Freedom s Sisters

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I do. That’s why I asked you how much you want to know rather than just saying that I couldn’t tell you more.”

  “Tell me what you think you can.”

  “The Greek army threatens the Alashi,” Janiya said. “Even now they may be beginning their assault on the steppe. We left the steppe to sew dissent among the Weavers, hoping that this would distract their attack. There are cracks in the Sisterhood already—we hoped to widen them into schisms.”

  “And what went wrong?”

  “The sorceress who had agreed to our bargain was found out, I think. We escaped just ahead of an attack on her house. And also—it’s not the Sisterhood that’s behind the invasion of the steppe, but a conspiracy from the Temple of Alexander. The Alashi control something the Weavers need. If the army controls it, they will control the Weavers.”

  “That is not an arrangement that can last,” Damira said. “The Weavers will not tolerate it for long.”

  “You’re probably right. But my concern is the Alashi.”

  “So now what?”

  “We needed somewhere to go.”

  “No.” Damira shook her head. “What are you going to do next? Walk back to the steppe? The war will be over before you arrive.”

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Janiya said. “Catch our breath, stay alive, and look for a way to turn the Weavers and the army against each other now, rather than later.”

  “Hmm,” Damira said, her voice mocking. “Well. Despite your hard work, loyalty, and sacrifices, the Weavers turned on you, didn’t they? Just as some of us warned you they would. Seems like you should have no trouble thinking of things that would piss them off.”

  Janiya turned away from Damira again, tense with anger. “You were always a troublemaker, Damira,” she said, after a moment. “I knew that if we came here, you’d hide us, at least, and that’s really all I’m asking.”

  “Did you have anything to do with what happened today?” Damira asked.

  “You mean the temple’s collapse?” Janiya laughed a little. “No. We heard the rumble, though. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. One rumor said that someone freed the djinni that supported some of the walls.”

  Janiya glanced at me, and Damira followed that glance. “You didn’t do it, but she knows who did.”

  “We weren’t involved,” I said.

  “But you do know who did it.”

  “Yes.” I cleared my throat. Was there any reason at all not to tell her? After all, the Greeks knew who it was and were already trying to find her. “Lauria. It was a woman named Lauria. She’s—she’s a friend of mine.”

  Damira raised an eyebrow. “That sort of friend?” she asked.

  My cheeks grew warm. “She’s my sister,” I said.

  “Ah.” Damira glanced at Janiya, and I saw, in that moment, that she and Janiya had once been that sort of friend. I felt a brief stab of envy, which I pushed aside. “Tell me about the woman who freed the djinni. How did she do it?”

  “She touched them and spoke the words of banishment. She can free bound djinni. They call her a gate. It’s her gift. I don’t know how she does it.”

  “I see,” Damira said softly. “And they let her slip through their fingers? Astonishing.”

  “I don’t think they meant to.”

  “No.” Damira rose and hobbled toward us again.

  “Stand,” she said to Alibek. She put her hand on his chin, grasping his face like an apple, and gazed for a long moment into his eyes. Alibek shuddered a little and did his best to look back at her. He fell back a step when she finally let go of him, and I saw him tremble. “Now you,” she said, and I stood up, clenching my hands into fists. I refused to show her fear. Her wrinkled hands were cool and smooth against my chin. Her eyes were dark brown, but when she stared into me, I saw not only her but something else as well. Djinn. She had a djinn within her, and it looked at me through her eyes.

  “You are possessed,” I whispered when she finally let me go. “But not unwillingly.”

  “We are companions,” she said. “We have lived together, like this, for a very long time.” She caught the quick look Janiya gave her and laughed a little. “Not quite that long.”

  “I have known a shaman with a djinn he spoke with regularly. But she only visited.”

  “Hmm.” Damira said. “My djinn is a barley-eater, like me. Most of the rogue djinni are rice-eaters, like her.” She glanced at Janiya, then smiled and brushed my hair back from my face. “You have been touched by the djinni—perhaps in time you’ll understand what I mean. I will help you.”

