Freedom s Sisters

by Naomi Kritzer

  Instead, I felt myself seized by the hands and dragged, as I had been before when the djinni had decided to show me something, in a whirl of light that made my stomach lurch again with nausea until we settled, finally, in a lamplit room. “Listen,” hissed a voice in my ears.

  There were three people in the room: two old women, and Kyros. They were in a vast room of shelves full of books; I had never in my life seen so many books. Several volumes, one so old it was nearly crumbling to pieces, had been spread out on a table before them. One of the women was the magia, I realized, though not the one I had encountered before. The gold serpent bracelet was coiled around her arm; she slouched back in a cushioned chair. The other woman, divested of her authority, was in fact the woman I had met as the magia, the one who had condemned me to the pit. She looked tired and worn, her inner fire a flickering candle. Her hands were folded in front of her; her long red nails rested against the backs of her hands. Kyros sat at the end of the table, withdrawn almost into the shadows. He told me she’d retaken the serpent, I remembered. As if it overheard my thoughts, the djinn hissed again, Listen.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” the not-magia said. “Cut her throat and be done with it. It’s what Kyros was supposed to do if he laid hands on her again.”

  “I got you out of bed because it’s not that simple, Lydia,” the magia said. “She’s a gate. Right now the gate opens at her will, but when she dies…”

  “When she dies, it will be flung open and will stay that way,” Lydia said. “That’s what always happens. So take her to some remote place and cut her throat there.”

  “I dislike that idea,” the magia said. “It is untidy.” She leaned forward and counted off on her fingers.

  “The first one was executed, and the gate closed. The second was executed, and the gate stayed open—and somehow, it was moved, but the books don’t say how. The third was killed by an aeriko. The book goes into a great deal of detail about the act: how he had to be drugged senseless to keep him from freeing it; how they had the aeriko rip his heart from his chest; the copious quantities of blood that flowed out; the death of the magia who had bound that aeriko. The gate closed. But the fourth was killed the same way, and the gate stayed open. And again, the books are vague on what was done then. But there was a fifth.”

  “Yes.” Lydia narrowed her eyes.

  “You are the oldest. Surely you remember.” Lydia’s mouth opened, and the magia waved her to silence. “Think hard, Lydia. Don’t just say you don’t.”

  “Ask your aerika about it. Aren’t you the one who swears you could get answers from a stone?”

  “I want your answers.”

  “It happened years ago,” Lydia said, her voice reluctant. “I was magia, but the most junior of the four. The girl was held prisoner for a time. Years.” Lydia waved vaguely as if pointing toward the prison. “She was the daughter of one of the other magias.”

  “But she did die, in the end.”

  “She threw herself from the tower.” Lydia grinned at the other woman. “The gate opened and stayed open. Here, in the heart of Penelopeia. You can imagine the problems that caused. One of the other four believed that blood magic could be used to bind a gate, if not close it. In the dark of night, we set the girl’s mother over the gate and cut out her heart ourselves. We were right, that time. The gate was bound to the magia’s corpse. We took her well away from the city and burned her body. The gate closed.”

  The magia sat back, her face showing clear relief. “Well, if it just takes a mother—that’s not so bad. This one’s mother is a former slave, Kyros’s mistress….” She glanced at Kyros; his face was grave, but he made no protest. Lydia chuckled nastily. “Why are you laughing?”

  Lydia shook her head. “Nothing ever works twice. The aerika are clever that way—it is their magic that creates these difficulties. You would slay her mother for nothing. You could slay Kyros…” She gestured at him, and again his expression did not change. “But you’ll anger our friends in the army—and again, probably for nothing. Perhaps you’d slay me, out of frustration. Her servants, a bandit dragged here from the steppe…All for nothing.”

  “There must be a way,” the magia said. “You found lore in the books.”

  “The books will do you no good. Cut her foolish throat. Don’t wait for her to take another fever and die of it. Or to take matters into her own hands as the last one did.”

