CHAPTER TWELVE
L AURIA
Zivar’s palanquin smelled funny—she didn’t use it much, and it had a musty odor. It was crowded full of all the strange things she’d thrown in for her trip. The basket of carefully packed food was no doubt her servants’ doing; the uneven pile of notebooks no doubt Zivar’s. The pillows were practical, but she’d put in so many you could barely see the rug on the floor. I had no idea why she had brought a silver pitcher, a freshly dug rosebush, or the huge seashell she normally used when she was working on a spell-chain. I arranged myself around the clutter. Xanthe, beside me, sat bolt upright, looking terrified.
“Are we being followed?” I asked.
Zivar pulled a spell-chain out from under her gown; she clasped it for a moment and murmured under her breath. “One approaches,” she said a moment later.
I’m only going to have one chance, I thought. Either they’re sending it to kill me, or they’re sending it to grab me and bring me back so that another one can kill me. I looked around wildly—they could be hard to see in daylight. But in the curtained interior of the palanquin, I saw its light, and as it lunged for me I had the momentary impression of a face. It’s here to kill me, I thought. I flung my hands out and hissed the words to banish it.
It has begun, it said before it vanished to the other side.
The palanquin was very quiet when I returned to myself. Xanthe and Zivar were both staring at me. “Lauria,” Zivar said. “I’m going to just call you Lauria, and not Xanthe—I think it would be rather confusing to call you Xanthe, seeing as you brought along a Xanthe, don’t you agree? What did you just do?”
“I freed it,” I said.
“The aeriko?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “There is a gate. Inside me. That’s what the djinni—aerika—all say. When I touch them, they can return to where they came from, even if they’re bound.” I glanced at Xanthe; her face was rigid and unreadable. “This is why the Sisterhood wanted me dead. This is why they thought they needed to kill me in some unusual way. Apparently there have been people who could do this before.”
Zivar chewed on her lower lip, her eyes glinting. “They must be terrified of you,” she said.
“They are,” Xanthe said softly.
“I heard murmurs of this even last winter,” Zivar said. “When your old master’s aerika disappeared. Then more talk, after you left. There have been people with gates within them before. Their deaths caused difficulties.”
Xanthe raised her head. “They were going to have an aeriko kill her,” she said.
“That wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “Nothing ever works twice.”
“How do you know about this?” Xanthe asked.
I shrugged. “I…the djinni showed me one night.”
“Can you close the gate?” Xanthe asked.
“It only opens when I will it,” I said. “Zivar’s aeriko isn’t going to slip through and let the palanquin fall.” Zivar cackled a little at that.
“More are going to be coming,” Zivar said. “They can’t just let you get away.” She fished a half dozen more spell-chains out from under her gown; they glittered in her palm as she murmured something under her breath. “Might as well make it hard for them,” she said. “I told my aerika to hurry it up, and to take a circuitous route. We’ll try to lose them, or outrun them.”
Xanthe looked pale and tense; her knees were drawn up against her chest. She didn’t want to meet Zivar’s eyes, or look at anyone else.
“Thank you,” I said. “Without you, I’d be dead.”
Xanthe let out a grim little chuckle and said nothing.
“Why did you help me?”
Her jaw worked and she lowered her eyes to stare at the rug under her feet. “My mother…Janiya appeared to me the other night, in my dream.” She fell silent.
“Did she ask you to help me?”
“No, actually. She just said she was sorry she’d left me. She cried, and wanted to kiss me, but I didn’t let her. I wanted to ask her more questions, but then the dream slipped away. I thought I’d ask you more questions instead, but then I found out they were planning to kill you that day. If I ever wanted a chance to question you more, I had to get you away, so that’s what I did. It was an impulse.” A stupid impulse. I swore I could hear the unsaid words echoing in her thoughts. “If I’d stopped to think, I’d have known the price was too high.”
“You did the right thing,” Zivar said. Xanthe turned her miserable eyes on Zivar, who was tucking her spell-chains back into her gown. “Their plan wouldn’t have worked. Also, Lauria is a nice person. Saving her life was a good thing.”
I guess I’m glad to hear you say that, I thought, and swallowed hard, thinking about how easily Zivar could let me be killed. I looked back at Xanthe, doubting her story. Could she really have gotten me out of the Koryphe entirely on her own? I thought I remembered a guard who’d turned away, and surely that secret door would ordinarily have been guarded? But perhaps the guards were so loyal to each other they’d do each other favors, without asking questions. When Janiya was a young guard, I thought she might have been willing to leave a door unguarded for a minute or two, “accidentally,” if asked by a friend.
“If Janiya had asked me to save you, I’d have let you die,” Xanthe muttered.
“Someone is coming,” Zivar said.