  “Great,” Janiya said, and sat heavily down on the floor. “All we really need is somewhere to stay.”

  “I expect you’re hungry and thirsty.” Damira dipped water from a jar in the corner to a kettle and a pot. “I’ll go out and get water for breakfast.” She lifted the jar onto her shoulder. Janiya started up to assist her, then fell back at Damira’s glare. “Don’t be ridiculous. Stay here and start tea. I’ll make porridge after I get back.”

  I had thought it was still the middle of the night, but when Damira opened the door I saw that dawn had come. The sky was violet-blue, and people were out on the street. Damira closed the door quickly, leaving us in lantern light.

  Janiya sighed and got up, lighting a fire on the hearth from the lantern, then putting out the lantern’s flame. The house was already stuffy, and with the fire kindled it quickly grew warm. “Tea,” she said, when it was ready, and handed Alibek and me each a cup. My stomach rumbled. Rhea’s roast chicken had been a long time ago.

  “Can we trust Damira?” Alibek asked.

  “I don’t see what choice we really have,” I said.

  “We can trust her, I think,” Janiya said. “We were good friends—a long time ago. When I volunteered to join the Sisterhood’s Guard, Damira was opposed. She considered them enemies, even then…She said I’d regret it, and when I refused to change my mind, she cursed me and told me not to ever speak to her again.”

  “Ah. So that’s why you came back here?” Alibek asked. “You had such fond memories of each other?”

  “I had a hunch she’d still be here. And I thought she’d take us in, for your sake if not mine. And I was right.”

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet. This way we have some time to sit and think about it, though.”

  Damira came back a short time later and started barley porridge cooking over the fire. “There are all sorts of interesting rumors flying about,” she said. “Some about the temple’s collapse, some about several sorceresses who were taken from their homes last night by the Sisterhood Guard. Soldiers dug among the temple ruins through the night, trying to rescue anyone who might still be alive under there. Today they’re offering sacks of rice to anyone who can lift a shovel and comes to help.”

  Damira dished porridge into bowls. It was bland but filling. I washed it down with tepid tea.

  “I’m thinking we should go dig,” Janiya said, as we ate. “We can wear scarves to protect us from the dust, and that should hide our faces as well. The Guard won’t be looking for us there. And we might hear something useful.”

  Damira raised an eyebrow, but didn’t argue. “Bring back the rice,” she said.

  Alibek peered out the door and into the street. “If we go out, all the neighbors are going to see us,” he said.

  “They’ve seen us already,” Janiya said without looking up. “Everyone knows we’re here. They’ll likely assume we’re fugitives, but probably no one will turn us in.”

  “No one will,” Damira said sharply. “The people here are the ones who didn’t join the Sisterhood Guard.” She spat. Janiya shrugged.

  “We’re going to be conspicuous,” Alibek said. “Our clothes, our boots…”

  “Fall into the mud when you’re crossing the canal,” Damira suggested. “That should take care of your finery.”
r />   I looked down at my clothes. I’d had them made just a few days ago. At least they were dirty. I ripped off part of my tunic to make a scarf. Fortunately, the tailor had used cheap cloth, and the fabric gave way easily. We tromped through mud crossing the canal, and passed through clouds of dust going up the hill to the temple courtyard. When we got there we didn’t stand out anymore, and the soldiers hardly looked at us anyway. If Lauria was still in Daphnia, she could probably hide in the temple courtyard.

  The dust clogged my throat and made my eyes burn. Even at the canal, the breeze brought the stench of rot. At the fallen temple, the smell was overpowering.

  The place where the temple had stood was now a shifting mountain of broken rocks. I’d expected to dig with a shovel, but instead we were sent to scramble up the heap and join a line passing buckets of loose rubble. “Do you know,” said the man to my left, as he handed me the bucket, which I handed to Alibek, “there was a soldier killed doing this yesterday. The stones shifted and he fell and died. That’s why they were so eager to hire people today.”

  “Why don’t they just use djinni?” asked the woman to his left.

