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That carpet had to be worth more than a kidney. How did Sasha know the price of a kidney? Don’t ask. But she was willing to bet that those woven ruby roses and royal blue diamond motifs were the product of hundreds of hours of work, and that kind of meticulous craft usually came with a shiny price tag.
She knelt down in the middle of Hamid’s living room to smooth her palms over the brightly coloured threads, her fingers unconsciously tracing the vine-patterned lines. It was soft, too.
“Did you lose something, Sasha?” said a voice from behind her, its tone both puzzled and helpful.
Effortlessly, she rearranged her legs to settle down on the rug and twisted herself in place, refusing to leave this easy comfort after the day she’d had. Getting chased through London was nothing new for her, but the explosive flasks and the company had been.
Just out of arm’s length, Hamid sat slouched in a dark leather-bound sofa, his small shape almost lost in the background of rich embossed leather. A thousand gold pieces? Two thousand maybe? Damn, maybe she needed some more practice. Artifact appraising had always been much more up her alley.
Stretching her hands forwards and digging them into the rich threads of the carpet like a cat, she looked up to the eyes she felt on her and drawled out, “this’s nice, Hamid, really nice.”
An instant smile appeared on his features. “Oh! Thank you. My parents sent it to me from Cairo. I think they got it from somewhere in Tunisia,” he said, obviously pleased at either the compliment or the memory.
It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him. Smiles were as much a part of Hamid as eel delicacies were to Other London. Nervous smiles. Excited smiles. Cocky ones that followed him casting that cleaning-up spell on himself.
She wasn’t quite used to it yet. With Zolf, it was easier. In the few hours she’d known him, he’d maybe smiled once or twice, and seemingly more out of satisfaction than anything else. That, she could relate to.
As if privy to her thoughts, Zolf emerged from the short hallway leading the bathroom, beads of water still dropping from his hair and beard onto the polished wood.
Rubbing at a spot below his nape, he threw a glance towards the window seat. “Bertie, you wanted to go next?”
At once, Bertie, who had spent the last half hour observing passersby below and making the occasional snide comment, slapped his hands loudly on his legs and shot up from his pillow seat. “Ah, thank you, Mr Smith, much appreciated.” As he strode past Zolf, he leaned down towards him and added with his booming voice, “hope you didn’t hog all the hot water to yourself, being a priest of Poseidon and all that,” before disappearing down the corridor.
“Cleric,” Zolf muttered to himself. He turned to Hamid, who sat watching him, hands clasped together and a sheepish look on his face. “Should I be concerned that your friend thinks Poseidon is the god of hot water?”
Sasha watched with some amusement as Hamid offered his best pained and polite smile to Zolf.
“I’m sorry, please don’t mind Bertie. He can be a bit of...”
“An ass?” Zolf and Sasha kindly supplied.
Hamid shook his head gently. “More like an acquired taste,” he corrected. “But please, have a seat and rest up, Zolf.” He patted his hands on the cushion beside him. “Out of all of us today, you’re probably the one who’s — well the one who...”
“The one who swam inside the poo water,” Zolf finished, a wry grimace pulling at his lips. “It’s okay, you can say it, Hamid. Plus, you jumped in right after me.” He laid a hand on top of the sofa. “Thanks for that, by the way.”
Zolf’s gratitude appeared to provoke Hamid’s hands into wild gestures. “Oh no, please, it was nothing. I mean — it wasn’t nothing, but it’s normal. We’re a team now, aren’t we?”
Team . The word bounced and stretched between the walls of Sasha’s head while Zolf slid between her and the sofa to join Hamid. She’d been part of a gang before. A crew. An organisation. But never a team.
As Zolf was about to settle down, her hand flew up to grab the lower hem of his shirt.
“Wait, Zolf — you gotta feel this carpet!”
Zolf stilled and raised his eyebrows at her, but didn't ask why. Instead, he simply crouched down and ran his fingers slowly through the threads.
His eyes lifted back up to Sasha. “It’s soft.”
She responded with an excited nod. “I know, right? Like really, really soft!”
She saw, rather than heard, Zolf exhale a tiny huff of laughter, as he was quickly joined by Hamid’s louder chuckle. This close, she could pick up the smell of whatever fruity shampoo Zolf had borrowed from Hamid. She tried to ignore the unfamiliar sense of warmth slowly seeping into her.
