Everyone was there. A few women were wounded, but none severely. I found a piece of cloth to wipe my sword and then slipped it back into its sheath. We’d retaken some horses and camels—in the dim light, I thought we might have taken horses and camels that were originally theirs, not ours. Served them right.
Zhanna gestured suddenly for quiet, and listened for a moment, her nostrils flaring in the night wind. “They’re coming after us,” she said.
“Right,” Janiya said. “Back to camp. We don’t want them coming on the wounded without us there to protect them.”
But our horses were growing tired, and halfway back to camp, the bandits caught up with us. This time, I felt as exhausted as the horses; my head pounded as I drew my sword. I told myself that surely the bandits were as tired as we were, but I was desperately conscious of the aches in my arms, of the way that each beat of my pounding heart echoed through my head and made it ache even more. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if this was yet another odd dream, and I was actually back at camp, still sleeping beside Tamar.
They swept in against us. I swung my sword wildly, afraid to close with any individual bandit, afraid to attract attention. I wanted to turn Kara and run away, and I felt a brief flash of clear jealousy for Tamar’s skill with archery: she could keep her distance from the fray. Then one of the bandits turned toward me and all I could think of was the desperate need to keep his sword from my flesh. The world narrowed: I saw his sword, I saw my sword, I saw the bandit’s dark eyes glittering in the darkness.
Then suddenly I felt a coldness against my side, and then a surge of pain. I’d been cut, maybe stabbed. I had no idea how badly, but in my weakness surely he would finish me off. To die out here, surrounded by strangers, in someone else’s cause! My throat tightened in fury and frustration, and I defended myself against a last swing. Maybe I can kill him, even if he does kill me. He knocked my sword aside—and behind him, one of the sisters rode up, kicked him off his horse, and then brought her sword down, cutting a huge red gash into his unguarded neck.
It was Zhanna. “Come on,” she said, and seized Kara’s reins, kicking her own horse to a fast canter. “We’re moving again.”
The bandits, too, were pulling back; the man Zhanna had killed was not their only loss. Now the pain from my wound flooded through me like scalding water; I bit back a scream and whimpered instead. I clung to my horse; Zhanna turned as we ran, took my sword, wiped it on a cloth kept on a hook on her saddle, and put it away. “Just hang on,” she said. “We’ll get you back to camp and Maydan.”
I still had no idea how serious the wound was, and clung to the idea that surely it was minor or Zhanna would have called for a halt to at least bind it up temporarily. Either that, or it was so serious that there was no reason to bother, but I didn’t feel like I was dying. I just felt like I might like to.
Finally, ahead we saw the yurts and the embers of the fire; Zhanna let go of Kara’s reins and sprinted ahead, shouting, “Maydan! Maydan!”
Kara came to a stop in camp and I slid awkwardly off her back. My shirt and trousers were soaked with my blood. I wondered if it had run down all the way to my boots; I couldn’t tell in the dim light. Tamar joined me, white-faced but apparently unhurt, and grabbed my arm, helping me to sit down. Maydan took a knife and cut a larger hole in my shirt, pressing her fingers carefully against the wound. “It’s not too bad,” she said. When I cringed away from her touch, she added, “I think you might have gotten some broken ribs from the blow, but the cut is very shallow. Prometheus was watching over you.”
“Or he doesn’t want her company yet,” Jolay said.
“I won’t need to stitch it, just bandage it tightly. You’ll be able to ride and fight again in a week or two.”
“We may have to ride sooner than that,” Janiya said.
“Well, she’ll do as she has to,” Maydan said. She checked the other injuries, then went to get her bandages.
“Do you think the bandits will come for us again?” Tamar said. “Their losses were far heavier . . .”
“I know. But that was true after our first attack, yet they came after us.”
“Could they have been that desperate for horses?” That was Zhanna now, not Tamar.
“Perhaps . . .” Janiya walked around our booty, looking over the horses and camels we’d taken from the bandits. “Unload the camels. Let’s see what’s in their packs.”
