A Thousand Nights

by Johnston, E. K.

  “I do not know, my lord,” I said to him. “Perhaps my smallgod smiles on me, and his power is greater than yours.”

  Now he smiled like a viper, like I had poked him with a stick.

  “The others had smallgods,” he said to me. “That did not save them.”

  He said words like Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered might have done, but in his mouth, they were harsh. When the Skeptic spoke, it was to encourage new thought. When Lo-Melkhiin spoke, it was to obliterate through fear.

  “Our father’s father’s father was a good man when he lived,” I said to him. “We have prayed to him for many years, and left him great offerings.”

  “I wonder, what do you think would happen to your smallgod if I ordered your burying hill burned?” He said blasphemy like it was nothing. To him, it was. “Have you seen burning bone, my wife? It starts like a roasted goat, but then the meat strips away to feed the fire until the bone is left naked and alone. It twists and shatters, marrow leaking onto the flames, until only dust is left.”

  “That is what happens to everything, my lord,” I said to him. “If only the fire can be made hot enough.”

  “Would you like to see it?” he asked.

  “No,” I said to him. “I have seen it before, when we have collected marrow for our use. I do not need to see waste.”

  “You are not curious?” he asked. “You do not wish to know how the world works?”

  “I am, and I do,” I said to him. “But I would rather be patient and learn things in their own time, than force knowledge where it causes destruction.”

  “Did the sheep teach you such common sense?” he asked.

  “No, my lord.” For the first time since he had dropped my hands, I looked into his face. “I learned that from the goats.”

  He laughed, a true laugh with his head thrown back and his mouth wide, and I could not hide my surprise. The cruelty was gone—no monster could have made that noise—and I thought about what Lo-Melkhiin’s mother had said to me the night of the starfall watching. If there was a good man in Lo-Melkhiin somewhere, I had just seen my first real glimpse of him.

  No, my second. He had watered his horse with his own hands when we crossed the desert, and had not pushed the animals beyond their endurance.

  “Why did you heal your mother?” I asked him then.

  He sat up, surprised at my question, all trace of laughter gone from his eyes.

  “It is what any good son would do,” he said to me. “Is it not?”

  “It is,” I said to him. “But you are not her good son.”

  He looked at me sharply. He had tested me before, as goats test a new minder, and now I was testing him. I was not even sure what my question had meant, only that the words had come to me when I needed them—threads from Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered and from Lo-Melkhiin’s mother both. It was clear to me that the words had meant a great deal to him, though, and now I had another puzzle, regardless of his answer.

  “I cured my mother because I had the power to do it, and because she was ill, and because it suited me,” he said to me. “Does that answer suit you?”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said to him, the picture of meekness. It was the way my mother spoke to our father when she had won, but wanted to let him preserve his dignity.

  Lo-Melkhiin smiled at me, not a hunter or a viper this time, but not quite a man either—or at least, not the kind of man I wanted in my bed.

  “I think we will do very well together, my wife,” he said to me.

  “If I do not die,” I said to him.

  “If you do not die,” he said to me. He reached out and wound one hand into the fabric of my sleeping gown, pulling it toward him. “Now, come up here and go to sleep on your pillows. If the serving girls find you down there in the morning, they will think you have angered me. Rather, I find you a delight.”

  There was no way to do it without crawling, which irked me. If he had let me go, I might have stood and walked, but he didn’t, so I was forced on my hands and knees like a babe. I put my head on the pillow, as far from his as I could, and he smoothed the gown back over my knees before lying down beside me. Though he was within arm’s reach, he did not touch me. Instead, he leaned over to put out the lamp. Just before the darkness swallowed us both, I saw that copper fire leap from him to me, though we did not make contact.

  Was this the last night, then, I could not help but wonder. There were so many ways to kill a person while they slept. He did not have a knife on his person, I was certain, but his robe was in reach of the bed, and if there was a knife there, he might stab me while I slumbered. He could wrap his long fingers around my neck, or use the ties from the bed hangings to cut off the air to my lungs. He could place one of the pillows over my nose and mouth.

  He did none of those things. He turned on his side, facing away from me, and I counted his breaths until they were even. As determined as I was to stay awake, the softness of his breathing lulled me, and I drifted between one blink and the next. I saw the line of his shoulders faintly silhouetted by the hour-candle when my eyes were open, and my sister’s strong hands with a grinding stone when they were shut. I wanted my sister, wanted her spirit and her sharp tongue, and the comfort her presence gave me. My blinks became longer, until I saw Lo-Melkhiin no longer.

  I knew it for a dream, because my sister was there, and I was with her and not with her at the same time. She was grinding shells to fine white powder, the basalt stone heavy in her hands as she crushed her work into the stone trough. Her mouth was moving, though I could not hear her. She was singing, I guessed. Or praying. I had never done this sort of work, but I saw how she did it. It was the same as grinding grain, except the grinding stone was long, flat on the bottom, and arched under her hands; the pestle was too heavy to balance on her knees, like the one we used for spices. This was priestly work.

