Another woman born, graceful as Myrna. Her grip tightened on her mistress’s wrist, and she forced her fingers to loosen. Shema squeezed back, gentle. Kyrin dared hope in it.
Sirius said, “Remember, the caliph has a wide hand toward his servants. As salaam alayakum, my friend.” And he kissed Ali on both cheeks.
“The pieces on the board must move, for the good of our master. In this, I am your servant, Sirius Abdasir.”
Sirius went out, Kentar followed, and Ali stalked back to sink down in his cushioned chair. He eyed Shema and Kyrin wryly. What did he suspect?
Kyrin bit her lip. Shema waved her hand over Kyrin in a gesture worthy of Ali. Her voice was low and smoky. “You may go. Nimah will clear this.” She flicked a hand at the table. “Come to me at dawn.”
“Yes, my mistress.” Kyrin did not dare ask which room.
Ali stared down at the table, his chin in his hand. Kyrin bowed, slid backward on the floor a few paces, and rose, glad Umar had not seen her humiliation. She paused before the curtains, but the Nubian made no sign, staring straight ahead. She tilted her hand by her side, hoping he knew her heart beat fast with thanks.
In the kitchen Kyrin gave her platter to the first pair of willing hands and stumbled away. In her quarters, she pulled the half-veil from her face and collapsed on her rug. She pulled the blanket over her and scooted back against Alaina.
It was warmer in the house than the desert nights, but the air was dead. She ran her fingers over the falcon under the edge of her rug, and stared into the shadows below the window at the tiny figure of Huen. Silent, still, moonlit, the dove springing from her hands.
Then the shivers came. There had been many possibilities and intents in the Blue Flower room. Ali wanted something from the guardsman, the guardsman demanding something Ali did not have. And Shema and her pain. Did she but wait to study her revenge? And Ali—he wanted Alaina, Tae, and herself for more than sons. A son was only the first face of his revenge.
How did Ali serve Sirius Abdasir, who served the caliph? Kyrin’s head spun, and she felt tears coming. What game did she stumble into between the caliph’s guardsman, Ali, and Umar, even the dalil?
Would she face the whip tomorrow and Shema’s wrath, or would her mistress toy with her at leisure? She had looked quite out of her head. Was she the queen on Ali’s board, his courtly chess piece? I would not be her enemy. Oh Father, I would not.
Kyrin wiped her face. Her falcon dagger would not leave her side again. She would find Cicero and Lilith when the sun rose. Surely the stables would be warm, with friendly faces. Tae’s breathing was even on the other side of Huen, who seemed to smile at her. Kyrin’s blanket warmed.
§
Something heavy landed on Kyrin’s legs and bounced off. Her comforting cover vanished, and cold air washed around her. She rolled off her rug, scrabbling under the edge, and her fingers closed on the falcon. Kyrin blinked at a large figure before her.
The cook cried in a cheerful voice, “What a pair!” and tossed their wadded blankets from her large hand. Kyrin released the dagger and rubbed her face. Tae’s neat place was empty.
“Wake up, girl!” The cook leaned over. In the grey light before the window she was large-boned as an elephant. She threw them each a blue thawb. Kyrin fingered it. Such a sapphire hue would not last long in the kitchen.
“Call Master Ali ‘Master’ when he speaks, do not go near him unless you are clean, do not speak to anyone older than you are unless they question you, and do come get a bath and something to eat. I am Nara. I will show you about the kitchen, the garden, and the court. You will learn quickly. Come, ready yourselves! There are things to do!” Nara smiled, not at all out of breath.
Kyrin’s mouth twitched. She kept back a laugh at Alaina’s stare, her lips just parted in awe. Her sister seldom stood at the bottom of such a waterfall as Nara’s deluge of words.
Kyrin straightened her rug and pulled her blanket smooth, sliding the falcon into the folds of her bisht. Their quarters smelled of washed stone, sweet flowers, and Tae’s herbs; not a trace of dust or smoke or sweat of dreams.
Nara led them down the passage, across the breezeway, and through the gate into the court of the women. A high wall enclosed it. Abundant vines sought the top of the walls, jade tendrils laden with a veil of white buds. Inside the wood gate Alaina ran her fingers over the soft, new leaves with a smile.
