Dead Rivers - Freedom's Gate Part 20

Janiya called me into the yurt when the aeriko returned from counting Greek soldiers. I sat down with her and listened as the aeriko rattled off cities and numbers. The number for Elpisia was significantly higher than it had been when I'd left a few months earlier; they were moving soldiers in, not that this should have really been a surprise to me.

Janiya listened to the numbers, then reluctantly fetched paper, ink, and a pen, and laboriously wrote them down as the aeriko recited them again.

"This was a good idea," she said to me. "Thank you for suggesting it. I'll send him back in a few days to count again."

I hesitated before leaving the yurt. "And in the meantime?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What are you going to do with the djinn in the meantime?"

Janiya set down her paper. "What are you suggesting?"

"You can send it out on other errands, you know. You could have it fetch supplies from somewhere else, if there's anything we're running out of. You could even have it take you to wherever the eldress is, if you think she ought to know about the rumors, and then have it bring you back."

Janiya stroked the spell-chain absently for a moment, then said, "I have to admit, Lauria, I have mixed feelings about using the djinn at all." I thought she was going to say that she feared the dangers it posed, but instead she said, "It's a slave; we don't... usually... keep slaves. It's not the Alas.h.i.+ way."

"It's not really like keeping a human slave." I said.

"Oh, I know. A human slave would pose far less temptation." She stroked the spell-chain again. "I guess right now I don't feel like we can risk freeing him; we too desperately need information on what the Greeks are doing, not to mention where the bandits are." She sighed. "Anyway, I kind of wonder if I should let him, well, rest for a few days. What do bound djinni do when they're not out on errands?"

"I have no idea." I looked for a moment at the necklace, glittering at Janiya's neck. "I guess you could summon it-him-and ask, couldn't you?"

"I could. I suppose I could." Her eyes were distant. "Anyway, thank you, Lauria. If you have any other suggestions regarding the djinn, please let me know."

As I stepped back out of the yurt I found myself thinking about Janiya's question. What did bound djinni do when they weren't following orders to work on some task? Did they sleep? Perhaps they wandered around and possessed irritating slaves like Aislan. Perhaps they visited their friends and families, if djinni had friends and families.

I hadn't thought about Aislan in a while. I wondered if she was still the smug, self-congratulating little a.s.s-kisser she'd been during my short tenure in the harem. Probably.

Saken summoned me after the midday meal for a lesson in swordsmans.h.i.+p. "You seem to have a knack for it," she said. "Like Tamar with the bow. But you'll be more effective with some practice." She'd brought two wood practice swords for us to work with, to avoid the risk of getting cut, and she showed me some techniques with both of us on the ground, then fetched our horses so that we could practice on horseback.

We spent the afternoon at it-either sparring or with Saken stopping to show me some move and leading me slowly through the technique. Nearby, I could see two of the other sisters practicing their own swordplay; beyond them, Tamar was working on shooting from her horse. It was a hot day, the sort of day when it would have been tempting to lie in the shade of the yurt and count dragonflies, but it was good to use my muscles again, to ride Kara and work until I was breathless and thirsty.

After taking care of our horses, we splashed in the creek to cool down and went to have dinner. As we were finis.h.i.+ng the meal, Janiya stepped out of the yurt with a secretive smile and said, "You can thank Lauria for giving me the idea for this." She handed Erdene a sack. "There should be one for everyone."

Erdene looked in and shrieked. " Apples! Fresh apples. And they're huge."

I'd seen apples like this once before; they'd been brought down to Elpisia as a curiosity. They grew somewhere up north. Smooth-skinned and red, they were the size of a baby's head; you had to use both hands to hold just one. True to Janiya's word, there was one for each of us. I marveled that the djinn would bring back such nice apples on an errand like thisuclearly Janiya had thought to specify ripe apples, but such big ones certainly hadn't been expected. I wondered what shortcut the djinn had used-maybe these were already picked and sitting in someone's cart and the djinn stole them. Certainly there was nothing wrong with the flavor. It had been months since I'd had a fresh apple. This one was tart and perfect, so full of juice I could have drunk it out of a cup. I ate it down to the very seeds, which I carefully buried by the creek.

Janiya called for everyone's attention after we were done. "We're going raiding," she said simply. "We'll break camp tomorrow."

There was a loud cheer, and someone got out the k.u.miss to pa.s.s around. "Who are we raiding?" I asked Zhanna when she appeared at my side.

"The Greeks, of course," she said. "We try to get in at least one raid every summer. We'll ride down to the edge of their territory, hit one of their outposts, make as much trouble as we can, and then head back out to the steppe before they've pulled their boots on."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked, glancing at Janiya. "I mean, if they're planning something..."

"All the better to hit them before they hit us," Janiya said.

