“Do you have any feathers?” I asked Tamar, who was getting ready for bed as well.
“Yeah, of course,” she said. There was a small wood box on the table; I’d barely noticed it, but out of the box came a soft leather bag, and a bundle of feathers, large and small feathers from all sorts of birds. She selected a small gray feather and handed it to me. “Will this one be all right?”
“I don’t know why Zhanna bothered trying to train me,” I said, taking the feather. “Of course you have feathers. You were a shaman’s apprentice. It never occurred to me to pick up feathers over the summer.”
“You’d make a fine shaman. You just needed a chance to learn more. You didn’t grow up with a shaman, so you don’t know the rituals. Why would you think to pick up feathers?” She yawned and stretched. “I’m going to bed. Maybe I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
I lay down beside her, my hand curled around the feather; I closed my eyes and thought of Zhanna.
It was winter on the steppe, but the yurt was warm, even with just me and Zhanna inside. “Zhanna?” I said, hesitantly, not certain I’d truly found my way here.
“Lauria.” Her face lit up.
“You haven’t come . . .”
“I was forbidden to seek you out. But no one can forbid you to come to me.”
“Who forbade you? Why?”
“You troublemaker,” Zhanna said with a joyful laugh, and gave me a hug. “They cast you out, and you keep making trouble. Tamar was not the only Alashi who disliked the rule about not freeing slaves. But the two you’ve sent could have been born Alashi; this has given strength to those who want us to free Danibeki slaves more often. Uljas wants to form an army, a strong army. And we’ve heard the Penelopeians are moving against us.”
“I think they are,” I said. “They want to wipe you out. They want your karenite; they’re almost out of their own, or so they say. Still, it’s the foundation of everything they do. Without it the Sisterhood is nothing.”
“Will you be sending us more slaves?”
“I hope so. But not until spring.”
“Lauria.” The dream was fading, and Zhanna grabbed my hand with all her strength, as if she could keep me from leaving. “You are the gate. You were chosen. I believe you cannot fail at your task, so draw your sword without fear.”
I woke to daylight and Tamar shaking me. “Where were you? Where are you? We need to go. Nurzhan brought a warning. Zivar means to kill us both.”
“Go where?” I scrambled out of bed, pulling my boots on, my coat. “It’s winter, it’s snowing . . .”
“She’s going to hide us. Zivar will calm down soon.”
Down the stairs, into the servants’ quarters, through a door, and down more stairs . . . there was a cellar I hadn’t seen when I’d explored. Tamar had a lamp; it flickered wildly, then settled as she put it on a shelf. I looked around. We were under the kitchen; I could hear footsteps above our heads, and the voices of the servants. The cellar was used for food storage. Sacks of flour, grain for the horses, carrots, cabbages, rice . . . There were clay jars in the corner that probably held wine or spirits of wine. Another shelf of jars probably held honey.
“She won’t think to look here?” I asked. “I’d look here, if I were Zivar.” I looked around. “And there’s no way out.”
“Yes there is,” Tamar said. She opened a cabinet against the wall; the sounds from the kitchen abruptly grew much louder. “This cabinet goes up, if you pull on a rope from the kitchen. It’s how they get the heavy things up and down. If Zivar comes down, we jump in and go up.”
“She won’t notice?”
“It’s what Nurzhan suggested, and I didn’t have any better ideas.”
“The stable?”
“That’s the first place she’ll look.”
“Maybe we should just leave . . .”
“It’s snowing hard, and the temperature is dropping.”
“Maybe tie her up in a sheet?”
“If it comes to that, I think they will, but they’d rather just hide us. Don’t argue, Lauria; they know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah.” Hearing my real name from Tamar made me think of Zivar listening from her bed, however she’d managed that—djinni, servants, some secret Persian magic left over from her days as a slave girl, I had no idea. I wondered if she was listening to us now, and all this sneaking around and hiding was a farce. They know what they’re doing. If anyone here knew what they were doing, it was the servants. If anyone could trust them, it was Tamar. If they wanted me dead, they’d have separated the two of us . . .
