Eliar’s frown deepened.
“That’s rude!” muttered Mai.
“Maybe not meant so,” he said. “Best the soldiers be seen accepting the gift.”
She gestured to Chief Tuvi. He strolled back to inspect the dumplings and the girl, who wasn’t more than ten. He indicated she should eat one first, and when she popped one promptly in her mouth, he allowed the soldiers to share the rest.
“Even so, walking through the market is more than your sister can do,” said Mai, mouth watering as she watched the soldiers devour the moist dumplings. She couldn’t bring herself to taste them when Eliar was rejected in that way, but if he meant to let the slight pass, she would not mention it again. “She wasn’t allowed to accompany me.”
“She’s unmarried. She’s not allowed to walk in the market until she becomes an adult.”
“Which I am, although I’m younger than she is? Just because I’m married? That doesn’t seem reasonable.”
Like his father, Eliar might smile and charm but there were things he would not joke about. “That isn’t our way, verea.”
“Forgive me. I had no intention to offend. I grew up selling produce in the market in Kartu Town. It seems strange to me that your sister lives so restricted.”
“Let’s move on,” he said.
Even Miravia’s absence could not ruin the delight of walking through the bright day and enjoying the sight of a city so rich they could build with wood as much as with stone and brick. So many colors and smells! Vendors sold oil by the ladle. At food stalls you could buy noodles, or mounds of colorful spiced and pickled vegetables.
A girl sat on a blanket under the shade of a canvas awning, fruit mounded in neat piles before her, crying her wares in a cheerful voice: “Sunfruit! Best and sweetest! Ghost melon for the new year! Strings of redthorn.”
Mai wiped away unexpected tears.
Priya cupped Mai’s elbow under an arm. “Mistress, are you well? Perhaps we should return?”
“Just remembering when I used to be that girl, selling fruit in the market in Kartu Town.”
She bought several sunfruit, making only a cursory effort to bargain, and shared out the segments with the others. The moist flesh cooled her mouth, but it tasted a little sour.
The smell of fried fish made her stomach turn, so they walked on, past carpenters raising walls where a hall had just days ago burned, past roofers shifting broken tiles, past folk hauling water and pushing wheelbarrows piled with bricks, past men and women calling out their wares in a singsong that grabbed and held the ear. The rhythm of the marketplace truly was the same anywhere. And today she had no need to feel hurried, to grasp at trinkets in passing, to wonder if the coin she’d been given as a sign of favor by Father Mei might be pried from her hand by Grandmother Mei in a fit of pique. She could wait, see what appealed, how prices compared, and she could come back whenever she pleased, because she and Anji were wealthy. Anji’s troop of Qin soldiers had saved Olossi. Acting as negotiator for their services, she had pinched the Olossi council for so much coin that she couldn’t imagine how she’d had the audacity just days ago to manage it.
No, there was no haste to buy.
Not until they came to the street catering to those who knew how to write, with its brushes and inkstones and ink knives. In one shop, a dozen wretchedly preserved scrolls had been tossed into a dusty basket in the corner.
“Look here, Priya,” she said to the slave, drawing her close, hand tucked into her elbow. “Don’t those look like prayer scrolls? Whatever would such a thing be doing in this land, where they’ve never heard of the Merciful One?”
The shopkeeper hustled over. “Verea.” He nodded at Priya, not realizing she was only a slave, and then at Mai, gaze shifting between the two to gauge their relationship. “How may I help you?”
“I’d like to look at these,” Mai said. “What a curiosity!”
“Please, please.” He was a short, broad-chested man wearing a sleeveless vest and loose trousers that fell to just above the ankle. He cleared a space on a table and carelessly dropped several of the frayed scrolls there.
A youth wearing only a kilt belted low on the hips was seated on the floor in the opposite corner at the rear of the shop, twisting hairs into brushes. His well-muscled chest was mostly hairless, quite smooth. He glanced up as if he had felt the weight of her gaze, and grinned flirtatiously right at her. She looked away, although not because she feared a lad’s dazzling smile. The Hundred folk wore much less clothing in public than Mai was accustomed to, displaying a great deal of lovely brown skin. Perhaps it was no wonder Isar did not like his unmarried daughter to walk in the market.
