“Lauria came for me.”
“Into the bandit camp?”
“Yes. I found out later—much later—that Kyros sent a djinn to make sure Lauria reached the Alashi alive. She made it help her get me out. They loosed the bandits’ horses as a distraction.” I rubbed the palm of my hand with my thumb. “I know you don’t like her—I understand why you hate her, honestly. But I knew a different person.”
Alibek nodded. He didn’t really agree, I thought, but he didn’t want to argue.
There was a bend in the canal. We found a spot that was clear of rubbish and not too muddy, and sat down. This time of day, the dogs and crows had returned to their dens or nests, but I could hear the scrabble of claws in the garbage behind us and knew that rats were nearby.
“So you didn’t have a lover among the Alashi?” Alibek asked.
“Why do you care?” I shot him a glare, but he was looking at me so mildly that I lowered my eyes and turned it into a shrug. “It’s not as if we had any privacy.”
“Surely people managed. There were plenty of ‘summer friends’ in the brotherhood.”
“People managed. Yes. But not me.” Zhanna was none of his business, and nothing had happened anyway. “Why are you asking me about this?”
Alibek shrugged uncomfortably. “As a concubine, I was only ever—used. My body, another’s pleasure. When I was with the Alashi, there was a man in the brotherhood who wanted to show affection to me, but I was terrified. So he left me alone. I have thought, of late, that I am tired of being terrified. You and I are a lot alike. I was wondering…” He stopped, suddenly awkward again. “Never mind.”
I realized a moment later what he’d been thinking—Me. He was—and felt my ears, cheeks, and forehead begin to burn.
“I’m sorry,” he said a moment later. “Don’t worry, Tamar. I won’t so much as touch your foot without your permission.”
I thought about that night years ago with Kyros, and all the horrible nights that had followed. I thought about Zhanna, and Damira and Janiya. Alibek was right. I was tired of being terrified.
I stole a look at Alibek. He was a pretty enough boy. And he was here. And most importantly, he understood what it was like to be a former slave.
I stretched out my foot toward him. “Well, if you want to touch my foot, I suppose that wouldn’t be too bad.”
He pulled my boot off, gently. My feet were rank, but he made no comment, just ran his thumb down the curve of my foot to my heel. I remembered he’d told me about the woman who’d wanted her feet rubbed. He pulled my other boot off, and rubbed that foot, as well. My feet hurt, I realized, and my legs ached—from weariness, from walking, from the cords inside me drawn tighter than a bowstring. He rubbed my feet for a while, patiently.
“If you want to touch the rest of me, I guess that would be all right,” I said.
“Don’t sound too eager,” he said.
“Well, what do you expect? How eager do you feel? You want to try it, I want to try it, so let’s try it.”
Alibek nodded. “If you want me to stop,” he said. “Just tell me. And—you understand—I’m not going to promise that I won’t want to stop.”
Our eyes met and locked. I saw the fear in his eyes, and I knew he saw the fear in mine.
“It always hurt,” I said. “Every time.”
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
He began to rub my feet again, then began to work his way up. His hands traced the muscles of my calves, around my knees, up to my thighs. Then one hand brushed the inside of my thigh, and I felt a shiver run through my body even as I also felt a jolt of fear. I almost told him to stop, then took a deep breath. Maybe I would tell him to stop in a minute.
Still, his hand wandered up my side and touched my cheek. He cupped my chin with the heel of his hand and drew my face close to his. He kissed me lightly on the lips. I could feel his breath, warm against my face. His lips were very soft, though his chin and upper lip were scratchy. I had never been kissed before. The men who chose me as their concubine were not the kissing type.
Alibek’s hand stroked my face, then down, tracing the side of my neck, my shoulder, the curve of my breast. I felt warmth flush through my body, and I reached out my own hand to Alibek’s face, bringing his lips to mine for another kiss. Then he pulled my body against his. Even through the layers of our clothes, I could feel the warmth of him. Something hard pressed against me, rubbed between my legs, and for a moment I caught my breath; it felt good. Then old fear caught up with me. I didn’t shove Alibek away, because of course when I was a concubine, resisting only ever made things worse. But I lay still out of terror, not anticipation, even though I told myself that this was Alibek, just Alibek.
