Freedom's Gate

by Naomi Kritzer

  “And to get out of the city?”

  “Just to the east of the gate is a spot that’s pretty easy to climb over. Again, I’ve arranged for the guards to be away from there. Hopefully there won’t be any other slaves that try to escape that night, because they’ll have an easy time of it.” He laughed. I laughed with him.

  “Not tonight, not tomorrow night, but the next night,” I said. “Just walk out, pick up supplies, and leave. I think I can remember that.”

  “Good.” Sophos drained his cup of wine. “There is one other small matter we need to discuss.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your virginity. Are you in fact a virgin?”

  I felt a flush rise to my cheeks. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “The other concubines will expect that when you return tonight, you will be a virgin no longer. And an escaped slave—your age, with your looks—who’s a virgin, that would be highly suspicious to the bandits.”

  He was looking at my body, not my face; at the places where the sheer fabric clung to my skin. I knew that my eyes had gone wide, but when I opened my mouth, my voice was quite steady. “No,” I said. “I’m not actually a virgin. I had an affair a year ago with another one of Kyros’s aides.” Something in me balked at naming Nikon as my lover, so I added, “A man named Myron.”

  “Myron. Oh yes. Kyros said you didn’t get along very well with him.”

  “Yes, well, that affair would be part of why we don’t get along. And I was drunk that night. I probably would have had the sense not to sleep with him if I’d been sober.”

  Sophos nodded. “I’m going to have to check, of course.”

  Check? “Keep your hands off of me,” I said sharply, dropping my voice so that we wouldn’t be overheard. “I am a free woman, not one of your slaves.” Sophos was standing up and moving toward me; I backed toward the door, cursing the drugged wine for making me so unsteady. “Anyway, you told everyone you were saving me—for some guest.”

  “Yes. But no one in the harem will believe that I called you here tonight and then sent you back untouched. They believe that you’re mine. And they know I’m a man who doesn’t like to wait.”

  “You said that no one would lay a hand on me. That if anyone did, you’d cut it off.”

  “So I did.” Sophos took my hand. “But things don’t always go as planned. Go lie down on the bed, Lauria.”

  My blood turned cold. “No!” I shouted, and jerked my hand away. “Don’t you touch me, you dirty bastard. I’ll tell Kyros!”

  “I’m sure you will, when you get back from the bandits. Or sooner, if you want an aeriko to carry the message. But I don’t think you’ll run back there right away, and you may realize later how necessary this was.” Sophos wrapped his hands around my wrists and jerked me toward him.

  Even barefoot, drugged, and dressed in see-through gauze, I was not a helpless ten-year-old kitchen maid like Tamar. I slammed my forehead into Sophos’s nose, which promptly started streaming blood. When he let go of my wrists, I punched him in the stomach. Swearing in Greek, Sophos made another grab for me; I dodged aside, but stumbled clumsily, and Sophos punched me in the stomach, twice. The first punch knocked me back against the wall; the second knocked the breath out of me. In the moment when I was struggling to gasp, he picked me up and threw me onto the bed.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I screamed as soon as I had air, no longer caring who heard. “This is not what I agreed to, you bastard! You pig!” I brought my knee up, aiming for his testicles, but he had seen it coming, and caught my knee in his hand, slamming it down against the bed. He yanked a knife out of his sleeve and held it to my throat.

  “Hold still,” he hissed. “It’ll be over a lot sooner.”

  “You’re going to cut my throat? How are you going to explain that to Kyros?” I had frozen momentarily under the cold blade; I was starting to sob—like Alibek, I thought—even as I couldn’t really believe this wasn’t all some sort of joke. This is a Greek officer. Kyros’s friend. Kyros sent me here.

  “I’ll just tell him you escaped and must have died in the desert. That’s where I’ll dump your body, if I have to kill you,” Sophos said. Keeping the knife at my throat, he ripped open my shift with his free hand. “Now spread your legs.”

