Lisette awoke into a different darkness than she had slept in. Night was all around her, and she ached. She stifled a groan, and stood somehow. She still wore her odalisque outfit, and she realized in the black, she might be a little invisible outside.
She had never been outside alone in the night since she had come to Persia; a sudden desire to run under the Persian stars overcame her, and before her rationale kicked in, she had crept out her window to hide against the wall. Black her tunic might be, but her skin was white, even darkened as it was by the bruises.
Lisette's eyes took a moment to adjust, but then, she looked up at the sky. Breathtaking.
The stars were bright and still and far away; Lisette remembered feeling half in the sky one night in France, but here, she felt so... earthly. So distant from everything else, and all alone. Alone.
She snuck along the wall, and realized she never had been past the east side of the harem. Glancing about, she moved low to the ground with strange ease. The sand and stones beneath her feet felt like nothing on her rough soles.
Soon, she saw a rather small building. She heard the voices of Vadim and another eunuch low in the darkness, and she crept closer. Peeking in a less-than-dark window, she saw a group around a few candles. One looked to the window suddenly and swore.
Lisette froze for a moment, her eyes wide and scared under the scrutiny of the shocked eunuchs. Then, she turned and ran. Straight into a man wearing black enough to be the devil. She fell back into the sand, her head hitting the bottom wall of the small building.
"Lisette!" Vadim came from a doorway, his voice coarse and low and angry. "You will be killed for this, if she finds out!"
Lisette answered without thinking. "Perhaps I should scream, then she could kill me and I would be free from this place. It would be a beautiful change."
"Even if you are sent to hell?"
"It couldn't be half as bad," Lisette whispered, rubbing the back of her head as stars ran away from the corners of her vision. "At least there, I am sure, they do not offer up humans as gifts or twentieth wives."
"Ah. I have heard the news of Aleena and the shah-in-shah," Vadim said, trying to see the dark shadow hovering over Lisette. "Come, I must take you back before you are seen."
"I am quite seen; you are seeing me, and so is this shadow of a man," Lisette said matter-of-factly. She tried to see him again, but failed. "Who are you, so quiet there? Speak."
"Why on earth should I obey a lowly odalisque who only earlier was beaten for not saying hello to me?"
Lisette froze from standing, on knee on the ground. The architect. The French architect. Laure whispered the Shma three times before daring to look up. The architect glowered down at her, or so she imagined. She still could not see him.
"Sir," Vadim said, seeming nervous for the first time, "please do not turn her in. She deserves nothing, she has never been so-"
"Quiet. I suggest you go back inside so I may speak to this girl." The architect was quiet, but Lisette knew anyone would obey his commanding tone. Vadim left, quiet as the grave, and Lisette felt her arm taken hold of. She gasped in pain, her bruises searing under the architect's hold.
"Ah, yes. You were beaten, rather than look at me." His voice was tinged with amusement and anger. "Stand up, then, girl."
"I'm not a girl," Lisette whispered, pushing herself to her feet. "I'm not a little girl."
"I never said you were little," the architect smirked. "How old are you, that you deny your girlhood, then?"
"Seventeen."
"No more than a girl, still. As the sultana would say, you're quite-"
"I have no desire to hear what the sultana would say. Let me go back to my room, before they catch me."
"I would not let them catch you, little girl," he said, almost mockingly. Lisette looked away, angry. "Do I sense some emotion? Come, be angry to me, little one, that I may laugh. Nothing is amusing any more; make me laugh."
"No."
"You are full of no's today, aren't you."
Lisette felt the urge to speak in French, and she did. "Je suis seule," she said, feeling strangely detached. He grasped her arms again, and spoke to her in French.
"You speak French? You are French? Why did they not say so?" He was urgent, biting into her bruises. She did not even give a sign she had heard him. "Tell me!" He gripped harder, making her stiffen, but she said nothing. Suddenly, his hands moved away, and grasped her shoulders. "Tell me, or-" His fingers wrapped around her neck. "Or I'll snap your pretty little neck and leave you on the sultana's couch."
"Do that," Lisette said, en français, gasping for air. "See how she likes it, see how she will take it out on you. She hates you," she added, wondering if that was true. He pulled his hands away, finally, satisfied.
"So you are French. What is your name?"
"Tell me yours, and I'll tell mine." His hands played at her neck again, and she spoke quickly. "Lisette Le- Leblanc. Who are you?"
"I am Erik." She noticed he wore black gloves, and he took one off with his teeth. "Where in France?"
"Nice. But I was taken out- kidnapped, I mean, at Cagnes-sur-mer."
"You are strangely dispassionate about it all."
Lisette began to answer, but then remembered. This was the architect, the one she would be forced upon, and who might force himself on her. She shook her head, dizzy, and fell down to the sand. He knelt slowly, his knee touching hers. He touched the back of her neck, frowning. "You are warm to the touch, you may have a fever."
"In this weather? Is it possible?" she wondered. He nodded, and she gave an unhappy sigh. "I hope it kills me. Then I can go to heaven."
"You think you will be let in?" He was amused, and he put his glove back on and stood.
"I have done nothing I should not have done, except let myself fall a little in love with a goy." Why was she pouring out her secrets to an architect? "But I never found much wrong in following your heart."
"And what does your certainly cold heart say now?" Erik the cynical architect offered her his gloved hand, and she took it to pull herself up.
"Die," she said simply. "It wants me to die." Erik did not let go of her hand, and when she fainted and fell to the ground, he lifted her easily and took her to her room through the window.