Maydan returned with bandages and water. She sponged the cut clean, then wrapped my ribs tightly with yards of clean linen, pinning it in place when she was done. It eased the pain slightly, and I had to admit, now that I knew how minor the injury really was, that some of my pain had really been from fear. Maydan wanted to help me into the yurt, but it was almost dawn now, and I was too keyed up to be able to sleep anytime soon. She fetched me a blanket instead, and I settled down where I could watch the sisters unloading the camels.
The contents of the camels’ packs were mostly unremarkable. There were some sacks of beans and rice, which were added to our own food stores, and bolts of cloth, some very nice, which would come in handy for replacing my shredded, blood-soaked clothing. One bolt of cloth elicited gasps, and as I saw it catch the light I recognized what it was—silk. The bandits must have robbed traders shortly before robbing us. We found some good-sized waterskins, some empty and some full. Then a small, tightly closed metal box came down; it required a key, but it didn’t take long to force it open. And inside was the prize—glittering, gem-set jewelry. The wealth of the bandits, most likely. The women sorted through the jewelry admiringly, holding up some of the flashier pieces. Not flashy enough to be eye-catching, one glittering necklace was tossed aside after a quick glance. But it caught my eye. A spell-chain. I wondered if any of the women here would know what it was. That, that surely was what the bandits were so desperate to retrieve.
If they know it’s here, and they know what it is, why did they keep it locked in a box, rather than around someone’s neck, where it could be used? I thought immediately of the garrison Kyros had sent me to, years ago, where the second-in-command had taken over. They’d locked their spell-chain in a box as well, and then put it under guard. For a moment I wondered if these were the same men, but I doubted it. I thought this spell-chain had probably been stolen.
The soldiers at the garrison had feared madness. There were other reasons to be wary of a spell-chain as well; binding-spells could grow unstable after the death of the sorceress who performed the initial binding. If an aeriko was going to break free from the spell, it would happen when the spell-chain was used, and keeping it locked in a box when it wasn’t in use would do no good. But those with a small amount of knowledge and a large amount of superstition might well keep it locked away anyway.
Now, would the sisters know what they’d taken? I wondered if I could make my way over and pocket the chain without anyone noticing. Of course, if it were found on me, even if they didn’t recognize what it was, they might want to know why I was stealing common property; I thought briefly of the honey. But still, it was tempting . . .
Janiya stopped by to look over the loot we’d robbed from the robbers. I saw her pick up the spell-chain and curl her fist around it—she knew what it was, I thought with a pang of disappointment. She glanced around, her eyes sweeping over me, and I quickly looked away.
The sun was up now, and the excitement and tension was finally beginning to ebb, leaving exhaustion behind, and giving me the opportunity to start to fret. Not that I was terribly expert with a sword, but surely anyone paying attention last night would have noticed that I’d used one before. Slaves were never permitted to touch weapons; had anyone been watching me closely enough to notice? Certainly Zhanna saw me get wounded, she rode in so quickly; and Tamar must have seen me during the first attack, since she was shooting at my attackers. Would they become suspicious? Who else might have seen?
Worse . . . It was strange for there to be a “worse,” but now there was. What if the bandits came after u
s again? We had the spell-chain; they would want it back. Of course, Janiya could use the aeriko to her own advantage, but they might gamble that we wouldn’t recognize the chain and attack anyway. And using the spell-chain carried its own risks. Aerika obeyed their orders because they had to, but they would twist those orders anytime they could. Janiya would not be experienced at spell-chain tactics. It wasn’t as if you could just order the aeriko to kill your enemies; you had to come up with something else for them to do. Even ordering them to move your enemies, to some remote spot, was risky; sometimes people were killed accidentally on trips like that, particularly since the aeriko were not terribly inclined to be careful.