"Will we bring their slaves back with us?" Tamar asked.

"If they can't free themselves, why would we free them?" Ruan asked. Her voice was sullen.

Tamar looked at Zhanna, who shrugged uncomfortably. "Remember what I told you?" she said in an undertone. "It doesn't come up that often because we don't free slaves."

Tamar's face was bleak with horror. "But-" she said. "There are slaves at Sophos's who may never have the opportunity to run. It's not that easy! It's not like you can just walk out the door one day, you need to get waterskins and shoes... they'll never have the opportunity, but they would be able to overcome their past. They would make great sisters. Or brothers." I knew she was thinking of Jaran.

"Maybe some of them wouldn't, but the others deserve a chance. Don't they?" Her voice wavered, with the first real uncertainty I'd heard from her in a long, long time.

The other sisters were pa.s.sing around the k.u.miss; only Zhanna was really listening to Tamar. She patted Tamar's shoulder. "Maybe someday you'll be the leader of a sisterhood; you'll be the one making the decisions."

After Zhanna had stepped away, I leaned over to Tamar and whispered, "Just grab a slave and throw her across your saddle as you ride away. What are they going to do, send her back?"

I woke in the night having to pee, but I knew that as soon as I stepped out beyond the edge of camp I could be approached by Kyros's djinn. I spent awhile tossing and turning in the dark, wondering if I had to pee bad enough to make it worth it. I finally decided that I wasn't going to get back to sleep until I went and relieved myself, and slipped carefully out of the yurt. As soon as I was alone, I saw the s.h.i.+mmer in the air. I suppressed a groan and asked, "Who sent you?"

"Kyros sent me."

"What do you want?"

"Kyros asks if you have anything to report."

I ought to tell Kyros about the planned attack, I thought. I don't know the details yet, but certainly I could report in again as I get closer. This is precisely the sort of thing I'm supposed to tell him- he'll want to know if there's anyone who could compromise my false ident.i.ty, because it would be easy to focus attacks on them during the raid. For that matter, he could warn the soldiers to avoid shooting at me. He could capture and interrogate the entire unit, sending me back to the Alas.h.i.+ as the lone survivor of a raid-gone-wrong ... "I asked Kyros a question last time you came," I said. "Do you remember the question, djinn?"

It occurred to me that Kyros might have sent his other djinn this time, but the s.h.i.+mmer s.h.i.+fted in the air and I thought I saw its color change slightly, from silvery to faint pink. "I do remember," it said, and I felt the p.r.i.c.kle of my hair lifting, because this was not the sort of answer I usually got from djinni. "You said, The next time you come, I think I'd like to hear what Kyros is going to do about this." It paused, then added, helpfully, "I delivered your message to Kyros."

"Did he send a response?"

"He sent no response."

There was an undertone, I thought, of malicious pleasure in the djinn's words. "Fine," I said. "I have nothing new to report to him."

The djinn vanished instantly- before I could change my mind, I thought, with a wave of frustration. Of course this one was unusually helpful, I realized a moment later; it no doubt knew I had things to report, but it could subvert its orders by taking care that I had no reason to report them. Well. I deserve a response, I thought, clenching my teeth. I have a right to know what Kyros is going to do about Sophos.

As I started back to the camp, I saw movement; Zhanna, I realized a moment later, coming toward me.

"I heard voices," she said sleepily. " Your voice. Who were you talking to?"

My blood ran cold. "Myself," I said. "I was out here muttering to myself."

Zhanna shrugged, not looking at all alarmed, and my heartbeat slowed down to something close to normal. I went back to my bed, but I didn't sleep well, or dream, for the rest of the night.

I was woken from my doze by Erdene, who was stumbling rather frantically out of the tent. As I rolled over, I heard the sound of her retching, and sat up. So did some of the other women. "Do you feel ill?" I heard someone ask. "We didn't eat meat last night..."

"She didn't drink any k.u.miss," someone else said.

Saken went out after her, to help her down to the stream to wash her face and drink some water. She ate breakfast with everyone else, but a few hours later, she was sick again.

"I know what's wrong with her," Tamar whispered to me as we scrubbed the pot and bowls after breakfast. "Remember how everyone was talking when the merchants came through? She's pregnant.

Meruert got sick right away, just like that."

Sure enough, Janiya took Erdene into the yurt to talk to her alone, and came out looking utterly exasperated. "We're going to have to wait on the raid," she said. "We'll have to escort Erdene up to the summer grazing pastures for her clan, first."

"What is Arai going to say?" Jolay asked softly.

"I think Erdene's right," Gulim said. "If she's carrying a child, he'll be so happy about it, he wouldn't care if it was born with two heads. He can claim the baby if he wants... it's happened before. Do you suppose Rishad will let him out of the brotherhood for the rest of the summer, to be with Erdene?"