  “They might kill someone underneath,” I said. “Someone who’s still alive. And free the djinn.”

  “There can’t be anyone alive under there,” the man said.

  “They found a priestess alive yesterday,” said a man farther down the line.

  “No!” the woman said, amazed. Another bucket swung from hand to hand, followed by a rough boulder the size of my head, followed by a piece of one of the big marble blocks. My arms ached. In the square below, people dumped out the buckets. Soldiers with shovels dug through the rubble there.

  “They are using djinni,” someone else said. “They’re sending them hunting through the rubble to find the people who are still alive.”

  Weavers and soldiers mixed in the crowd. There were few people in Penelopeia who could recognize me—was Kyros here? He was nowhere in sight, of course. No doubt he was somewhere comfortable. Sweat trickled into my eyes. One of the Weavers scrambled up past me. I tensed, but it wasn’t Rhea or anyone else I recognized. She climbed back down to argue with the military officer in charge. Soon after, a djinn lifted a wagon box to the top of the pile. The breathless sorceress climbed back up and reorganized us. She had us shovel debris into the wagon box instead of passing it down in buckets. The djinn carried full loads down and dumped them in the square. This went faster.

  “How did this happen? Did you hear?” I asked the man who’d told me about the soldiers. “Was there an earthquake?”

  “The official word was an earthquake—but I didn’t feel any tremors until after the temple began to fall,” he said. He lowered his voice. “I don’t know what caused it, only that the Sisterhood of Weavers wants to hide the truth. They kidnapped one of their own last night—she had something to do with it.”

  “I know what caused it,” said a woman nearby. “It was Zeus escaping his prison.”

  “Isn’t his prison supposed to be thousands of miles away?”

  “Sure, that’s what they say. But who’d look for him here? Pretty good place to hide him!”

  “It wasn’t Zeus,” said an older man who looked Danibeki. “It was the lost rivers returning.”

  “Those are thousands of miles away.”

  “It wasn’t either one. There were aerika who held up the temple. Someone broke the spell-chain that bound them, and it collapsed.”

  I knew that voice. My hands and feet tingled as my blood turned cold. Lauria. That’s Lauria’s voice. I dropped my shovel and lurched sideways to grab her before she could slip away again, my certainty that I’d heard her voice overpowering all sense and the knowledge that she had to be far away by now.

  I found myself staring into the face of an older woman, perhaps the same age as Janiya. Definitely not Lauria. “Excuse me,” I said, trying to gather my wits, and let go of her. My face was already flushed from the heat, but my cheeks burned even hotter.

  I heard a shout. Someone had been found in the rubble, alive or dead was not yet clear. We rushed over to help move rocks, though some rocks slid under my feet and I thought that anyone alive might be killed by the effort to get them out. The soldiers didn’t want to risk climbing on the unsteady pile, though, and the sorceresses didn’t want to risk having their djinni accidentally kill someone. So we did the best we could, and in the end uncovered the body of a woman who had clearly been dead for a while. I wondered if she were a priestess, a sorceress, or something else—it was hard to tell. One of the sorceresses sent up a small palanquin for the body, and we lifted the woman onto it to be carried down.

  If she was a sorceress, she might have left behind a spell-chain. I went to work digging near where we’d found the body, trying to sift through without anyone noticing. I had, barely a half year earlier, convinced Lauria not to bind a djinn, but right now, a djinn seemed so very useful that I was more than willing to use a spell-chain if I could find one. I promised myself that I would free the djinn when I was done with it. Lauria, of course, had made that promise and I’d ignored her. Though now I’d helped put thirty pieces of karenite in the hands of the Sisterhood of Weavers.

  If I was going to compromise my beliefs again, I hoped this time it did enough good to be worth the guilt.

  The woman with Lauria’s voice was digging near me. I wondered if she’d had the same idea about looking for spell-chains. She glanced at me warily, and I gave her a sheepish smile, still embarrassed by my mistake earlier. We dug side by side for about an hour, silently. No spell-chain turned up.

