CHAPTER THREE
T AMAR
Name your mother.”
“My mother is the River that will return.”
“Name your father.”
“My father is the Steppe that gives us freedom.”
Zhanna took my left hand. A priestess of Arachne whose name I didn’t know took my right hand. Janiya stepped forward and looked into my eyes. “You took your freedom, and you proved yourself over and over again. You weren’t born one of us, but you’re one of us now. Walk through fire and come out Alashi.”
Cheers rang out as shaman and priestess walked me to the fire. The Greeks told their slaves that the Alashi made initiates walk through fire, and for a moment I felt a breath of fear. But they had no intention of hurting me. Zhanna and the priestess dropped my hands, picked up torches and set them alight, then held them high over their heads so that the flames licked against each other. I walked under the flaming bridge, then they tossed the torches into the fire. The Alashi crowded around me, each person lacing their fingers with mine and then kissing me on the forehead in a gesture of welcome. I made my way around the huge circle, then back to where I’d started.
Now I would go through the ceremony again—this time, pretending to be Lauria. I slipped off my own vest and put on Lauria’s, then stood before the shaman and priestess again.
“Name your mother,” Zhanna said.
“My mother is the River that will return.” Lauria’s mother was alive, and I wondered fleetingly how she would feel about embracing the river as her adopted mother, even if she’d never much gotten along with her real mother. It was too late to ask. And the truth was, I was afraid that if I waited, the eldress would change her mind.
“Name your father,” the priestess said.
“My father is the Steppe that gives us freedom.” Lauria’s father was Kyros. I had no doubt that she would willingly disown him.
Zhanna and the priestess clasped my hands again, and again Janiya stepped forward. Her eyes were bright and her voice very soft. “You took your freedom, and held it as tightly as any Alashi,” she said. “You stayed true to us when we were not true to you. You were not born one of us, but you’re one of us now. Walk through fire, Lauria, and come out Alashi.”
I stepped under the torches again. The cheering this time was quieter. Meruert and Ruan and the other women from my sword sisterhood came to clasp my hands again, and kiss me. Beyond them, I saw a young man gazing at me. I couldn’t remember whether he had clasped my hands the first time, but when I reached for him now, he recoiled like I’d offered him a cup of poison and turned his back on me. My stomach twisted. Swallowing hard, I turned back to those who were willing to accept Lauria as well as me.
There was kumiss and stewed lamb afterward, then drumming and dancing. The sword sisterhoods and brotherhoods would ride out tomorrow with the new recruits. Between Sophos’s slaves and the mine slaves, there were too many to assign only one blossom to each sword brotherhood and sword sisterhood. They would have to go out in groups. The feast was wonderful. I’d gotten tired of Alashi food during my summer with the sword sisterhood, but now it tasted like home. Well, other than kumiss. I still hated the thick, sour drink that everyone tried to press on me during the evening celebration.
Ruan, who had been so nasty to me all summer, embraced me like a long-lost kinswoman and dragged me over to see the rest of the women from Janiya’s sisterhood—Maydan, Gulim, Zhanna. Maydan’s face lit with a warm smile. She leaned on a stick to help her walk. Erdene let me hold her new baby. Her daughter’s downy hair was the color of a chick’s feathers, clearly the gift of the trader who’d fathered the baby. Then Meruert spotted me and I went to see her and Jaran and the others who’d escaped from Sophos’s household, lone blue beads hanging on cords around their necks. Jaran looked at me nervously—he’d fled north to the steppe after selling Lauria to the mine, certain I’d have his head if I caught up with him. I’d forgiven Lauria for going behind my back, though, so I couldn’t really hold a grudge against Jaran. Much.
Zhanna had met us on the steppe and warned Lauria to flee. Now she poured me kumiss and told me to sit by her side. I had been Zhanna’s apprentice during my summer with the sword sisterhood, but now she met my eyes like an equal. “I felt so proud when I heard what you’d done,” she whispered.
“But you were the one who told me that the Alashi didn’t free slaves,” I said.
“I never said I agreed with that rule.” Zhanna gazed for a long moment into my eyes, and I saw humor and the spark of something else. I looked down quickly. She sighed and stroked my back gently. “You are no longer my apprentice,” she said. “You’re a full-fledged shaman, though I think you know that.”
I nodded.
“And you are fully Alashi now, as well. So there are rules that don’t apply anymore.”
What was she talking about? I lifted my head to look at her again. She gave me a level gaze and a hint of a smile. And I realized that she was inviting me to—I choked a little on my kumiss and put it down. I had no idea how to politely refuse. I had spent years not being allowed to refuse, but now—now—
“Excuse me,” I said, and stood up. “I need to—” My mind went blank for a moment, and I almost bolted in panic. “I need to relieve myself. I’ll be back soon.”