  I had clenched my knees together when he’d grabbed his knife. When I hesitated, he cut me with the knife—not my throat, not enough to make me bleed to death, but a small, deep slice over my collarbone. “Spread your legs,” he said again.

  I wanted to stare dry-eyed at the ceiling, unflinching and unmoving, but I wept, and when Sophos thrust his clammy fingers inside me, my stomach twisted and I vomited. He pushed my face to the side and let me dirty the bedclothes. “Slept with Myron. Heh. You’re as pure a virgin as I’ve ever seen, for all that you’re older than most I’ve met.” His voice was calm and conversational. “It’s actually a little surprising, given all the time you’ve spent on horseback.”

  I had no idea what he meant. “Please,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.”

  He had slipped the knife back into his sleeve while I retched; now he untied his dressing gown and pushed it back out of his way. Then he lowered himself down and thrust inside me with a grunt.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “It hurts. Stop, it hurts.” It felt like the whole inside of my body would rip like my shift.

  Another grunt. Another. He was distracted, and for an instant, I realized that his knife was within my reach; I could pull it out of his sleeve and plunge it into his neck. But part of my mind was still insisting, This is a friend of Kyros; this can’t be really happening, this is a friend of Kyros; and then he had grabbed my wrists and pressed them against the bed, leaning on them heavily as he thrust again. Another grunt. Another, this one louder. Like a camel, I thought; He sounds like a grunting camel. I counted fifteen grunts before he pulled out, spilling himself on my stomach. “There,” he said with clear satisfaction. “You shouldn’t get pregnant. Pregnancy could be a real problem on this sort of mission.” He stood up, wiped himself clean, and retied his dressing gown.

  I was shaking as if I’d been immersed in freezing water. There seemed to be blood everywhere—some from my collarbone, some from . . . elsewhere. “Kyros is going to kill you,” I said, between sobs. “He will have you staked out naked in the desert so the vultures can tear you to pieces. Like they do with military commanders who misuse aerika.”

  “Indeed.” Sophos poured himself more wine. “I’ll look forward to it, then.”

  I desperately wanted my voice to be cold and steady, but it caught like fabric on thorns. “I think I’ll tell him I want you castrated first. But I want the wound cauterized so that you can’t bleed to death before the vultures find you.”

  “Good thought.” He unbarred the door. “If you’re back from the field then, you can do the honors.” He sat down in his chair. “You can go back to the harem whenever you want. Our business is concluded.”

  I stood up. My legs would barely hold me, but I wanted to get away as fast as I could. My ripped shift hung open; I gathered it around me as well as I could, with my shaking hands, and shuffled toward the door.

  “Don’t forget,” Sophos said, behind me. “Not tonight, not tomorrow night, but the night after.” I glanced back as I opened the door, and he raised his wine cup in a mocking toast. “Good luck with the Alashi.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I stumbled out into the open air of the courtyard, shaking so hard that my teeth rattled. The dry air had turned cold. I had no lamp; the moon was bright enough for me to see my way back to the harem, but I had no intention of going there. I wanted to go scrub my body raw in the Arys River, but there was water closer at hand than that, and I was going to use it.

  The well house was close to the bathhouse, a little shack, gray in the moonlight. I pulled up a bucket of water, then set it on the ground at my feet and ripped a piece of cloth loose from my shift. I wet the cloth and scrubbed blood, sweat, and semen fro
m my body. When I thought the cloth was probably filthy, I threw it down and ripped off another piece to scrub at my face, washing away paint and vomit and the flecks of Sophos’s spittle that had dripped onto me.

  A gust of wind whipped suddenly into the well house and I shuddered. If I ripped any more cloth from my shift, I’d be naked, so I heaved the bucket up and turned it over my head, soaking myself from my hair to my feet. The water splashed against the rocks that formed the floor of the well house.

  I can’t stay here. Not two days, not two minutes longer. I set the bucket down carefully. I was nearly naked, except for my shift. I had no food, no water, no shoes. I’ll just go back to Kyros. He wouldn’t expect me to stay here, not after this. He wouldn’t. Jaran’s aeriko, the “Fair One,” flashed suddenly in my mind. Are you afraid I’ll tell your secret? That would be funny. Whatever would your old master say?

