Flashback: Omar, Part II

One Week Later, in the 2nd year of the reign of House Redwater

There were distinct advantages to having a job description that included the phrase 'a man about town.'  It meant that his wife truly couldn't keep him from going out.  She could set his own minor agents, spies, and retainers upon him...except that he had an entirely separate structure of such people, just to be safe, and they wouldn't be reporting his movements to Jamilla.

It all felt like some big game, really, but it was quite serious.  He had talked to a few people, called in a few favors, and so Jamilla was going to go on a girls' night out, get distracted and pampered and, no doubt, talk politics, intrigue, the fate of planets and all sorts of girl talk like that.

His plans had resolved into a rather vindictive desire to see her suffer.  Here he was, trying to at least give some consideration to her feelings, to at least make this as painless as possible, and she'd rebuffed him.  And so Salamah planned on seducing a young woman, carrying on with her until she had a baby, and then leaving her behind to present the child to Jamilla as a fait acompli.  But Salamah also had to suceed in brushing off the mother of the child, which meant that he had to choose a woman of less than considerable means, but respectable enough to...

Well, it could go on for quite a while.  It was a complex, if somewhat sleazy, balancing act, and all of those factors and more had influenced Salamah's choice in bar.
    
The Backwards Goblet (its traditional joke is 'how can you tell if it is backwards?") was not low class by any means.  Several years ago, or so he was told, it had even been flash.  For reasons that nobody knew, several of the trendsetters of Azha had alighted on the Goblet, and within a week it had become the hotspot where anybody of note started their night.  And if they didn't, well, then they weren't of note.  Celebrities of every kind were there, and for nine months it was all but the center of the world.  Then, just as arbitrarily, they moved on one day.

Overnight, The Backwards Goblet turned back into what it was before.  A lower-to-middling sort of place full of 'Aspiring' people.  Aspiring poets, philosophers, courtiers, writers, courtesans, academics.  Where once, for nine months, the real deal had declaimed and charmed and posed, now hopeful iimitations sought entry into these circles...and hoped that their stop at The Backwards Goblet was purely temporary.

And Salamah was going to play as an Aspiring Courtier, someone who looked up to him as he might to a Noble.  His clothes for tonight were slightly threadbare, but carefully matched.  He stepped out of the rusting hover-taxi to gaze upon a giant goblet with the words "The Backwards Goblet" awkwardly stretched around the goblet.  And standing beneath it, one little accident from being crushed, was a man with no neck, muscle and fat blended.

He smiled at the man, who grunted and let him in.  The place was almost quaint.  It had old-fashioned, out of date wood paneling and chairs and bars...it was almost as strange as going back to sticks and stones, in some ways.  Real wood, too.  There were a few dozen people there, including a number of women who would work.

There was one with long blue hair and pitch-black skin, whose eyes were alight with mischief.  There was a beautiful, pale red-head who danced like all the world relied upon it.  The way her hair, spiky, seemed to shake with her movements was, to be frank, quite arousing.

But his eyes finally alighted on a young-looking woman of dark, almost brown skin, her face smooth, her hair a nut-brown, her face as expressive and pretty as any of them there.  There was a gentleness to the way she was talking to the bartender, nursing a drink that seemed fruity, well-dressed and modest.  She was not beautiful, but there was a prettiness and cuteness to her, a warmness in the way she held herself.  Of course, everything could be faked.

Still...he was intrigued, and he began to pick his way towards her.  Target acquired.

Had he known what he was getting into, he would have turned around right there...or perhaps not.

((This is only half of what I'd planned for Omar II but it's already gotten a bit long, and I haven't released anything in a while, so, well, here you go.))