The round pebbles lining the path were warm under Kyrin’s feet. On her right, water splashed at knee level from a chipped ceramic spout into the large pool she had seen little of on her first visit. There were large rocks along one oval edge. The last tension leaked out of Kyrin. Here were riches. Water, more precious than gold, and green, and food, and life.
Water flowed from the pool into stone channels bordering the court walls. One channel divided into runnels to nurture the vegetables and herbs growing beside the west wall.
Nara ordered them to strip. Kyrin shifted the falcon to her serving thawb, praying Nara did not pick up the garment to scold her for wrinkles, like Aunt Medaen. Kyrin splashed and spluttered in the morning chill of the pool, and at last Nara nodded her satisfaction at her scrubbing.
Kyrin stepped out. Her blue thawb clinging to her with damp, she bundled her old thawb under her arm. She held still while Nara examined her head for biters.
The cook cleaned and cut Kyrin’s nails and trimmed her hair, evening the wisps about her face, broken by heat and cold and numberless tucks behind her ears. Nara’s curt, darting way reminded Kyrin of a mother hen. The cook finished and cocked her head, her hands on her hips. At her urging, Kyrin stood beside the pool with Alaina, who had undergone the same treatment, and stared into the water.
A ripple waved Kyrin’s sleek, wet hair around her tanned face. Her chin remained sharp, her eyes wide-set. Her mouth thinned, and she lifted a finger to her black earring. The water twisted her face into a gargoyle’s, left her serious and dark beside Alaina’s pleased smile.
The blue thawb fell graceful to Alaina’s ankles. She filled it with beauty. But the serving blue sheathed Kyrin straight from shoulder to toe. The ridges of the pale star at the base of her throat rose slightly where the skin puckered.
Kyrin centered the fish over it. At least she would not be sold. And a boy’s slenderness made a good fighter. It did.
Alaina twisted her hair, and the falling drops scattered their images, mingling them in oblivion. Kyrin slipped behind her and fingered her bright wet curls over her shoulder, blinking. Her sister’s hair was glorious, like her smile, and swept down her back to the darker blue of her sash. Alaina twirled, as if she could not help herself, and the clean blue flared around her. Kyrin smiled. For her, this morning was not marred. Alaina deserved a young lord to cherish her, not slavery.
“The Master does favor that hair,” Nara said. “Come now, that’s enough, there is something for your stomachs inside.” The cook turned toward the gate, but Kyrin clutched her thawb in sudden horror.
“Oh, Shema wanted me at dawn!”
Nara clucked, frowning. “Easy, girl. She never rises before the sun reaches the middle of the sky, when the master is about the fields.”
Kyrin slumped and Nara reached for her bundle. Kyrin stepped back, holding it tight to her side.
“What is in that, girl?” Nara asked sharply.
“It was my mother’s.” Kyrin lifted her chin. “Ali said I could keep it.”
“Show me.”
Kyrin peeled away the thawb to reveal the falcon dagger. Nara sniffed, but then she looked in Kyrin’s face and said not a word. She tucked a fold of the thawb back over the blade and led them to the kitchen, talking at a furious pace.
Female slaves served Ali on assigned nights at table and worked the rest of their days around the house and in the gardens. If they displeased Ali they would be banished to the fields for a time. The threat of a day there ma
de the most disobedient slave beg at Umar’s feet.
“The sun spoils the girls’ skin, you know, not like around the Nile, where we bathed in the bright morning, and rested during the sun’s strength.” Nara eyed them with a smile. “But you have tasted the sun, and know he harms you not, if you respect his strength.”
At the kitchen door Nara lowered her voice. “Umar is the men’s overseer, and things are different here than in the caravan. Watch, and seek wisdom.” She shoved Alaina inside ahead of her, and Kyrin followed.
Men and women sat on the floor before the ovens, eating from large, separate platters. Every head turned. Nimah’s smile was almost worshipful, where she sat among the other women, near Alaina’s feet.
