by Kate Elliott
“Do you believe you would be better treated as a debt slave, you who are Ri Amarah and scorn all those who sell their bodies and their labor?” asked the Hieros coldly.
“Yes! It would be better! My life in Nessumara will be like living in one of the hells. But maybe I should just let that reeve fly me there. If the Star of Life invades Nessumara and overruns it, then I can hope to be raped and killed and that would still be better than living in a prison with a wicked old man who abuses those he controls!”
The Hieros clapped her hands. An attendant, an older woman with a sharp gaze and a curious eye, appeared on a path shrouded by flowering plants.
“Tea,” said the Hieros, and the attendant nodded and vanished. The Hieros turned to Mai. “Does your husband know you are here?”
“No.” Mai tucked her chin, her body remembering the lessons learned in the Mei clan, when you kept your gaze down and shoulders bowed as Father Mei or Grandmother addressed you in that scolding way. But then she remembered she was mistress of her own household. She was a good businesswoman. She had overseen the birth of a new settlement. She had blessed the marriages of more than forty local women and Qin soldiers, bonds that would carry them into the years to come, that would bind them to the land. She lifted her chin and looked the Hieros in the eye. “He is away on militia business. I have taken this action on my own.”
“Ah.”
“I did not know who else to turn to. Can you shelter her?”
“The Ri Amarah will take me to the assizes once they know she is here. They’ll demand her return, according to their laws, by whose measure she is still a child because not married. How old are you, Miravia?”
“I was born in the Year of the Deer.”
Her frown deepened. “Twenty. Far too old to be called a child.” The attendant walked up the steps, set a tray on a low table, and poured three cups of steaming tea. Birds called from the trees, and a ginny lizard—maybe the same one who had nosed into the palanquin—ambled into a patch of sun and settled to its full length.
“However, few love the Ri Amarah,” added the Hieros. “Fewer will support them in a dispute against the temples. What will Captain Anji recommend?”
Mai nodded as the old woman examined her. “You already know. That is a magnificent length of silk, Holy One.”
The compliment drew a smile. “A fine bolt of first quality out of Sirniaka. No one else produces such exquisite silk. Miravia, you will hand out the cups.”
Miravia took them one at a time, each one cupped in her palms, offering the first to the Hieros, settling the second in Mai’s free hand, and sitting back on her heels with the third held close to her mouth as she inhaled the scent. “You’ve put in a tincture of rice-grain-flower.”
“The Ri Amarah women are known for their herbal knowledge.” The old woman sipped, and Mai sipped, and Miravia sipped and smiled her approval.
In silence, they finished drinking.
“As I said,” continued the Hieros, “the displeasure of the Ri Amarah I can weather. They do not enter or tithe to the temples. But I am not as eager to set myself against Captain Anji. We negotiate difficult times. We are beset with creatures wearing the cloaks of Guardians who have raised an army that can be turned against us at any time, and no doubt will be if they gain control of the north, as they seem likely to do. Am I willing to offend a competent commander who may be key to our ability to withstand the storm? His ability to organize others into an effective force makes him valuable. He himself knows this. What if he were to change loyalties? To ride north and offer his services to the army in the north because we offended him here?”
“He would not!” Mai cried.
“Why not? Are you saying Qin soldiers did not conquer territory in lands far away from the Hundred? Is it not true that you grew up in a town they conquered? That you are yourself a prize for a victorious warrior?”
All the words she wanted to say—to protest that Anji would never ally himself with folk who burned and raped and killed—died in her throat. Her tongue was dry, and her hands had gotten cold.
“It’s all true,” she said in a low voice, never dropping her gaze from the Hieros’s fierce glare. “Beyond the Hundred, the Qin are conquerors. You could say I am a prize taken in war. But we came here as exiles. I speak because I have done my best to find willing and honest wives for the Qin soldiers. To encourage women to marry men they might not otherwise look at because they began their lives as outlanders.”
