I devoured the bowl and she refilled it, offering me a waterskin when I slowed down. I quenched my thirst, then ate some more of the lentils and rice. For the first time since leaving Sophos’s house, I was neither thirsty nor hungry. Saken, I noticed when I finally stopped to look up, had eaten the cheese.
“My name is Lauria,” I said after scraping the last of the lentils from the bowl. “This is Tamar.”
“You have a Greek name,” she observed.
“I have a Greek father.”
“The man you escaped from?”
“No. I was sold, not long ago.”
“We don’t talk about that here,” Ruan muttered, glaring balefully at Saken.
“It doesn’t give them much to talk about if they can’t mention their old lives,” Saken said.
“What’s your point?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tamar said. “We don’t wish to talk about it.”
Saken picked up the scissors from where they were lying on the ground. “During the summer, when we’re serving as sword sisters, we all wear our hair short, for convenience.”
“And safety,” added a short woman with a cleft chin.
“My sister Erdene was planning to wait until sunset, but if you’d like to trim your hair now, you are welcome to.”
Tamar’s eyes flashed, and she snatched up the scissors, took her hair in one hand, and slashed it off in a single tangled mass. It fell to the ground, nearly as long as her arm. “Sophos never let us cut our hair,” she murmured, forgetting Ruan’s rule already.
Saken laughed, showing crooked teeth and a dimple. “Actually, it’s customary to cut each other’s hair; I probably should have mentioned that. Maybe Lauria can even it out for you, and then you can cut hers.”
Flushing scarlet to her ears, Tamar put the scissors down; I trimmed her hair to match Ruan’s and Saken’s, and then Tamar took the scissors and cut mine. My neck felt suddenly cool even in the hot sun. “No loss,” I said, looking down at the hair around me. “It was tangled past redemption, I think.”
We gathered up our shorn hair and, on Saken’s instructions, tossed it into a growing pile left by the others. Heaped together like drying grain, the shades of hair were in stark contrast. Thanks to my Greek ancestry, my own hair wasn’t the pure black of Saken’s—it was a dark nut brown, though so coated with dust it was hard to really see the color. Tamar’s hair, when clean, was almost red. Saken’s hair was as black as a raven’s feathers and almost straight, but Ruan’s had a little curl to it. I’m not the only Alashi to have a Greek father, I thought, and wondered which of the other sword sisters here had themselves been born as slaves—or who had a mother or a father who’d once crossed the steppe like Tamar and I had.
Saken escorted us back to the yurt, with Erdene tagging along, and had us empty out our bags. Then she inspected our clothes. My boots passed muster, but Tamar’s boots made her bite her lip and shake her head disapprovingly. “You’ll need a pair that actually fit. I’ll take these back to my subclan and see if maybe someone’s outgrown a pair recently and could trade with you.”
“What do we do about our clothes?” I asked.
“The Unegendai will give you linen and you can make new clothes.”
“The . . . Who?”
“Our sponsor subclan. They take care of material needs that we can’t meet for ourselves. We herd a few animals, of course, but the subclan provides most of our food, our clothing, and so on. Every subclan supports one of the brotherhoods or sisterhoods.”
I nodded, pretending that I understood, while wondering what to do next: did I find the subclan and ask? Did Saken ask for me? Would thread be provided as well, and needles? The clothes were in a different style from the Greek clothes I’d worn in Kyros’s household; I wasn’t even sure how to cut the cloth for clothes of this style. I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, I’d appear foolish. Like someone who couldn’t even begin to simply watch and imitate.
“I’ll ask for cloth when I’m looking for a pair of boots for Tamar. You can wear those things for now,” Saken said, answering at least one of my questions and reassuring me that I didn’t have to ask. “Sit down, Tamar, and let me get the measure of your feet.”
Tamar sat and pressed the sole of her foot against the boot that Saken held up; Saken marked where her toes reached with a piece of chalk. “You should show her your feet, Tamar,” I said softly, and at Saken’s quizzical look Tamar unwrapped her feet. I rose to my own knees to take a look.
