Freedom's Gate

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Are you not really a virgin?” Tamar asked. She dropped her voice to a whisper and glanced to see if Aislan was listening. “There are ways to fake the blood, if you have to. I would have expected Sophos to check, though, before paying a virgin’s price.”

  “I really am a virgin,” I said, and stabbed at the vest I was mending, jabbing myself in the finger. “I think she was just harassing me. I swear before Prom— I swear before the djinn, Tamar, I don’t know what she was talking about.”

  Tamar shot me a dubious look, then glanced at the circle of silent women with their eyes on their sewing, and shrugged. I thought she’d probably want to discuss this later. Aislan strolled over and picked up Tamar’s finished mending to inspect it; she flashed another bracelet, this one a slender thread of silver around her wrist. “How was your night, Tamar?” Her voice was falsely sweet.

  Tamar looked up at Aislan with undisguised loathing and said nothing.

  “You know, if you’d pretend to like it, he’d find someone else. One of the young boys, maybe.”

  “Thank you for the advice, Aislan.” Tamar’s voice was thick.

  Aislan shrugged and looked down to smile at me. “Let this be a lesson to you, Lauria,” she said, flashing her bracelet again. “If you act like you’re enjoying yourself, you’ll get to spend your nights with men who want to treat you well. If you act like you’re hating every minute of it, you’ll get to spend your nights with men who take pleasure in your pain.” She patted me on the cheek and ambled back to drop the mended socks into the basket.

  I glanced at Tamar. Her face was scarlet and her jaw was tight. The stitches of her seam had gone from tiny and careful to huge and ugly; after a moment she looked down, bit her lip, and picked out those stitches. I felt my own anger flare at Aislan. As prickly and inexplicable as she might be, I found myself liking Tamar much more.

  During our evening meal that day, Aislan’s face went suddenly gray and she dropped her plate of food. Her limbs tremored like she was going to have a seizure, but her eyes didn’t roll back in her head; they stayed wide, though unfocused and glazed, as if she were staring at something just five inches from her nose. Aeriko possession. This sort of visitation from an aeriko—a djinn, I reminded myself—I recognized.

  “It’s back,” someone murmured. I looked at Tamar; she was trying to suppress a smile, without much success. When she saw that I was looking at her, she quickly pushed a bite of food into her mouth and composed her features.

  Everyone else was looking at Jaran. He put down his plate of food and rose from his cushion in a quick, fluid gesture; he crossed the room slowly, his eyes fixed on Aislan’s. “Why are you bothering her?” he asked in a conversational tone.

  If the djinn had a reply, I couldn’t hear it. Jaran shook his head and slowly lowered himself to a crouch, cupping Aislan’s shoulders gently with his slender hands. “You know I’ll throw you out eventually. Why don’t you just leave her alone?”

  Aislan began to drool. Meruert whisked Aislan’s plate of unfinished food out of the way and, after a minute or two, finished it. Jaran shrugged and went back to his own abandoned plate. When Boradai came up a little while later to escort the concubines downstairs, she saw Aislan and turned furiously to glare at Jaran. He inclined his head respectfully. “I’m going to take care of it,” he said. “I needed to finish my meal first. Exorcisms require a great deal of strength.”

  “And you’ll need assistants, no doubt,” Boradai said, her tone acid.

  “I’m so glad you understand that.” Jaran glanced around the room and his eyes lit on me. “I don’t need the new one, of course.”

  “She can’t go down today,” Boradai said through clenched teeth. “Since she’ll be staying here, she can take someone else’s place. Tamar can go down.”

  “Oh no, Tamar is my apprentice,” Jaran said. “She needs to stay here. But . . .” He looked around and shrugged. “With Lauria here, I suppose we could spare Meruert.”

  Meruert stood up quickly to put on cosmetics and perfume, then followed Boradai out the door.

  Once they were gone, one of the other women led the unresponsive Aislan to a seat in the corner of the room. Jaran finished eating, then stood up and stretched. He sat down across from Aislan and began to strum his dombra, the same two notes over and over, just as he had last night before the visitation from the aeriko.