Priya sucked in a sharp breath, a hiss of surprise. She had untied a ribbon and smoothed out the first few turns of a battered scroll, careful lest the ragged tears rip further.
“This is a copy of the Thread of Awakening,” she murmured.
Was that a tear below Priya’s eye, or a stray drop of rain? Priya had always a well-modulated voice, in which Mai heard only affection and wisdom. Tenderly the slave tied the scroll back and peeled open a second.
“Aie!” She sounded as if the sight pained her. “The Discourse on the Seven-Branched Candle. Ill handled for its pains. I cannot imagine how these holy books journeyed here.”
“Yet here they are,” murmured Mai as the woman mouthed the words silently and rocked side to side to the rhythm of the unspoken phrases.
The months-long overland journey with Anji’s company had been hard on Priya, but she had never relaxed her care of Mai, never once spoken of her own fears and aches. Nor had Mai, in the seven years Priya had been her personal slave, ever asked. Anji was the one who had discovered that Priya had been kidnapped years ago from a temple where she served the Merciful One, and marched over high mountains to be sold into slavery far away from her homeland. Her only comment: “I survived because of the teachings of the Merciful One.”
“Do these exceptional scrolls interest you, verea? They are rare. Outlander work. It was chance I was able to lay hands on them. You’ll find nothing else like them in all of Olossi.”
“Look how dirty and torn they are,” said Mai with a kind smile. “How sad that those who handled them treated them with such scorn. Here, now, what can you tell me of these prints?” She indicated a set of pictures leaning against the wall. “How I love butterflies! So colorful they are! But is this a practiced hand? Or apprentice work? Please advise me, ver.”
Distracted, he followed her to the ranks of prints on display. “It’s very good work, although you might find Hoko’s work more to your taste, she is a master artisan, the best in town. Here are Hoko’s festival prints special for the Year of the Red Goat, which I can offer at a markdown since we scarcely had a festival this year due to the terrible events. See the detail of this wharf scene! The festival banners, the ghost ribbons, the food stalls. Here, the incomparable Eridit, and there a talking line of children from the Lady’s temple dance the episode of the reunited lovers from the Tale of Change.”
“It’s very fine, but the colors here look a little smudged. Oh, I do like that one, but—”
She smiled brightly and spoke cheerfully, and wielded her “but”s like a trimming knife until the shopkeeper begged for mercy. “Your sweet tongue is as sharp as those swords carried by your soldiers, verea,” he said, laughing. “I accept defeat! What is it you want?”
“It seems a high price for prints for a festival now over, for a year that won’t come around again for—well—how can I even count that far? Many rounds of years, surely, before the Red Goat walks again.”
“I can’t lower my price, verea. My overhead. Surely you understand. But I could throw in something else. Is there something you have your eye on?”
She made a show of examining other prints, the brushes, the inkstones. He had an assistant bring tea. As she sipped, savoring the gingery taste, she entertained him with a long digression about needing to bind a new accounts book, as she must of nece
ssity set up a household.
“So you and the outlanders are indeed staying, as it is rumored?”
“Is it spoken of?”
“Surely it is, verea. You must know every person in Olossi talks of little else. How could it be otherwise, since your bold attack saved us from ruin?”
She liked him, for his laugh and his praise of Anji and the soldiers, and because bargaining entertained him as much as it did her. Because he offered tea not just to her and Priya but also to Eliar and Tuvi and the four soldiers as they loitered under the eaves, waiting for her. “I’ll need two accounts books. I am sure you can bind them with good-quality paper, something that will hold up better than those poor scrolls, and provide the necessary scribal tools.”
In the end she purchased the prints and the accounts books, with the entire basket of dusty scrolls thrown in as a courtesy. The books and scribal tools and prints would be delivered, but Priya herself carried away the basket, clutched as tightly as a precious child. Mai could not have been more pleased.