Zhanna sought me out, later, on the other side of the encampment. “Don’t worry,” she said, and I could see sympathy in her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you away. I just—well, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” I said. I wanted to pretend nothing happened.
“Do you want to come sit with us again? Just for companionship. I promise.”
“That would be nice,” I said, and followed her back to the others.
In the late-night firelight, I could see that many others had paired off. Some reunited with summer friends. Others enjoyed a last night with their lover from the winter. Zhanna hadn’t sought out anyone else, though I doubted she’d have had trouble finding company. I looked down at my kumiss and wondered what it would be like to spend an evening with someone I’d chosen. Someone I liked.
When I joined the Alashi, the eldress said they would teach me to live as a free person. But when it came to this, Sophos’s hands still gripped me tightly. I shivered in the cold night wind, and wished Lauria were here.
I must have fallen asleep during the night because someone nudged me awake at dawn—Janiya. “The eldress wants us to leave today,” she said. “Get your horse ready.”
I’d drunk only the kumiss I couldn’t refuse, but my head ached and my tongue stuck to my teeth. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth, but I still felt like something scraped off the bottom of a boot. Well, it couldn’t be helped. I went to find my horse.
Janiya joined me as I saddled Kesh. “The eldress is sending us with remounts and packhorses. We’ll be able to travel quickly.”
“How much karenite did she give you?”
Janiya handed me a heavy pouch. I peered in. There were hundreds of pebbles of the stuff. I swallowed hard and closed the bag. “I don’t want to bring this much.”
“The Alashi don’t lack for it.”
“We don’t need this much.” I thought about the army of slaves the eldress had mentioned so casually. “There are hundreds of pieces in this bag.”
Janiya studied me for a moment. Then she shrugged and said, “How much do you think we should bring?”
“Ten pieces each,” I said. I was thinking that would be twenty pieces, but she took out three small bags and counted ten into each.
“Who else is coming?” I asked.
“Me,” said a voice behind me.
I turned. It was the young man who’d snubbed me last night during the ritual. He was mixed Greek and Danibeki ancestry, and a little older than me. He had pretty eyes with long lashes, like a girl.
“Tamar,” he said, and gave me a stiff nod.
Did I know him? Then I remembered: Alibek. The man who’d named Lauria a spy. I thought of him as her betrayer, although I had to admit I could understand why he’d done it. “Why are you coming?” I blurted.
“The eldress asked me. She seemed to think I’d have a better chance of passing myself off as a merchant than someone who was born Alashi.”
“So, why you? Why not Ruan?”
“She’s going to lead the sword sisterhood,” Janiya said.
“Oh, you’re joking. She’ll be terrible at it!”
Janiya shrugged. “It’s the eldress’s decision, not mine. And it was her decision to send Alibek.”
“The first thing we’re doing is going to Elpisia to find Lauria and help her free Thais,” I said. “Lauria may be coming with us.”
Alibek’s eyes narrowed, but he shrugged. “My lady Tamar,” he said, “if you say Lauria is trustworthy now, I will hold no grudge.”
“You will hold no grudge? You sought me out last night just to snub me when I was being Lauria!”
Janiya held up her hands, cutting us off. “Alibek, if Lauria joins us, will you treat her respectfully, as a sister?”
“Of course I will.” He was breathing a little bit hard.
“Tamar, will you treat Alibek respectfully, as a brother?”
“Yes,” I said, irritated that she’d even question that.
“Alibek, you have no feud with Tamar, do you?”
“No.” Though the set of his jaw said otherwise.
“And Tamar. You have no feud with Alibek—right?”
No feud with the person who had betrayed Lauria? I ground my teeth and said, “Right.”
“Then I think we can set out.” Janiya mounted her horse. “Come on.”
Alibek gave me another grim look and mounted his horse. I chewed on my lip as I settled onto mine. With Janiya, we turned south—toward Elpisia.
We approached Elpisia near twilight two days later. I had an idea of where Lauria might hide, so we picked our way along the dried-out riverbed, the horses following us. Alibek hummed a little tune to himself. It was a short tune, and he hummed it over and over. “Would you stop?” I muttered.
“Sorry,” he said, but he started up again a moment later.
Lauria was not there. Kesh snorted, though, and a few minutes later I heard the whinny of another horse. I pulled myself up to the top of the bank and saw Kara, her saddle off and her halter loose. She trotted straight over when she saw me, and snuffled my hair and hands.