  Our mothers sat close by her, weaving broadcloth by passing the shuttle back and forth between them. It was not fine work, but it was good work, the sort I had hoped to emulate when I was a child. While I watched, my sister’s mother looked at the shells and shook her head. They were not fine enough, I knew, though I had not heard her say it. They must be ground so hard that they forgot the animals they used to house, the place where they used to live. There must be nothing of their old power left. Only then could they be put to priestly use.

  My sister ground the shells again. I put my ghostly hands on her shoulders, and felt the tired ache there. Grinding was rough work, even a small amount. My mother and my sister’s mother were always careful to make sure that the grinding of grain was a job shared by many, because if one person did it too often, it would twist their whole body. We were lucky to be healthy and to have enough men and women to do the job. My brothers had told us that others, not so well-off as us, were forced to spend so much time grinding that they could not lie flat on their backs, nor spread their fingers out, nor even walk properly any longer.

  I did not know who did that job in the qasr. I had not yet ventured into the kitchens. I did not know if Lo-Melkhiin bought flour. He could afford it, surely. I had not set hand to a grinding-stone, nor to any work harder than spinning, since I had left our father’s tents. I had grown city-soft. Perhaps the desert sun would break me, if I ever went outside the walls again. The dream began to fade, my eyes clouding over, as I doubted myself. I did not want to lose this vision of my sister, but I did not know how to hold on to it.

  Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered had called me strong, and I had not died, so maybe he was right. I tightened my fingers on my sister’s shoulders, the way I had touched Firh Stonetouched the night of the starfall party, and the dream became clear to me again. I could feel her muscles now, and the heat of her skin under her shirt. In the tent with just our mothers, they had taken off their veils and tunics. It was cooler that way, and easier to work in the desert heat.

  I kneaded my sister’s shoulders the way my mother kneaded bread dough, and felt the ache lessen. Her breath came to her lungs, and she pus
hed the stones together harder than she had before. We did the work together, like we had when we stitched the dishdashah, only this time we whispered no secrets to one another. I did not think she would hear me, even if I tried, and by the time I thought to, my sister’s mother had taken the stone from her hands, nodding and smiling at a job well done. I would have to remember, when next I dreamed, to see if I could talk as well as touch.

  My sister raised one hand to her shoulder, as though to massage her aches herself. Her fingers passed right through mine, but I felt them do it. For just a breath, I thought she might feel them too, but she shook herself, and that shook me back into my bed in Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, far away.

  It was daylight when I woke, still reaching for my sister’s touch. Lo-Melkhiin was gone. A new hour-candle burned on the table, and there was my tea, steaming beside it. The lamp was unlit—there was no need for it when the sun was up—but it was polished brightly. Beside it, painted gold, was a wooden ball.

  I RETURNED TO THE SPINNING ROOM, and found I was made welcome there. Grief and resilience are odd emotions, I was coming to understand. Before, the women had not wanted to become attached to me, as they assumed I would not survive. Now that I did not die, they were letting their guard down. I wondered what would happen when I did die, and how long it would take their hearts to soften again afterward. If I had been a nobler sort, I might have scorned their friendship to spare them future pain, but I was lonely, and as common as our father’s goats.

  Before, they had talked around me, and I had learned from them. Now, they tried to include me in their conversation as much as they could, though there were, of course, some things we did not discuss. They were all city born, though, and hungered to hear my stories about growing up in the desert.

  “Will it make you homesick to tell?” one of the weavers asked.

  “No, I do not think so,” I said to her. “It makes me happy to remember.”

  I did not tell them any of our special stories, the ones that my mother and my sister’s mother whispered to my sister and me over the fire when our father and brothers were away on caravan. Nor did I tell them the stories I spun for Lo-Melkhiin. Instead, I told them of the great silver-colored birds that tried to take goats and even sheep from the herds my sister and I had watched when we were children.

  “My sister had better aim than I did,” I said to them. “But I could throw a rock farther. When the great birds came, we shouted and waved our arms, and threw stones. Even if we hit them, the birds were so big that we could not injure them too badly. They would fly away and leave our flocks in peace.”

  “Lady-bless, that sounds terrifying!” a spinner said. “Big enough to carry you off, and you only armed with stones!”

  “They do not have a taste for children,” I told her. “In the desert, the only things that do are lions and snakes, and both of those creatures will hunt anything. The birds only came for the flocks, and we drove them off.”

  “Where do they live?” This from the embroiderer who specialized in stitching desert flowers into the hems of dresses for city women. I had no notion of where the birds lived, but I was in the rhythm of a story now, and could feel the word-threads coming together for an answer.

  “Far away to the north of us, beyond the sand desert and the scrub desert, there is a range of mountains, higher than anything you can imagine.” A Skeptic had lectured about mountains at dinner a few nights ago, and shown pictures of them, incised on baked clay tablets. His mountains were by the blue desert, though, where Lo-Melkhiin’s mother had come from.

  “And they come all this way for food?” the embroiderer asked.

  “Sometimes there are too many of them in the mountains,” I said to her. “So they pick the youngest and strongest birds, and send them out across the desert to look for food.”

  “Poor things, to come so far for nothing,” said the spinner.

  I smiled at her. “Our father gives them the oldest sheep, who would be too tough for us to eat, and whose wool has failed,” I said. “He knows what it is like to go out with the caravan and provide for a family at home.”

