“Yes. The Greeks are in no position to threaten us. Someday, perhaps, but not in our lifetime.” Janiya sighed. “Though the influx of newcomers may be almost as dangerous to us as an army. We don’t have enough food. Our flocks aren’t big enough…”
“Send people south,” I said. “Have them organize clans to farm the lands down there.”
“That’s a good idea,” Janiya said. “I’ll suggest it to the elders and eldresses.”
I shrugged. “Do we need their approval? Maybe you should suggest it to Ruan. Or others from the sisterhoods and brotherhoods who might enjoy a new challenge.”
Janiya shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the thought. “We aren’t bound together by magic, but we’re bound together by our customs. This isn’t the time to challenge them, or we might crumble as thoroughly as the Penelopeian Empire.”
The big initiation ceremony for new Alashi took place near the end of the fall gathering. Tamar had initiated me in absentia when she’d been here last spring, so I didn’t have to go through it. Zivar was not yet ready to be initiated, so she sat with us as well, looking a little wistful. She still wore her spell-chain, but kept it hidden.
Prax walked under an arch of torches, and the men from his brotherhood clustered around him to clasp his hands in welcome. Tamar and I hung back, but Prax sought us out. Tamar stood on tiptoe to press her lips to his forehead. Prax clasped my hand and met my eyes, then bent his head to let me kiss him, too. “Welcome back,” he whispered. Another former mine slave was already swearing his loyalty, and many others were still waiting their turn. What was next spring going to be like, with hundreds of newcomers already swarming the steppe?
Prax came over again to sit with us during the celebration. “You remember what we said about starting our own clan?” Prax asked. “I’m thinking that now is a good time. Not right now, but next spring.”
“Are you thinking we’ll go to the site of the reservoir?”
“Yes, with herds—and something we can trade for seeds. The stories all say that it was the most fertile lands that were flooded.”
“Do you really think it will be inhabitable yet?” I asked.
“I do. But you’re probably right that we should make sure of that. Maybe we can ride there together as soon as the snow melts, before the spring gathering.” He glanced around the little circle, at me, Tamar, Alibek, and Zivar. “Maybe just the five of us. What do you think?”
I glanced around; everyone was nodding. “Let’s do it,” I said. “As soon as the snow melts.”
It was a long, difficult winter. Janiya invited Tamar, Alibek, and me to stay with her clan for the winter. Since Xanthe and Zivar were still blossoms, they were sent out with another clan. I was just as glad not to have to spend the winter in close quarters with Xanthe, but I missed Zivar.
There were several young girls in the clan who were back from their first summer with the sisterhood. I saw their mothers fussing over them, including one who got all weepy over her daughter’s shorn hair, and my throat went unexpectedly tight.
Uljas had been able to bring Burkut’s body up to the Alashi for burial. I hadn’t been able to bury my mother at all…I had no idea what had happened to her body. Then again, I was certain she wouldn’t have wanted to be buried on the steppe. This wasn’t her home. If anything, she might have liked being buried with Kyros—which would have been even more impossible, since he hadn’t left behind a body at all.
Still, not being able to bury my mother was one of the things that gnawed at me in the early months of winter. If I spoke with the eldress, I thought she would probably let me initiate my mother in absentia, but my mother wouldn’t want that, either. What would she want? A proper daughter. A respectable son-in-law. Grandchildren. All the things I was never going to give her.
I decided that I would grow out my hair, as a memorial to my mother. Brushing my hair always made me think of her.
I had dreams some nights where I stood in darkness and heard the roar of water approaching. I always wrenched myself awake with a gasp and found myself drenched in sweat. Awake, I couldn’t bear to think about the horrors I had unleashed; my thoughts recoiled. Tamar didn’t seem to feel the guilt I felt. I broached the issue with her once, and she gave me one of the steady, slightly patronizing looks she’d used when I was in the grip of the cold fever. “You said yourself the djinni would succeed in making a gate, sooner or later. And as long as our gate stood, the djinni would keep being bound. And we saved the Alashi from the Greek army. If you could do it over, would you leave the river bound?”