“MISTRESS, HERE IS juice, just as you like it with lime and mint.”
“Ah! That’s very nice, Sheyshi.”
“While you were gone, I washed the cloth just as you said. I folded the bedding. I cooked rice. The young mistress helped me.”
“Very good, Sheyshi. Where is Miravia?”
“She went back through the gate, Mistress. Do you want your hair brushed, Mistress?”
“Yes, Sheyshi.” Mai sank down onto pillows and sighed with pleasure as Sheyshi took out the combs and sticks that held her hair. Released, her hair fell past her hips. As Sheyshi brushed with steady strokes, Mai watched Priya examine the scrolls. The slave said nothing, but tears shone on her weathered skin.
“What have we found?” Mai asked finally.
“A treasure! Six of the scrolls are written in script unknown to me. They might be anything. But the other six are discourses and threads. I have not touched holy books since the day our temple was burned and we were taken away by the raiders.” She wiped tears from her cheek. “I thank you, Mistress. This treasure brings me great joy.”
Mai sniffled, wiping away her own tears. “We’ll make an altar. You can teach me all the holy prayers.”
“We will not build an altar in the house of the Ri Amarah.”
“No,” said Mai with a frowning laugh. “I suppose we will not.”
The brush paused halfway down her length of hair.
“Mistress, what altar will you build?” Sheyshi asked. “Can I pray there? I know the words ‘the Merciful One is my lamp and my refuge.’ But that’s all I know.”
Priya touched each of the scrolls in turn, as if she could absorb their holy essence through her skin. “Of course you will pray, Sheyshi. The Merciful One hears the prayers of all people.”
“Even women?” Sheyshi whispered. “Even slaves?”
“Especially women. Especially slaves.” Priya sat back. She had grown thin. In Kartu she had been more robust, favored with extra food in her capacity as nursemaid to the house’s favored daughter, Mai. But the long journey had whittled at her flesh to expose the ridges and hollows of bone.
“You must eat more, Priya,” said Mai, scooting forward to touch one of Priya’s hands with her own. “And rest. I could not bear to lose you.”
“I will recover, little flower. Do not fear for me. You are the one who must be careful to eat plenty, now that you are with child. Look. Here comes Miravia.”
The guesthouse attached to the Ri Amarah compound was separated from the street by gates, and further separated from the main compound of the family by another set of gates.
Miravia entered, ran over, and kicked off her sandals before she dropped down beside Mai on a neighboring pillow. “Sheyshi, what a lovely brushing you’ve done!” The young slave dipped her head shyly, smiling at this praise. “Priya, you look tired. I will take Mai into the house for supper and afterward I will bring a tray of food for you and Sheyshi myself. That way you can rest.”
“Let me put your hair up, Mistress,” said Sheyshi.
Sheyshi braided Mai’s thick black hair into the loose arrangement which she then twisted and bound up on Mai’s head with combs and hair sticks, while Mai and Miravia discussed the shopping expedition and the scrolls.
“Don’t mention that they are holy scrolls,” said Miravia, with a look of alarm as if she thought invisible spirits might be eavesdropping. “They might make you get rid of them.”
“Even if we just keep them here in the guest house with our other belongings?”
“It would be better if you did not mention it. Might you teach me the reading of the script, Priya?”
“Certainly,” said Priya. “Must you ask permission from your elders?”
“I won’t, for they would forbid it.”
“Then not in this house. It would not be fair recompense for their hospitality.”
Miravia sighed, and made no reply. She took Mai’s hand. “Come, Mai.”
They slipped on sandals and walked to the inner gate. “My mother is particularly keen to talk to you. She wants to know what you thought of our markets.”
“I don’t think it’s right you’re not allowed out to shop! Yet you visit the prison!”
“To bring food to indigent prisoners. That they cannot forbid me to do because of our obligation to act for justice and mercy where we can. But only adult women are allowed to go out into the marketplace.”
“And even then, with a veil covering your face!”
“Mai, let it go, I beg you.”