"If Arai claims the baby, won't he have to? Even if he doesn't, Rishad isn't heartless. And it's not like Amin and Gerhard and their caravan will be coming back this way anytime soon..."

We broke camp that morning and started heading east. Saken looked sad at the prospect of Erdene's departure, and I remembered Zhanna's comment, poor Saken, when she had told me about women who didn't take summer friends. If Jolay had gotten pregnant, I wondered if Maydan would have gone with her back to their clan? Except Jolay wouldn't have gotten pregnant; I remembered her slipping her arm around her friend, a little smugly. Well. I could ask Zhanna about it later, if I remembered.

Jolay had Tamar and me practice our riding skills as we traveled; she made us gallop and have our horses jump over rocks and other obstacles. Tamar fell off twice and I wondered if I should try to fake a fall, but I was afraid I'd rebreak a rib. Besides, they already knew I was a competent rider. And a competent swordswoman. If anyone was suspicious, falling off my horse wasn't going to make her any less so. Tamar climbed back on her horse after each fall with a grim look, but no complaints. Maydan looked her over when we made camp that evening and p.r.o.nounced her bruised but without serious injury.

Erdene looked miserable. She ate some dinner, then ran to throw up. Saken brewed her some tea with honey; that, at least, stayed down, and she ate a little bit of plain rice that stayed down. There were tears in her eyes as she went into the yurt to sleep.

We took the next day slower, because of Erdeneuor rather, everyone else took the next day slower.

Saken made Tamar and me, and our poor horses, work just as hard as we had the day before. At least today Tamar managed to stay on her horse. Her bow and a quiver of arrows were slung from her saddle; I saw her caress the edge of the bow with her fingers at one point, but of course practicing her shooting was not practical while we were moving camp.

When we neared the summer camp of Erdene's clan, Janiya sent Saken on ahead to tell them we were coming. Most of the camp turned out to greet us. I could see some children, waist-high to their elders, and a man with snow-white hair and a stout stick to lean on, and thought how quickly I'd grown to think of young, short-haired, and female as the way the whole world looked. Gerhard and Amin and their men had been 50 foreign that their appearance had barely disrupted that.

Erdene shrieked as we rode up, and tumbled off her horse into the arms of a woman who must have been her mother; she looked like Erdene would look in twenty years or so, with gray hair and lines in her cheeks. Then she turned away from her mother and threw up, to her own distress and the amused disgust of the watching children. Her mother immediately began to fuss over her, leading her away to the cool interior of one of the yurts-no doubt she'd feed her sips of honeyed tea and rice mixed with milk and whatever else Erdene could keep down. I saw Janiya sigh with obvious relief: the problem of Erdene's health, at least, was out of her hands.

"Welcome, sword sisters," said the man with the white hair. The elder of the clan, no doubt. "You will join us for dinner, of course, and spend the night with us."

"We are honored by your hospitality," Janiya said.

We began to dismount our horses, and then froze in place as Janiya's glare swept over all of us. " No one else had better need to leave before the summer is over," she hissed. "Am I understood?"

She was. Amply.

Not that it mattered all that much; the young unmarried men, like the young unmarried women, were gone for the summer; the boys in the camp were boys, too young to interest anyone except Tamar (who was clearly not interested); and while there were young married men with a wandering eye, their wives were keeping a close watch on them tonight. The welcoming feast was lively; everyone wanted to hear how our summer was going, what adventures we'd had, how Tamar and I were settling in, and of course, how Erdene had managed to get herself pregnant. I ate roasted goat stewed with raisins and listened as Saken and Jolay proudly described my and Tamar's progress in riding, shooting, and fighting; Tamar would have to give a demonstration of her shooting prowess the next morning, as everyone wanted to see whether she really was as gifted as was claimed. The visit from the merchants was described in detail, complete with loving descriptions of the Greek wine they'd pa.s.sed around, and the exotic looks of the two men, one dark and one pale.

As the evening wore on and the k.u.miss was pa.s.sed around, I caught Tamar's eye and saw that she looked as tired and worn as I felt. There was something about being in a large crowd of people who were catching up with beloved relatives and old friends that made me feel like much more of an outsider.

We made some quiet, polite noises and withdrew to the sisterhood's yurt. Ruan was already there, snoring. "And she complains about your nightmares," Tamar muttered, snuggling down under a blanket.

"She should hear herself."

That made me start worrying that I would have a nightmare that night, and I lay awake for a while, listening to the sound of conversation from the camp-fire. It wasn't close enough that I could make out more than voices, and that was just as well. If they were talking about me, I didn't really want to know what they had to say when I wasn't there. At least they'd been kind enough in our presence, talking about my skill with the horse and the sword, Tamar's skill with a bow, and both of our courage in battle.