  “What makes them so big?” a weaver asked. “We’ve large sand-crows here, but nothing so big as that.”

  Again, I did not know, and again, I felt the story-threads come to me when I wished for them.

  “There is a metal in those mountains that we do not have in the desert,” I said to them. “It is in the rocks there, and when the water in the mountain wadis rushes over them, part of the metal goes into the water. The birds drink of it, and grow strong.”

  “That sounds like Skeptic talk,” said one of the oldest weavers. “Lady-bless, you are no Skeptic.”

  “I am not,” I said to her. “But I have the stories of my village, and our father has traveled widely to bring us even more tales. It may not be the truth, but it is what I know.”

  “You are wise, lady-bless,” the old weaver said. “And you are desert-strong.”

  “Perhaps that is why she—” The spinner who had started to speak cut off abruptly. Her spindle thudded to the ground, as though someone had kicked her and she’d dropped it in her surprise. All her thread was unwound. She would have to start again.

  I had been embroidering; my hands were finally soft enough to use the silk thread without snagging it at every turn. When I started talking I had stopped paying attention to what I worked, but the work had not stopped.

  Needlecraft, whether carding, spinning, weaving, or embroidering, is a craft of the eyes. Talk is easy when you work, because you can talk without taking your eyes from your task. Until the clatter of the dropped spindle, we had all been looking at our laps or hands, where we held hoops, raw yarn, or small looms. Even the women who worked the bigger floor looms in the corner could talk with us without looking away from what they were doing. Now, they all stared at me, and there was fear in their eyes. Surely they did not think I would be so cruel as to punish a girl for speaking what everyone already knew.

  Then I saw that they weren’t looking at my face. They were looking at my hands.

  I looked down at my hoop. I had meant to make a caravan: camels and men, all brightly colored on the desert sand, beneath an endless blue sky. I had done the sky right enough, and the sand, because I had done them before I started to tell my story. But where I had meant to do camels, I had instead done sheep. They were scattered on the ground, running away. The shepherd—no, the hunter with them—had his bow trained on the sky, but I knew he would not be able to fire his arrow in time.

  Plummeting out of the blue was an enormous bird, wings extended longer than the man was tall, and terrible talons stretching for its prey. There was no way to be sure—embroidery does not let you make pictures of people’s faces in great detail—but I knew in my heart that the hunter was Lo-Melkhiin.

  “Lady-bless,” began the spinner.

  “Will you hush, woman?” said the old weaver. She looked at me with an awed expression on her face. “Lady-bless, your work is very good, but perhaps that is all you should do today?”

  She was terrified. I could hear it in the polite way she spoke, and the others in the room fairly quivered with it. They were like the sheep before the rainstorm that had flooded the wadi and taken my sister’s brother. This was strange to them, and they knew, somehow, that a storm was coming.

  “Perhaps you are right,” I said to her. “I am unused to such a long time at one craft. In our father’s tents, we had too many tasks to spend so long at only one.”

  It was not a very good excuse, but it was good enough to get me from the room. I held the hoop and the embroidered cloth tightly against my chest, blocking it from the view of any that I passed. When I got outside and reached the large vats where the dyers boiled the colorant we used to dye yarn and cloth, I threw the work, hoop and all, into the fire, and it burned just the same as any cloth would do.

  I returned to my room, anxious to not meet anyone in the gardens in case they had heard about what I had done. In our f
ather’s tents, gossip spread quicker than fire, and I knew that here would be no different. The women, at least, would all know by the time the sun set; and if the men did not, it would be because they did not care to, or because they did not believe what the women said. Whether Lo-Melkhiin would hear, or believe, I did not know. And I did not know what his reaction would be.

  I stared at the hour-candle in my room and prayed to the smallgods. I asked our father’s father’s father for his strength and luck. To my mother’s mother’s mother, I prayed for survival. She had survived when she should not have, thanks to a talking camel. I did not think I was worthy of such a miracle, but I prayed for one all the same. Neither of the smallgods had saved themselves, in the end. Both had been saved by other forces. Perhaps it was enough to do your best, and know when to ask for aid.

  There was a clamor in the garden outside my rooms. On the other side of the garden was the bathhouse I used. It was not the only one in the qasr, but it was the most private. I had never seen anyone else use it, and I knew only one person could be using it now.

  I pulled on my darkest veil. They would see me, undoubtedly, standing in the sun, but I did not want them to see my face. I stood in my door and watched four guards, Firh Stonetouched among them, carry a litter into the bathhouse. On the litter, his dark skin pale and his fine clothes dark with blood, was Lo-Melkhiin. I fled as they disappeared into the bath, and did not see another soul until the serving girl brought me my dinner.

  “What is happening?” I asked her. “What is going on?”

  She was pale too, though her dark hair was still neatly bound up and her dress hung perfectly about her body. The cup on my dinner tray had clattered against the finger bowl when she set it down, and I knew that her hands shook, though now she had them balled up inside the pleats in the front of her shift.

  “Lady-bless,” she said. “They say a monster attacked Lo-Melkhiin while he was hunting in the desert.”