The chestnut horse’s name was Krina. When I approached her, she looked me in the face for a long moment, and then gave a demure sniff. It was nice to think that she knew just looking at me that I was a better rider than the Greek officer, but some horses just prefer women. For that matter, some horses just prefer men; I tried to avoid riding those.
We bargained for Krina; the same dealer was also able to sell us a gentle, trustworthy older mare for Uljas and a pack horse. This would be quite a herd of animals to take care of, but after we took Zarina and Uljas up to the steppe, Tamar and I could use the spare horses as remounts like the Alashi did, and travel much faster. From a nearby vendor, we bought some grain so that if we wanted to travel fast, we didn’t have to stop early in the day to let the horses forage. That done, we led our new train of horses through the streets to the inn where we were staying, and got them settled in the stable, paying the extra fee and tipping the stable hands for the extra work.
The sun was setting; our errands had taken all day. I felt quite satisfied with our purchases, though. We were already in a far better situation than we’d been when we entered Daphnia. We had a tent so we wouldn’t freeze, at least not for a while. We had horses. We had food for our journey up to the steppe. Our parcels were heavy but I felt lighter as we headed up the stairs to our room. Then Tamar opened the door and fell back a step, nearly running into me. “There’s someone in our room,” she hissed.
“Come in, come in,” the voice was saying. “Look, I paid well to get in here; I don’t want that wasted. Close the door before someone sees!”
Trapped by the urgency of the voice, Tamar stepped inside; not wanting to let her face whatever or whoever it was alone, I followed her. It was a sorceress, not one I’d ever seen before, pacing our rug. I could almost see the cold fever hovering around her like a swarm of insects, it was so palpable. As soon as we were in the room she darted to the door and closed it.
“Now, where is it? You have more, I’m certain of it. You’ll sell to me. Certainly you’ll sell, if we can settle on a price. I’ll give you a better price than that chiseling cheat you dealt with yesterday. Double whatever she offered.”
Karenite. “We don’t have any more,” I said. This was an excellent opportunity to sell our second chunk, but I didn’t trust this sorceress. She had bribed her way into our rooms. If discretion was warranted—and surely it was—she was not the person to sell to.
“But you did have some! No more means you had it, ah ah ah!” She barely restrained herself from pouncing on me. “You have to sell it to me,” she said, her tone wheedling. “How much did she give you? Double. Triple! Whatever you ask!”
“Why are you so desperate?” Tamar asked.
Her eyes grew wide at that and she beckoned us closer. “I know things I’m not meant to know, and I think the Sisterhood suspects. It has been well over half a year since they sent me any for myself. I need to know what they’re planning; I need to know who’s against me. But for that I need an aeriko, and for that I need soul-stone—do you see my dilemma?”
“Don’t you have aerika?” Tamar asked.
“Yes, yes, but they’re busy.” She pulled back and glared at Tamar. “You’re being deliberately dense. I don’t have time for this. Are you going to sell to me or not?”
“We have nothing to sell,” I said.
“It’s possible she’s telling the truth,” she murmured to herself. “It’s possible she sold all she had to the first one. She’s stupid enough to make it possible, her and her companion. Look,” she said, and she was speaking to me again. “If you happen to come across any more of it, come to me next time. First. Here.” She unpinned a brooch from her coat and placed it on our table. It was silver, worked into the shape of an apple tree. “Any silversmith in town should be able to direct you to me if you want to find me.” She rose and left. The door swung shut behind her, and this time Tamar barred it.
“Weavers,” Tamar said with a faint groan. “Why couldn’t we have found something of value to fruiters or silversmiths or horse dealers or anyone other than Weavers!”
“They’re not usually this difficult,” I said. “She’s in a particularly bad state.”
“They all get bad eventually.”
“How many have you met?”
“Some of Sophos’s slaves used to be owned by Weavers. You want to know how bad a Weaver can get? Ask a slave.”
I decided to drop the subject.
When our dinner arrived that night, one of the servants slipped a tiny bottle of scented oil to Tamar. “Zarina thought that after your errands and exertions today you might be interested in a bath.”
“Yes,” Tamar said immediately. “Tell her we’d like to come down as soon as supper is over.”
“What’s that about?” I asked as soon as the slaves were gone.
“I asked Zarina to send us a message if she was able to find out anything about Uljas. She’s not supposed to leave the bathhouse, so she said she’d send us a message if she had anything to tell us.”
“Huh.” I took a bite of dinner. It was as good as the previous night’s. “Why is she doing us favors?”
“I bribed her.”
We went down when we were done eating. Zarina was watching for us anxiously. Tamar passed her a small wineskin, which Zarina put away somewhere safe. “I don’t have any information about Uljas but there’s something else you should know,” Zarina said. “You’re being watched.”
My first thought was that our interest in Uljas had attracted attention, but Zarina went on to say, “Are you soul-stone merchants?”
“Why do you ask?” Tamar asked.
“That’s what the Weaver this afternoon thought, but you don’t seem to know the protocols . . .” Zarina looked from Tamar’s face to mine, and then slowly raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me there’s no soul-stone in your packs.” Tamar glanced at me, and we looked back at Zarina.