I leaned out and looked. Another palanquin was approaching. “It’s a sorceress,” I said, pulling my head back in.
“You don’t have to be a sorceress to ride in a palanquin,” Zivar said. “I believe there are guards in that palanquin, with orders to seize you. Human guards, who can’t be banished with a touch.” She fingered her spell-chains again, and this time spoke aloud, so that I—not just the djinni—could hear her. “Keep us away from that palanquin. They’re here for Lauria, for your gate. If you want her to stay safe, you’d better keep us away.” She tucked the spell-chains back into her dress. “We’ll see how much they want to protect you, now, won’t we?”
There was no discernible change—though in the shuttered box of the palanquin, it was hard to tell how fast we were moving. I looked out. “They’re getting closer,” I said.
“We are outnumbered and cannot outrun,” something hissed in my ear, and I nearly leapt to my feet before realizing it had the voice of a djinn. “We can outmaneuver.”
Another voice spoke. “We will protect you. Trust us.”
“And hold on tight.”
I looked at Zivar, who arched one eyebrow and said nothing.
I looked out again. We were almost side by side. Someone was pulling back the curtains of the other palanquin; and Zivar had been right—I could see women, guards, crowded inside. Then one reached out for us, and our palanquin shot suddenly upward. I heard the guardwoman’s scream as she plummeted, and I hoped her death didn’t free one of Zivar’s djinni. Surely not. It just moved the palanquin, it never touched her… And Zivar didn’t collapse screaming and dying to the floor of the palanquin, so apparently not.
They were approaching again, this time from below. One of them shot something like an arrow at us, a rope trailing behind. An anchor. It was deflected by one of the djinni—as were the next dozen that were shot at us.
Xanthe’s hands were gripped into fists against the pillow she was sitting on. Her knuckles were white.
Another hail of arrows started—this time, they were fire arrows, and one of them found its way past the djinni and landed inside the palanquin. Xanthe jumped up and smothered the flame with one of the pillows. “Send a djinn to steal the arrows,” I said to Zivar.
Zivar nodded, her hands already twisting the spell-chains. “Are you going to fire them back down?” she asked.
I hadn’t really thought about it. “I could try…I’m not very good with a bow. But if we take their arrows, they can’t fire any more at us.”
The djinn returned with a whirl of bits and pieces—arrows, bows, an extinguished torch, the grappling hooks—and set them in a tangle on the rug of our palanquin. “Steal the rest of their equipment, too,” I suggested. “Whatever they’ve got that the djinn can take without hurting anyone…”
This time, the djinn returned with a larger pile—swords, helmets, pillows and rugs, even—to my shocked amusement—a spell-chain, which Zivar snatched up and added to her own collection, summoning the djinn a moment later to her side. I watched for another djinn—surely, I thought, they’d send one to try to get their stuff back. Yes. There it was, and in a breath, I was able to lay hands on it and send it away.
“It’s slowing down,” Xanthe said, looking out of our palanquin. “Falling behind.”
“Let’s come around for one more pass,” I said. “If we pass underneath, I can free the djinni that are carrying the palanquin.”
“No!” Xanthe sat bolt upright, horrified. “These are friends of mine. People I know—you can’t, please…”
I bit my lip and didn’t argue. “Zivar. Your new spell-chain—have that djinn carry them safely to the ground, so they aren’t hurt. Is that all right?” I looked at Xanthe. She nodded and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “They won’t be hurt. Now take us in under them…”
There were four djinni left. Zivar’s djinn brought us up under the other palanquin; looking out, I could see them, but they were out of my reach. “We can’t go any closer,” Zivar said. “Do you need to free them?”
“If I do, they can’t follow us to see where we go,” I said. Holding my breath and keeping my eyes away from the ground, I leaned out the door, grabbed the roof of the palanquin, and hoisted myself onto it. Then I crawled to the center. It was canvas, drawn tight over the ribs of the frame; it easily held my weight. But the djinni were still just out of my reach. I have to hurry and do this before the guards realize I’m standing right under them. My stomach lurched as I let go. We were moving faster than the swiftest horse, but the palanquin was at least the size of a large wagon. Even if I fall down, I’ll just fall onto the canvas again. Not all the way to the ground. I wanted to crawl to the edge and peer over the side before I committed myself, but that would have been stupid, and I knew it. I have to do this, or coming out here was awfully stupid. I didn’t fall when I let go, and I’m not going to fall when I stand up.
I took a deep breath.
“I am the one who was sent to free the rivers,” I said out loud. “I cannot fail.”
