an estate sale

[namesthesky]

Damn the old lady. Damn her into whatever creative torments have ever been invented for priests to wish on their theological opponents, all simultaneously, for ever and always, let it be done.

Aya is quite aware that she'd revise this opinion if her opinions had any power over the fate of the old lady. Since they do not, she will stand here and silently call down curses.

She was supposed to be willed to herself. She had plans. She was going to sleep in the temple attic and work for the post office and save up enough to go to Carthapane. She was pretty sure she could be enrolled in a college by twenty-five, doing something useful by thirty - she was undecided pending her more formal education between illegal human export and working within the system for debt relief or purchase-to-manumit programs -

And now she'll just count herself lucky if she gets bought by someone with loose enough security that she can flee over the border without falling into a magic, attempt to teach herself Tsopixi, and do - she doesn't have a plan after that, now. Her plan went up in smoke when the old lady's will was read and she was left to the idiot grandson and the idiot grandson traded her to a reseller for enough to cover his bad investments. She can't go work for the post office with marked heel and no papers.

And she is keenly aware that she is sixteen going on seventeen, which is a much different situation than she faced when she was on the block a decade ago being advertised for her literacy, assessed for her ability to take dictation.

She shifts position. The chain between her collar and the wall jangles. She watches people going by, browsing, reading the sign posted in front of her.

"Ayabel" - 125 seo
16 yrs, healthy
Reads & writes (Esevi, some Ancient Sudre)
10 yrs housegirl experience, previously farming
No history of rebelliousness

Yeah. No history of rebelliousness, because the old lady was old and coming up on the end of her life, the old lady let her read books and left her enough free time to think and draw, the old lady was going to will her to herself and then she could get started on her life.

This history won't last long, Aya doesn't think.

Most especially if anyone looks at the second line and brings her home for the obvious thing.

Comments

[makeyourselfuseful]

"...Hal is... a strange one," she says contemplatively. "Maybe because Duke Halzane asks so much of him, I don't know. But whenever he doesn't have to act the ducal heir, he does the oddest things in the oddest ways. He'll come down and cook with me, or get one of the girls to teach him how to sew or braid cord or weave baskets or wipe floors. He cleans his own rooms - not on much of a schedule, mind you, but often enough. When the Duke wanted to get him a personal servant, Hal told me he didn't want some poor soul to get beaten when he ruins his clothes, and I managed to persuade the Duke it would be a waste of money since he doesn't write letters and he looks after himself."

[namesthesky]

"Yes, I imagine it would be - difficult if my official job description amounted to anything more than 'exist thereabouts'. I have no idea how I'd have rescued that shirt."

[makeyourselfuseful]

"That boy is hard on his clothes. And his pillows. And occasionally his furniture. I don't think he's raised a hand to a servant since he got out of his biting phase when he was three, but he does destroy things."

[namesthesky]

"Well, I know which I prefer him to be."

[makeyourselfuseful]

"Be thankful you didn't know him as a little one, then. He learned how to walk and spent the next few weeks rocketing around the house biting anything he could catch - people, curtains, tables, doors."

[namesthesky]

"From a distance of several years," confesses Aya, "that is very cute."

[makeyourselfuseful]

"It is, isn't it? Much less so at the time."

[namesthesky]

It occurs to Aya to wonder what would have happened to a small incorrigible biter in this house.

She frowns, then stops wondering.

"You've been here for a long time, then?"

[makeyourselfuseful]

"Yeah. I grew up in the city; my parents were the cooks in neighbouring households, which is all the cute childhood story I've got because I was a very boring child. I grew up helping my mother in the kitchen, and then I came here when I was - oh, about your age, I suppose. Just in time to meet little Hal before he discovered the joy of biting things. And how about you? What's your story?"

[namesthesky]

"Second-generation slaveborn," says Aya, "on a farm; I taught myself to read when I was five, got noticed at it when I was six, and I was sold for enough to buy someone older and better suited to farm work in particular. My prior owner had me taking dictation and doing household chores - everything I listed for you the other day, pretty much. She wasn't bad, as these things go, usually let me make a given mistake once without hitting me, left me some time to myself - some of her relatives and friends were worse, but they always left eventually. It's nicer here, though, I'm not sleeping in front of the hearth and you're a better cook than I am and I have so much time now."

[makeyourselfuseful]

"I'm a better cook than most people," says Berete.

[namesthesky]

"I am more than willing to believe it." Steamed bun steamed bun om nom nom.

[makeyourselfuseful]

"If you ever run out of better things to do with all that time, you're welcome to come down and learn. With or without Hal."

[namesthesky]

"I'll keep that in mind."

[makeyourselfuseful]

She smiles.