“Well, your appetite can do odd things when you’ve been ill,” my mother said, still perplexed. I agreed, and pretended to drink some wine. It would be difficult to dispose of it without her noticing, but then she turned her back for a moment and I poured half my cup onto the rug under our table. It would stain, but hopefully no one would notice until it could be shrugged off as the result of some accidental spill while I was ill.
Finally, the meal was over and my mother took herself off, sending a servant with the tea, which joined the wine under the table since I didn’t want Kyros to get suspicious.
It was night. Finally. I lay down, grateful for the cooler air that drifted in from the window now that the sun had set. Of course, now I couldn’t fall asleep. I tossed and turned for hours, remembering that first night in the mine, when I had so desperately wanted to sleep in order to speak with Tamar, and couldn’t. Perhaps I could meditate, as I did when I was apprenticed to the sorceress, and reach the borderland that way…
I had made myself a spell-chain, almost, and followed the singing of the beads to the borderland. I had no beads to sing to me today; I certainly didn’t have any karenite. There are plenty of spell-chains at close hand, though. Perhaps if I listen, I will hear them…
I couldn’t hear singing, but after a while I heard something else—a windy, thunderous sound that ebbed and flowed. I tried to follow the noise but kept stumbling back to consciousness, irked by an itch or by my own hunger. I’ve forgotten how to do this. I sat up, leaned against the wall by the window, and tried again. Listen.
There; a trickling sound, this time, like water melting from a roof in spring. Follow it. I focused, and this time the noise grew louder. I saw myself trudging down a muddy path, following a thin stream, and tried to contain my excitement that it was working and just focus on the stream, on the path to the borderland. Then I felt myself slip, and fall, and I jerked awake, bumping my head against the wall in my spasm.
I lay down on the bed again. There’s hours of night left. Hours. Just relax, I told myself. This is going to work. I’m going to find my way there.
Just let go…
You have a great deal to answer for.”
“What?” I was in a tent; the light was dim, but that wasn’t Tamar’s voice. “Where is Tamar?”
The woman leaned forward, and I could see her face. It was Zhanna, the shaman from the Alashi sisterhood. She was dressed for battle, her bow at her side. My heart leapt: Zhanna was a good friend. “She’s worried about you. Terribly worried.” Zhanna was worried, too. I could hear it in her voice.
“Tell her I’m safe,” I said. I wanted to sweep Zhanna into a hug and ask her to tell me everything that had been happening on the steppe, but this dream might be brief. I didn’t trust that we’d have time.
“She’s not going to believe that! She believes that you’re in Penelopeia and Kyros has you. If you’re safe, where are you?”
“Oh—well, I am in Penelopeia and Kyros does have me, and so does the magia. But—well, I’m safe for now. I was sick, and they brought my mother to nurse me back to health. They’re afraid that if I die, something will happen with the djinni. It’s hard to explain, but they need to keep me alive. And I’m guarded by Janiya’s daughter.”
“Who?”
“Janiya had a daughter, among the Greeks. Zhanna, can you tell me what the Greeks accused Janiya of, when they betrayed her?” Does Zhanna even know what I am talking about?
Zhanna nodded; she did know. “Theft of a spell-chain,” she said. “An important spell-chain—the one that binds the Syr Darya.”
“Are you serious?”
“I don’t know if she really did it or not. When she told me about it, I rather thought she was falsely accused. But there was another time—well, I don’t know.”
I heard a shout outside the tent, and Zhanna started to her feet. Tears came to my eyes; I had really hoped to see Tamar, and seeing Zhanna was just not the same. “They’re putting something in my food that keeps me from the borderland,” I said. “I may not be able to come back anytime soon. Tell Tamar…” That I love her was too personal a message to give through Zhanna. “…that I wish I could see her,” I said. “Tell her that I will be free again and will return to the steppe. And she should tell Janiya—her daughter has not forgotten her.”