Tamar blew out the lamp and we sat down in the darkness, our backs to the open cabinet, listening to the voices of the servants in the kitchen.
Sitting in the darkness, I began to feel jittery. I found myself thinking about the day Zivar had dragged me outside to learn to fly. Running as hard and as fast as I could sounded strangely appealing. I stood up, shifting from foot to foot. “Do you need to relieve yourself?” Tamar whispered.
“No. I need . . . I don’t know. I need to move a little.” The floor was hard stone, very quiet; so long as I didn’t knock over a cask of wine my steps should be soundless. I groped my way to the wall and felt my way along it, just to be able to pace. Three steps in each direction. It wasn’t enough. I tried jumping up and down in place. It felt like I had a kettle of boiling water inside my heart, with nowhere for the water to splash as it bubbled out of the spout, and no one to take the kettle off the fire. I sat back down and tried to steady myself, but found my thoughts racing. Calm down, I told myself, but it didn’t help.
“Lauria,” Tamar whispered, and closed her hand gently over my wrist. “Come here.”
She drew me against her and had me lie down with my head in her lap. “Think of the river,” she said. “The snow will begin to melt soon; think of the Arys, of the snowdrifts turning to the spring flood.” She ran her fingers through my hair, stroking my scalp and my temples with her fingertips. “Think of the white foam on the water, the branches caught in the rush, the sound of the snow beginning to drip . . .”
I could see a river in my mind’s eye, but it wasn’t the Arys at spring flood. It was the Jaxartes—the Syr Darya—its bonds cut as if with a sword, crashing down from the mountains and into the dry riverbed. The sky was a cloudless blue, but the rush of water sent a cloud of water up to the sky like smoke from a wildfire. As they flowed once.
Tamar was still whispering, her hand warm and comforting against my face. Draw your sword without fear, Zhanna had told me. Why stop at slaves? I will free the rivers, both of them. They were bound; they can be unbound. It was done; it can be undone. This is my task, this is what I was born for, to find the spell-chain that Zivar described and free the djinni within it. Zivar thinks it could be remade, but she doesn’t realize how scarce karenite is becoming. Besides, if the rivers returned, people would believe that they were free. They would rise up against the Greeks—slaves and Alashi together.
I felt a swell of elation, as if the task were already completed, even though I had not the faintest idea how I would do this, where to begin, how to even find the spell-chain that bound the Syr. It seemed perfectly clear, however, that Zhanna was right. I was chosen, I couldn’t fail, so why not set my sights on the ultimate goal? I settled back against Tamar, willing to wait, just for now. Spring was coming. I would free Prax, I would find Thais. It would all work out because I could not fail.
Tamar suddenly went rigid, her hand freezing against my hair. I could hear someone’s feet above us, quite close. “Into the cabinet,” Tamar whispered, and I scrambled in after her. We had to pull our knees up against our chests to fit in; Tamar swung the door shut, and then we were going up, up, and when the door opened again we were in the kitchen. “Hurry,” someone whispered as we scrambled out.
“Which way?” Tamar asked breathlessly.
“The stable . . .” We started to follow, but a shimmering light abruptly blocked our way. “Shit,” the woman mutter
ed and fell back a step from us as if to distance herself from our doom.
Zivar stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her eyes alight and an unsheathed knife in her hand. “And this is why they say that a sorceress should have a family,” she spat, striding toward us. “Someone she can trust.”
The servants bowed their heads and avoided her eyes. Some of them edged away from the knife.
“Instead, I have a house of spies and liars.”
Nurzhan appeared in the doorway, her face anxious. “My lady,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Are you here to pretend to me that you didn’t know? To speak to me soothingly, lock me somewhere safe, tell me that it’s all the fever talking?”