They had reached the gate. Mai embraced her friend as they waited for the mechanism to be drawn back from the other side. “I’ll say nothing more. But I have my own plans. You’ll see.”
AFTER SUPPER, MAI accompanied Miravia on her lamp-lighting rounds.
“Do you miss him?” Miravia asked as she stood on tiptoe, pressing a lit taper to a wick. With a hiss, flame brightened.
Mai closed and latched the glass door. “Yes. But I don’t like to think about him. What if he is killed? That would be too painful to bear, wouldn’t it?”
“If you cared for someone, it would. Otherwise maybe it would be a relief, wouldn’t it?”
Her voice had such a finely grained dark tone that Mai touched her hand, to let her know she was not alone. “When my uncle Girish died, I think everyone wept only because they were ashamed that they were glad he was gone. But people will feel relief, if a death lightens their burden.”
Miravia wiped her cheek with the back of a hand, but she did not reply. She walked on to the next lamp in the vast rectangular courtyard of the women’s side of the Ri Amarah compound. Older children not yet sent to bed played in the open space, shrieking and giggling as they dodged around benches and the twisting forms of pruned trees. A hearth glowed in the kitchens, and beside it a pair of old women prepared pots of steaming herbs. At a raised trough, chatting girls scoured dishes. Most of the married women had gone to the innermost apartments, leaving the supervision of the courtyard to the unmarried women and elderly widows.
“What if another’s misfortune brings relief to you?” asked Miravia as she lit a lamp, keeping her face turned away from Mai. “If something you never wanted is made impossible through no effort of yours, only through trouble afflicting others?”
“What happened?” asked Mai as she latched the tiny glass door. They stood in shadow far from the running children, the clatter and laughter in the kitchen, and the intermittent cries and complaints of younger children being coaxed to bed in the sleeping rooms. “No one can hear us here. You know I’ll keep secret any word you tell to me, Miravia.”
A bench stretched below the lamp, the polished wood gleaming under the illumination. Miravia sank down, and Mai sat beside her, taking her friend’s hands between her own.
“A courier came from Clan Hall to Argent Hall, a reeve bearing letters. One of the Ri Amarah houses in Toskala paid to have a message delivered to us. High Haldia is fallen—” Her voice
broke on a caught breath.
“Yes, I heard that, too.”
“I spoke once to you of the young scholar it was arranged I would marry. I should have gone a year ago but the roads weren’t safe. To High Haldia. Where their house is.”
“Oh, no,” murmured Mai.
“A few survived the assault, and fled to Toskala with their news. But he’s dead. Mai, he’s dead. And I’m relieved to know it. I never even met him. It’s just I didn’t want to marry someone I never met and never knew. But you did.”
“I always knew I would marry someone my father chose for me.”
“He didn’t choose your husband.”
“No,” said Mai with a strangled laugh. “He was very upset when Anji picked me. Father had no choice then. No more than I did. In Kartu, you could not say no to the Qin.”
The lamplight made Miravia’s face ghostly and vulnerable. “Where did you find the grace in your heart to accept it? And not fight it?”
“The only place to find happiness is inside. In the house I grew up in, the ones who fought to no purpose, who thrashed and flailed like Mei and Ti, they were the unhappiest ones. Even Uncle Hari didn’t know how to be happy even though everyone loved him because he was so funny and charming. But a worm gnawed at him. He was dissatisfied. He never learned how to use his anger to build, only to tear down.”
“How did you learn?”
Mai shrugged, amused at herself and saddened by Miravia’s distress. “Maybe because I am like my father in wanting to control things. So if I can control myself, then no one can touch that part of me. That’s my garden, where my spirit rests.”
“My spirit flies in the mountains and fields and forests,” said Miravia with a grimace, “or it would, if I could ever go there. They’ll just arrange another marriage for me.”
Mai felt her trembling. She kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Maybe you’ll be fortunate, as I was.”
“Maybe so,” she said without meaning it. “But there was talk, before the scholar, of an old rich man who’s already buried three wives, and needs a fresh young one. A lecherous goat!”