I braced my feet against the ribs under the canvas and braced my body against the wind as I rose slowly to my feet. The slightest shift could knock me from my perch; I needed to do this quickly. I reached up, and realized as I tipped my head back that the djinni were reaching for me, straining to touch me from where they were held by their orders. I could touch all four. “Return,” I said, and opened the gate in my heart.
I felt a rush of sudden heat like a blast of hot wind, and I threw myself down to the roof of the palanquin, grabbing the ribs under the canvas with both hands. Within, I could see the four djinni passing into a narrow tunnel, but it seemed to be closing on me even as I struggled to hold it open. I was being crushed, pressed, smothered. I thought I heard the djinni talking, then realized it was Xanthe’s voice shouting. The tunnel was still there, a whirl of fire in the darkness around me, but everything else was going away; I couldn’t breathe.
Then it was gone, and I could breathe again. “Lauria!” someone was shouting. Their voice was muffled. “Do we need to cut a hole in the roof or can you crawl back down here?”
I was sprawled on the roof of the palanquin. The voice was coming from inside.
“I’m all right,” I said. My voice was a croak, but everyone inside fell silent, so I said it again. “I’m all right. I think I can get back inside.”
“If you swear you won’t free it, I’ll send an aeriko to carry you in,” Zivar said.
“I won’t free your aeriko,” I said. Not right now, anyway. It was a relief not to have to try to climb down and crawl back inside. My whole body felt bruised. I wasn’t sure I’d have the strength in my hands to hold on.
The djinn was over me now. I had the sense of a woman looking solemnly into my face. I swallowed hard, and let go of the palanquin’s roof. The djinn gathered me up as if I were a cat, supporting me gently as it lifted me off the roof. “Don’t fear,” it whispered. “You will not fall.”
It slid me over the edge and for a moment, I hung in the air, nothing below me. I took a quick look down since I didn’t have to worry about freezing up and falling. The ground was a long way down. Palanquins fly high, of course, but I could swear we were as high as a mountaintop with nothing—nothing—below us except possibly some birds. Then we went through the doorway, and the djinn laid me down on the cushions, and I could breathe again.
“Well,” Zivar said, embarrassed. “That could have been planned better.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Xanthe glared at me. “She means that she didn’t give precise enough instructions to the aeriko that was supposed to pick up the other palanquin and take it safely to the ground. When you freed the aerika that were carrying it, they dropped it onto you. Zivar’s aerika didn’t pick it up because it was resting on our roof—its instruction was to not let it fall and, well, it wasn’t falling, was it? She had to bring it back, give it a new instruction, and send it back up there to lift the palanquin off you. You could have died!”
Zivar gave me a mute, apologetic shrug.
“Well.” I felt the tender spots on my face, my breasts, my arms and legs. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Zivar still looked embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”
“This sort of thing happens when you’re working with djinni,” I said. “Aerika, I mean. I could tell you some stories from when I was still working for Kyros…” I shrugged again. “Did the other palanquin…”
“It’s safely on the ground,” Xanthe said.
“My aerika are watching to see if they have any other spies to send after us, but I don’t think they do,” Zivar said. “I think we’ve shaken pursuit. For now.”
“Aerika aren’t supposed to be very good at finding people,” Xanthe said.
“No,” I said. I had recovered enough to sit up, arrange myself on the pillows, cross my legs. “They’re not. But if they’re determined enough—if they send out enough—they’ll find us. They’ll find me. It’s just a matter of time.”
We traveled through the day and into the night without stopping. “Aerika don’t get tired,” Zivar said when Xanthe suggested that we put down for the night. She had a chamber pot for us to pee in, though no screen to hide behind. It was emptied by a djinn. When Xanthe hesitated to use the pot, Zivar offered to have a djinn carry her down to the ground, and then back up when she was done. She blanched, hesitated a bit longer, and finally used it. But she refused tea the next time Zivar offered it.
Zivar had a kettle and—terrifyingly—a tiny stove to heat water. Her servants, fortunately, had packed a generous hamper full of food before she left. I dug out some thin bread, slightly stale, and a covered bowl of hummus, along with a sack of plums. I was ravenously hungry; I tried to remember my last proper meal, and I was pretty sure it was lost in the mists of the drugs they’d given me. This wasn’t exactly a proper meal, either, but we had a great deal of time and no shortage of food, so I ate bread and hummus until I was sick of both, then turned to plums, then to cheese.
“Where are we going?” Xanthe asked.
“North,” Zivar said. “To the place where there’s no night.”
Xanthe bit her lip and looked at me. She wanted to talk to me privately. When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “How far is that?”
“A couple of days…I don’t really know. When we stop seeing night, we’ll know we’re there, won’t we?”