“You protect them from their first lesson, Nara.” Umar leaned against a cold oven in the back wall, beside the largest dish, surrounded by men. “Slaves cannot sleep as they please in our Master’s house, they must be faithful to serve, rising with the sun.”
Kyrin stiffened against Umar’s lingering stare. Did her blue thawb anger him? She and Alaina were the only ones in the kitchen wearing the midday shade besides him, but they wore sashes of darkest blue, not red.
Nara’s mouth thinned. “Young lilies they are, but not too young for a husband it seems.” The look she shot Umar would burn a hole through stone. “There is less uproar in my kitchen when I show them how we women work, and you teach them golden obedience.”
Umar snorted. Nara smiled grimly and went to stir her pots over the fire with a vigorous arm.
Alaina nudged Kyrin. She shut her mouth. Nara could be more than one woman.
“Eat.” Umar tapped the stick in his hand against the floor. “You must not faint the first day, if our Master regards you so high as the blue.”
Kyrin rested on her knees like the rest around the platter. She would rather wear Nara’s brown than bear the glances and whispers of the others. Nimah’s mother was silent. Kyrin felt awkward after so many hours around friendly fires and open faces. She ate beside Nimah, fumbling to form her balls of raisins, rice, and cinnamon. Alaina’s lips twitched, her somber eyes on a perfect ball of rice in her hand.
Nara returned to sit with them. She whispered, “Everyone knows Umar carries poison in him, but our overseer, Jachin, is kind. He watches out for us. And since I am our Master’s only cook . . .” She nodded, her straight hair bouncing. “All give me their favor, or suffer.”
“And who is Jachin?”
Nara stared at Kyrin. “He came in caravan with you, the Nubian.”
“Oh.” She could not say she had always thought of him as “the Nubian.” He, of all men, deserved a name.
26
Longing
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from whence shall my help come? ~Psalm 121:1
Nara paired Kyrin and Alaina to work in the garden. She gave them each a bisht of earth brown and they put them over their thawbs, drank a ladle of water, and began their first task.
While Kyrin weeded the long beds of herbs and vegetables near the pool she stretched her stiff back. Sleeping on stone on a rug was much different than on sand. Sand at least made the right hollows.
Before the noon meal Nara sent Kyrin to Shema with a platter of good things. Outside her mistress’s door Kyrin set her shoulders. The wood panel was cracked open.
She pulled her thawb higher toward her neck—as if it could cover her necklace and her scar. She had left her veil in her quarters. That she would wear it only to Ali’s table unless he commanded otherwise. Let them stare, she had told Alaina. “These women are tame flowers who do not know the free air.”
Kyrin sighed. She suspected her sister rather liked the silky veil and its sense of mystery. It was wasted on her.
“Come.” Shema’s voice had a breathless quality. Kyrin stepped inside. Without her outer robe, Shema was as slender as a peeled wand in a sleeveless white thawb. Henna clasped her hands and arms in delicate, curling vines, and her eyes were ancient oak hollows full of rain-water; under them her skin was pale as goat milk. She raised a listless arm, tinkling with bracelets, to point at her bed, and Kyrin laid her platter down on the red silk cover and waited, as Nara had instructed.
The floor was polished brown tile, with small blue, red, and white flowers around the edges of the squares. Her mistress’ slippers were scuffed, dainty, poppy-red silk. Shema cleared her throat. She moved to the bed and sat, fingered a date and set it down, took a sip of milk and shoved back her cup with a squeak on the platter. “How are you as strong as an oryx?” She did not look at Kyrin.
“Oh,” Kyrin breathed, and licked her lips. “My mistress . . . I have kept my stronghold in many ways since I was small, and my master set me to learn the warrior’s way that my-my husband follows.” Heat spread across her face.
“Mmm.”
Nara had said to be silent until her mistress asked for something, but Shema had made such a face at the dry date and winced at the warm milk.
“Would—would you like an orange?” Kyrin slipped it from her sash and held it out.
Shema looked at her and drew back, then her gaze wandered to the orange. Her swan throat bobbed.
It was one of the first fruits from Ali’s trees. He had thrown it to Jachin as too green for his taste. Jachin had gifted it to Nara. The cook said Kyrin had need of it after the desert, and to share it with Alaina. Its delicate scent had teased her since Nara put it in her hand. Alaina would not mind if she gave it away.