“No.”
“So?”
I tried again to put it out of my mind.
Food was short through the winter. The Alashi were not prepared for so many new members, and the supplies left behind by the retreating Greeks did not fill the shortage. The days were cold, and the nights colder. I dreamed one night that I was back at Zivar’s house in Casseia, in a soft bed within a warm room; I could even smell the meal that waited for me. I was almost disappointed when I woke up, though when I thought about the food I’d smelled, I realized that it wasn’t the comfort I missed—it was Zivar.
It also occurred to me that it had been a long time since I’d had one of those dizzying surges of energy that came with the cold fever. Nor had I felt despondent and unable to rise from bed. I wondered if Zivar and the other sorceresses were similarly even-tempered now.
Zivar, I found out, was only an hour’s ride away. On a day of cold, bright sunshine, I rode out to where Zivar was staying. She had been having a rough winter. They were making her take tests; of course, she was mostly failing them, just as Tamar and I had. I wanted to tell her that the tests didn’t really mean anything, but I feared that if I did, I’d just make it more likely that she’d never be allowed to join the Alashi.
I took her out for a walk. The sky was blue, and the snow reflected the winter sun like shards of broken mirror. There was no wind, which was the only thing that made it bearable to be out in the cold. We kept walking, trying to stay warm.
“Do you feel different these days?” I asked Zivar.
“I feel like strangling the eldress. Is that what you mean?”
“No. I mean the cold fever. Is it still with you?”
Zivar stopped in her tracks. “No,” she said, after a moment. “Or if it is, it is quieter than it’s been in years.”
“I wonder if that’s true for all the sorceresses?”
Zivar shrugged. “I could send my aeriko and ask, I suppose, if you really want to know. Does it matter?” Her hand traced the chain under her coat.
“I suppose it doesn’t, really.”
We kept walking.
“I think the eldress wants me to give up the spell-chain,” she said. “Those stupid blue beads! I have a dozen of them now but she still acts like I don’t have enough. I think she wants me to free my aeriko. That will prove something, that I’ve ‘changed’ or whatever.”
I made a noncommittal noise. She was probably right.
“I don’t even want it anymore,” Zivar said. “I haven’t used the aeriko for anything in ages, and I don’t like looking at it. But what if they don’t let me stay? How am I supposed to survive?”
“You’re strong, Zivar,” I said. “You don’t need it.”
“I can’t survive on my own, Lauria!”
“You won’t be alone. Prax wants to start a new clan—you heard him talk about that at fall gathering. He told me I would always be welcome, even when I was in exile. That’s where I’m going in the spring, and that clan will take you in.”
“What would you have me do?” Zivar asked. “With the spell-chain, I mean.”
I sighed. “The djinni are people. When they are bound, they are taken away from everything and everyone they know. And not even death can free them. They’re stuck. I know the temptation of holding a spell-chain, but I would never keep one for long. Not now.”
Zivar fell silent. Then she loosened her wrappings and slowly drew the spell-chain fro
m under her coat. “Take it,” she said, holding it out to me.
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“I don’t want it either, so take it!”
I swallowed hard, squinting at her in the sun. “If you don’t want it anymore, then break it, Zivar.”
Zivar took a deep breath, and let it out. “I don’t have a stone,” she said.
“I have a hammer,” I said. I had brought it along just for this. Zivar gave me a slightly suspicious look—who brings a hammer along on a midwinter ride?—then laid the necklace out on a patch of ice. She summoned the djinn; I could see it, barely, in the dazzling sun. Then she raised the hammer and smashed the binding stone.
The djinn shimmered for a moment; then it was gone. If it spoke, it was only for Zivar’s ears.
“Well,” Zivar said. She picked up the chain. “I guess we should go back to camp before we freeze solid.”
When we stepped into the big yurt, the clan eldress saw the broken spell-chain and took out a blue bead for Zivar.