After a moment Alibek realized something was wrong, even though I didn’t say anything. He touched me again, tentatively, then pulled back.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” he said.
“No—” I got to my feet, a little unsteady on the bank. “Do you think we can interrupt Janiya and Damira now? I’m hungry.”
Alibek stood up beside me and really did lose his balance, skidding into the canal and soaking himself to his knees. He swore, then scrambled back up. We picked up our bags of rice and walked back to Damira’s house in awkward silence.
The door was closed, so we knocked. “Oh, there you are,” Damira said, as if they’d been waiting—but the inside of the house was stuffy, so I knew that the door had been closed for a while. We sat in silence while the rice cooked.
“I met the other Tamar today,” I said, trying to fill the silence.
“Another Tamar?” Damira poked at the fire with her stick, then wiped sweat from her face. “Not someone I know. Perhaps she’s also new in town.” The rice was done. She set it on the table.
“More digging tomorrow?” I asked Janiya.
She sighed and rested her head against her hand. “I don’t know. We aren’t getting anywhere, but I keep hoping we’ll get lucky. Or see some other chance. What do you think?”
I shrugged. Alibek shook his head.
“More digging tomorrow,” Janiya said finally, and we lay down to sleep.
Alibek was close by, and I found myself thinking about our encounter that evening. Heat rose to my face, from cast-aside pleasure or pure embarrassment I wasn’t sure. I rolled onto my side, away from him, then tried, unsuccessfully, to get comfortable. I wondered if Janiya and Damira were waiting impatiently for us to fall asleep, which of course made me even more awake. I rolled onto my back again and stared up at the ceiling, wishing I could go sleep outside.
Lauria once told me that during our summer with the Alashi, the djinni showed her a vision of herself in chains. She’d found that confusing, because she had not been born a slave, but she came to understand that as Kyros’s servant, she wore a different kind of chains.
I was still in chains as well.
I thought about reaching out to take Alibek’s hand. But the longer I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. Finally, I decided to just do it, but in the darkness, instead of taking his hand, I put my cold fingers on his bare stomach. He jumped like a mouse had bitten him. I snatched my hand back and whispered, “Sorry.”
Alibek rolled over. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I heard a rustle. He’d held out his hand for me to take. I laced my fingers through his. His palm felt warm against mine. The skin was cracked from labor in the temple square. He squeezed my hand gently, and whispered, “Thank you.”
After a time, I felt his hand relax into sleep.
I still lay awake, thinking about the steppe. I wished we were back there. We weren’t accomplishing anything in Penelopeia.
I wondered how the slaves we’d freed were getting on. Prax, the mine slave. Jaran. Uljas. Nika and her daughter Melaina—Lauria had refused to let me come when she freed them. Nika had recognized Lauria, but had pretended not to, in a strange gesture of courtesy. That was why Lauria had
called herself Xanthe for a while—she didn’t want to reject that gesture, yet she wanted Janiya to know it was she who had freed Nika. I’d have to remember to ask Janiya tomorrow if it worked. It was a strange way to tell her, coming at it from a slant. Kind of like the way we talked when we knew the sorceresses might be listening to us.
If Lauria wanted to send me a message with a name, but had to hide from others who might be looking, what would she call herself? Xanthe again, perhaps. Or Zhanna, or Ruan. Or maybe Tamar. That would certainly get my attention.
That other Tamar. Was that a false name? Was that a message to me? No, surely not. When she heard my name was also Tamar, she never batted an eye.
But it was a false name, I realized suddenly, and I knew who the other Tamar was, and who the message was for. She wanted Lauria to find her—that’s why she was using my name. She was hiding from someone else—that’s why she wasn’t using her own.
It was Lauria’s mother. That was why she spoke with Lauria’s voice.