“Well, I’m glad you both like it! I’m sorry I don’t have much else to offer.” Hamid ran his eyes over the living room, starting from the brass-accented coffee table, on to the heavy velvet curtains and the veined marble countertops. “But, at least I suppose it’s comfortable enough for a place in Central London.”
Sasha struggled to contain a grin as Zolf mouthed “comfortable” to her, his back still to Hamid.
“But just enough,” she whispered back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say, Sasha?” Hamid asked, the leather underneath him creaking as he leaned forward in his seat, brows slightly furrowed.
“Uh, what did I say?” Sasha mentally whacked herself for her response. Her appraising wasn’t the only thing that needed work. “Oh, right. It was nothing. I — I was just agreeing that your flat is comfortable.”
Inches away from her, Zolf murmured under his breath, “comfortable enough.”
Sasha quickly flicked her eyes downwards to prevent another grin, instead focusing on the way her thumb playfully traced the woollen loops drawn by golden interwoven leaves.
Zolf seemed to take this as his cue to finally straighten up, only to immediately flop down by Hamid’s side.
For a while, no one spoke. Sasha continued her private game, having now given herself the additional rule of not being allowed to follow the same line twice. She was getting quite good at it, if she could say so herself.
After a few minutes, Zolf was the one to break the silence. “So Hamid, how long have you been staying here?”
“Oh, uhm — I’ve only been here for a few months. I only moved here after my university —” a noticeable pause ensued, long enough to make Sasha look up, before Hamid pressed on “— after I decided to take a break from my studies.”
Sasha eyed Hamid carefully; she could recognise another liar when she saw one. Though she couldn’t figure out what kind of secret an Upper Londoner like him, living in a posh flat like this, could possibly have to hide. In her experience, people in his position had nothing to hide — they could get away with anything.
At Hamid’s side, Zolf seemed to sense that something was off too, as he asked, “Why’d you decide to take a break?”
Hamid sprung from the sofa without warning. “I should check on Bertie. You didn’t use up all the hot water, Zolf, but I’ve got a feeling that Bertie might. And I really need a hot bath tonight.” Then, he was gone before either Zolf or Sasha had any time to question it.
Still rooted to her spot on the rug, Sasha arched a skeptical eyebrow in Zolf’s direction. “Suspicious?” she asked him.
"Definitely suspicious,” he agreed with a nod, casting a side glance at the empty corridor. His mouth opened, as if he were about to speak again, but the words only tumbled out after a few seconds of hesitation. “Well, we’re all gonna have our secrets. And most of us just met today, so I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.” As he spoke, the heel of his hand began kneading his knee, around the juncture where Sasha guessed that metal met flesh.
Briefly, she wondered if it ever hurt.
“Sasha. About that. Well, it’s not really about that, but, are you comfortable — don’t ,” he warned, a grin threatening to form at his lips.“Are you alright with staying here with us tonight? If there’s another place where you’d rather hole up for the night, then that’s good with me too. You can just meet us here first thing tomorrow morning.”
Though Sasha heard the words perfectly, it took her a moment to register their meaning. Even then, it felt like surely she must have misunderstood something.
She tilted her head slightly. “Do you want me to, like, leave?”
“What? No. I mean, to be honest you’re probably safer here with us. I’m not really sure about Hamid yet, but at least Bertie seems like he can definitely hold his own in a fight. And I’m here too. You can count on my trident to poke at whoever tries to come near you.”
“That’s…” she started, her mind furiously shuffling and discarding words in search of the correct one in this situation. “That’s cool,” she finally said, her clumsy choice of words heating her cheeks in embarrassment, before she quickly added, “Thanks, Zolf.”
Shaking his head, Zolf cleared his throat awkwardly. “It’s okay, no need —”
“So! What have we got planned for dinner, everyone?”
Relief, and possibly the tiniest speck of gratitude, flooded through Sasha at Bertie’s grand entrance into the living room. Jumping at the opportunity, she unfolded herself up from the floor and flashed something that hopefully resembled a smile at Zolf, before fleeing to the kitchen with Bertie trailing closely behind her.
Gods, at least the explosive flasks hadn’t expected her to hold a conversation on her own.