Janiya pulled herself up next to me. “That’s an Alashi horse,” she said.
“It’s Kara,” I said, my throat tightening. “Lauria’s horse.”
Janiya slipped something out of her pocket and Kara lipped it up. She stroked Kara’s nose. “Nice to see you again,” she murmured. Then she looked at me. “She hasn’t been groomed in days.”
My heart sank.
“Let’s pull back from town for the night,” Alibek said.
“But…”
“There’s nothing we can do tonight,” Janiya said.
We ended up moving as far away from Elpisia as we could and making camp in the growing darkness. Kara stayed close to us.
“What was Lauria’s plan?” Janiya asked.
“We didn’t really have one. I told her to wait here for me. She was traveling with just Kara. She should only have gotten here a few days ago…”
“Do you think she waited? She might have been seen hiding and detained.”
“Honestly, I think she probably went into town after Thais.”
“Thais,” Alibek said. “She was one of the others that Lauria took back to slavery, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. “We were trying to free all of them. Nika and her daughter, Uljas and Burkut, Prax…”
“I see.” Alibek looked grim, but also faintly pleased. “I know Thais. Kyros sold me to her master, and that’s who I escaped from. She has no interest in freedom now. But she does hold a grudge.”
I suddenly noticed how chilly the night was. “You’re saying that if Lauria did try to free her, Thais would have turned Lauria in?”
Alibek thought this over. “Probably,” he said.
“I want to go into town and look for her.”
“Lauria, or Thais?”
“Both!” Even if Thais didn’t want to be free, she might know what had happened to Lauria.
Janiya caught my hand. “Don’t go into town tonight,” she said. “You’re a shaman—seek her out in your dreams. Ask her where she is, and what’s going on.”
I had to admit the sense in that, and after eating a quick meal, we went to sleep.
I found my way to the borderland quickly and looked for Lauria, but she was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t been able to find her since that night when she shouted, I love you. Would I know if she were dead? I wouldn’t be able to find her in the borderland if she were dead, but surely, I thought, I would know. She was my blood sister. I took a deep breath and tried again.
I didn’t find Lauria, but as I concentrated, my hands reaching out to grasp her, I saw something else: a web of red silk threads that led from my hands to…elsewhere. They were my blood ties, I realized—the ties that linked me to other people. These were all people I could bring into the borderland with me if I tried. Well, maybe. Some of the threads, as I touched them, gave me a sense of resistance, like a full bucket of water at the bottom of a well. If I pulled, I could bring them in. Others were slack like a fishing line in still water. I could pull on those all I liked, but nothing useful would come of it.
As I held the threads up, I saw Lauria’s. It glowed with a faint light but was slack. I saw no threads leading to anyone dead, so Lauria, surely, was just awake. I felt relief, then wondered what she was doing awake in the middle of the night. Were they waking her at night and letting her sleep in the day? Why?
Well, I might as well look for Zhanna. Did one of these threads lead to her?
The world turned to a blur around me, but when it settled, I was not in an Alashi tent, but in a Greek house. In front of me I saw a desk piled high with papers, a shuttered window, and a lamp. This was an officer’s study. Sophos had something similar. I felt a stab of panic, but Sophos was dead. I took a deep breath, reminding myself I was a shaman. This was my territory, no matter what it looked like. No one could hurt me here.
“Tamar,” a man’s voice said.
It was Kyros.
I was sold to Sophos when I was ten years old. I’d been owned by a friend of his, and one day when he was visiting he saw me fetching water for the kitchen. Before I knew what was happening, my mother was kissing me good-bye and telling me to stay out of trouble. She died six months later. I found out from the Fair One, the djinn that visited Jaran.
Sophos brought me home with him. He had me scrubbed clean, dressed in white linen, given a glass of drugged wine, and taken to a guest’s bedchamber. I wasn’t told what to expect—not by Sophos and not by Boradai, who took me to the room and left without a word. It was evening. There was a lamp on the table, and the room was small but very comfortable. The large bed took up most of the space, piled high with quilts and pillows. It was winter, and the room was kept warm by a fire. In my innocence, I thought perhaps my job there was to keep the fire from going out, so I sat down on the rug by the hearth and tended it.
When the door opened, I had drifted off to sleep, and I snapped awake, afraid I’d be beaten for failing at my duty. The fire still glowed, to my relief, and the room was as warm as anyone could ask for. A man came in alone, wearing boots, and I kept my eyes on his boots as he sat down on the bed. He took them off and set them down on the floor, then chuckled—it was a kind-sounding laugh—and said, “What a pretty girl you are. You must have been very tired.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, keeping my eyes down.