I wanted to pace, as the day wore on, but within the palanquin I really couldn’t. It was the size of a small room; there was room for all three of us to stretch out, side by side, but barely. The rest of the space was taken up by the hamper of food, all the gear we’d stolen from the guardswomen in the other palanquin, and the miscellaneous junk Zivar had brought along. Even just reaching for food from the hamper, I kept getting jabbed by the rosebush.
When I’d felt like this, traveling with Tamar, I’d gotten off my horse to run alongside for a while but that wasn’t really an option here. I tried to stifle the itch that rose up inside me, without success. I fidgeted, instead—tapping my feet against the floor. If my mother were here, she would tell me not to fidget. That started me worrying about my mother. Was she alive or dead? Free or captured? Had Kyros spared searchers to find her, knowing her potential as a hostage? The worries circled through my thoughts like a noisy parade: alive or dead? Free or captured? Alive or dead? Free or captured?
It was a relief when Xanthe interrupted. “Tell me about my mother’s crime. What do you know about what she did? Do you know that she was innocent, or were you just saying that to try to persuade me?”
If even Zhanna isn’t sure, I don’t think I know either. I evaded. “Janiya is no common thief.”
“What did she steal?” Zivar asked. “Or what was she accused of stealing?”
Xanthe was waiting for my answer. “A spell-chain,” I said. “An important spell-chain. The one that binds the Syr Darya.”
“That was your mother?” Zivar said, turning to Xanthe.
“Did you know of this at the time?” I asked.
“When was this? A bit over ten years ago?”
“Thirteen years,” Xanthe said.
“What do you know of it?” I asked.
“I was always a good listener—good at hearing things I wasn’t supposed to hear. Mila—the Weaver I apprenticed with—was entangled, that spring, in some sort of conspiracy.” Zivar gave me a brief nod, as if to acknowledge the truth she knew I knew: that Mila had been her owner, and she had been a slave who had learned sorcery by spying on her mistress. “I overheard rumors about a theft of something extraordinarily powerful.”
“Was Mila involved?” I asked.
“I think so, yes. I think that’s why she was killed.”
“Killed?” I said. “I thought it was an accident. Someone misusing a spell-chain out of arrogance, or stupidity.”
“Yes, that’s what they wanted everyone to think,” Zivar said. “That’s what I assumed for years, but then we had that little chat, you and I, and you said that a certain Greek officer would only use a spell-chain that way if he were ordered to do so by the Sisterhood, and if they could give him certain guarantees of safety. I lay awake for weeks, thinking that over. And yes. I think that is what happened to Mila. They knew about the conspiracy and took care of it.”
“If there was a conspiracy, why was my mother blamed?” Xanthe asked, softly.
Zivar looked over at her: at her earrings, her tattoo, the sword that rested by her feet while we traveled. “Tell me about your mother,” she said.
“I don’t remember her all that well,” Xanthe said. “She raised me until I was six. Then one day she was arrested. Accused of theft of a spell-chain. An important spell-chain. For a few weeks, everyone thought she would be executed. Instead she was stripped of her rank and sold into slavery. I was raised by one of her friends, Photine, until she died from a sickness when I was twelve. After that, I joined the Sisterhood Guard myself.” Xanthe cleared her throat. “You say some conspiracy was to blame. Surely they knew that. If this is true, then why—my mother—why?” Her voice went suddenly very thin.
Zivar gave her a long, level look. “There are several possibilities, of course. One is that the magias disagreed.” She turned her palms up. “Surely there are loyalties, even now.”
“My loyalty is always to the serpent,” Xanthe said. “To whoever holds it.”
Yet you freed me when the magia wanted me dead. I decided not to point that out.
“Anyway, it’s awkward to admit a mistake,” Zivar said. “It shakes the illusion that the magias operate as one. Another possibility is that they needed someone to blame publicly, having taken care of the erring sorceresses privately. Your mother was convenient. She might have angered the wrong person. Finally, there is the possibility that your mother was involved. I only know that Mila was involved, not who else might have been; I see no reason to assume it was only Weavers.”
Watching Xanthe, I saw her relax slightly, at that possibility. My mother really was a criminal. All is still right with the world. Zivar saw it, too, and laughed, very faintly, under her breath.
“Make no mistake, Xanthe,” she said. “These are not nice people. Whether your mother was guilty or innocent would have been irrelevant. She was not a Weaver; therefore, she was expendable. She had sworn her life to the service of the Weavers; therefore, if the Weavers needed for her to take blame for a crime she did not commit, in their eyes it was her duty and her privilege to submit to their punishment. They probably felt that they were being very kind and merciful, not having her executed.”
Xanthe drew the curtain aside to stare outside. I studied her face; Zivar laughed softly to herself. Tension still coursed through Xanthe’s body. Her face was rigid, impossible for me to read.