  I’m getting out, I thought. Now. Tonight. I left the well house and started toward the wall.

  “Lauria.”

  The strangled whisper made me turn around. It was Tamar. She had been sitting in the shadow of the well house; I had no idea how long. “Have you been watching me?” I blurted out.

  She ran quickly across the dark yard. “I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered. “I’ve wanted to run away, too. But you’ll die if you try tonight.”

  Another gust of wind hit me and I almost fell to my knees. Tamar grasped my arms and steadied me.

  “You are soaking wet. You have no shoes, no food, no water, no container for water. You’d never make it to the Alashi. If you go back to your old master, he’ll just beat you and send you back here, even if you make it there alive, which you probably won’t.”

  “I can’t stay here,” I whispered.

  “I know,” Tamar whispered back. “But you can’t try it tonight. Come upstairs. I’ll get you a fresh shift, and a blanket to warm you.”

  “Why were you watching me?” I asked as Tamar began to lead me back upstairs.

  “I thought you might need some help finding the well,” Tamar said. “That night when I was ten, I wanted nothing more afterward than to take a bath. Boradai wouldn’t let me. I screamed, and she beat me and told me to shut up. It was a waste of water. I was planning to tell you not to bother asking, just to slip in and wash if you wanted to. Boradai is asleep.”

  “Was it Sophos who did it to you?” I asked, on the stairs.

  “Oh no.” Her shoulder flicked in the hint of a shrug. “He gave me to a friend of his. Your old master, actually. Kyros.”

  My stomach rebelled again, but this time there was nothing left. Tamar let me lean on her, and then we went in and I collapsed onto a pillow.

  It was very dark; Tamar crossed the room to dig through one of the cabinets, and returned with a clean shift and a large shawl. I dropped the rags of my old shift onto the floor, dressed in the fresh one, and wrapped up in the shawl. After a while, I stopped shaking quite so hard. Despite the bucket of water, my hair still reeked of perfume.

  “I hate this smell,” I whispered.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Tamar said.

  The cloying smell hit the back of my throat and I almost retched again. “You’re not used to it,” I whispered.

  “I’m not like you,” Tamar said. “Meruert is used to it. Aislan is more than used to it. You’ll get used to it in time.”

  “It’s making me sick.”

  “It’s probably not the perfume. The drug Sophos had us give you makes some women sick. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  I doubted that, but fell silent. Tamar sat beside me for a few more minutes, then slipped off to her own corner and left me alone again.

  No one will lay a hand on you. Sophos’s lie rang in my ears as I stared into the darkness.

  I thought about how I would tell Kyros when I returned. Sophos broke his word. He did not treat me with respect, like a free woman. He laid hands on me, and worse. Kyros’s face would grow dark with rage, as it had when I returned to tell him about the military commander who had attempted to poison me. Sophos might not report to Kyros, but there were laws against rape, and Kyros could see that they were enforced. He would send soldiers to fetch Sophos, or perhaps a djinn. What do you have to say for yourself, Sophos? Perhaps he would let me castrate him. And I’d be the one to tie him, in the desert, to be torn apart by vultures while still alive . . . I wouldn’t cry, telling Kyros, of course. I would maintain a steady reserve, the calm of a soldier the day after a battle. I wish I’d killed him. I wish I’d grabbed his knife when it was within reach. I should have killed him, the bastard, the betrayer.

  I could hear someone moving around in the dark harem, and I pulled the shawl tighter around myself, thinking, unwillingly, of Alibek. Don’t take me back there. Don’t give me back to Kyros. Have you ever visited a harem, Lauria? Because of my sister, he took me to rape. And Tamar’s voice, steady in the darkness—He gave me to a friend of his. Your old master, actually. Kyros.