  There were cabinets along one of the walls, and Tamar began to fetch things from them. She brought him a drawstring bag made of polished leather, and a copper incense burner shaped like a stylized sun. A dozen quill feathers bundled together and tied with thread. A vest covered in twisting vines worked with bright thread. Jaran shrugged on the vest and resumed strumming. One of the boys lit incense and placed it in the holder, and one of the women untied the feathers and laid them out in front of Jaran. Tamar brought a small, covered clay pot down from the cabinet, and then all the concubines sat, arraying themselves loosely around Jaran and Aislan. Tamar gestured to me and I sat down beside her.

  Jaran played for what seemed like a very long time, though it may have only seemed like a long time because of the tedium. Smoke coiled up from the incense burner like a dark snake in the air, then broke and dissipated as a cold night breeze wafted through the room. It smelled musky, like spices mixed with wet sand. Finally, Jaran set down his dombra. He uncovered the pot; then he picked up a large black feather and lowered it briefly inside. I saw moisture glistening on the tip of the feather; the pot held something liquid. Very delicately, Jaran took Aislan’s hand, and brushed her palm with the moistened feather.

  “Aislan is a child of the river, the steppe, and the djinni,” he said. “Tamar, do you claim her?”

  “I do,” Tamar said.

  “Lauria, do you claim her?”

  I was hardly qualified, but the expected response was pretty clear. “I do,” I said.

  He went around the circle; each woman and boy gave the expected response. When everyone had spoken, he dipped the feather into the pot again, and brushed her forehead, cheeks, and lips. “Aislan belongs to us. Be gone.” He pressed the heel of his hand to her forehead, and for a brief moment, I saw the shimmer of a djinn in the air, like an aura around Aislan. A look of strain crossed Jaran’s face and he sank back on his heels. Aislan was still drooling.

  He picked up his dombra and began to strum again. Two notes, faster and faster. This time, he dipped his fingers into the water and flicked the water over Aislan’s hair before pressing his hand against her head. “Aislan belongs to us. Be gone!” This time, there wasn’t even the sparkle of the djinn starting to leave.

  Jaran glanced at Tamar; she jumped up and ran to the cabinet, and came back with a small drum. She sat down and began to beat a slow, steady rhythm. Jaran stood up and began to dance to the drumbeat. Jaran’s dance made me think of a bird in flight. He started out with a slow, measured step but began to whirl as Tamar sped up the beat, his arms outstretched. He grew breathless from exertion; I could see the sweat beading on his face. Finally he clasped Aislan’s hands and jerked her to her feet, grasping her face in both hands, his palms on her cheeks. “Aislan belongs to me!” he shouted. “Return to the Silent Lands, lost one of your kind, and trouble us no more!”

  The harem went silent—a breathless, expectant hush as everyone watched Aislan. For a moment, we all saw it: the djinn, like a golden shimmer in the air, lighting the face of both Aislan and Jaran. Then, like water draining from a funnel, we saw the djinn slip into Jaran’s chest; I could see Jaran’s face, and for a heartbeat, I could see the djinn in his eyes, wild and staring and angry. Then it was gone.

  Aislan slipped out of Jaran’s hands and fell to the floor. Jaran collapsed beside her, exhausted.

  After a few more hushed moments, Tamar tenderly covered Jaran with a blanket where he lay, and slipped a pillow under his head. She did the same for Aislan, in a more cursory way, and then began to pick up the ritual implements. The other concubines started to chat in whispers that s
lowly became normal speech. Aislan’s eyes were closed; someone checked to make sure she was breathing, then covered her with a blanket to let her sleep where she’d fallen. I wasn’t sure if I should help pick up the ritual items, but I trailed Tamar as she put them away. “What’s in the pot?” I asked her.

  “River water, from the wet season when there’s water in the old riverbed. One of the yard slaves gets it for us.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why Jaran needed so many people here.”

  Tamar gave me a slightly exasperated look. “Well, he doesn’t, exactly. But Aislan is a favorite and Sophos wants to be sure this gets fixed right away, and no one’s going to argue with Jaran. This way, none of us had to go downstairs.”

  “Except for Meruert.”

  Tamar shrugged. “She likes going down. One of Sophos’s friends likes to give her things, like Aislan. Aislan likes going down, too. But she was possessed by the djinn, so too bad for her.”

  “It’s still pretty early,” I said, as Tamar closed the cabinet where the water pot and feathers were stored.