“One of the magias was removed shortly afterward,” Zivar said. “Sometimes one will get unmanageable, and when that happens, the other three have her confined. There are loyalties among the guards—surely you do know of this, Xanthe. Perhaps your mother’s loyalty was to the magia who was removed. Perhaps that’s why she was punished so harshly.”
Xanthe swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said, very softly. “I believe you may be right.”
If Xanthe freed me on Sophia’s orders, or Phile’s, was Zivar part of the plan? Surely not. Xanthe glanced back at me, her nervous eyes flickering quickly over my face. Her expression was still unreadable. It took me a whole summer to turn against the Greeks. Surely Xanthe is hiding something.
I did turn against them in the end. And they took Xanthe’s mother from her. But surely, right now, she’s still hiding her real loyalties. She won’t even meet my eyes, and that’s not just shyness. Xanthe isn’t shy. I tried to remember whether she’d ever looked at me straight on before our escape, and couldn’t. Before my illness, she’d spent as little time in my company as she could manage. I remembered her looking me full in the face when I was still too drugged to see straight. But other than that, it was hard to say whether she’d ever met my gaze.
Night fell. Zivar stretched out and went to sleep; I thought Xanthe lay awake for a while, then she fell asleep, too. I lay awake, thinking about the djinni that even now were no doubt searching for me, thinking about the battles that raged on the steppe. I could hear my heart beating in my ears, racing like an out-of-control horse. My whole body pulsed with energy, but I had nowhere to go and nothing to do with it.
Rivers, part of my mind whispered. Or maybe djinni? Was I hearing djinni, speaking beyond that gate in my heart? Rivers.
I started listening for the sound of trickling water, then pulled back. If I stayed away from the borderland, Kyros would not be able to find me; if Kyros could not find me, he could not threaten my mother, even if he had her. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to talk to Tamar, either. Doesn’t matter. I need to stay away.
I lay awake in the dark for hours, dropped into a light doze for a bit, then woke again, still in darkness. Tamar said that I could return to the Alashi, I remembered, but surely they’ve sent watchers there. If I go to the Alashi they’ll find me. But is there anywhere I can go where I can truly hide? Is there anything I can do to help the Alashi, before the Greeks wipe them out?
The Greeks were using djinni against the Alashi. If I joined the Alashi on the steppe, I could free the djinni that were being used on the battlefield. Well, some of them, anyway. I thought about what I’d seen in the vision of the battle. It wouldn’t change anything. It would help, but it wouldn’t make a real difference.
But if I freed the djinni that bind the river…
Well, that might make a difference. The floodwaters would sweep away most of the outposts along the frontier. That would be a potent distraction. Not to mention that everyone said that the rivers’ return would free the Danibeki slaves. This would be only one of the two rivers, but still, it was hard to imagine that anyone, Greek or Danibeki, would look at the waters crashing down from the mountains and not see the beginning of the defeat of the Sisterhood of Weavers.
The palanquin was still headed north, and even with my hours of lying awake I thought the night seemed short. We ate the last of the food for breakfast, and to my relief, Zivar decided to stop somewhere to buy more. She selected a tiny cluster of houses from the air: “There.” The descent made me feel a bit ill, and when we stopped with a gentle bump in the center of the village, it felt like we were still moving; I stood up to step out and immediately stumbled.
Everyone in the village had run out of their houses to stare at us, but we quickly realized they didn’t speak Greek. Zivar tried some other languages—Persian, I thought, then something else—with no better luck. So she dragged out the empty hamper, gestured to it and pantomimed eating something. Then she opened her purse to show them the coins inside, then gestured again to the hamper.
That worked—mostly. They brought cheese and thick loaves of bread, but Zivar had to stop them from putting in a live chicken. “It has to be cooked. READY TO EAT,” she said, shouting as if that would make her words easier to understand. “No chickens! No sheep, either!”
The villagers were odd looking. Their skin was much paler than normal. I’d seen someone that pale—who wasn’t sick—once before, when the traders had come to the Alashi sisterhood during the summer. One had had pale skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair. I thought some of the villagers here had blue eyes; I saw no yellow hair, but some of them had hair the color of dry sand. They were polite and helpful, though, despite the fact that they couldn’t speak our language.
Xanthe pulled me aside. “Where are we going?”
“Zivar said something about the land with no night,” I said. “It’s north of here…somewhere…”
Xanthe shook her head impatiently. “That’s not where I want to go.”
“Where do you want to go?”
Xanthe turned away from me, looking south, the way we’d come. “You can free djinni. So you could free the river, if you went to where the Sisterhood of Weavers dammed it.”
“Yes,” I said, and eyed Xanthe, who was still looking south.
“That would hurt the Weavers, wouldn’t it?”