  In the whirl of anger and betrayal, I dozed, finally, for an hour or two toward morning. Not tomorrow night, but the night after, I thought, grimly, when I woke to see daylight. The night after. The sooner I’m out of here, the sooner I can get to the Alashi, accomplish my mission, and report back to Kyros to have Sophos executed. I can trust Kyros. I can trust Kyros.

  I had stopped shaking by the night I was to leave, and the ache between my thighs had subsided. Sophos hadn’t sent for me again. The night I was leaving, Boradai came up to say that Tamar should attend on Sophos in his chambers, but her courses had come and so she was excused. Jaran was sent down instead. The rest of us were told we could go to sleep early. I picked at my dinner, though I knew I’d need my strength; I had had little appetite since my night with Sophos, and I’d have been nervous before my escape in any case. No matter how orchestrated it was, something could still go wrong. A slave caught escaping would be flogged, or worse, and I had little doubt that Sophos would apologetically tell me that he had to punish me, to avoid suspicion.

  I stretched out after dinner and waited as the harem fell asleep around me, curled up in my shawl while I waited. I passed time trying to think about how I would rid myself of the smell of perfume, once I was out. I wouldn’t be able to afford to waste water to wash myself. Maybe, I thought, if I rubbed a great deal of sand into my hair, that would get rid of the smell . . .

  Finally I was sure that everyone was asleep. I stood up; Tamar lay on the floor near me, and for a moment I almost wanted to bring her with me. It would certainly piss off Sophos if I did—but there would be water for only one person, and Tamar had no shoes for the walk across the desert hills. And I was pretty sure that if I brought Tamar, there would be complications in the mission I hadn’t planned on. Still, she looked cold in the night air, and I covered her gently with the shawl. I tiptoed to the door and looked around; everyone was still. I eased the door open—Sophos must have had the hinges oiled; it was perfectly silent—and slipped down the stairs.

  The courtyard was empty, as Sophos had promised. And there—a cache of supplies. Sophos had brought along my own boots, from Kyros’s house; I slipped them back on my feet. The other clothes could wait until later. I shouldered the backpack and walked briskly toward the gate.

  “Hsst. Lauria.”

  My stomach turned over and I whirled. In the dim moonlight, I could see a slight figure dressed in white; she clutched the shawl I’d left with her around her shoulders. Tamar. “You’re running away,” she whispered. “You’ve got supplies and everything. You’re running away.”

  “You’ve got a problem with that?” I glanced around with alarm; if Tamar had seem me leaving, what if someone else had?

  “A problem? Are you crazy?” Tamar had caught up with me, and she grabbed my arm. “Take me with you.”

  I can’t. But I fell silent, looking at her, and said nothing.

  Her hands clenched like claws and her face went livid. “If you try to leave me here, I’ll give the alarm. I
swear it! Take me along or I’ll mess up your escape. You’re not leaving me here. Do you think I’m stupid? You have supplies. You must have bribed the guards. Anyway, I don’t care. You’ve got a sure way out and I’m coming with you.”

  I told myself that I had to bring her because she’d spoil my escape. But the truth was—we’ll have to find water anyway, and I know Tamar would walk a hundred miles on broken glass if it would take her away from Sophos. The truth was, I didn’t want to leave her behind.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “But once we’re clear of the city, I’m going to make you help carry the supplies.” I hoped to hell there would be enough in the pack to see us both safely to the Alashi.

  Helladia was much smaller than Elpisia, but Sophos lived in the center of town, a long way from the wall. Tamar padded silently behind me, and I thought about her bare feet, wondering if there was anywhere that we could steal her some shoes before we left Helladia. I kept hoping we might spot a pair of muddy boots, left out to dry and then forgotten, but of course we saw nothing nearly so useful. At this late hour, the streets were dark and quiet, and nothing, not so much as a broken pail, seemed to have been left out on the street. It’s her problem, not mine. Forget about Tamar’s feet, worry about your own task.

  There was a sudden noise, and Tamar shrank into the shadows beside me. I realized as I pressed my back against the stone wall that we’d heard the huff of a horse; the building we were passing was a stable. I gave Tamar a reassuring nod, and stepped back out into the street.