Beyond the walls, I heard the clash of metal. Battle. The tent vanished around me as Zhanna woke to face whatever was happening where she was. Let me see, I thought furiously. Let me see her.
The steppe formed around me again: whether it was a true vision or a picture painted out of my own fierce desire to know what was happening, I wasn’t sure. It was gray dawn outside the tent, and I could hear the sounds of battle, though at first I could make no sense of what I was seeing. Men and women ran past me, on foot and on horseback, weapons in hand. I followed on foot, searching for Zhanna in the confusion. I saw her, finally, on horseback, riding toward the crest of a hill, and followed.
When I had spent my summer with the sisterhood, we’d raided a Greek garrison. We’d had the advantages of surprise, speed, and arrow poison. The garrison had plenty of weapons and horses—we’d stolen some of them—but only one spell-chain, if that. The Sisterhood of Weavers, I knew from my service to Kyros, rarely entrusted more than one spell-chain at a time to their army.
That, apparently, had changed.
In the dim light of dawn, I could see flickers of light across the battlefield; djinni carried torches to provide light. At first I thought that the djinni were following the Greek soldiers, but that would have made them easy targets. The djinni were following the Alashi, offering targets to the Greeks.
Other djinni seemed to be circling the battlefield and snatching weapons away from Alashi. Another had been sent to wreak chaos in the Alashi encampment—scattering horses, emptying sacks of grain and rice, sabotaging pots. The one small mercy was that it was too risky to have the djinni do anything to the individual Alashi directly.
I had thought that Alashi women fought side by side only with other women, but today there were both brothers and sisters on the battlefield—quite a few of them. Even so, they were outnumbered by the Greeks. And they were losing.
I heard a horn give the signal to retreat. But retreat to where? I thought. This was no mere raid. The Greeks were making war on the Alashi. There was karenite on the steppe; the Greeks meant to take the steppe and wipe out the Alashi like lice.
Hearing the signal, Zhanna wheeled her horse; too late to dodge, I realized that she would ride it straight through me. The world went dark and silent around me; the battle, for me, was over.
I stood in darkness for a moment, then realized that I could still hear that sound I’d heard before—the sound of water. Holding my breath, I moved quietly toward it.
The darkness around me lightened to gray, and I found myself in an empty courtyard with a fountain at the center. The sound came from the fountain. It was a very simple fountain—more a pool, really, just a round thing with a wall, but when I looked down I saw endless deep water with no bottom. Something glowed near the bottom, and faintly, over the sound of water, I could hear singing—a thousand voices singing together in a vast powerful chord.
I took a deep breath, leaned forward, and let myself fall in.
The water around me was cold—shockingly cold, after the vague unreality of the borderland. I swam down, and farther down; I could see a blue glow, and through the water the voices sang loudly. There. THERE. It was the spell-chain. THE spell-chain—the chain that bound the Syr Darya, I knew with absolute certainty, lying at the bottom of this fountain, wherever it was. Miles of chain and blue beads and light; I started to try to gather it up, but my hands here had no more reality than they’d had in the vision of the library.
My lungs were beginning to scream for air, but I took a moment to look around. Where is this? Is this a real place? Could I go here and find the spell-chain? I was underwater, but around me I saw what looked like a ruined temple. There
were walls, and a gate. A light flickered through the gate, then another light came back out again. It felt familiar, even though I had never seen it before.
I need to breathe.
I thrust my feet up against the rough stones, swimming back toward the surface. My head didn’t break through; the water was endless, and I saw no light overhead. Need to breathe to breathe to breathe…
Oh, shit…
I sat up in bed, gasping for breath, choking the water I would have sworn was there out of my lungs. My heart beat frantically and after a moment I let myself slump back against the pillows, shivering in the warm night. My hair was damp, though from sweat, not swimming. The taste of the water was still on my tongue.