The cloth, supplies, and jewelry from the camels had been packed away again, and Zhanna came over to sit by me. I tensed, wondering if she was going to ask me about my skill with a sword, but instead she offered me a waterskin and then stroked my hair gently. “I’m sorry you were hurt last night. It wasn’t fair, sending you into battle.”
“I was glad to be able to do something useful,” I said, since that was what Tamar might have said. Well, no. Tamar would have bitten her head off for suggesting that she might have wanted to stay behind.
“Were you ever a shaman-trainee?” Zhanna asked.
“No,” I said. “Tamar was, though.” I handed the waterskin back to her.
“Huh.” Zhanna picked meditatively at her thumbnail. “Did your shaman try to tap you, at least?”
“Why do you ask?”
“The djinn seem . . . interested in you.”
My scalp prickled as I remembered the Fair One’s taunting. “Eh. I wouldn’t know. At Kyros’s, I worked in the stables; I saw the shaman seldom, if at all. I met the shaman in Sophos’s harem, but I was there only briefly . . .”
“Would you like me to train you?”
“No,” I said. “You should ask Tamar. She would.”
Zhanna nodded. “I could train both of you, I suppose.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She was silent for a few moments, her hands in her lap. “Are you and Tamar summer friends?”
“What?”
“Summer friends.” She looked at me with wide-eyed frankness, and the baffled look on my face must have told her that I had not the faintest idea what she was talking about. “Well, you know. During the summers, when we’re with the sisterhood, some of the women have summer friends. Maydan and Jolay, for instance.”
“You mean they’re lovers.”
“Right. Summer friends.” She took a swig of water herself. “Of course, some women just aren’t interested in that sort of thing. Erdene is one of those—poor Saken! And then there are women who have all-year friends. But most of them end up like Janiya.”
“What do you mean?”
“Commanders of sisterhoods. And then they see their all-year friends only in winter.”
“Wouldn’t those be winter friends, then?”
“You’d think that would be the way it worked, wouldn’t you?” Zhanna winked at me. She brushed a strand of hair from my forehead, and laid her hand gently across my face. “I’ll talk to Tamar about shaman training, too. We can discuss it later.”
“Tamar and I aren’t lovers, but we’re blood sisters,” I said.
“Ohhh,” Zhanna said. “I’d wondered why the eldress sent you to us together! Usually new people are split up.”
Janiya strode over, a slightly grim look on her face. I braced myself, thinking that she would surely be here to confront me about my ability with the sword. But she squatted down beside me, looking a little ashamed.
“I shouldn’t have let you come along tonight,” she said. “Ruan was right to question it, and even after Tamar protested, I should have ordered you to stay here. You could both have been killed—especially you, in the thick of the fight with a sword you barely knew how to use.” I felt a wave of relief at her words, followed by a rush of shame. Was I that unskilled with my weapon? “But I did, and luckily you both came through with no permanent damage.”
I nodded.
Janiya tucked a blue bead into my hand. “You proved your courage in that first fight, little sister,” she said. “I’m not sure what you proved by coming with us into the second fight—courage or foolishness, or perhaps that you felt yourselves to be sisters. But I think you earned a second bead then.” She placed a second bead beside the first on my palm. “Both you and Tamar.” She patted my shoulder. “Rest and let your body mend itself. You’re to take it easy as much as possible until Maydan says you’re recovered.”
As I lay around camp with Jolay, I worked on embroidering my black felt vest. The picture of the wineglass was quickly completed: shaky, but I supposed that was almost appropriate. I needed an image for my life at Kyros’s—other than a horse, because I still wasn’t ready to try to make a picture of a horse. I could embroider a shovel, I supposed, for the manure I had supposedly shoveled in the barn, but some mischief in me made me think that it would be nice to do the vest using real images, images that truly represented my past but could still be explained to the Alashi. Kyros wasn’t my owner, but he was my boss. What image could I use to represent him?