  Just as well, really. Near sunset, we were all ordered off the pile and searched by the soldiers to make sure we weren’t taking anything. If I found a spell-chain, I’d have to hide it well if I wanted to keep it.

  I thought they might send us back up to dig through the night, but they handed out sacks of rice and sent us home.

  “This is ridiculous,” someone yelled. It was the sorceress who had thought of using wagon beds to move rubble. “Where are the cold chains? Let’s use aerika bound by dead Weavers. I’ll hold the chain and give the order, if you’re afraid.” One of the soldiers said something I couldn’t hear, and the sorceress said, “Oh, I’ll tell you where they are. They’re off to war—the army has them. They’d rather slaughter bandits than save Weavers.”

  I nodded, wanting to shout, “Yes! Keep thinking that way!” Though thinking about her words made my stomach hurt. Cold chains. Dead sorceresses. You could use these spell-chains for murder without killing the sorceress who did the binding. I’d heard that if you used a spell-chain to kill someone, the djinn often killed you, too. But soldiers already risked death. They wouldn’t hesitate to give the order to kill. At least each cold chain could be used that way just once. They’d run out eventually.

  Though they’d get a lot more if they tracked down and executed all the Younger Sisters…

  I found Janiya and Alibek at the edge of the square with sacks of rice under their arms. The sun was going down, and it was a little cooler. We slid down the bank, waited our turn to scramble across the canal on the rocks, and went back to Damira’s house, putting the rice by her hearth. She scooped some into a pot and started it cooking.

  “Did you learn anything interesting?” Janiya asked as we waited for the rice.

  “One woman today knew why the temple collapsed,” I said. “But no one believed her. Others thought it happened because Zeus escaped his prison, or because the rivers are returning. Or that Rhea did it somehow.”

  Janiya nodded, then looked at Alibek. He shrugged and said, “There was another woman working today named Tamar.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “It’s not a common name. Did you learn anything, Janiya?”

  “I’d been thinking, maybe we could make trouble by organizing an uprising from within the barley district here in Penelopeia. I’ve decided that won’t work. People may not trust the Weavers, but they have just enough comfort they’re not go
ing to risk losing it.”

  Damira snorted.

  “Barley district?” Alibek asked.

  “You know. This neighborhood. The poorest part of town. The people here eat barley because it’s cheaper than rice. But they’re not going to rise against the Weavers. They’re poor but not desperate.”

  Damira had said something about barley-eating djinni and rice-eating djinni. I’d never seen djinni eat, though. Janiya rested her head on her hands and said, “I’m exhausted. I think we should sleep. Even if there’s a simple way to snap the alliances like a dry twig, I won’t see it right now.”

  Alibek and I nodded. We ate dinner, then lay down on the floor—Damira had only one bed, and she wasn’t offering to share, even with Janiya—and tried to sleep.

  I roused in the night and thought at first I was dreaming of the borderland. But the voices I heard were Damira and Janiya, speaking quietly from beside the open door.

  “I never should have let you go.”

  “How were you going to stop me?”

  “I should have tied you down. Refused to cut you loose until you promised you’d change your mind.”

  “You tried something along those lines, as I recall. I beat you.”

  “Only because I let you.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Think what you like.” A low chuckle, and then the sound of a kiss. And then another. I closed my eyes again. I’d overheard this sort of thing before, but this was Janiya. My cheeks grew hot, but I also felt another stab of envy. Not because I wanted to be with Janiya or Damira. They were old. Well, older than me. But I could hear their ease with each other. They shared something I still shied away from.

  Zhanna had flirted with me at the spring gathering. What would it have been like to say yes? Did I desire her the way Janiya and Damira desired each other? I didn’t think so. Did I desire anyone at all?

  I heard another kiss, and then a faint gasp. I rolled over onto my side, turning my back on the noises, and saw that Alibek was also awake. He met my eyes in the dim light. I expected him to laugh at me, but he didn’t. Instead, I saw faint yearning in his eyes, then he turned his face away.