Nurzhan approached her hesitantly, keeping a wary eye on the knife. “Well, my lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and whether it’s the fever talking or your true heart, the fever’s kept you from eating much in days. What do you say to lunch?” It seemed an absurd proposal, but Zivar seemed to be considering it. “Look, whatever you want to discuss can be discussed in the dining room—when was the last time we even used the dining room?—and we can all have a good meal. Then if you decide to execute all of us we’ll go out with a full stomach.”
“As soon as I put down my knife you’ll be after me with a sheet to force me to bed.”
“Well, let’s think about this. Maybe you can sit at one end of the table, where no one can reach you before you can pick your knife back up, and Xanthe and Tamar can sit at the other end.”
“Her name isn’t Xanthe, it’s Lauria.”
“It’s agreed, then.” Nurzhan nodded to some of the other servants, who hastily began to carry food and dishes into the dining room.
The dining room had probably not been used in years, but it was immaculate and well kept by Zivar’s servants. One had already spread out a cloth, and another was setting out plates and bowls and serving meat and cheese and bread. Zivar settled into an armchair at the opposite end, her back to a wall, and maintained a vigilant grip on her knife until her meal was served. I wondered if the servants could wrestle away the knife from her if they were truly determined to do so. If she were threatening one of them, they’d probably be more inclined to take the risk. Tamar and I sat at the other end of the table, well out of reach, and Nurzhan and a few other servants clustered in the doorway. “Eat your food,” Nurzhan whispered to us.
Tamar tucked into her food; I ate a few nervous bites. Zivar was also eating, a wary eye on the rest of us. No one said anything for several minutes.
“Now then,” Nurzhan said. “Did you have plans for the afternoon, my lady? Shopping, perhaps, or planning an improvement to the house?”
“Killing the spies,” Zivar said. “And anyone who tries to stop me.”
“We’re not spies,” Tamar said.
“Oh, you pretend to be outcast Alashi, to be a couple of fugitives, but I have ears in a lot of places. A great number of places, and so I know all about your little arrangement with the Sisterhood. You’re trying to trap me. You probably think you have trapped me.”
“What little arrangement? I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Of course you’re going to say that. What are you going to say? ‘Why yes, Zivar, we were sent here by the Sisterhood to lure you into exposing yourself . . .’ ”
“Listen to me, Zivar,” I said. “If the Sisterhood wanted you dead, they wouldn’t waste their time getting you to expose yourself. They hold your spell-chains. They could arrange for someone to accidentally free one of the djinni so that it came back through and killed you. They don’t care about your secret because you’re useful to Ligeia. You said yourself she can have you make spell-chains that she knows will be at risk, because she doesn’t care whether you live or die.”
Zivar’s hand tightened on her knife; her jaw clenched. “Then what are you doing here?”
“We came to Casseia to find a slave.”
“And why did you smash your own spell-chain, you foolish, stupid girl? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I never want to enslave anyone, ever again, and that the djinni deserve freedom as much as you or me or Tamar.”
“You’re as sentimental as a little girl.”
“Yes, you’re probably right.”
She thought it over. “No, this makes no sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“I know that you are Kyros’s daughter,” she said. “Ligeia spoke of a Lauria, and it was clear from the description that she meant you.”
Tamar choked on her meat and I almost spit a mouthful of wine back into my cup. “Ah,” Zivar said. “This is true, if nothing else is. You are the daughter of Kyros.”
“Bastard daughter,” I said, setting my cup down very carefully. “The child of his mistress, a former favored slave.”
“Then why does Ligeia think that you work for him?”
“Because Kyros is lying to her, I guess, or else I’ve lied to him better than I thought.”
“Who is Kyros?”
“You know I’m his daughter but you don’t know who he is?” I shook my head, considered lying, then shrugged and said, “He’s the commander of the military garrison at Elpisia, near the northern border. I was supposed to go infiltrate the Alashi. You correctly guessed that we were cast out. Now I’m dodging his djinni.”