  “If things get worse every time, how do we know that the gate will stay at the place where we cut her throat?” the magia asked.

  “Well, if it doesn’t, we’ll hardly be any worse off.”

  The magia jerked her head toward Kyros. “We will consult the books. Keep her alive for now, if you can. As long as we hold her, and keep our own aerika away from her, she’s harmless.”

  “She’s mortal,” Lydia said. “She’ll die eventually, no matter what we do.”

  “Are you volunteering to have one of your aerika slay her?”

  “How many times do I need to say that we should just kill her? I’ll volunteer to hold the knife, how’s that? Or we can use one of the cold chains, and I’ll take the risk of the aeriko’s wrath if you shrink from the danger.”

  “You’re a fool,” the magia said, and I saw her hand stray to the golden serpent.

  They rose and began to prepare to leave. I thought the djinni would probably take me away—what was there still to see?—but then I gasped as the world tilted, and I wrapped my hands around my spinning head. When things steadied, I opened my eyes again and found myself looking down at one of the books on the table—the ancient one that threatened to crumble to pieces. There was a drawing on one page, beautifully rendered in rich detail, of a gate into a tunnel. It disappeared into darkness, despite the fact that from another angle it appeared to be simply a gateway through a wall, no thicker than the wall around Elpisia. The Passage, the book said. In different handwriting, below, someone had added, Now Drowned.

  The darkness was fading to gray, and the singing had changed; it was a human voice now. I was waking, if it was reasonable to call it waking when you felt as sick and exhausted as I did. At least now I was no longer alone. Someone fed me sips of tea, then held the basin when I vomited them up again, waited a bit, and offered more. “Leave me alone,” I muttered.

  “Shhhhh,” she said. “You need to try to drink.”

  “I’ll make you sick. You should leave.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Drink.”

  I recognized that voice. What is she doing here? “Mother?”

  “Yes, darling. I’m right here. Now drink some tea.”

  I had never gotten along well with my mother. Even when I was a little girl, I had spent most of my time trying to get away from her. But right at that moment there was no one else I would have rather had at my side—not even Tamar. Even knowing that she might well have been brought here as a sacrificial goat, to bear my inner passage to some more convenient location. I closed my eyes, drank the tea as she bid me, let her wash my face and comb the flecks of vomit from my hair. “Mama’s here,” she murmured, unperturbed, when the tea came back up again. “You’re going to be all right.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  T AMAR

  From the hills above it, Daphnia looked like a green gem cupped in a bird’s nest. The grasslands around us were turning yellow and brown from heat and drought, but Daphnia was watered by canals. I’d seen those canals last fall, but Daphnia’s gardens had been dead and brown from the cold. I remembered Lauria’s disappointment that I hadn’t seen it in its glory. Now I knew why.

  Janiya, Alibek, and I went to Daphnia because of Zarina. Zarina was the bath slave at the inn I stayed at with Lauria. I had tipped her well, and in return she had warned us when we were about to be arrested. With Lycurgus dead, Zarina seemed like our best hope of finding the Younger Sisters. No one knows more secrets than a well-placed slave. And Daphnia wasn’t far from the farm. Janiya agreed this step made sense. It would be up to me to talk
to Zarina. I hoped she was still at the same inn.

  I turned to Janiya. “We probably shouldn’t bring all of the karenite into the city. If we get stopped…searched…well, you’re supposed to be able to hand it over to the temple, but I think if they found our sacks of it, they’d just execute all three of us.”

  “We can’t just leave it sitting out by the side of the road,” Janiya said. “One of us will have to wait with it—either me or Alibek, since you’re the one who knows Daphnia.”

  “I don’t know Daphnia. I only went there once.”

  “I’ve never been there at all. Nor has Alibek. Which one of us do you think you want with you?”

  I almost said I wanted Janiya just because Alibek was so irritating. But I made myself stop and think about it. “I don’t expect I’ll be recognized. But anyone who remembers me will probably remember that I was with a woman. If I’m with Alibek, there’s less chance I’ll be recognized. That’s important, because Lauria and I got in some trouble.”