  “If Boradai comes up to bother us, Jaran will tell her that we’re guarding Aislan to make sure the djinn doesn’t come back.” Tamar shrugged and flopped down on her pillow. “Don’t you go telling this to Boradai or Sophos or anything.”

  “You think I would?” I gave my voice a slight edge.

  Tamar shrugged. “No offense, Lauria, but you seem pretty witless in some ways. I figured I’d better tell you to keep your mouth shut.”

  Witless? Well, that was better than “suspicious.” I shrugged and lay down near Tamar, though not in “her” corner. “I won’t tell anyone,” I said, truthfully enough. I supposed that I shouldn’t feel any sort of allegiance to Tamar and the other concubines, but in truth I was beginning to feel a real sympathy for Tamar. She hated going downstairs, and if I were really stuck here, I thought I might hate it, too. Besides, if someone ratted Jaran out, suspicion would naturally focus on me. That would definitely not be helpful to my real goal here.

  As the other women blew out the lamps and we all settled down to sleep, I found myself thinking about Tamar’s angry, slightly drunken face when she’d woken me, and her relief tonight at being able to stay safely upstairs. Against my will, my thoughts turned to Alibek. Do you know what they do to me? I clenched my teeth together and rolled to my side, pulling my covers over my head. Kyros was a good man. He was nothing like Sophos. And Alibek . . . Alibek was nothing like Tamar.

  Ten days passed. I did my best to maintain a cautious distance between myself and the slaves in the harem, knowing that every time I spoke I gave myself away: I was too bold, too loud, too ready to meet Aislan’s eyes. I was insufficiently frightened and definitely not as hungry as I should be—there was never quite enough food. And I was too old—absurdly old for a fairly attractive woman to still be a virgin. I knew this had attracted some discussion, because I overheard Tamar and Meruert discussing it one afternoon. “I think perhaps her old owner was her father,” Meruert said. “Some men have special scruples when it’s their own daughter.”

  There was dancing practice each afternoon, supervised by Boradai. After giving me a few days to settle into the harem, Boradai had put me through my paces in front of everyone. She’d had me stand and mimic Meruert’s fluid movements as well as I could, sweeping my arms through the air, stretching out one leg and bowing at the waist over it, turning my wrists in a graceful gesture. When we’d finished—Meruert with unruffled grace and me stumbling along behind—Boradai had Meruert sit down and turned on me with disgust. “You are worthless as a dancer, with neither grace nor flexibility,” she said.

  I wasn’t exactly raised for this, I thought, but managed to keep the words behind my teeth.

  “You’ll need a great deal of work before you’ll be able to take your place with the others. Tamar, teach her the limbering exercises, to begin with. Meruert, we’ll need to excuse you from dancing soon enough”—her gaze swept disdainfully over Meruert’s still-flat belly—“and you can work with her on moving gracefully.”

  She allowed me to sit down, finally, and I watched the women of the harem dance. They moved in slow, choreographed unison. Each move seemed designed to show off a part of their body; they wore shifts without sleeves, leaving their arms bare, and the skirts had a slit to expose the line of their leg. Tamar’s face was always carefully neutral when Boradai was looking at her, even as Boradai tapped her leg with a stick, urging her to show a bit more of it. I found myself thinking of Aislan’s comment about how Tamar attracted men who enjoyed her pain, and my mother’s advice about standing as if you wanted to disappear into yourself. Her advice, I thought, was a double-edged sword. Before Boradai and Aislan, it was best if I tried to disappear. But were I sent down to dance with the others, to be chosen by one of Sophos’s guests for a night of my company . . . well, for a harem slave to make it clear that she only wanted to disappear was to invite attention from precisely the wrong men. My mother knew that once, I thought, looking at Aislan—the “favorite”—and thinking of her, alone with her tea, watching the neighbors from her window. But it’s been a long time.

  Boradai looked me over carefully after the dance lesson, and then took herself out. There was a burst of stifled giggles from Meruert and one of the other women. I knew that I was the subject of a fair amount of cynical amusement, even from Tamar, and that everyone was watching me for signs of dread and fear when contemplating my appointment with Sophos or the friend he was supposedly giving me to. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure how much dread I should be trying to show. I certainly had no desire to sleep with Sophos or any of his friends. On the other hand, Tamar’s open revulsion and dread each evening were more the exception than the rule among the concubines; while few were pleased to go downstairs, as Aislan was, most seemed to see it as a chore to be completed, the way stable hands might shovel manure. I figured that someone in my position—in the position I was pretending to be in—would probably be resigned to her fate.