“There’s been much discussion about how you encouraged young women and Qin men to make their own choices. In this country, clans and elders arrange marriages. That is the proper way to do things. Youth is not celebrated for its wisdom. Lust is a slender reed on which to build a house. We recognize the power of the Merciless One. We do not construct homes on her body.”
“That’s also how it was arranged in Kartu Town, where I grew up. Yet it seems to me, Holy One, that people did not treat each other very well in the house where I grew up. I sold produce in the market for several years and I heard plenty about the misery folk endured in their households. Maybe people could have at the least the right to say no to an arrangement. Then maybe more would treat each other decently and fewer fall into abuse.”
“Spoken passionately, verea. And with some understanding of human nature, rare to see in one so young as you. Yet you must know, having seen the ceremony of binding, that we do not force young women to accept a marriage. She doesn’t have to eat the rice.”
“There are other means of coercion.”
“Those who truly fear the arrangement made by their clans are not required to suffer. The temples can always serve as their refuge.”
Mai lifted her chin, sensing victory in those words. “Miravia is not fortunate, she is not willing, and yet she cannot say no. Folk will say she went willingly, when the truth of her heart speaks otherwise. I believe her when she says she will suffer abuse in that house in Nessumara. If I can do something to stop it, then it is dishonorable of me not to try!”
Miravia hid tears behind a hand.
The ginny thumped its tail once, then lapsed back into stillness. A small bird with a red-feathered cap and white-tipped wings fluttered in under the pavilion roof, landed beside the tea tray, and looked them over with sharp black eyes.
“You may suffer for this act today,” said the Hieros.
“I know,” said Mai. “But I can’t do anything else.”
The old woman bent her head, as if considering whether to make one more attempt to bargain Mai down. Her hair was entirely silver except for a few strands of black. It was bound up and pinned in place by lacquered hairsticks like those Mai herself used. Once, Mai supposed, it had been luxuriantly thick hair. Now, of course, age had thinned it.
She raised her head and looked at Mai. “Do you trust me?”
“I came to you for help, Holy One.”
“Very well. I’ll help you. But she’ll have to leave Olo’osson immediately. Today.”
“There is another way, Holy One,” said Miravia. She sucked in a breath as for courage and spoke again. “I could enter the garden.”
“Mira!” Mai grasped her arm. “You can’t—”
“Not as a hierodule. No offense to you, Holy One. I have no place in the temples as an acolyte. But merely as a—a—a—” She shook off Mai’s touch, not in an angry way but in the manner of a person who knows she must walk the next stretch of the road alone. “Once I enter the garden—and do what is done there—my family can no longer marry me off.”
“You can’t possibly—” Mai cried.
“No clan among the Ri Amarah would ever accept me,” said Miravia calmly. “They will say I am no daughter of theirs. They will say I am dead.”
The old woman had features honed by age; in them you could see the ghost of her youth, and yet Mai could not imagine her young. “Who are we, daughter, if we have no clan? We are a fish hooked out of the water that sustains us and left to die on the shore. Do not be so eager to
embrace this form of death.”
“I do not want never to see my mother and brothers again. But it is still better than what awaits me in Nessumara. Can you imagine sending one of your own daughters into such danger?”
The Hieros smiled. “Certain of my daughters are trained to walk into danger, and they do, and I will likely never see them again. But you are desperate, indeed, Miravia. Is this truly what you wish?”
“Doesn’t anyone ever think I also might be curious? That I might want to—” She stammered. “Don’t all the tales say it brings pleasure? I see in the blush on your cheek, Mai, when you speak of Captain Anji. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to experience what every girl born into the Hundred expects she can have simply by walking to the temple after she has celebrated the feast of her Youth’s Crown?”
“I am not one who will argue this point with you,” said the Hieros. “Enter if you wish. If you feel apprehension natural to one coming from your circumstances, be aware that certain of the hierodules and kalos are trained specifically to—Well, it should be obvious we are accustomed to every temperament and wish a person might have, entering Ushara’s holy precincts.”
