The sultan's palace was a new world. A new world to escape the old.
Claude Frollo de Tirechappe arrived in the hot, lurid palace a mere two years after the torching of Paris. Mere years after a single gypsy's kiss had inspired in him such darkness that it had frightened all of France.
He should have known fate would punish him. By the great King's decree he was finally stopped, before Paris was ash. However, he was given a choice. Leave Paris, and suffer no consequence. Or the noose.
Exile or death. He had picked the former, and boarded a ship to a long forgotten place. A place he had visited years ago, in his youth, before becoming a minister.
Persia.
The place was hot, stifling, teeming with a matter of oddities, vices, and temptations. Most prevalent of all: the aura of mystery surrounding the sultan.
However, as soon as he had informed a messenger of his arrival, he was summoned to the palace.
The sultan, embraced him like an old friend, clapping him on the back, calling him brother. He stiffened beneath the energetic man's enthusiasm.
"You've grown so old since last you came! So much gray, so many wrinkles... Persian air will do you well, perhaps turn back the years," the ruler had said.
"Well, I will be here as long as you require any services of mine. I am in need of an occupation," Frollo said. Although the sultan was friendly now... Claude knew of his capriciousness as well when he passed by the pit, the stinking, rotting pit filled with headless bodies.
"Of course! But what may I ask prevents you from doing your old one?"
"There were some... difficulties in my duty I could not remedy."
No questions were asked after that.
Exile was a blessing. His duty hardly mattered anymore.
Jehan was dead. The hunchback loathed him. His men had deserted him.
And the gypsy?
The gypsy had spurned him. And in fear of his love... had disappeared one night from the harbor of Paris.
There was nothing tying him to Paris.
She still danced in his mind. Her name tingled on his tongue each night as he groped at himself in the dark. He wanted... he wanted desperately to feel. To feel something other than numbness, the coldness that pervaded him.
He was cold. Some may say cruel. But the truth was... he hated the coldness the bitterness that gripped his heart.
He hardly cared for Paris. He hardly cared for the lofty goals of purging the city of sin. Not anymore.
He only cared for her.
xxx
It was hard to frighten a gypsy.
Hard, but not impossible.
Esmeralda realized this wryly as she fled in the night from Paris, stowing away on a ship.
She hated running. She hated being a coward. But there were some things that frightened her greatly in this world. One of them was losing her family. The other was being dominated by a man like Frollo.
So she picked a third choice.
She let one soldier see her as she slipped aboard the vessel. She hardly cared where it was going, so long as it was far away. It was as the ship departed that she whistled to the soldier, a mere boy of seventeen.
Their eyes locked. His mouth fell open.
As Esmeralda left, she knew that the soldier would report to Frollo she had departed. He would have no more reason to torch the city. She would still be free.
Alone, but free.
Alone.
She was alone for a long time. She became the dancing girl, the crew's entertainment.
Even though some spoke warmly, if coarsely to her, she still was alone.
There were times she looked back. There were times she wondered about him.
He was so vile, so murderous!
Passionate, charismatic, whispered the dark, twisted recesses of her mind.
She found herself pitying the man. Pity? Ha! Then she would remind herself of his misdeeds, his madness.
She still desired something though. A nagging something.
To unhinge him. To overthrow that sanctimonious, arrogant man.
It was thoughts like this that alarmed her. Thoughts like this that made her wonder if she was more like him than she thought.
Esmeralda became lost in new worlds she had never seen before. The ship stopped along many places. Spain, Greece... then finally... Persia.
It was because of the captain she came to be at the sultan's palace. It was because of the captain she was summoned to dance.
The sultan was a man of power. But in Esmeralda's experience, men of power are easily swayed by gyrating women.
She was invited ("Cordially invited," the captain had whispered to her in awe) to join his court, and become one of the handmaidens for his daughter. She would be housed, protected, honored... so long as she danced each day for the white-haired sultan.
Where else was she to go? She accepted.
Her dark skin made it easier to blend in to the world of Persia. She wore their garb, wore the hanging veil across her mouth and nose. She became a faceless servant, only stripping herself of the mask when she crawled onto her mattress to sleep each night.
She lived in peace. At least the closest thing to peace before the whole mess in Paris started.
She still dreamed that he came to her.
Sometimes she shivered in fear.
But sometimes she was set aflame.