Honey cakes, I thought, picturing myself in Kyros’s office. I never went in there without being offered tea and a honey cake. But that didn’t really capture Kyros; an image of a honey cake implied a glutton, and Kyros was never a glutton. Particularly since I couldn’t very well say to the Alashi that he always offered me honey cakes when I returned from a mission . . .
I summoned up an image of Kyros in my mind’s eye. Though he was technically a military commander, he had the softness of a man who spent little time in the saddle and even less doing real work, but I’d seen him training with his sword, and he could move as fast as a diving hawk when he wanted. A hawk. That wasn’t a bad image for Kyros; the hawk circled high above the desert, waiting to spot its prey, and that was often how I thought of Kyros. But in truth, Kyros wasn’t a hawk; he was more like a hawk’s master, sitting in the cool of a cave and waiting for the hawks to return with offerings of rabbits, squirrels, and sparrows. You’ve returned with my little straying bird already.
His spell-chains—he wore one around his neck, the other looped around his left wrist, so that no one could possibly miss the fact that he had two of them. On rare occasions he’d loaned one to me; I remembered the feel of the cool stones against my neck. I could embroider a picture of a spell-chain; I could use that to outline the back of the vest. And that way, if Janiya saw me looking at the spell-chain she picked up, she’d understand why. Perfect, I thought, and reached for the thread.
“Lauria.” Janiya’s voice broke into my reverie. “I need a cup of water.”
I set down my vest and stood up, with some effort, and picked up the waterskin. As I put my hand on it, it occurred to me that Janiya was testing me again. I threw the waterskin to the ground and sat down with a thump.
Janiya laughed. “Better,” she said. “But you still fail.”
Tamar sighed as I sat back down. She seemed to have the morning off from practicing archery or horseback riding or whatever they’d been drilling her on while I was recovering, and she’d settled down beside me. She was still embroidering her first image—a rosebud, ripped in half, with feathers scattered across the bottom of the vest. “I don’t know why she didn’t tell me to get her water that time,” Tamar muttered. “I was all set to ask her what was wrong with her legs that she couldn’t get it herself.”
I shrugged, though it disturbed me a little that someone who’d actually been a slave would have no trouble seeing through the demand to the test underneath. “It’ll be your turn next time. Probably.”
Tamar laughed a little.
“You should talk to Zhanna, you know,” I said. “She really is a shaman. Maybe she’ll finish your training, if you ask.”
Tamar gave me a long, mournful stare. “I think she likes you better,” she said, and went back to her embroidery.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I looked her over carefully as I rose to join the others in packing our bags, and I thought I saw the glitter of the spell-chain peeking from the edge of her fist. She’s been using the aeriko to watch the bandits, I thought. She’d wanted to give me and Jolay time to heal up before we moved, if possible, but now the bandits were presumably moving toward us again.
Well, I wasn’t really looking forward to moving, let alone moving quickly, but I could if I had to. Around me, women began to pack bags and take apart the yurt; others went to gather in the flocks, which had been kept close by since the raid. I gathered up my own belongings—vest, blankets, sword—and strapped them to Kara’s saddle. Tamar joined me a few minutes later, pink-cheeked and breathless; she’d been out riding. She greeted me breathlessly and ran to help pack the yurt.
I returned to camp to offer to help with the yurt, but Maydan firmly told me to sit down somewhere and rest until it was time to leave. I withdrew to the edge of the river to sit in the shade of a tree, watching the activity back in the camp.
There was a shimmer in the air in front of me. “You are seldom alone,” the aeriko said.
It sounded almost like a complaint, and I suppressed a laugh, mindful of the fact that someone might glance in my direction and see me talking to the air. “Do you have a message for me?” I asked.
“Kyros sends the following words.” The shimmer shifted slightly and I heard Kyros’s intonation in its voice. “Greetings, Lauria, and I will try to keep this short. You are my most trusted aide and you have my complete confidence—however, I have been very worried about your safety, which is why I sent the aeriko to keep watch over you. Please give the aeriko a brief update, to set my mind at rest.”
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