Tamar passed her another small wineskin. “Tell us what you think we ought to know.”
Zarina put away the bribe. “According to the law, all soul-stone is the property of the Sisterhood of Weavers. The High Ones own most of it, and give pieces of it to the rest, but in the last year or two they’ve gotten a lot stingier with it. The bandits in the north have it, but they don’t sell it to the Greeks, so it falls to go-betweens, the soul-stone merchants, to sell it on the black market. Of course there are plenty of sorceresses willing to pay a lot of money for the unofficial supply. But discretion is important, and many sorceresses, especially when they’re in the grip of the cold fever, are not particularly discreet.”
“What is the penalty for selling black-market karenite?” I asked.
“Soul-stone. Don’t call it karenite, or they’ll really think you’re a bandit! The punishment is severe. Death by dismemberment. That’s why discretion is important. It’s not just selling soul-stone that’s illegal, but also just having it, if the Sisterhood didn’t give it to you. They don’t like executing other sorceresses, but they don’t hesitate when they catch a merchant. It’s considered theft from the Sisterhood if you have any.”
“What about people who just find it?” I asked.
“Well, you always have the option of turning it in,” Zarina said. “The Sisterhood does give a reward to those who bring Athena’s property to her temple and turn it over. It’s not nearly as much money as you can get for selling it, but no one will execute you.”
Tamar was pale. I thought I probably was, too. “So what do we do now?”
“Well, that depends on whether you have any soul-stone with you right now or not. If you try to sell to a sorceress, you’ll likely be followed; any sensible sorceress will refuse to let you in, and a crazy one, well, you run the risk, the big risk, of selling to someone the Sisterhood would just as soon dispose of. Then they might come in and arrest all of you. If you try to leave Daphnia, you’ll be stopped and searched, and if they find any soul-stone in your bags you’ll be executed.”
“How
did they know to start watching us?” I asked.
“You arrived from the north with nothing obvious to sell and then a day later you had enough money to stay at an excellent inn and buy yourself a nice tent and a couple of horses. Someone was bound to notice.”
I nodded, feeling extremely foolish.
“Thank you,” Tamar said.
“You really ought to at least get wet,” Zarina said. “If you come out of the bathhouse as dry and dirty as you were when you went in, I’ll fall under suspicion.”
We stripped off our clothes and let Zarina pour water over our heads; I scrubbed my face and hands, at least, then we dried off and got dressed again. Tamar lagged behind me as I was getting ready to leave; I thought she probably wanted a private word with Zarina, or maybe to pay her another bribe, so I stepped out and lingered for a moment in the courtyard.
Tamar joined me a moment later. “I asked her if she wanted to come with us when we left.”
“Did she?”
“No.” Tamar paused. “She said she thought we were both likely to end up dead; that if we were lucky we’d be run through with a bandit’s sword rather than cut into pieces slowly by a city executioner, and she had no particular desire to share that fate. There are worse things than slavery, she said.”
“I can’t really blame her.”
“Me neither. But we have got to get better at this, Lauria, or Uljas and Prax and all the rest are going to feel the same way as Zarina.”
We discussed the situation quietly late into the night, and decided that turning the soul-stone in at the temple was our only reasonable option. “We’re not doing this to make money,” Tamar said. “We’re doing this to free slaves. We can’t do that if we’re dead. And we have enough money right now to last us a while, if we’re careful with it.”
We went out in the morning with the soul-stone in my pocket. It was easy enough to find the Temple of Athena; we could glimpse the glimmer of white marble like a snowcapped mountain from a long way away. Up close, it resembled an enormous swan’s wing, curving upward and coming to a peak. There was a sort of courtyard in front of the temple, also paved with white marble, with a fountain built of white marble in the center. I had visited the temple on previous trips to Daphnia and had found it beautiful. This time it made my stomach tighten in fear. I glanced at Tamar; she was looking around in frank amazement. After a long look, she said, “A white floor? It must take about a hundred slaves scrubbing all the time to keep this place clean.”
And sure enough, when we went up for a closer look at the vast gates of iron and silver, I saw two Danibeki women polishing them. I’d never noticed them before.
The gates stood open this time of day; the iron and silver bars were bent into the outline of an olive tree on one side of the gates, and a loom on the other. Women and a few men streamed in and out with offerings: chickens, honey, elaborate woven tapestries rolled and tied with ribbon. If I look around, will I be able to spot the watchers that Zarina said were there? I decided I didn’t care quite enough to try. We’d made our decision.
We went in through the gates, following the press of the crowd. I put my hand in my pocket and touched the cold, rough pebble. Hard to believe all the trouble we could get into for a little piece of rock. The temple was as busy inside as out. Visitors left offerings at the altar, then paused to speak with a priestess—to ask for prayers, to receive a blessing, to get some advice. I wondered how we did this. Did we just drop the stone in front of the altar like a jar of honey? Or were we supposed to give it directly to a priestess?
“Good morning,” one of the priestesses said to me. Ah. I guess we really are being watched. “Are you here for a blessing? To ask for advice on something?”