“Come here,” he said, so I stood up. “Lie down on the bed.”
I lay down. I didn’t understand why, but ten years of slavery had taught me to obey without asking for explanations.
“Spread your legs apart,” he said. “That’s it, just like that. Now close your eyes.”
The sudden pain was like a knife. I think I may have screamed, What are you doing, before I started begging him to stop, promising I’d never do it again, whatever it was I had done to deserve this. I didn’t strike out at him, because to strike a Greek meant death. My hands knotted into fists, and I bit my knuckles until they bled.
When he was done with me, he called a servant to remove me from his bed. I had to be carried, as I was too hurt to walk. It was actually some months later that I learned the name of the friend that Sophos had “given” me to: Kyros.
Tamar,” he said again. He was seated behind his desk. “No, don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “This is my territory, not yours.” And I wanted a tent. I pictured it, and the world tilted sharply. A moment later, we were sitting on cushions in an Alashi tent.
“Of course,” Kyros said, and gave me a polite nod.
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“Where is Lauria?”
“Ah, yes. That’s precisely what I wished to talk with you about.”
“Where is she?”
“Safe, for now.”
My stomach clenched. “Where?” I asked.
“Penelopeia,” Kyros said. “We’re the guests of the magia. Or at least, I’m her guest. It would probably be more accurate to describe Lauria as her prisoner.”
Penelopeia. Months of travel. Months. My mouth went dry. “Why are you telling me this?”
Kyros turned his palms up. “I need information. From someone. It can come from you, or from Lauria. Right now, Lauria isn’t talking. The magia is willing to be a little patient, for now. She knows that Lauria is my daughter, but she has her limits—and so do I.” He leaned forward. “Do I make myself clear?”
“You’re saying you’ll hurt Lauria.”
“Yes. And kill her when we’re done. Unless you give us the information we need. If you agree to help us against the Alashi, I’ll even set her free. You are trusted.”
“So is Lauria. Set her free now and she’ll be accepted back.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “Well, well, well. But no, I don’t think I’m going to do that just now. I know my daughter pretty well, and I knew when she betrayed me. She’s no longer of use to me as an ally among the Alashi. All that’s left is the information she can give me. I’ll give you a day or two to think it over, Tamar. I’m sure you can think of some scraps of information that might buy her some time.”
I wanted to call him filthy names, but when I opened my mouth again, I was alone in the tent. “Lauria,” I called. “Lauria!” Surely Kyros couldn’t keep her from me here…but there was no answer.
I brooded over breakfast, and while loading up the horses. “Do we need to go back to Elpisia?” Janiya asked me.
“Kyros has Lauria,” I said.
“Were you able to speak with her?”
“Briefly,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell anyone about my conversation with Kyros. “I think he took her to Penelopeia.” He could be lying about that—she could be in Elpisia right now—but Kyros wasn’t stupid. Lauria and I had broken slaves out from the heart of Helladia and organized a mine rebellion. If Lauria were in Elpisia, I might find a way to get her out, and Kyros knew it. No, he would have taken her somewhere far away. Penelopeia was the Imperial city, the seat of the Sisterhood of Weavers. I could believe that he would have taken her there.
Janiya furrowed her brow and nodded slowly. “Let’s head to the farm, then, to see if we can find Lycurgus and make contact with the Younger Sisters.” Her voice was firm, but I knew that she was giving me an opening to protest and insist we had to go to Penelopeia. But without a sorceress’s palanquin, it would take months just to get there. Besides, the farm was sort of on the way. Janiya still looked at me, waiting, so I nodded.
Alibek didn’t say much as we loaded the horses. I could hardly stand to look at him. It wasn’t fair to blame him, but I still thought it was his fault.
“There was a story I heard when I was a boy,” Alibek said. “About a man who sowed a field with blood and was surprised when an army grew there overnight, burned his house, and slew him.”
“Are you saying that Lauria deserves whatever happens to her?”
“I’m saying that she planted things that will bear fruit for years, even if she’s changed her ways. That’s just the way the world is.” Alibek undid the top of his shirt and slid it down slightly, exposing thick, ridged scars on his shoulders, and a shiny healed burn scar just below his throat. “There are reasons some of us hold grudges.”
Shaken, I turned my back on him and mounted Kesh. Lauria sowed a lot more than blood, I thought. I knew the story that Alibek was talking about, but…Lauria had changed. She was not the person he knew.
There were fields beyond the field of blood. Orchards and gardens waiting to bloom. She deserved to reap from those fields, as well.