“Miravia,” whispered Mai, “it would be—with someone you don’t even know, or—” Humiliated, she looked away.
“All are allowed to enter who have not offended the goddess,” said the Hieros. “You, too, may enter if you wish, Mai.”
“I would not! Anji would—!”
“Does he own your body, as a master owns the debt of a slave?” asked the Hieros.
She could not find a safe place to fix her gaze. “It would be shameful. I couldn’t.”
Miravia grasped her free hand. “Oh, Mai. Do you think less of me?”
“Never!” She burst into tears. “I just want you not to suffer what I grew up with! That hateful house! Grandmother Mei’s spite. My father’s temper, and how it made everyone walk with their heads down for fear of looking him in the eye and getting punished for it. He beat my brother, Younger Mei—my dearest, twin to me—because he wasn’t strong and angry like Father. And now my dearest twin doesn’t even have me to protect him or hold his hand. But I always knew I would have to leave the house. That’s the way of it, that the girls must leave to join their husbands’ households, where they bide at the mercy of those who may treat them well or ill. Bad enough I should have to leave. I couldn’t bear to think of you, Miravia—”
“It will be well.” Miravia kissed her and stroked her. “Once my family casts me out, we’ll find another way.”
“I’ll gift you with so much coin,” sobbed Mai, “you can set up your own stall selling herbs and ointments.” She sucked in breath and wiped her cheeks.
They embraced.
Mai pulled away. “Best I go quickly, Holy One.”
“You came in secret, did you?” said the old woman with a faint smile, perhaps of disapproval. “Now we will see what colors this thread layers in the cloth.”
“I don’t want you to get into trouble,” said Miravia in a husky voice.
One last embrace. Maybe their last one.
Mai walked out of the garden with the palanquin carried behind her by silent but clearly curious folk. They did not attempt to speak to her.
It will be well, she thought fiercely.
The baby woke, and as she crossed under the white gates, ginny lizards peered down upon them from the trees and tall bushes. Atani turned his head as if trying to track them. As she passed under the outer gates and beyond the temple’s outer wall, the sun had risen a hand’s breadth above the estuary. The path down to dockside gritted under her feet. The force of all she had said and done overtook her in a rush of feeling that made her tremble. What would Anji say?
The boatman stared at her as the acolytes jostled the boat while getting the palanquin fixed across the board, but mercifully he said nothing except “You’ll have to sit inside, verea, for there’s no place otherwise.”
He balanced the boat deftly as she clambered aboard, tightening her grip on the baby until he squawked in protest. She settled onto the bench inside the curtains as the boatman poled away from the dock. She kissed Atani’s sweet face for comfort.
The water had gentled, and the easy slap of water in the back channels lulled her. Smells and sounds rose from the channel: musty molding thatch; the dry rustle of reeds; the whit-whoo of a bird calling after its mate. Soon she heard the rumble of wheels, a hammer pounding a steady rhythm, a burst of laughter cut short. A boy’s voice lilted: “There is it, Seri! Go get the porters!”
What would she tell Tuvi? She’d not thought that far ahead.
The boat bumped the dock. An odd spill of silence emanated from the dockside where she might have expected the lively sounds of commerce.
“No need for such a look, ver,” said a voice she recognized as that of one of the hirelings. “We just took the coin like any hire.”
The palanquin thumped hard to the boards. Weren’t the hirelings going to pick her up and start back to the city? She bit her lip and reached for the curtain, to tell them, kindly but firmly, that they had to go right away.
“I beg your pardon, ver, but them who hires the palanquins have to be able to expect privacy—”
The curtain was abruptly pulled back. She looked into Chief Tuvi’s face, his expression so blank she thought it hid a deeper emotion. His mouth quirked, as if he had a wish to speak but could not. At a movement behind him, he flipped the curtain up over the roof of the palanquin and stepped out of the way.
There stood Anji, his riding whip clenched in his left hand and his normally neat topknot as frayed as if he’d bound his hair up in haste. To come riding after her.