Zivar flung it back at her. “I didn’t destroy my spell-chain for you,” she said. “Keep your damn bead. In fact”—she wrenched off the necklace with its fifteen blue beads and threw it to the ground—“take them all. I don’t even care anymore.”
“Well,” the eldress said, and stepped back with a slightly nervous smile. “Well. I think you’re—I think you’re ready. If you want to be a full member of the Alashi, at spring gathering—you’re ready.”
“I don’t care about spring gathering,” Zivar said. “If I’m ready, then I’m going to go stay with Janiya’s clan. Today.”
“I don’t see why not,” the eldress said, looking as if she’d be very happy to have Zivar off her hands. “I’ll send for a horse. You can ride back with Lauria.”
Prax arrived with the first of the warm spring winds. We took enough horses to travel quickly, and Tamar, Alibek, Prax, Zivar, and I rode out together toward the valley where the reservoir had been. My hair was long enough to braid again. It bounced against my shoulders as I rode.
“This was a lot faster in a palanquin,” Zivar muttered the first night, but didn’t complain beyond that.
We reached the river and traveled near it. It flowed within its banks now, as if it had never been gone, deceptively calm. Tamar looked at it in awe for several moments, then said, “It would be hard to cross this, if you were a slave coming to join the Alashi—most can’t swim.”
“Maybe we can persuade people to help us build a bridge,” Prax suggested. Alibek laughed skeptically at that. “Or we could expand Alashi territory beyond it. If you don’t have to cross the river to reach the Alashi, it’s less of a problem.”
“What’s left of the Greek settlements?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“Not much. Some were wiped out by the flood. There were slave uprisings in the cities that were left.”
I shuddered a little, trying not to picture Elpisia.
I had slept very heavily through most of the winter, but that night I dreamed that Kyros was calling my name. I woke early, feeling uneasy. I still felt uneasy when I went to sleep that night, but I didn’t dream of Kyros again until we reached the valley.
The valley had been dead and black when I saw it last, and despite Prax’s optimism, I’d expected it to still look like that. Instead, it was a lush paradise, covered in thick grass with a scattering of vivid flowers. “This could be farmed,” I said to Prax. “You were right.”
Prax nodded. “Let’s spend the night here tonight, then head back at dawn. It’s tempting to explore it, but I want to get the rest of the Gulzhan clan up here as quickly as we can, along with the men from the brotherhood who I think would be interested. If we don’t move in, someone else will.”
“There’s plenty of space…”
“We should lay claim to some of it as soon as we can.”
We did at least spend the afternoon exploring. We were a long way from the remains of the gate, but we found the ruins of houses, a piece of a jug, and a tarnished silver spoon. Prax, who had found the spoon, put it in his pack.
I dreamed of Kyros that night. First I heard him calling my name. It was a distant, muddled sound, as if I were swimming underwater. Then his face came out of the darkness. He looked haggard and afraid. “Lauria,” he whispered again. I expected him to say more—to ask for my help, to curse me, anything. But all he said was my name.
“Go away,” I tried to say; the words caught in the darkness, smothered into silence. I jerked awake. It wasn’t yet dawn, but I didn’t want to go back to sleep, so I rose quietly and slipped out of the yurt, taking my blanket with me for warmth.
I’d thought I’d left quietly, but Tamar joined me a short time later. “Nightmare?” she asked.
“I dreamed of Kyros,” I said.
“In the borderland?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Was he searching for a way out?”
“He might have been,” I said. “He called my name.”
“You returned,” Tamar said.
“With your help, and Alibek’s.”
“Do you think it was real, what you saw?”
“I don’t know,” I said. That was a lie. I knew it was real. I shivered.
“What’s it like there?” Tamar asked.
“In some ways, it’s not a bad place. There’s no pain, no hunger, no cold. If he believes that Zeus is hidden there, he even has something to do. He can look for Zeus.”
“We don’t know when that doorway was built,” Tamar said. “Maybe its purpose was to push Zeus through.”
My hands were cold. I pressed them between my knees to try to warm them. “How did you bring me back?”