“Hurt them? I don’t know. It would make them angry.”
“Furiously angry.” Xanthe was still looking south. Her eyes widened slightly at the thought.
“Do you want to hurt them?” I asked. “Make them angry?”
“Yes,” Xanthe whispered. “They took my mother.”
She was still staring south. Why? I wondered, but the curiosity about her motives was drowned out by my rising excitement—this could be possible, really possible, I could do this… “I’ll try to persuade Zivar,” I said.
The hamper full, the villagers counting their money, one of the men gestured for us to follow him, making eat, eat gestures. Zivar glanced at us, then shrugged and followed. He led us into the largest of the houses, where we took seats around a table. Villagers crowded in to watch us eat and the man who’d invited us brought out a roast leg of mutton, with roast carrots and tiny fresh-shelled peas. The mutton was tough, but the vegetables were welcome; I thought I could have made a meal of carrots and peas. They filled our glasses with something I initially took for cider, but it was bitter instead of sour. After the shock of the first sip, I decided it was drinkable. Better than kumiss, at least.
When we returned to the palanquin, I waited until the djinn had lifted us high into the air, then said, “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll tell the Sisterhood where we are?”
“How?” Zivar asked. “They’re months of travel from Penelopeia. They don’t even speak a civilized language.”
“Someone there might have a spell-chain,” I said. “I bet the Weavers told everyone with a spell-chain to watch for us. And just because we didn’t see anyone there who spoke Greek doesn’t mean no one there does.”
“A spell-chain? In that tiny little backwater? Don’t worry about it.” Zivar kicked her feet out and crossed her ankles.
“You don’t know they didn’t have one,” I said. “Maybe they invited us to stay and eat because they were trying to delay us.”
“They just wanted more money,” Zivar said.
“They made us think they just wanted more money.”
“You really think they might have had a spell-chain?” Zivar looked a little doubtful now. “Who would have had it?”
“There could have been a sorceress there,” I said. “Or a trader. Or even an officer…” Unlikely, but I watched Zivar think it over, and I could see doubt creeping in. “If they know we’ve been here, they’ll know where to look for us.”
“That’s true,” she said.
“I think we should change direction.”
“And go where?”
“The drowned valley, where they imprisoned the northern great river.”
“The Jaxartes, you mean.”
“The Syr Darya,” I corrected her.
“Why do you want to go there? Oh, I know. You told me once you want to free the rivers! I told you the southern one belongs to Persia now—how are you going to get that one back?”
“Persia can keep it. I don’t know how I would get it back.”
“But you want to free the Jaxartes.” Zivar’s eyes searched mine. “Why?”
My answers spilled out, one after another: “Because it might save the Alashi. Because it will infuriate the Weavers. Because everyone says that the rivers’ return will free the Danibeki slaves, and I think even one river returning will free more than I could free in a lifetime. Because I can.” Because I think I’m meant to. I closed my mouth on that answer; I wasn’t sure Zivar would understand it.
“What do you care about freeing the Danibeki slaves? If they had any gumption, they’d free themselves, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that what the Alashi say?”
“The Alashi are wrong,” I said.
“Are they? I know a slave who lived thousands of miles from the steppe who managed to free herself. In an unusual way, mind you, but nonetheless. I know others who are ‘slaves’ in name only.” Zivar leaned back against her pillows, then sat up as she got pricked by the rosebush. “But the Alashi—how would it help them?”
“The bandits—Alashi are threatened by the Greeks right now,” Xanthe said. “The Weavers have sent the army to try to take the steppe.”
The vision I’d seen rose up again in my mind, and I shuddered and leaned forward to press the point. “Zivar, you asked once about joining the Alashi. I can go back there now—the Alashi have said they’ll take me back. But they won’t be much of a refuge for you if they’re being destroyed by the Greeks.”
“If the Weavers realize that I helped you free the river,” Zivar said, “they will have me killed. They don’t need to know where I am. They have my spell-chains.”
“Do you really want to see magic scattered through the world?” I asked. “Do you want to see green mice running through the grainery? Strike at the Penelopeian Empire this way, and you’ll see it.”
Zivar thought it over for a long time. Then she shifted her weight and drew her spell-chains out from under her dress. “South,” she said. “And east. I want to go to where the great northern river is bound.”
I grew up at the foot of a range of high, rough hills. But if you followed the track of the old Syr Darya to the east, you quickly reached the real mountains. The Danibeki called them the djinni’s mountains; the Greeks sometimes called them Zeus’s mountains, since his lost hell was supposed to be hidden under one of the highest peaks. Their peaks were white even in the summer, and you could see them even when they were days of riding distant.
It was in one of those valleys that the Sisterhood of Weavers had imprisoned the river.
