the room. He pressed against the stone in a slight crouch, the knife still clutched in his hand. His face had gone very white.

Faris’s stomach tied into a knot. “What do you want, sir?” he asked the man at the door.

“I want my property returned.”

“I’m afraid I don’t—”

“You know exactly what I mean! My slave! I want him back.” The man’s voice softened slightly. “I will pay you for his… repairs, of course.” He tucked a meaty hand into his cloak and withdrew a fabric purse that jingled slightly when he shook it. “This is more than fair.”

“He doesn’t belong to you,” Faris replied through gritted teeth.

“He most certainly does! I bought him myself for sixteen para from a trader near Lashva.”

Already tight, Faris’s stomach lurched when he heard his lover’s value reduced to a few silver coins. He had to fight to keep his voice steady. “You removed your collar. You no longer have a claim on this man.”

Boro’s former owner waved a hand dismissively. “That was a mistake. A brief… error of judgment. I never intended to give him up.”

“You left him to die.” The sentence came out as a low growl. The armed men scowled and placed hands on the hilts of their swords.

But the man in the middle simply shrugged. “As I said, it was an error. Here. Take this and I will collect my chattel.” The purse gave an incongruously merry jangle.

Drawing himself to his full height, which was not very tall, Faris said, “No.”

“Surely
you
don’t mean to keep him! What would a… person like you do with a slave? Do you fancy yourself a master? That’s far above your station, boy.”

Faris was thirty years old. He was no boy. “He is a free man, sir. And whatever mistake you may have made, the law is clear on this. Do you fancy yourself above the law? That is above
your
station.” He never would have thought himself capable of such words to anyone, let alone a wealthy man flanked by guards. But Boro was here in his house, and Faris would die before he’d let him be enslaved again.

The guards shifted uncomfortably while their master’s entire face turned an alarming shade of red. If he had been a patient, Faris would have given him cinnamon, garlic, and olive oil and told him to drink less liquor. “You are an impudent dog!” the man spat.

“Perhaps. But I am a free man and this is my house, and you may not enter. And if you try to take Boro, everyone in Zidar will know, and they will all know that you have broken the law. Do you have enough money and power to stand up to the entire town?” Faris swallowed. “He can’t mean that much to you anyway, not the way you treated him. And a man such as you—you have so much, I’m sure you hardly notice the loss of one slave. Let him go.”

The man stood with his free hand opening and closing, and his guards continued to hold their sword hilts. Faris wanted to look at Boro and see how he was reacting to this conversation, but he didn’t dare break eye contact with the man who confronted him.

Finally the man tucked the purse away and lifted his lip into a sneer. “You’re right, boy. He means nothing to me. He’s worth nothing. But
you
have offended me, and I do not take affronts to my honor lightly.”

Quietly but calmly, Faris replied, “It seems to me that a man who would own another, who’d starve him and beat him and leave him to die all alone, tied to a stone—it seems to me a man like that possesses very little honor.” That was truth.

The man made a strangled sound and moved forward. Faris braced himself. But then one of the guards placed a hand on his master’s arm and murmured something in his ear, and Boro’s former owner stepped back. He compressed his mouth to a thin line and gave Faris a glare that could have curdled milk. Then he spun on his heel and marched away so fast his guards had to scramble to keep up.

Faris’s knees felt rubbery, and he wanted to collapse against the doorframe. But he didn’t. He carefully closed the door and bolted it, then turned to look at Boro.

Boro was still in the corner with the knife, and his face remained pale. His eyes were very wide.

“It’s all right,” Faris said as soothingly as possible. “He’s gone.” When Boro didn’t respond, Faris slowly approached him and gently took the knife away. He set the blade on the nearest shelf before wrapping Boro in an embrace. “He’s gone,” Faris repeated. Boro was trembling.

“You didn’t… you didn’t let him take me.”

“Of course not!”

“But he offered you money.”

Faris pulled away. “Do you really think I’d… I’d
sell
you?”

“He might have given you a
lot
of money.”

The anger Faris had been feeling toward the stranger now twisted within him. He backed away. “Do you think there’s any amount of coins I’d accept in place of you?” he yelled. “Even if it were my right to do so—and it isn’t—I wouldn’t sell you for a sultan’s treasure! I may be a thief, but I’m not….” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He turned around and stomped across the room to the table and began throwing sliced vegetables into his big pot. His cheeks burned and his throat felt so tight he could hardly breathe.

He heard the footsteps behind him, but still he jumped a little when hands landed on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Faris. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Faris whipped around. “What way did you mean it?” He was still shouting.

“I only…. This is new for me. For so long I’ve been treated like… a thing. Josipa and I treated our goats far better than my owner treated me. And yet there you stood, turning down good money, putting that rich bastard in his place. You’re no thief, dusho. My beloved. You’re the bravest, best man I’ve ever met.”

It was the endearments that did it more than the compliments, which weren’t true anyway. The rage inside Faris melted away like ice in the sun. Faris melted too, draping himself against Boro. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He should have been kinder to a man who was so terrified about being enslaved again. “What I said is true. He can’t take you. The town would never permit it.”

“What does the town care for me?”

“Maybe they don’t, not yet, although I’m sure they will when they know you better. But they do care about the law.”

Very quietly, Boro said, “None of
them
cut me down from that pillar.”

“But it was Mirsada who fetched me and made sure I cut you down. And the others, even if they had taken you, none of them would have known what to do with you. Not even Safet the barber.”

“But they knew you would.”

It was hard to shrug inside a tight embrace. “I suppose. They know I carry on Enis’s work.”

“I think it’s your work now. It has been for some time.”

Faris didn’t bother to answer. It didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was that Boro was safe, and that he knew it. Faris inhaled against Boro’s skin, scenting coffee, honey, onions, and Faris’s own herbs. Good.

T
HEY
ATE
their stew in silence, sometimes trading smiles across the table but no more. When Boro finished his bowl, Faris wordlessly refilled it. Boro shook his head and chuckled.

After the food was gone, Boro cleaned up while Faris stripped leaves from some dried plants, then took an inventory of his stock. He made a list of items that were running short. Some were spices he could obtain from a merchant in town, but others were more exotic and would require a trip to Tuchenik. In the past, he’d been glad for an excuse to make that journey, but not anymore. Although that task could wait a while longer, he would have to walk into the hills very soon, before the freezes killed everything off and the ice and snow made the trip too treacherous. Maybe by next week, Boro would be up to joining him. That would nice. He hadn’t had company on any of his hikes since before Enis died.

As darkness fell, Boro must have noticed him squinting over his papers, because he lit a lamp and set it beside him. Faris smiled at him. “I’ve never been waited on before.”