“I have, um, some property of Athena’s which I would like to return,” I said. I dug in my pocket. “Am I supposed to give it to you?”
“I think you need to see the high priestess,” she said with a broad smile; I could see her eyes go briefly to someone near us, then back to my face. “Just come with me.”
She led us back along the edge, past acolytes that knelt at looms, past little rooms where you could sit to have your dispute mediated, if that was what you needed from the Goddess of Wisdom. The high priestess had an office in the back, apparently; it was much like Kyros’s office, complete with a plate of honey cakes to offer visitors. “These young women have something that belongs to Athena,” the junior priestess said. The high priestess set aside whatever she was working on and gestured for us to sit down.
I was really hoping to just hand over my karenite, get whatever reward they offered, and leave, but I sat. So did Tamar.
The junior priestess smiled and left. The high priestess waited.
I took the karenite out of my pocket and dropped it on the desk. “Is that yours?”
The priestess looked at it. “Yes,” she said. “That is ours. Thank you very much for returning it. I’d like to reward your honesty. Will you wait for just a moment?”
She withdrew to a back office, and came out with a small bag—coins, presumably. I doubted they were alexanders. Like the bag we’d gotten from Phoibe, it was beautifully woven cloth; I thought it had probably been made by one of the acolytes we’d seen outside. We’d handed over the karenite, we’d gotten the reward. Was there anything else we needed to do before we got the hell out? “Thank you,” I said, and stood up.
“If I may ask,” the high priestess said. “Where did you come across this?”
“We found it on the ground while traveling,” I said.
“And yet you knew to bring it here. Have you seen a spell-chain up close in the past?”
“We picked it up as a curiosity,” I said. “It wasn’t until recently that we discovered that it was the property of Athena.”
“Where were you traveling?”
I thought for a moment that she suspected we were Alashi. But it would be terribly foolish for the Sisterhood to offer amnesty and then not fulfill their promise; if they did that, nobody would ever bring their karenite in again. She probably wants to know where they should go look for more. They are running out, just as the rumors say. “Near Elpisia,” I said. “At least, that was the first town we came to once we headed back to civilized parts.”
The sorceress nodded. “You may go,” she said, so we picked up our bag of money and fled. I didn’t look in the bag until we were out of the office. Five alexanders. The price was, indeed, much better on the black market. It doesn’t matter. We’ll have enough money to do what we came to do.
There were a few Weavers coming in to make offerings as I left; one had brought in a huge, elaborate rug she’d presumably woven herself. It was slung across the back of a horse. I glanced over at the slaves, wondering if Tamar could approach them while their mistress was in the temple, and realized that the man holding the horse’s bridle was Uljas. In my excitement, I almost stumbled right into Tamar. “Over there,” I said when I had regained my composure. “Holding the white horse. That’s Uljas.”
Tamar looked at him and nodded. She was starting to say something back when I heard someone—not Uljas—shout, “Lauria!”
Tamar instantly fell back into the temple. My hands turned to ice. It would be worse to flee—whoever this is, I can probably talk my way out of it, but if I run I’m done for. Tamar was already pretending not to know me, so I stepped quickly away from her and looked for whoever had called. “Lauria!” the voice called again, much closer this time, and I turned around to face . . . Myron.
Myron was one of Kyros’s other trusted servants. One of his Greek trusted servants. Myron and I had been sent out together to look for Alibek, a lifetime ago, though I’d found him myself; Myron, as usual, had been more of a hindrance than a help. He had a tendency to act as if I worked for him. I summoned an amiable smile as he clasped my arms. He might be slow-witted, but he hadn’t been fooled by the face paint.
“Lauria, it’s been months!” he said. “Where have you been? You wouldn’t believe how cag
ey the old man’s been, but then, it’s been a rough time for him lately. Let’s go get a drink.” I started to protest and he said, “Oh come on, first round’s on me!”
I thought about breaking away from him, claiming that I was still on some mission that couldn’t be interrupted, but it occurred to me that I could probably get some useful information from Myron. But did he have instructions to detain me, and send for Kyros, if he found me? He didn’t have that sort of guile in him, I decided after a few moments of thought. “One drink, Myron, then I have to keep moving. Kyros’s instructions didn’t mention getting drunk with you.”
“An oversight, of course,” Myron said. “How could he know we’d run into each other?”
Myron led us quickly through the streets; I suspected that any city he visited, he always knew the closest place to go get drunk. The tavern he dragged me into was reasonably clean, at least. He found us a table and ordered wine. “So where did you get that nasty scar? And tell me where you’ve been!”
“Sorry, I can’t,” I said, resisting the urge to finger the scar that Tamar had manufactured for me. “It’s still confidential. But I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.”
Myron had never needed much prodding to get him to talk about himself. He’d spent the summer running various errands for Kyros, the sort of thing I’d used to do. He’d carried messages to garrisons, sorceresses, and merchants, and brought home messages and observations to Kyros. He’d audited someone’s books, purchased a set of horses, and delivered a sealed pouch. To my disappointment, he didn’t seem to know anything that would be of use to me; it had been a very busy summer (not surprising, since I’d been gone—he was doing his own job and mine as well) and he’d barely seen Kyros.
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