I craned my head out the window of the palanquin to look at the mountains as we drew close. I glimpsed them in the afternoon of our final day of travel, and thought that we were almost there, but when evening came, they were still distant, glowing white against the twilight sky.
It had become routine to sleep in the palanquin. We curled up around the chaos, stuffed pillows under our heads and tried to forget about how far we were from the ground. Zivar nudged me awake when it was still dark. “If you haven’t ever seen the sun rise over the mountains,” she said, “it’s a sight worth seeing.”
Zivar rose and stepped out of the palanquin; I lunged after her, then realized that we weren’t moving and that I could hear her laughing. She’d had the djinni set the palanquin on the ground while I was still asleep. I took a moment to gather my wits and wrap my blanket around my shoulders, then stepped out after her. The night was still quite dark, but I thought we were at the summit of one of the foothills. The air was chilly and dry, like night on the steppe, and my breath hovered in the air.
Zivar didn’t speak; just clasped her own blanket around herself and waited.
Xanthe climbed out a few minutes later, rubbing her eyes. “You scared me half to death,” she said to both of us. “What’s going on?”
“We’re watching the sunrise,” I said.
“Oh.” Xanthe ducked back into the palanquin, and I thought she’d gone back to bed, but she emerged again with her own blanket. “It’s cold,” she said. “Where are we?”
“The foothills of Zeus’s mountains,” Zivar said. “Hey! Maybe after we free the river we can go let Zeus out of his hell. They say he’ll grant us all immortality if we can find a way to free him.”
Sunrise over Zeus’s mountains happened in pieces. The first rays of light broke through the teeth of the mountain peaks. Then the snow on the peaks turned pink, then gold. Streaks of cloud like ribbon wound through the peaks, and finally, the sun was truly up, the sky blue, and, warm in the summer sun, we’d dropped our blankets to the ground.
“When Alexander defeated Zeus, they say he dragged him from one end to the other of the empire he founded. Then he brought Zeus here, to the mountains of the djinni, ripped the tallest mountain from its roots, and imprisoned Zeus beneath it,” Xanthe said, staring calmly at the peaks. “I never understood why they could say Zeus’s hell was lost, when it was also supposed to be under the tallest mountain. I guess now I do, because I don’t know how you’d know which one’s the tallest.”
“I’ve never seen Zeus or Alexander,” Zivar said, echoing what the worshippers of the djinni said about the gods. “I’m not worried about either one.”
“They say that Alexander took care not to make the mistake Zeus made when he imprisoned Prometheus. His chains were forged, not from metal, but from Zeus’s own immortal bones.”
“I’d never heard that,” I said, shivering a little. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. How would you get the bones out without killing someone?”
“Well, Zeus is immortal,” Xanthe said. “Prometheus had his liver eaten every day until he got loose, didn’t he? And he never died. It grew back. Same with Zeus’s bones.”
“You’d think a mountain would be enough,” I said.
“Not for a god.” Xanthe pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“I don’t know how you’d break chains made from a god’s bones,” I said. “I guess it makes sense that he’d be grateful if you could manage it, though. Prometheus granted Arachne immortality, why wouldn’t Zeus grant you immortality if you freed him?”
Xanthe gave me a quick, half-lidded smile. “I’ve also heard that there are slaves who say that Zeus will make the river return.”
“I’ve never heard that,” I said. “Is this something slaves say in Penelopeia?”
“Maybe.”
“We should get back into the palanquin,” Zivar said. Xanthe looked at it with loathing, then climbed back in.
We found the track of the old river a few hours later and followed it up through the valleys and crevices where it had once flowed. In the height of summer, it was bone-dry. As I peered down, I caught a glimpse of something brightly purple, fluttering in the summer wind. “What is that?” I asked, and leaned out for a better look.
Zivar muttered something to her djinni, and the palanquin slowly descended to let me take a look. The purple was a torn piece of cloth—from a cape, or a large banner. But as we moved down, I could see the rest more clearly.
It was a battlefield.
Zivar shuddered, and would probably have taken us away again, but looked at my face and fell silent.
The bodies lay where they fell. Scavengers had been here, but this battle had happened recently; they hadn’t had time to do much. There were no Greek bodies, only Alashi; the Greeks, having won the day, had no doubt removed their own dead for burial. They had taken no prisoners. Many of the dead had been struck on the forehead, as if someone had combed through the field after the battle, dispatching the wounded.
Men and women lay side by side. I felt an overpowering need to see if anyone I knew lay here, even as I wanted to run away. “We can use my djinni to bury them, if you’d like,” Zivar said.
“Yes,” I said, and swallowed hard. The Alashi normally buried their dead under a cairn of rocks. “Have them dig one big grave. We can’t stay for long.”