The cuts, to my relief, had not festered, but they hadn’t healed well, either. Saken looked them over and quickly sent for a woman named Maydan, who apparently was known for a bit of knowledge and a gentle touch. “This one probably should have been stitched when it happened,” Maydan said, tracing the largest cut with her forefinger. “Too late now, and it looks to be healing as well as can be expected. I’ll wash your foot and bandage you up again, and tell Janiya to go easy on you for a few days, until it heals properly.”
“Thank you,” Tamar said stiffly. I knew that her instinct was to insist that she could wash her own damn foot, but Saken’s kindness had disarmed her a bit and she was able to show a modicum of graciousness. Maydan sponged off the injuries and wrapped Tamar’s foot again, this time in clean new linen.
Saken returned before sunset with a different pair of boots and some clothes ready-made. “Hand-me-downs,” she said happily, waving the bundle at us. “Come on back into the yurt and you can try everything on.”
Saken’s family had been perfectly happy to exchange an outgrown pair of boots for a pair that would actually fit her fast-growing younger brother, and had sent the two of us some outgrown clothing besides. Saken outfitted each of us with a pair of dark brown wool pants, a leather belt, a dun-colored linen tunic, and a white linen head scarf that shielded our bare necks from the sun. The only thing we lacked was an embroidered vest of thick black wool, like the one Saken wore. “You’ll make your own vests later,” she said. “We make new ones each year anyway. For now at least you’ve got some clothes, and they fit you just fine.”
They did fit us; Saken clearly had an excellent eye. Tamar buttoned her tunic and buckled her leather belt with an almost exaggerated care; I thought of the flimsy shifts we’d worn in the harem and wondered what she’d had to wear as a kitchen maid. I probably wouldn’t have had a belt as a stable hand, either, I thought, and fingered the leather strap. Tamar was far too fascinated by her own new clothes to notice my own reaction to mine, but Saken might.
The sun was going down; Ruan had built up the campfire a bit and the rest of the sisterhood had gathered. At Saken’s invitation, Tamar and I sat down beside her and Erdene; a few minutes later, we belatedly leapt to our feet, imitating everyone else. Janiya had arrived.
Janiya smiled broadly around the circle, basking for a moment in the affection of her troops. “It’s been a good winter,” she said, and there was a ripple of amusement through the sisterhood. “But it’s going to be an even better summer.” A shriek of approval. “We have two new sisters, Tamar and Lauria.” She waved in our direction, and everyone turned to look, though I’d have sworn anyone curious had taken a good hard look at us during the long afternoon. “To welcome them, and to celebrate our new season together, we feast tonight! But don’t stuff yourself sick; we break camp at dawn tomorrow and head out onto the steppe.” Janiya sat down, dished herself some of the food, and everyone else immediately dug in.
The “feast,” such as it was, featured mostly goat meat; it wasn’t a terribly young goat, and the meat was greasy and gamey. I hadn’t been fussy when I ate that afternoon, I was so hungry, but now that I was no longer on the brink of starvation I noticed how strange the spices were, not at all like the Greek spices I was used to. The rice and lentils were mixed with a strange sauce; there were vegetables in the mix, but small pieces. I was hungry enough that I dug in with a will anyway, but I knew that within a few weeks I would be very tired of the taste of Alashi food.
> “Where do you get the rice and lentils?” I asked Saken. “You don’t grow them, do you?”
She laughed. “No, we don’t grow them. We trade for them with the people north of the steppe; just because the Greeks think we’re dangerous outlaws doesn’t mean the rest of the world feels that way.”
“What do you—” I paused. “What do we trade for them?”
“Horses, mostly. Our horses are the best anywhere, everyone knows that. We also keep our eyes open for karenite, that’s a pretty stone you can find on the steppe—we carve it into shapes and make it into jewelry. There’s a constant demand for it.”
“And the weapons? Where do they come from?”
“Some of them come from raids on the Greeks, others we trade for, others we make. That’s an awfully nice sword you’ve got; you’re lucky.”