I wanted to find Lauria, to tell her, to see what she said, if I was right…My excited discovery had pushed sleep even farther away, but I gently pulled my hand away from Alibek, closed my eyes and focused, and sank, finally, into the darkness I was looking for.
The web shone out for me like a dew-covered spiderweb. Lauria had gotten away, so surely I would be able to find her tonight…I looked for the thread that led to Lauria.
But it was gone.
I had to be mistaken. I looked again. Perhaps she was awake, but the thread should still be there.
It was gone.
Completely gone.
Where was she? Where could she have gone?
I kept looking, sure that I must just not be seeing it.
She’s dead, my mind whispered. I shook my head, refusing to believe it, but I could think of no other explanation. She didn’t get away after all. She’s dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
L AURIA
I learned to swim as a child, splashing in the river one spring as the floods ebbed. When I was fourteen, Kyros decided that he wanted me to become a better swimmer. So I practiced. One of his other servants taught me better form. I learned how to hold my breath and swim underwater, how to swim while carrying a burden, how to rescue someone in the water who didn’t know how to swim. When I was ready, Kyros tested me by having me swim across a lake. It was tiring, and the water was very cold, but I made it. After all that, I thought perhaps Kyros would have some special task he wanted me to do that required me to swim. But no; he just wanted me to be able to swim, and swim well, if I needed to. In retrospect, it was probably one of his own crazy-like-a-sorceress cold fevers that told him to do it.
As I fell toward the mountain lake, I sucked in my breath and tucked my knees against my chest. I hit the water butt first, and it stung like a blow. The water was shockingly cold, and I shuddered as I went down. Then I kicked my legs and swam back to the surface, breaking through to yell, “Hey!”
The palanquin looked very high from here. No one looked out at my call. Was Zivar in there, or had Xanthe managed to throw her out, too? Maybe they’d both fallen in while I was underwater.
“Hey,” I yelled again. “I can swim, but I’m getting really cold.” The water felt a little warmer as the shock wore off, but now my boots were weighing me down. I kicked them off.
There was still no response from the palanquin.
Zeus’s hell. Now what? Could I swim to the shore? I splashed in place and looked around; I was nearly at the center of the lake, and the shore was a very long way away. We’d covered the distance quickly in the palanquin, but I thought that even trying to walk the distance would take hours.
I looked up again. The palanquin was moving away. “Stop,” I shouted uselessly. “Come back! Zivar! Xanthe. Don’t leave me here to die, come back!”
Can they even hear me?
I’d gotten a mouthful of water when I fell in, and the taste of it reminded me of the dream I’d had about the spell-chain. Is that spell-chain hidden here in the very lake it binds? Well, if I find it, I’ll have all the djinni I could ever ask for, at my fingertips.
I looked up one last time, searching for the palanquin, then took a deep breath and dived down toward the bottom of the lake.
In my vision, the spell-chain had given off a glow, which I had followed to its source. I’d hoped that when I dived underwater I’d see that glow and be able to follow it. Instead, there was water in my eyes, making it hard to see much of anything other than the greenish light of the sun through the water. I swam straight down, and the light dimmed. It wasn’t a terribly deep lake, as it turned out: I bumped up against the rough gravel after a few moments of kicking. I wanted to kick myself back to the surface to gulp air, but I forced myself to wait for a moment, take a look around—any glow? No?—before I kicked off and shot back to the surface.
My head broke through the water; I gasped for breath. My clothes were weighing me down, soaked with water as they were. I had been reluctant to take them off because they offered at least a little bit of warmth, but if I was going to search for the spell-chain, I’d exhaust myself much faster with the clothes slowing me down. Will I die from cold first, or exhaustion? Either way, I think I’m more likely to find the spell-chain with nothing to slow me down. I kicked off the trousers and pulled off my tunic. Naked, I felt light as an eel. The exercise was warming me a bit.