Zivar nodded and barked a short order to her djinni. I walked slowly through the battlefield, looking for faces I knew. I had almost concluded that I knew no one who’d died here when I saw a short male body that lay with its back to me. Not really wanting to grasp the dead man’s shoulder, I moved slowly to the other side of the body and crouched to see the face.
It was Uljas.
Zivar saw me pause and came over. “You know him?”
“When I served Kyros, Uljas was a slave who tried to escape. I tracked him down and took him back. After I was banished from the Alashi, I went to the home of his new mistress and got him out again. He…” I cleared my throat. “He told me if he ever saw me again, he’d kill me.”
Zivar looked at me, then at the body. “So he was your enemy.”
“Yes, I guess he was.”
“But you’re not happy he’s dead.”
“No.” I stood up and walked away to look at the rest of the bodies. I guess I thought as long as he was alive, there was a chance he might forgive me. I fought a wave of nausea that rose up with the battlefield smell around me. It never would have happened. I hope he’s found Burkut now, and they’re happy.
The bodies lay thick on the ground. I tried to remind myself that the Greeks had removed their own dead, and there might have been quite a few. Still, though the Alashi would make quick retreats if they thought it would be to their advantage, to leave behind their wounded spoke of desperation. They had lost this battle badly.
Zivar approached me again. “The grave is done. Shall we have the djinni take the bodies to the grave?”
I nodded. “I’ll carry Uljas, though.”
I retrieved the purple cloth that had first caught my eye and wrapped it around Uljas like a shroud. His body was heavy, and still stiff. I carried him over to the grave; it was too deep for me to lower him into gently, so I set him by the side so that one of the djinni could place his body in the grave.
The Alashi usually put things in with the bodies of their dead, but I had little I could offer Uljas, or any of the others. When all the bodies were in the mass grave, the djinni covered them with the dirt, then mounded rocks over it.
“Are we done here?” Zivar asked me.
I nodded silently.
Zivar strode back over to the palanquin, but didn’t settle herself onto the cushions. Instead, she took out the live rosebush, which was looking a bit worse for wear. She scraped out a hole to plant it in at the edge of the cairn, and patted dirt around its roots. Then she poured water onto it from a jug.
We stood silently for a moment longer.
Then we climbed back into the palanquin, where Xanthe was waiting, and continued toward the lake in the mountains.
There were other lakes dotted here and there along the track of the river, and I wondered how we’d know when we reached the place where the river was bound. But when we reached it, there was no doubt.
Part of the river was dammed by rocks; it was not entirely magical. There were openings, though, and crevices, and instead of flowing through, the water was held in place, shimmering like a bowl of black glass. An enormous bowl of black glass. I thought I could see the djinni that held it. Hundreds of them, encircling the lake, holding back the waters. All these years. All that effort. Are they tired? Do djinni get tired? “Take me close,” I said.
“Think it through first,” Zivar said. “Remember what happened at the temple? You just about got crushed.”
Once I’d freed one djinn, the water would come shooting out through the gap I’d left. I imagined the water, a thousand times more powerful than spring floodwaters…“Will we be able to get out of the way of the water?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Zivar said. “My aerika seem to want to keep you alive. That might motivate them to get us clear.” She thought it over. “The water might not come right away. Surely the aerika are supposed to patch holes, if anyone slips loose. Still…”
“Perhaps we should wait over the middle of the lake,” Xanthe said. “One of Zivar’s aerika can carry you to the edge and let you free the djinni one at a time. Surely it will be easier to pull you out of the way of the water than the whole palanquin.”
The thought made me queasy, but I had to admit that it made sense. “Let’s move out over the middle of the water.” I want to see all of it.
The lake was blue from above, and unthinkably large—much larger than I’d imagined. I remembered my glimpse of the sea near Penelopeia and knew that was larger than this was, but I’d only caught a brief glimpse. This, I could lean out and gaze down and try to take it all in. Larger than Daphnia, I thought. No. Larger than Penelopeia. No. It would cover Daphnia, Penelopeia, and Casseia, were they placed end to end, and drown all the Alashi besides.
The thought gave me pause. I had known that loosing the river would bring a flood, but until I saw the water I didn’t really understand just how big the flood would be. I had pictured something more like the spring flood after a particularly snowy winter, not the wrath of all the gods falling down from the heights like the end of the world.
But I was chosen for this, the cold fever whispered.
“Let’s move down a little,” Xanthe said. She was at my side, leaning out, looking down. Her hands were shaking.
Zivar brought us low and close to the water, and I leaned out to look, to see how close the nearest djinn was…
…and felt a sharp blow to my backside, and—gods and djinni help me, I’m falling.