I dropped off, finally, and dreamed of my mother.

I knew I was dreaming, this time; I stood in the room and knew that I could see my mother, but she couldn't see me. My mother wore white linen, and when she looked up, her face was much younger than the face I knew, and when she s.h.i.+fted suddenly at the noise outside her door, I realized that this was the harem she'd been in before she was freed.

The door swung open, and my mother swiftly stood up. "Good morning, Kyros," she said.

Kyros, like my mother, looked many years younger. "What do you think of your new quarters?" he asked.

"I am..." she hesitated, and a smile rose to her lips but not her eyes, "unaccustomed to the luxury of such privacy."

He swung her suddenly into his arms, and she melted in his embrace, then pulled away slightly. "Your wife."

"I've told her to stay away from this entire wing."

"You don't know how much she frightens me."

"She's harmless. She'll obey me, at least."

"Didn't you tell me once that she apprenticed with the Sisterhood of Weavers?"

"Yes, but they sent her away because she had no talent. Don't worry!"

My mother raised her chin stubbornly and Kyros sighed.

"You know how I love to spend time with you," my mother said, melting into his arms again briefly and stroking the stubble on his chin. "I just wish I weren't always so afraid."

"I'll think on this," Kyros promised, and drew her close to him again.

The room tilted suddenly, like a leaf in a flooded river, allowing me to see that while she pressed her body to his and stood on tiptoe to nibble his ear, she had a satisfied, faintly calculating look on her face.

I woke with everyone else at dawn and thought about the dream as I helped to take down the yurt and pack up the horses and camels. My mother had been a harem slave, and at some point, somehow had talked her way into freedom-she was still the mistress of her old owner, but the more I thought about it, the more I'm so frightened of your wife seemed like a plausible line for a harem "favorite" to use to gain her own freedom. I could imagine it working for Aislan, at least; Tamar, well, if she'd tried it on Sophos, I imagined that he'd just consider her fear an extra bonus. Why Kyros had appeared in the dream, well, that was just strange. Perhaps because I preferred to imagine my mother with a kind owner, rather than a brutal owner like Sophos, and Kyros was the Greek man I knew the best.

Just pebbles spilling from my weighted heart, I thought, but I had to admit that it seemed distinctly like an djinn-sent dream, the way Zhanna had described them. Vivid. And not a nightmare. Were the djinn trying to tell me that Kyros was my mother's old owner, the one who had freed her? Does it even matter? I shrugged off the dream and tried to focus on the coming raid.

Janiya apparently struck an agreement with the eldress to leave the bulk of our flocks behind with the clan during our raid; we'd bring the horses and enough camels to carry our yurt and other necessary gear, but leave behind the sheep, goats, and dogs. Some careful sorting and repacking was done-most of our extra food would also stay behind until we came back. Then the clan, including Erdene, turned out to say good-bye. Saken gave her a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek, and she was clearly upset as we rode away. Ruan kept trying to offer words of comfort, though it was fairly clear that Saken didn't want her company. Around midmorning, Zhanna picked a fight with Ruan; I was pretty sure she was mostly trying to distract her. All conversation had to be conducted at a yell, during the periods when we were letting our horses walk, which made the fight embarra.s.singly public. At least neither ended up with a b.l.o.o.d.y nose.

Everyone was in a surly mood by the time we stopped for the evening. We put up the yurt and took care of the animals and had dinner, Ruan and Zhanna still periodically muttering insults at each other. Saken hardly even seemed to be aware of it; big tears dripped into her bowl as she ate. Though Ruan was clearly in a foul, vicious mood, none of her usual arrows were aimed in my direction, or Tamar's-nor did she "accidentally" spill our food, step on our hands, or engage in any of the other hara.s.sment she'd found so amusing only a few weeks ago. Despite everything, I had to hide a smile when I realized this.

Take that, you petty bully, I thought as I finished the last of my food.

There was no drumming, dancing, or drinking that night; Janiya went to bed early, probably hoping that the evil mood would evaporate with the night dew, and everyone else followed.

In the darkness, I heard someone come into my room. "Who's there?" I muttered sleepily.

Light gleamed suddenly from a lantern, blinding me momentarily; I blinked and saw that it was Kyros.

"This is important," Kyros said. "I have a gift for you."

"Now?" I asked, trying to remember how I'd gotten back to my own room, my own bed. I was in the desert...

"Here." Kyros held out a glittering spell-chain, then swiftly pulled it back as I reached for it. "I need to know that I can count on you."

"You always know that you can count on me," I said. "That's what you've always said."

"I need for you to say it," Kyros said. " Kyros, you can count on me. I am your most trustworthy servant."