CHAPTER NINE
TAMAR
I could send a message to Zivar from the Temple of Athena. Of course, the message would not be private, so I would have to choose my words carefully. “Tamar wishes to speak with you” was definitely out. There weren’t that many women named Tamar, and Kyros might have people watching for messages from anyone named Tamar or Lauria. Of course, he might also know where we spent the winter and read anything sent to Zivar. But we had to send a message, because we were running out of time. It would take weeks to ride down and speak to Zivar. If we sent the message through the temple, it would be carried by djinni.
Neither Alibek nor I could read or write, so I hired a scribe. I thought a bit longer, then said the message was from Photios, the man who ran her merchant company. Surely he sent her a lot of messages, so this wouldn’t attract attention. But Zivar would know it wasn’t his handwriting. I had the scribe write a simple message with the name of our inn, saying I had something to discuss and signing it with Photios’s name. When the ink had dried, I rolled up the paper and tied it, then gave it to the acolyte who handled messages. “This is for Zivar, in Daphnia.”
“Do you trust Zivar?” Alibek asked as we walked back to our room.
“Not really,” I said. “She’s still a sorceress. But I trust her more than the woman Zarina sent us to. Zivar is crazy and unpredictable, like all of them. But she’s not a bad person, for all that.”
“You have exceptional taste in your friends, Tamar,” Alibek said.
My face flushed hot. “Go drown yourself in the Chirchik River, Alibek.”
“What? Do you deny that you have unusual friends? You’re friends with a sorceress. You’re friends with—I don’t even know what to call Lauria. A turncoat spy? And then there are the escaped slaves back with the Alashi. Exceptional friends. All of them.”
“Lauria isn’t just a friend. She’s my blood sister. Take your mockery and go drown yourself, Alibek, really. I don’t want to hear any more about how much you hate Lauria.”
“Did I say anything?”
“You’ve said plenty!”
Alibek sneered. “I think you need to sit down in the shade and have some tea. You think you know what I’m thinking and you don’t.”
We’d reached the inn. “Fine,” I said. “Fine! I’ll sit down in the shade, but I want you to leave me alone.”
“I’ll go visit Janiya,” Alibek said. “We need to let her know what’s happened.”
I nodded stiffly. It was a good idea. I wished I’d thought of it, because I’d have told him to sit down and I would have gone. Then I could have talked with someone who wasn’t Alibek.
So it was a pleasant surprise, hours later, when the doorman for the inn fetched me. “There’s a woman here to see you,” he said. I jumped up—could Zivar really have come so quickly, or was it some strange sorceress here for my karenite? But it was Janiya. I led her through the garden and up to our room.
“Nice,” she said, looking around. “Listen, I left Alibek with the horses. I had to come tell you something. Zhanna spoke with Lauria last night.”
“She what?” My face burned. Why hadn’t Lauria come to me? Because I was staying out of the borderland, of course. Avoiding Kyros.
“Zhanna had a conversation with Lauria, then sought me out to pass things along to you.” She raised an eyebrow, as if she were going to ask me again why Zhanna couldn’t seem to find me in the borderland—then shrugged and left it. “I didn’t want to send her message with Alibek.”
“Is she safe?”
“Well, sort of. She said to tell you she was safe—she wanted me to reassure you. But you were right—she’s in Penelopeia, in the custody of Kyros and the magia. She says that for now, they don’t want to hurt her. She was sick, and they brought her mother there to nurse her.”
Her mother? I remembered Lauria complaining about her mother. But at least her mother’s loyalty would be to her—mostly. Probably.
“Also—this didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but she was quite certain that they want to keep her alive. There’s something bad that might happen with the djinni if Lauria dies.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
“They’re putting something in her food that keeps her from the borderland. She wanted to tell you that she wishes she could see you, and that she will be free again and will return to the steppe.”
Janiya fell silent.
“Was that it?” I croaked. My eyes were hot and my throat felt so thick, it was hard to swallow.
