Anoor grinned widely despite the insult.
“I do?”
“Yes. Do you have a shantra board?”
“No.” Anoor’s shoulders drooped. “But I know where we can get one.”
“Lead the way.”
—
Anoor led Sylah to her favorite place in the Keep. They walked through the cloisters—where the clockmaster informed Anoor it was half a strike past ten at night—toward the western side of the Keep where the library was.
“Hello again, Bisma,” Anoor greeted the librarian.
“Oh hello, Miss Elsari.” Red sauce coated his mustache from the stuffed flatbread in his hand. His eyes slipped over Sylah as if she weren’t there. Sometimes Anoor forgot she was a servant in everyone’s eyes. Anoor wondered if it galled her.
“You here to enter the tournament?”
“Just to watch, actually.”
“Go on through then, it’s a tense one today.”
Sylah snorted beside her.
Between the racks of books and forgotten words was a collection of tables. Sometimes Anoor sat there to read the latest zine when she couldn’t wait to go all the way back to her chambers. Sylah pulled a face as she surveyed the library.
Every third night between the strikes of nine and ten a group of servants came down to play shantra.
There were eight of them today, two groups of four, clustered around two boards. The silence was fraught with a thoughtful tension.
“Fucking skies above, this is what servants spend their nights doing?”
They all looked up at Sylah’s rude intervention. Eight faces split in a scowl.
“Sorry,” Anoor said on Sylah’s behalf as she dropped her eyes to her feet.
“Anoor!”
Anoor knew that rich, deep voice, like morning coffee. She raised her gaze to Kwame’s smiling face.
“Oh, I hoped you might be here.” Kwame used to be Anoor’s shantra partner, as the game required four players.
“You haven’t played in mooncycles. We’ve missed you.” His competitors were glaring at him, waiting for him to make the next move, but too polite to interrupt the warden’s daughter.
Sylah wasn’t too polite to interrupt. “Is there a spare board we could use?”
“Of course, they’re all Anoor’s anyway.” Kwame said. “Hi by the way.” He added a greeting to Sylah, which shocked Anoor until she remembered once again—Sylah was a servant.
“What does he mean they’re all yours?” Sylah asked Anoor.
“Nothing,” Anoor mumbled.
“She bought them all,” a young girl added; Anoor was ashamed to say she didn’t remember her name. “And sorted out this space in the library for us to play. The kitchens can get a bit noisy.”
Sylah was looking at Anoor, and it brought out beads of sweat on her brow.
Anoor imagined what Sylah was thinking: this sad girl had to pay servants to be her friends? Anoor felt her skin heat up with embarrassment as she thought of her life before Sylah. Loneliness had gnawed at her heart, and she drifted, purposeless, with a few small pleasures like shantra, clothes, and jewelry. Oh, and food. She missed fried food desperately.