My first impulse was to swim toward shore before diving down again, but surely, if someone were hiding the spell-chain, they’d have thrown it into the center. Or the deepest part. I wouldn’t think about that now. I turned away from the shore, swam for a few minutes, then took a deep breath and dived down.
Again, I reached the bottom fairly quickly. This time I was able to pick up a good-sized rock off the bottom to weight me down as I took a look around. No glow, though a little bit of faint greenish light filtered down from the surface. If there was a spell-chain down here, I didn’t see it. This is hopeless.
I set down the rock and thrust my legs back toward the surface. I wiped the water from my eyes as well as I could with my wet hand, once I was out, and took a big breath. The hot summer sun felt good on my head. If I could just crawl up on top of the water and rest there for a while, I would be fine. If only the palanquin hadn’t left me…
I don’t have time to think about that now. I swam for a minute or two toward what I thought was the center of the lake, and dived again. What would it be like to die from cold in a lake? I’d heard that dying from cold was normally not too bad—you fell asleep and never woke up. And I’d heard that drowning was awful. If you died from cold in the water, did you drown, or did you fall asleep? I don’t have time to think about this, either.
The lake was deeper here. Down I went until my hands hit something hard. The ground? No—a wall, I realized, a stone wall. This was a city once, before the water came. I felt my way along it, and groping along the ground, my hand touched something smooth. My lungs were burning, so I closed my hand around and pushed off from the wall, shooting back toward the surface.
Out, and I gasped for air, then tried to float on my back to look at what I’d found: a glass teacup. I held it up for a moment, letting it shine in the sun. My great-great-grandmother could have drunk from this. Could have been drinking from this when the water came. I shook off the thought; probably my great-great-grandmother had been elsewhere, and that’s why she had survived. I loosed the teacup and let it fall through the greenish water, to settle back on the ground below, and dived again.
There were buildings here, looming in the green-gray darkness; I had disturbed some fish, which darted through a hollow window and into the darkness. I still saw no spell-chain. I returned to the surface, swam a bit, took another deep breath, and dived again.
This time when I reached the bottom of the lake, I landed inside one of the buildings; the roof had long since fallen away. The walls were coated in a green mossy growth. Looking around, I thought I could identify
a fireplace, and the remains of a table. In the corner, I saw a greenish lump; I prodded it tentatively with one finger and realized that it had once been a cask of wine.
I found more greenish walls on my next dive; there was a window to one side of me, and sand swirled around my feet. I found an overturned kettle and a cooking pot, or what was left of them. They were coated in slimy green weeds. If I’d had the palanquin close by, I’d have wanted to bring these bits and pieces up to the top simply as curiosities. Zivar would be fascinated, even if Xanthe wouldn’t care. There was still no sign of the palanquin when I reached the surface, though, so I was glad I hadn’t taken the trouble.
When I went down again, I saw a glimmer of something in the muck of the lake floor. Could it be? I pulled myself down and dug through the mud and weeds; my heart leapt as I saw the sparkle of a faceted gem. I closed my fist over it and pulled it free, already wondering if I could speak to the djinn right here underwater. But instead of a spell-chain, my fist held an ordinary—well, richly made, but worthless to me—necklace, set with gems. Diamonds, I thought—it was hard to be certain of colors underwater, and I didn’t care enough to test to be certain. Worthless. I dropped it and pushed myself back to the surface.
I was growing tired. I floated on my back for a few minutes, trying to rest, and realized that I was also getting cold. I was starting to shiver; this wasn’t good, it would only exhaust me sooner. I wondered how much of the day was left. Even if I managed to stay afloat through the day, night would surely finish me off. Maybe Xanthe and Zivar will come back before then…
I took another deep breath and swam down.
This time I found white marble steps—patches of white were still visible under the weeds and sand—and white columns. Beyond that, a carved statue like the ones the Weavers put in front of their houses. This one showed a bird in flight; I could recognize the shape even now. Was this a temple? Or some other public building? Or merely the home of some very wealthy person? I swam a little farther underwater and came to something that made me pause.
Freedom s Sisters Page 21