Janiya nodded, then sighed and said, “Also, she has seen my daughter. She told Zhanna something of that. But yes. That was all of her message to you.”
I had to close my eyes and cover my face with my hands, because I hated having anyone see me cry. I heard Janiya rise and the clink of a cup on a tray. “Have some tea,” Janiya said, and set a cup down beside me.
I wanted to curl up and tell her to go away—or else get my horse and start riding, even though I wouldn’t reach Lauria for months.
At least Lauria was safe. Or safer than I’d feared, given what Kyros had said. Or else she’d lied to us—all too possible if she feared we’d get ourselves killed trying to help her. A drug to make her sleep heavily—that made sense. No wonder I had been sure she was alive but unable to find her in the night. They wanted her alive because of something with the djinni. That must have something to do with her ability to free bound djinni by touching them. But if they knew about that, why keep her alive? Even if they were keeping her alive for now, surely they would kill her as soon as their fear passed…
“She saw your daughter?” I asked when I was certain that my voice would be steady.
Janiya sighed deeply. “I have a daughter—Lauria told you of this?” I nodded. “She’s nineteen years old now. I think of her every day, but I don’t expect to see her again before I die. Lauria told me she hadn’t forgotten me.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”
“Thirteen years.”
“She was six then? Of course she hasn’t forgotten you. My mother died when I was ten, and I haven’t forgotten her.”
“But you’re not angry at her, either. For leaving you.”
“No.” I took a sip of tea. “I was angry at her for a long time for not trying to protect me when I was sold. A real mother, I thought, would have fled with me in the night to the bandits. My mother…her spirit was gone, and she never thought of escape. She sent me away. And I never saw her again.” My free hand knotted around the edge of my tunic. “Dying, though. She couldn’t help dying.”
“I was taken from my daughter. Sold. She’s angry anyway.”
“Well, of course. You could have run. Taken her and run.”
“But I couldn’t have! I was a prisoner. I was lucky not to be put to death. I think my—someone who liked me must have intervened on my behalf.”
“Tell her that, not me.”
Janiya poured another cup of tea and sat down. “I should have taken her and left right after she was born. Left Penelopeia, left the Greeks, left the Sisterhood Guard. I loved it there, but I should have known. Somehow. I should have run then, when I could have.”
“To where?”
“The Alashi take all kinds of fugitives.”
> “Ha. So Lauria could have just left Kyros and run away, and the Alashi would have taken her in?”
“Yes.”
“Funny.”
“We would have been more suspicious. She would have been watched more closely. The tests would have been…different. Very, very different. But yes. We would have taken her in. For Kyros’s purposes that would not have worked, though.”
“For Kyros’s purposes, the plan they tried didn’t work either.”
“True enough.”
“So Lauria’s seen your daughter?”
“Yes. My daughter is her guard. Isn’t that strange?”
I caught my breath. Janiya’s daughter, guarding Lauria? “You know how to go to the borderland,” I said. “Go to your daughter.”
“I can be taken to the borderland. I don’t know that I can go there myself, let alone find someone else there.”
“Try!”
“Do you think I haven’t? I tried for years, when I was first taken.”
“Try again. Persuade her to help Lauria.”
“You think she would listen to me? Would you listen to your own mother if she appeared to you in a dream and told you to betray the Alashi?” I shook my head. “Do you think Lauria would have listened to her mother if her mother had shown up in her dream and told her to trust Kyros?” I laughed at that, out loud, just a little. “Well, I don’t think my daughter is going to listen to me, either.”
“You have to try.”
“I could make things worse.”
“Go to her,” I said.
Janiya put down her tea and stood. “I need to get back to the horses. I told Alibek I’d send him back here before night.”
“Can’t you stay instead?”
“It would attract attention. It probably already has, don’t you think? Do you get along with Alibek so poorly?”
“He hates Lauria.”
“Well, he has a right to. Just as you have a right to love her.” Janiya shrugged. “One of you can come visit me again in a few days.”
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