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

[anotherbreeze]

"I don't care," he says. "Whatever you want, or nothing."

[namesthesky]

"All right. And... I'm not sure why you're offering to bring me food."

[anotherbreeze]

He shrugs. "Because you might be hungry and it's a long way to the kitchen and I'm already going?"

[namesthesky]

"You could also send me to bring you food," she points out gingerly.

[anotherbreeze]

"Yeah," he says, "but I'm not."

[namesthesky]

"...May I ask why?" She almost adds 'my lord', then catches herself and trails off instead.

[anotherbreeze]

"Because - I got a person for my birthday," he says, frustrated. "And I don't know what to do with you. I don't want to do anything with you except leave you alone to do what you want, but I can't free you because you don't belong to me, on paper you're still Father's - he's like that with everything, Mother doesn't even own her own maid. And I don't know you, I don't know what you'd be doing if you weren't doing this, I don't know if you like it here, I don't really expect to find out, but I'm not going to send you to get my lunch when I'm perfectly capable of getting it myself and anytime I ever ask you to do something I can't know if you want to do it or if you just feel like you have to because you're my birthday present. So I'm just - going - to - not."

He covers his face with his hands and adds, somewhat muffled, "Sorry about the ranting."

[namesthesky]

"...it's fine," says Aya, blinking. "So... you aren't planning on giving me any... chores to do at any point? This isn't just a settling-in period?"

(Where "chores" is a stand-in both for conventional work and for - the obvious thing, but she isn't about to suggest it.)

[anotherbreeze]

"No," he says, dropping his hands, "yeah. This is it, this is what you get. So do you want something from the kitchen or not?"

[namesthesky]

"...Some... of... whatever you're having," says Aya, "if you don't mind?"

[anotherbreeze]

"All right," he says, and off he goes.

[namesthesky]

Aya...

sits very still for a moment,

and then she gets out another sheet of paper and draws a mismatched butterfly. She comes closer to actually writing on butterflies than anything else, and saves them for special occasions lest someone be suspicious of the little curlicues and personal ideograms passing for wing designs.

On the one wing, if he's for real, this is close to the cushiest situation imaginable. Effectively unlimited quantities of food better than what she ever learned to make, a comfortable room to herself, shelves and shelves of books she hasn't read yet, an attic full of things to entertain herself with if she takes him at his word, plenty of paper, and no demands on her time.

On the other wing, he seems sufficiently distraught by her presence that he might or might not be keeping an eye out for a way to get rid of her, and while he seems like he'd manumit her if he could, she has no strong reason to believe he wouldn't consider selling her to get her out of the way a strong second choice if it ever came up.

On the third wing, she can make no progress towards her original goal from here. With marked heel and no papers, she cannot very well save up money, attend school with it, make friends and social capital, and use these acquisitions plus remaining quantities of money to create change in things that annoy her about the world.

On the fourth wing, the boy who is (the buffer between her and the man who is actually responsible for) holding her back from this plan is the heir to Viore - the relationship between him and the current duke might be a disaster zone, but there's no sign of siblings anywhere and he hasn't been formally turned out or disinherited in favor of some cousin. She might be able to completely leapfrog her plan, if he's come down harder on the "sympathetic" side than the "does not want her around" side.

The butterfly gets one antenna, and it is on the side of the first and fourth wings.

[anotherbreeze]

The heir to Viore returns after a little while.

"Pastries," he says cheerfully. He glances at the drawing, almost says something, then stops himself.

[namesthesky]

She accepts the plate. "Thank you." She looks at him, and at the drawing, then picks up the butterfly and offers it for his inspection. "I draw," she says, and she shows him the lizard and the bird too. "You can look if you want."

[anotherbreeze]

"I like them," he admits. "But nah."

And he turns to go back to his room.

[namesthesky]

"Erm -" begins Aya; she's really not sure how to go about getting the attention of someone who seems keen to act as her peer. Maybe this would be easier if the old lady had kept more than one slave.

[anotherbreeze]

He stops.

"Yeah?"

[namesthesky]

"Since... you seemed... worried, I thought I should mention, this is a nicer situation than I would have likely wound up in if Berete hadn't picked me out, by a long way. I don't know if you're mostly upset on my behalf or because something about me is inconvenient, but I'm going to - try not to be inconvenient."

(She sounds so cringing even when she's actively trying not to be. She wonders how much papers in her pocket would have helped with that, if she'd have gone through awkward months of deferring to everyone she met if she'd been manumitted as expected. She supposes it wouldn't be an awful habit for a junior post office employee to have, and anyway that doesn't matter anymore.)

[anotherbreeze]

"...Thanks," he says. "That's - good to know. And, I don't know, it's not that you're inconvenient exactly? I mean it's technically sort of true but it's not the point. It's complicated."

[namesthesky]

"What is?" asks Aya.

[anotherbreeze]

"It's like... it's like being Father's only son," he says, leaning back against the doorframe. "There is no next heir; after me it's a handful of distant cousins in other provinces, none of which even border Viore, and they all have equal claim. So if I fall out of a tree and break my neck or something, and my parents don't manage to cough up another child in time to grow up before Father dies, it means chaos and rioting at least. Worse, if the cousins get to fighting each other and the King takes too long to come clean up the mess. So every time I think about doing something that might risk my life, it's not just 'what if I die', it's 'what if I die and thereby fuck over a whole province'. You could call that inconvenient, I'd for sure climb a lot more trees without it, but the population of Viore isn't really stopping me from taking stupid risks with my life. They couldn't if they tried. It's just," he shrugs, "I'm not keen on riots. I don't know, does that make sense?"

[namesthesky]

"In this analogy am I the population of Viore?"

[anotherbreeze]

"Yeah. Something like that. The details aren't the same, but it's the same general idea."

[namesthesky]

"I'm unavoidably on your plate because anything you could do to get me off your plate would have bad side effects for me and you don't want that," she concludes. "Well, I can stay out of your way and leave you alone, if you'd rather?"

[anotherbreeze]

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe? But I don't want you afraid of bothering me. If you need something you can't get by yourself, that's on my plate too. The part of this situation that bothers me already happened, and it's not something either of us can change, at least not while Father is alive. You're not going to make things worse just by talking to me or whatever."