“Alibek forgave you. And you and I, we had vows that bound us together.”
I thought about the ritual I’d gone through with Janiya, repudiating my vows to Kyros.
“I think he’s stuck there,” I said.
We had agreed to leave the valley at first light, but we lingered a bit. As I rounded up the horses, a sparkle caught my eye. I looked down. It was a gold pin, shaped like a rose, set with sapphires and—I suppressed a laugh—a piece of karenite. It was a lovely thing, and I picked it up, thinking about how my mother would have liked it.
We rode out along the river. My mother, and my grief for her, rose up again, and for once I didn’t try to push the thoughts away. When we stopped to rest, I took my knife and cut loose my braid. I looped it once, pinned the loop closed with the gold pin, and threw it into the river.
“An offering,” I said. “In honor of my mother. She worshipped Athena, but not because she believed in her. My mother was Danibeki. She believed in the river.”
Tamar had been sitting in the grass; she rose, then bent to look through her own pack. “Your mother was a brave woman,” she said. “She had your voice, but she was unlike you in almost every other way. Except for her courage. I would like to make her an offering as well.” Tamar found what she was looking for—a small shovel. She held it up, as if making a presentation at an altar, and then threw it into the river.
Alibek had been watching with half-lidded eyes; now he stood up. “I heard many stories about your mother when I was Kyros’s concubine,” he said. “Your mother won her freedom through flattery and trickery. I thought of her with a mix of envy and contempt. When I met her, she was not what I had imagined. But I could well believe that she had once won her freedom with her ability to persuade.” Alibek took out a wineskin. “Andromeda, I drink to you,” he said. He took a swallow of wine, then poured out the rest into the river.
Prax stood up next, a little hesitantly. “Like Alibek, I heard stories of your mother when I was Kyros’s slave. I once heard a story you might not know. Some years before I tried to escape, a sickness swept through Elpisia. It struck slaves harder than masters, and many became very ill. Kyros thought that the slaves who claimed severe illness were lying, to evade work; it was Andromeda who persuaded him that this wasn’t the case. Your mother’s silv
er tongue may have saved many lives.” He took out the silver spoon he’d picked up yesterday. “I honor her.” He threw it into the water.
Zivar was the last to speak. “I never met your mother,” she said. “I only met you.” She took out the broken spell-chain. “I honor the honor and courage that she passed on to you.” She looped the chain around her hand, whirled it a few times to let it build up speed, and loosed it into the river.
“Thank you,” I whispered, scarcely able to speak. We rode on a short while later.
Near the end of the day, Alibek shouted and pointed at figures across the river. I squinted. Soldiers, or escaped slaves, or something else? Slaves, I decided as they grew nearer. They were all on foot, and some were limping, obviously footsore.
The group was within shouting distance now, and Tamar waved. Then she pointed. “Do you know her?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The woman on the left. The short one.”
I squinted. I couldn’t make out faces. “I think your eyes are better than mine. Who is it?”
Tamar shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun and waited a few more minutes. “It’s Zarina,” she said, finally. “The bath slave from the inn. Zarina, who didn’t want us to free her.”
I fell back a step. “Well,” I said. “How about that?” I started to shrug, then shook my head. “The river returned,” I said finally, and we rode south to meet Zarina.
EPILOGUE
T AMAR
Three Years Later.
Everyone warned me that childbirth would hurt. They also told me that it was worth it. They were right about both. At least it stopped hurting as soon as the baby was out. “It’s a fine, healthy girl,” Maydan said. “Shall I send in the anxious people waiting outside?”
I settled back against the pillows and rested the baby against my thighs, looking at her. Her dark hair was sparse and wispy, and softer than fur against my fingertips. I touched her hands and feet. She curled her little fingers around my big one. I’d seen plenty of newborns, but most of them were red and puckered and funny looking. I’d been prepared to have an ugly newborn—most babies did seem to get better looking as they grew—but to my pleasure and surprise, mine was beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. She had dark, clear eyes and stared at me like she was trying to learn my face by heart.
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