Quails And Soup

In Gregorian Calendar: 1st July, 1723

"Are Ottoman soup made of bilge water?" you exclaim as you give a disgusted look at the unpleasant contents of the bowl.

"I don't find anything wrong with it," Fatma replies, taking a sip. Her grimace gives you the answer, tastes like sh*t.

"What, Sultanim, not like the soup?" The cook, who is distributing with a big wooden spoon, points it at you and jeers.

"Why, not even a dog would want to drink this," a blonde girl, whose name you learnt to be Sibyl, whispers next to you. Her Arabic is better than the old cook and Cihangir, the man who told you that you were being taken to Constantinople. He often checks on you girls, but he's always too quiet.

Sibyl, Fatma, the brunette Nadia and a few other girls are sitting in a circle with you. It feels a bit better to have friends in this precarious situation.

Thankfully the cook didn't hear Sibyl, or another fight would ensue. This would have been the 20th time or so in three days.

Yes, for three days you haven't felt the sunlight or inhaled fresh air. Everyone started getting vexed and were getting harder to handle, so the men allowed you to eat in the galley, a more pleasant place than the dark storeroom where you all are crammed into for most of the day.

But you have managed to learn about your acquaintances. Sibyl is a pretty French girl of sixteen, blonde and freckled. She can speak Arabic somewhat passable, like you. You only learnt Arabic recently. When you joked why she came to a 'barbaric port when she could have been in France in tight corsets and waving fans', she grimly replied she didn't know why her parents brought her here at all.

Nadia is about seventeen, slightly plump, fair skinned with a long face which looks indifferent at all times. She is a local, but can speak many languages because most of her family are merchants. Her father is a friend of Kasim.

Meeting all these interesting people made you self conscious, but how can you tell them you were a runaway Mughal who escaped the law? You lied to be an ordinary local.

You look around to see everyone drinking the soup hungrily, and start having an internal debate whether you should do the same. A prim girl like Fatma, however, is not doing any better than you. But she pretends to be fine.

"Come on, eat up, you haven't eaten anything for days!" Fatma says with concern.

"I'm missing my mother's cooking a lot," you sniff, and your stomach grumbles. She pats your head.

Someone knocks on the door loudly. The cook hastily drops the soup bucket and opens it. It's a dark, young man who comes in and starts arguing with the cook.

"They're arguing about quails..." Sibyl murmurs to herself.

"You know Turkish?" You ask, surprised.

She shrugs. "Kind of, I have travelled quite a lot. I've been to Kostantiniyye, or Constantinople, whatever they call it."

They keep on arguing, which makes you curious. "Can you translate what they're saying?"

After a while, she smiles a little. You're surprised to see that she is actually capable of doing so. "They're out of quail meat, and their prince boarded this ship a while ago and wants quail for dinner."

"Ugh, isn't that prince the one who ransacked our town? He must have a bad case of gluttony, if he's so mad about quail," you say as you fiddle with the locket by your neck.

"Sounds ironic when you can't live without chicken yourself, Razia," Fatma replies with a weak smile. You just huff.

"I'm definitely having chicken now, alright-"

"That must be Shehzade Mahmut Ali Khan! Ever heard of him?" Sibyl chimes in to join the conversation, looking slightly excited.

"Well...yes...Sultan Murad died recently, how come he is ransacking towns instead of getting coronated?" Fatma asks, almost to herself. You're quite surprised to hear her talk about politics, again.

"Weird. They all are weird. And I don't want to think about anything they do after they took me away from my family," another girl, Raysha, grumbles. She's probably the eldest of you all, but still young. You've heard her cry about some lost lover. She's a bit weird at times.

"I do agree with you on that," Sibyl says. "I don't even get why our town was attacked, I thought we had allegiance to the Ottomans. Shehzade Mahmut its also said to be kind..."

"Someone who raids towns cannot be kind," you snap. She nods and looks down at her bowl.

All this time, the argument still continued. Then suddenly, the cook throws up his hands, says something loud, then leaves. The soldier looks at you all awkwardly for a moment, then orders you to go back to the storeroom. You quickly take one big gulp out of the bowl (it tastes awful), then leave the galley. He closes the door when everyone gets in.

Wait...you don't hear any clicking sound. He forgot to lock the door!