“What did you do to the first two?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s it,” Zivar said, and she snatched up the knife and launched herself at me. “I’m going to cut your lying throat.”
She knocked me backward in my chair to the floor; my head knocked against the wall and my ears rang from the impact. I brought up my knee, kicking her as hard as I could. Tamar leapt onto her like an angry dog, biting down on her wrist in an attempt to slow her arm. Despite Tamar, I felt the knife score my shoulder; Zivar’s breath was hot in my face, her eyes utterly wild.
Then she was off me, in the hands of the servants, the knife clattering to the ground. “Spies—liars—” Zivar shouted, struggling. The servants pinned Zivar against the wall. Someone had a sheet and they were binding her in it, pinning her arms, her legs. She screamed like they were hurting her, though they had a practiced air and I doubted that they bound her tighter than was necessary. Tamar watched with horror. Zivar writhed as they carried her away, still screaming.
“Well,” Nurzhan said, as Zivar’s cries faded. “That was unpleasant. You’re leaving in the spring, aren’t you? I think having strangers around makes it more likely that her fevers make her violent, rather than making her want to dress all her servants in velvet or buy fifty perfectly matched white horses.” She shook her head and returned to her work.
We went back to our own room; Tamar sent for water and a soft cloth to bandage the cut Zivar had left on my shoulder. We didn’t expect to hear anything from Zivar for a time, but a few hours later one of the servants knocked on the door. “Zivar wants to speak to you,” she said to me. “She will not be refused. She’s bound, so she can’t harm you.” She gestured, and it was clear that this was an order, not a request.
I hadn’t seen Zivar’s bedroom before. It was chaotic, despite the best efforts of the servants, with stacks of books and heaps of clothing. I wondered how much of the mess came just from the last day. Zivar lay on her side on the bed, her face flushed, her body wrapped in the sheet like a fly in a spiderweb. “Tell me one thing,” she said. “Kyros. Will he misuse my spell-chain? Will he be the death of me?”
“He won’t forget he can’t have his djinni commit murder,” I said. “Ever. That’s not Kyros.”
“But,” Zivar said. “I hear a but in the way you say that.”
“But if the Weavers order him to have one of the djinni kill someone, risking death himself to kill you and commit the assassination—he would probably do it.”
“Ah.” She smiled faintly. “Probably.”
“The
penalties for misusing a spell-chain are severe. He would want some sort of assurance that they wouldn’t turn on him once he’d served as their tool.”
“A wise man.”
“Were you going to try to take away my spell-chain, if I’d completed it?”
“Only if you were stupid and let me do it. No, I have two pieces of karenite right now. I was going to try to get you to make me a spell-chain. I was planning to try to persuade you to do it, but I’d have given you a piece for yourself if I’d had to. Now . . .” She blew out her breath. “Not likely, you silly girl.”
“Was that all?”
She shifted a little in her binding, striving for a more comfortable position. I wasn’t sure whether to offer to help her move herself, or just to keep my distance. “You have been reading Photios’s letters to me, or so I heard.”
“Letters—oh yes, the travelogue.”
“As he has time, he explores new lands, looking for new trade goods. Alas, when he finds interesting things he seldom has the ready cash to buy them for me.”
“I thought he was looking for a place for you to retire to.”
“Well, that, too. But it’s quite hard. If it’s far enough from the Sisterhood that I could go and not be found, the languages are all foreign and the people rather barbaric.” She sighed. “And no matter how far I went, there’s always the spell-chains I made . . .”
“Why can’t you have one of your own djinni snatch them back before you left?”
“They’re no better at finding spell-chains than finding people. Besides, if you let an aeriko touch soul-stone, sometimes they find a door back to where they came from, and . . .” She blew once, gently, as if chasing away a feather. “Gone.”
“So why do you hide it so carefully? Why the lock, the guard . . . ?”
“Well, you never know.” She paused. “Would you like to read more of Photios’s letters? I will trade.”
“Trade what?”
“Your own stories of lands far away, for him to go look for.”
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