  Janiya nodded. “I’ll wait for you outside the city. Do you want me to hold all the karenite?”

  “Give me one piece,” I said.

  “Just one? Are you sure?”

  “If we need more, we’ll come to you.”

  Money we would need plenty of—money for the room at the inn, money for bribes, money to buy wine to bribe slaves, money for clothes that would let us move around the city without attracting attention. Janiya handed over most of the coin, and I divided it between myself and Alibek. We looked like bandits from the steppe, but there wasn’t much we could do about that right now. Lauria and I hadn’t attracted attention because we looked like bandits. Plenty of merchants arrived as dirty and ragged as us. We attracted attention because we came in with nothing, then visited a sorceress and suddenly had enough money for an excellent inn.

  Alibek, though, looked doubtful. “What are we going to say we’re here for?”

  “We’re traders. With money and no goods at the moment.”

  “Traders of what?”

  “Exotic fragrances,” I said. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Think you know enough about perfumes to pass?”

  “Not if I’m talking to a real fragrance trader.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Then yes.”

  I hid the piece of karenite inside one of my waterskins, in case we were searched. Only a very thorough searcher would find it there. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait, one more thing,” Alibek said. “Are we going to pretend we’re married?”

  Traders working together, a man and a woman—they’d likely have some sort of family relationship. “Cousins,” I said. “If anyone asks.”

  The guards at the city gate waved us through. Alibek glanced at me. “Where to?”

  “This way.”

  I found the inn easily. The outside was very plain, and for a moment I thought I might have the wrong place. But I remembered the old man who opened the door, and inside, there was a fountain that used a tortoise shell as a basin. Scarlet flowers spilled from boxes all around the courtyard, and a bench stood in the shade. The bathhouse was where I remembered it, the door opened a crack. I hoped Zarina was inside, because if not, I was going to be out of ideas.

  As with my first visit, the innkeeper wanted to see our money before he showed us a room. My first time, he’d ignored me and spoken to Lauria. This time, he ignored me and spoke to Alibek. I wondered idly if he would take us to the room Lauria and I had stayed in, but no. Instead, he suggested a choice of two rooms. One overlooked the courtyard, he explained, and was shaded from the midday sun. The other had a view of the Temple of Athena, and got a bit of sun but also enjoyed a nice breeze in the evening. The courtyard room had a single, large bed. The room with the view of the temple had two beds, with curtains that could be drawn for privacy. “I’d like an evening breeze,” I said, not giving Alibek the chance to make the choice. “Also, we’ve been on the road for weeks. I’d like to take a bath as quickly as possible.” The innkeeper told us dinner would be up at sundown and said a bath would be readied as soon as I’d like to come down.

  Alibek sat down on one of the beds, pulled off his boots, and drew his feet up to sit. “Mind if I take this one?”

  “It’s yours.” I sat down to dig through my pack. I’d bought some spirits of wine just to tip Zarina.

  “I’m going to go down and see Zarina.”

  When we’d come in the fall, the bathhouse had been shut up tight, with a roaring fire, to keep it as warm as possible. Now, in the heat of the summer, the shutters had been replaced with loosely woven cloth that offered privacy without keeping out the breeze. The water was tepid to let bathers cool off. I was relieved to find Zarina, her blue-black hair gathered loosely mid back. She’d worn a light shift even in winter, but her clothing now was nearly transparent.

  I set the wineskin on the shelf where she kept the soaps and oils. “Do you remember me?” I asked.

  She looked me over and quirked an eyebrow. “Where is your companion?”

  “I’m working with someone else now, a man. Alibek. He may be down later.”

  She gestured toward the bath, and I shed my clothes and stepped into the water. Zarina helped me scrub clean—I still found it uncomfortable to be bathed by someone else—then gave me a towel and a light robe and started combing out my hair. “You’re as generous as always,” she said. “Can I offer you assistance of some kind?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I need to find a sorceress who is one of the Younger Sisters.”