Saken scraped her plate clean, sucking every drop of juice and gravy from her fingers, and I imitated her. We scrubbed our plates with sand when we were done, and wiped them clean, stacking them in the yurt, where they would be packed in the morning. Saken came by to give each of us a small clay cup of something; expecting water or wine, I took a ready swallow and nearly gagged. It was something thick and sour; forcing down what was in my mouth, I smelled it cautiously. “It’s kumiss,” Saken said. “Fermented mare’s milk.” She was enthusiastic and I tried to force a smile and nod while sneaking a look at Tamar, to see how she was reacting to it. Tamar’s expression was far more openly shocked than mine; then she set her jaw and drained the cup.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself to do the same, but then changed my mind, afraid that I would gag and vomit up my dinner. Instead, I took another sip. Another. It was alcoholic; I tried to tell myself that it was merely bad wine, but the worst piss water I’d ever drunk at least didn’t have the throat-clogging sticky thickness of this stuff. I forced down another sip, wanting to discreetly dump it out but fearing that someone would see me—for all I knew, it might constitute sacrilege of some kind to throw it away. I looked down in the cup; one final gulp would do it. I steeled myself, downed it, and shuddered.
“You finished that fast!” observed a woman sitting near us. “Would you like some more?”
“No! Thank you.” I saw the look of mirth on her face after I’d answered and realized that she knew perfectly well what I thought of the stuff, and was teasing me. I managed a ghost of a smile in return.
The fire was burning down; Erdene tossed on more of the dried animal manure the Alashi used as fuel. A gust of wind made it flicker, then flare higher momentarily; I saw that Ruan was watching me and smirking. I scowled and turned away from her. Erdene fetched a big kettle and placed it in the flames to heat.
One of the other women had slipped away from camp a few minutes ago; now she was back, carrying a sack. “I’ve got the wool,” she said, with a broad smile. “It’s time.”
Ruan went into the yurt and returned with a large straw mat; one of the other women helped her unroll it into a rectangle the size of a very large rug. Then she held up the scissors. “Anyone left?” she said.
Erdene stepped forward, sighing dolefully, and Ruan gave the scissors to Saken. With a flourish, Saken snipped off Erdene’s black curls, and tossed them into the pile with the rest of the hair. “That’s all of us,” Erdene said.
Erdene and Saken held open a large sack; Maydan, the woman who’d tended Tamar’s feet, gathered up the shorn hair and dumped it into the sack. When every scrap had been retrieved, the sack was closed and shaken vigorously, then emptied out onto the reed mat. The women carefully distributed the hair so that it was evenly scattered over the mat; there was enough that at least a scattering of hair could reach from end to end. Even with it all mixed together, I thought I saw a handful of reddish hair that had come from Tamar. Then they took out big handfuls of black wool from the other sack, and spread it out over the mat, fluffy, thick, and even.
“The water’s ready,” Erdene said.
Janiya had stood back for this entire operation; now she took her place at one end of the mat and gestured; the sisterhood formed a circle around it, clasping hands. I counted, for the first time: with Tamar and me, there were twenty-one women in the sisterhood. “We are sisters, bound through our duty,” Janiya said. “We are sisters, bound in shared water. We are sisters, bound through the mingling of our bodies.” She paused, and Saken and Erdene picked up the kettle and poured steaming water down over the wool, hair, and mat, soaking every inch.
“Bound in Arachne’s tightest web; wrapped in Arachne’s purest cloth,” Janiya said. “Bind us together, bind us together, make us one.”
We broke the circle and stepped back; three of the other women rolled up the mat, the wet wool and hair bound inside. They each pinned the mat under one knee to press it tightly together. When it was done, they tied it shut. The ritual complete, Saken happily brought out the jug of kumiss again, but thankfully didn’t try to force any of it on me.
“What was that about?” Tamar whispered. I shrugged. Saken couldn’t have overheard, but she came over when she was done filling cups to explain.