Kyrin approached and laid the orange on the platter. “Please, let me get you more? There are greens too, with vinegar and oil; and the garlic, the way we do it in my country, it is good.”
Shema stopped, her thumb under the first curl of peel, her brows furrowed. She said with the force of every fiber in her body, her eyes hard agate, “Did Ali gift this to you?”
He had, in a way, but that was not what Shema asked. “No, mistress.”
“Who, then? One who admires you besides your husband?”
Kyrin’s throat dried. If she named anyone, and the tale got to Ali . . . “Many friends gave this gift of the sun until it came to me, mistress.” There, she could be a poet, if an anxious one.
Shema giggled and set the orange in her lap, her eyes dark and deep. “You protect these ‘friends.’ I could tell my husband.” She leaned forward, her delicate lips curling to fierceness.
Kyrin said nothing and did not drop her eyes from Shema’s. Thieving could take her hand if the full measure of justice was taken, but Ali’s whipping could take Jachin’s life.
Shema reached out to stroke Kyrin’s hair and wrapped a strand around her finger. Kyrin bit her tongue and forced herself still. Shema said, “I will not deliver you to him. I hate him, the light of my eyes. He took my life from me, what life I had.”
She wound and wound Kyrin’s hair, watching it slip away through her fingers, as if she did not truly see what she did.
“I did not steal the orange.”
“I know. You can get me whatever is in season next sunrise.” Shema paused. “My father the wazir was weak, may he live long. Now the wazir’s daughter and a strong merchant house have been joined. Joy breathes not in our union.” She dropped her hand and gathered herself on the bed, her thin shoulders hunching, fingers tightening across her stomach. “I will not give him a son! A son, who will learn to use the weak, to raise his sword for death, for gold, and for a name, who will despise the righteous on their knees!
“A son who will scorn me,” she whispered, her hair sliding down to curtain her face. It hung limp and oily, and did not smell of lavender. “Umar—he is Nara’s son, he knows.”
Surprise choked Kyrin, and pity. Her mistress was indeed as much a captive as the falcon. She said low, “My father was not able to defend his house.” She coughed.
Shema’s gaze did not move; she seemed to hold her breath.
“Ali
killed my mother, and—he gave me this.” Kyrin lifted the necklace from her throat. Shema frowned. “And this.” Kyrin touched the jet in her ear. “You would say that I am the heir of house Cieri. In my land, I inherit at my father’s command. He has no sons.”
Shema bent her head and laughed, short and bitter. “It is hard for one who has walked on rose petals to step onto a slave’s path of burning sand. Yet you have given me but a handful of grains from your tale to judge.”
Kyrin took a deep breath. “If it would please you, I will tell more.”
Shema brightened. “It is good, tell on.”
Kyrin finished and rubbed her face. She felt as if she had walked all day behind Waleed, with Faisal jeering at her. Her throat was paper-dry with old anger and pain.
Shema yawned. “Have you met Qadira?” At Kyrin’s questioning look Shema said, “She is my husband’s oldest concubine, save Nara, who now orders the kitchen. Qadira rules the women under Jachin, and around him when she can. She wears a blue veil and a ring with a sapphire. She is a jackal who will follow a wazir’s daughter into the desert, waiting for her death. But I have a sword to my hand yet,” she muttered, eyeing Kyrin.
So, Qadira led her to Ali’s room last night. Kyrin lifted her chin and stared back at Shema, letting her mistress take her measure.
Shema nodded. “You will come to me when the sun rises. I am awake then, though none know it.” Staring out into the warm afternoon, she waved her hand in restless dismissal. Kyrin hesitated at the door. But the time for hesitation was past. Standing in the passage, she bowed. Deeply. “My mistress.”
Shema nodded, a formal dip of her head. They understood one another, understood what the rest of the house needed to see. Kyrin’s lips curved in a smile. It had been far too long, and it felt right. She arranged her frown in place.
Soon she carried Tae’s healing brew to Shema thrice a day, at terce, sext and vespers bell.
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 28