  It wasn’t as if sex itself could be that bad. The sorceress I’d visited with the message from Kyros had been heavily pregnant when I arrived, and I’d met two older children. No one in his right mind would force a woman who could summon and bind aerika to do anything she didn’t want to do. If all women found sex as awful as Tamar found it, no sorceresses would have children. Of course, a sorceress was likely to have chosen her own husband. Tamar certainly hadn’t chosen Sophos as her master. But still . . .

  In the early afternoon of my twelfth day in the harem, Boradai came upstairs; I didn’t pay a lot of attention until I realized that her gaze was focused on me. “Lauria,” she said. “Sophos would like you to attend on him after dinner tonight. Tamar, make Lauria ready.”

  Tamar and I went back down to the bathhouse. I had seen the way Tamar had looked at me during my twelve days in the harem, and I looked to see if she was smirking now, but she wasn’t. In fact, she avoided my eyes entirely as much as she could, her face distracted. “No lice,” she said when she’d finished checking my hair in the sunshine. “I did a good job on you last time, didn’t I?”

  “You did a very good job.”

  “Now for the perfume,” Tamar said. She dipped the comb in oil that turned out to be heavily scented. I recognized the smell from Alibek. It was heavy and cloying and gave me the sense of an overpowering sweetness in the back of my throat. I felt vaguely sick to my stomach. I hoped that Tamar would take my pale face and queasy disinterest in dinner as nervousness; they might be more convincing than my acting.

  Tamar dressed me in a clean shift of very sheer white linen. I felt exposed, especially as every concubine in the harem watched me during dinner. I pushed my plate away. “I’m not very hungry,” I muttered.

  “Let me get you some wine.” Tamar jumped up and brought back a large metal goblet, filled almost to the lip of the cup. I took a sip and gagged; the wine had a strange taste, as if it had started to sour. “Drink it,” Tamar urged. I took another
sip, then another, and pushed the cup away. She pushed it back to my lips. Slowly, I downed most of the cup. I was unsteady when I stood back up—far more unsteady than wine alone would have made me, and I realized that the strange taste had been from something else in the wine. Tamar supported my arm, and I cursed myself for not being firmer about pushing it away. The purpose of this conference would be to get information: to find out when and how, exactly, I was to escape. I hoped I wasn’t too drunk and drugged to remember my instructions.

  We arrived at a closed door of heavy wood. Boradai stood outside. “He wants you to go in first,” she said to Tamar.

  “I’m not prepared—”

  “Go on.”

  Tamar shrugged with false nonchalance and went in, closing the door behind her. She came out only a few minutes later, looking none the worse for wear. “Go on in,” she said to me. “He said he’s ready for you now.”

  My hands were shaking. I stepped inside and closed the door.

  “Drop the bar in place,” Sophos called from the bed. “To make sure we’re not interrupted.”

  It fell into place with a thud.

  We were in Sophos’s bedchamber. His bed was built on a platform, piled high with cushions; gauze drapes to deter insects were pushed casually to the side. Sophos had been lounging on the bed, but swung himself off and stood up, offering me a chair at the small table off to the side. “Sorry for my casual dress,” he said, gesturing at his dressing gown. “Best to keep up the charade for Tamar and Boradai, though, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, relieved.

  “So. How have things been going?”

  “Well—first of all, I’m sorry, but I’m a little drunk. Tamar insisted.” He nodded with a smile. “It’s been a bit tedious. I’ll be glad to be on my way to the bandits. I assume that’s what this meeting is to discuss?”

  “Of course.” Sophos poured himself a little wine. “You won’t mind if I don’t offer you any, will you? I think you’ve had enough. Yes. Not tonight, not tomorrow night, but the night after is the night you can be on your way. I will ensure that the night guard is elsewhere. Wait until the concubines are all asleep. I’m not having any guests that night; someone will be with me, but I’ll keep whoever it is occupied, so you won’t have to worry about anyone returning to the harem in the middle of the night. Just get up and slip out the door. I’ll have sturdy clothes and water hidden right by my front gate, along with your own boots—I brought them along from Kyros’s. Pick up the bundle and head out.”