“We’ll drag that along behind our horses tomorrow,” she said. “The wool and our hair will lock together and become black felt—we call it sister-cloth. We’ll cut up the felt and use it to make vests.” She smiled and lifted the jug. “More kumiss?”
“No thank you,” I said.
Her face fell slightly and she said, “You’ve been through a lot. If you want to go lie down, I can show you where you’ll sleep.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said, so Saken showed me to a spot in one of the yurts. Apparently I was supposed to just lie down on the rugs on the floor; she gave me one of the pillows—it had a quilted appliqué of a sun and a spider—and a blanket, which was relatively unadorned, only having alternating stripes of yellow and white.
“Good night,” she said kindly.
Tamar lay down beside me. “You can stay out by the fire if you want,” I said as she curled up in the blanket Saken had given her. “You don’t have to go to bed early just because I am.”
“Thanks,” Tamar said. “Saken is nice, but I’d rather not be out there all on my own.”
The blanket smelled rather strongly of sheep. I had expected to lie awake worrying—about my mission, about the tests to come, about Ruan, about Janiya—but I had underestimated how truly exhausted I was. The rugs were less comfortable than my soft bed back at Kyros’s house, but they were a great deal more comfortable than the ground had been while we were traveling. I fell asleep almost immediately.
Lauria!”
Waking with Tamar’s face before me, for one moment of dizzying terror I thought I was back in Sophos’s harem. But I smelled wood smoke and curried goat and wool felt, and a moment later the memory of our trip caught up with me. “What?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“You were moaning in your sleep, whimpering. I thought you were having a nightmare.”
I lay back down. “I think I was,” I said. “Thank you for waking me.”
“Shut up,” another voice hissed out of the dark; I wasn’t sure whose. “Bad enough when blossoms snore.”
I fell silent and put my head back down, but now I couldn’t sleep. After a while, I got up—I was sleeping close to the door—and tiptoed out. The stars were fading, but it wasn’t yet dawn. I suppose it’s not surprising that I can’t fall back to sleep. Just yesterday, this would still have been prime walking time. I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and sat down, wondering if there was something useful I could do, since I was up. Probably, but I had no idea what. I could fetch water if I knew where the bucket was. And how to get to that stream I saw yesterday. And how to get back here from the stream. I sighed. I felt very lost, and very foreign. Even for Tamar, I suspected, this didn’t exactly feel like coming home.
I heard a rustle behind me. “Hey,” Tamar whispered. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“If we’re going to sit around and talk we should probably
go a little farther from the yurt,” I whispered, thinking of the vicious hiss inside. She nodded, and we strolled over to the banked coals of last night’s fire. The rolled-up reed mat still lay on the ground nearby.
“What do you think so far?” Tamar asked.
“I’d rather hear what you think,” I said.
She took a deep breath and let it out in a whoosh. “The Alashi are everything I ever dreamed they were,” she said. “Everything I ever dreamed of becoming.” She studied the ground and half smiled. “I kind of wish I were one of them already and didn’t have to go through their tests.” She pulled the blue bead out from under her shirt and studied it in the dim light. “And Ruan’s a jerk.”
“I think there are jerks everywhere.”
“Yeah.” Tamar sighed again. “It’s just—well. I’m sure you’re right.”
They sky was lightening from black to charcoal gray; there was enough light now for me to clearly make out the shapes of the camp around me. Somewhere far away, I heard the single low tone of a horn made from a sheep’s horn. Then another; then another. Beyond the camp, we could hear the vast rustle of thousands of Alashi stirring. Dawn approached; the camp was awaking.
I turned back to the yurt. Ruan stood in the doorway. From her face, I thought she’d been there for some time; she’d probably heard us talking about her. Tamar saw as well, and I saw her go rigid. “Be easy,” I whispered in her ear. “She already hated us.” Tamar smiled, then laughed. She straightened her skinny shoulders and waved brightly at Ruan. “Good morning!” she called. Ruan narrowed her eyes and stomped away. For the first time since we had arrived at the Alashi camp, I felt my stomach unknot slightly.
CHAPTER FIVE
Freedom's Gate Page 13