  “Still looking for trouble, too.”

  “It’s what I need. Can you help me?”

  “I can give you a name. What you do with it is up to you.”

  I nodded.

  “Pelagia. Her house is near the Temple of Alexander. She has a statue of a leaping fish outside her house.”

  “All right.”

  “She’s unpredictable.”

  “They all are.”

  “She’s worse than most. I wish you good luck. Tread softly or you won’t be back to share your generosity with me again.”

  There was a pause.

  “Do you remember the question I asked you last fall?” I had asked her if she would like to run away with us, to be free.

  “I remember it well.”

  “Do you ever regret your answer?”

  “Sometimes. But rarely.”

  “If you’d like to change your mind…”

  “My answer hasn’t changed.” She’d said, No thank you, I think you’re likely to end up dead. And some things are worse than slavery.

  When she finished combing my hair, I left my clothes to be washed, slipped on borrowed sandals to go with the borrowed robe, and went back up to see Alibek.

  “What next?” he asked. “Can we find Pelagia tomorrow?”

  “I want clothes first. Something that will blend in. We’ll have a tailor come tomorrow.” I looked him over. “You should go bathe. New clothes on a filthy man—not good for blending in.”

  Alibek gave me a nasty look, which I didn’t understand. “Look, you can tell her you want to bathe privately, if you don’t like being ‘assisted.’ She knows you’re with me. She likes me. I tip well.”

  “She will know me for a slave,” Alibek said. He gestured toward his back. His scars.

  “She knew me for a slave, too, when Lauria and I were here the first time. She will hold her tongue. Trust me, Alibek.”

  He stood up, finally, and went down. He returned a bit later, clean and wearing a robe, like me. He was silent for a while, then said, “I don’t understand turning away from freedom. Especially…” He let his words trail off, but I knew what he meant. Alibek had been a harem slave, like me. Zarina was expected to offer certain other services, beyond a bath.

  “Surely there were favored slaves in Kyros’s harem—slaves who believed that their job wasn’t so bad. There were slaves like that where I came from.”

  “Zarina has her wits about her, though. Not like some. S
he deserves better.”

  “I thought you said it was a bad idea to free slaves—that they were a burden on the Alashi.”

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “I don’t think Zarina would really fit in, in a sword sisterhood.” I caught his eye. “But I’d still take her with us if she’d come.”

  Slaves brought our food up at sunset. It was even better than I remembered. The lamb was tangy, with a thick gravy I could soak up with the soft, chewy bread. There were also apricot tarts the size of my palm. I sighed happily over my food. “Did you get tired of the Alashi food?” I asked as I finished. “I got so tired of it during my summer with them I thought I was going to cry.”

  Alibek shook his head, absently. “I liked it. Why wouldn’t I like it?” He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes. “The food was better when you were a slave, is that it?”

  “No! Why do you take every word I say the wrong way?”

  “Why would you complain about the Alashi? About their food, of all things?”

  “I can’t believe you never got tired of it.”

  “Did Lauria complain the way you do?”

  I stood up, furious. “The Alashi were her life. She loved the steppe, and so did I.” I stomped off to my bed and threw myself down on it, turning my back on Alibek as if to dare him to say another word. He fell silent. I listened to him finish his own dinner, prepare for bed, and lie down. He took a breath, as if he was going to say something—then let it out, his words unspoken.

  The tailor came in the morning, and we paid the rush fee. That meant we’d have new clothes by evening. In the meantime, our own clothes were dry, but I was reluctant to go out in them. Lauria and I had put on our coats and hoped no one would notice us—but we had been noticed, and in any case, it was no longer coat-wearing weather. I went down to the inner courtyard to sit in the shade and watch the other guests—and to avoid Alibek. Naturally, no sooner had I gotten settled on the bench in the shade than I saw Alibek coming out to the courtyard and looking around for me. “The room is getting very warm,” he said, sitting down next to me. I thought it was probably more that he was bored, and irritating me amused him, but I moved over and made a space for him to sit down.