Her breath caught in her chest; her fingers went cold; her cheeks flushed hot.
But not this cringing. One sharp breath she took in, and then with her market face as bland as ever she could make it, she stepped out of the palanquin with the baby in her arms and smiled with blander politeness at him, facing it out with pleasant words in the tone with which she would greet a treasured acquaintance.
“Anji, I was just—”
He slapped her, the back of his hand to her cheek, the blow so sharp and unexpected that all grounding in time and place fell away for forever and one instant as she fell and she drowned
he’s furious
he’s reaching for his sword
he’s going to kill me now
Merciful One, please give me the strength to endure this
She was too stunned to react when instead of cutting her down he took the baby out of her arms and turned his back on her. Then he paused, shoulders tense like coiled steel, and turned halfway back.
“Bring her,” he said to Tuvi.
He walked to his horse, mounted, and rode away.
“Hu!” Tuvi sighed, and as through a haze Mai saw him take his hand off his sword’s hilt. Her cheek was stinging.
All kinds of people were staring, old and young and laborers and merchants and debt slaves and girls at their harborside slip-fry pans with mouths dropped open. Everyone was staring, except the Qin soldiers detailed to escort her, who were carefully looking elsewhere. The river churned behind her.
“Follow my lead, Mistress,” Tuvi said in a low voice. “It’s best if you ride, so they can see you are still honored among us. Do not let them see you cry. You’ve nothing to feel shame over.” He paused, fingering his wisp of beard as he studied her. “Do you?”
Her face was really hurting now, a throb that reached to her left eye. “It wasn’t wrong to help Miravia.” Her voice was a scrape over tears held in. “Are you angry with me, Tuvi? I couldn’t bear that on top of the . . . other.”
He shook his head, as if she’d given the wrong answer. “Ride with me, Mistress.”
She had no more of a choice than the day Anji had approached her father and proposed that Father Mei might be interested in marrying his daughter to a Qin officer, a polite way of saying: I’m taking her. He could have hauled her out of the marketplac
e where she had sold produce, and done whatever he wanted; no one could or would have stopped him. The family would then have taken her back in shame, or left her to make her own way as a whore. It happened to women all the time, didn’t it? Only the old stories and songs made it seem glamorous.
She struggled to gather calm as she turned to the porters. “The second half of your payment is waiting at Crow’s Gate when you return the palanquin, as was agreed.” She followed Tuvi to the waiting soldiers.
But of course it was impossible to ride in a taloos. Trembling and embarrassed, she had after all to call the bearers and return to Crow’s Gate sitting within the palaquin as the Qin soldiers plodded before and after like jailers. She wept once and then wiped her eyes. Her cheek hurt if she touched it, so probably it was going to bruise, and then she wept again, and after that she thought of what Tuvi had said and she was done with weeping. She had done nothing wrong! Even if everyone said otherwise—that of course a young person must marry according to the wishes of the clan—she could not stand aside while her beloved friend was handed over to a man who had already killed three wives.
They arrived at Crow’s Gate. The line at the gate moved slowly, and when she peeked out from behind the curtains, it was to see sober young militiamen interviewing each incoming party and clerks of Sapanasu checking accounts books. She leaned out, but did not see Anji among those waiting in line.
“Set me down, please.” The bearers did so, and she climbed out and walked over to Chief Tuvi. “How long will this take, Chief? Don’t they let Qin soldiers through?”
“They do not, on orders of the captain. If the locals must endure these delays in order to make the roads safe, then so must we when we are about the ordinary business of the day. Lest we appear as outlanders in their eyes, taking privileges we deny to them.”
“No, of course Anji is right.” She looked away, pretending that her bracelets must be turned. Her breasts were beginning to ache, a sense of fullness that anticipated a feeding, for although Atani did not take much at any one time, he nursed frequently.
Tuvi dismounted and handed his reins to one of the soldiers. “You four escort us, two before and two behind. The rest of you wait your turn and be sure that the bearers and palanquin owners are properly paid.”