Freedom's Gate

by Naomi Kritzer

  The ache in my ribs subsided as I listened to Kyros’s words, and I felt the calm reassurance of his words wrap around me. I hadn’t even realized that my stomach was churning until I felt it settle. “Things are going well,” I said softly. “Well, mostly. We’re—I’m—working to be accepted as one of the Alashi. It hasn’t been easy but I’ve passed some of the tests.” I fingered the bandage on my side. “We were attacked a few nights ago, and I was wounded in the fight. I’m recovering now.” Should I mention Janiya’s spell-chain? I hesitated—no, surely he knew that the Alashi had many resources, one more could hardly matter to him. But I could tell him about Sophos. “There’s something you should know about what happened when I was with Sophos,” I said. I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts, but suddenly my breath was ragged and my mouth was dry. The aeriko shimmered silently in the air, waiting. “I—” No, that wasn’t how to begin. “He—”

  Back at camp, I could see Tamar conferring with Maydan, and Maydan pointing toward me. “Someone’s coming,” I said. My voice was unsteady, stumbling. I wish I could talk with Kyros about this face-to-face, not through an aeriko. “You’d better go, someone’s coming.”

  The shimmer vanished. I glanced toward the camp again, hoping that nobody had seen anything, and saw that Tamar was not coming toward me after all. I could have finished my report. I rubbed my forehead with my hand, hoping that anyone who saw me would think my headache was from the glare of the sun. At least this way, I could mull over how to tell my story, instead of thrashing around for words while facing an aeriko.

  I hugged Kyros’s reassurances around myself like a blanket as I made my way back toward camp. Everything was loaded up; women were mounting horses and moving out. Someone had saddled Kara for me, and I mounted with a little bit of difficulty and joined the rest of the group. As I started to ride out, I suddenly remembered something I’d seen, but not entirely noticed, down by the river. A cooking pot—the big iron pot we cooked rice in. Someone had been scrubbing it, probably, and left it behind. Well, I’d ride down to the river and grab it and catch up; even injured I thought I could probably manage that.

  It was right where I remembered seeing it—tipped over and full of water and sand. I started to lift it and had to stop; the strain on my ribs was too painful, and it felt like my entire back seized up in protest from the effort. I swore, in Greek; I had pictured myself simply scooping it up and tying it to the back of my saddle. I hadn’t remembered it being this heavy, but then, when Tamar and I had cooked the meal, I hadn’t had a broken rib. I kicked it over to dump out the water and sand, let it drain for a moment, then tried again. I thought I could probably lift it, but whether I could get it, and myself, up on my horse—well, that was another question entirely.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  It was Tamar. Relief washed over me. “I saw this pot when I was down by the river and I realized someone had forgotten it. I thought . . . I thought I’d . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell someone instead of taking off by yourself? Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll get it.” Tamar efficiently loaded the pot onto her own horse and helped me mount back up. “Come on, we’ll have to hurry to catch up.”

  We encountered Maydan on the way; she had doubled back to look for us. I was keeping up, but with a tight jaw and clenched fists, and Maydan sent Tamar on ahead while riding with me. “We can stop and rest if you need to, I know where everyone else is going.”

  “What if the bandits . . .”

  “They’re moving but they’re not within striking distance of us yet.” Despite her confident words, Maydan glanced over her shoulder to scan the horizon. I wondered if she knew about Janiya’s spell-chain. What would Zhanna and the other djinn worshippers think of Janiya making use of a bound djinn?

  For that matter, I wasn’t entirely certain I trusted Janiya’s information. Janiya couldn’t possibly have a lot of experience getting useful information out of bound aerika. It could have told her that the bandits were close just for the fun of seeing us scurry around like mice in a hawk’s shadow; after all, without a precise definition, close could mean “closer than Penelopeia.” By the same token, if the bandits were too far away to see, it could have told her they were far. Did Janiya know just how precisely she had to phrase her questions, in order to trust the answers?

  I knew how to get information out of aerika. Throughout the ride, I mulled over whether I could offer to help, and if so, on what pretext. I could plausibly claim to have recognized the spell-chain, but I could think of no excuse for a former slave to have much experience at questioning aerika. Perhaps if I’d been a longtime trusted servant at Kyros’s I would have occasionally overheard him giving instructions to an aeriko, but as a stable girl . . . no. There was nothing I could say; it was too risky.

  Regardless of whether Janiya’s aeriko was providing her with reliable information, Maydan and I were not attacked by the bandits before we joined the rest of the sisterhood at dusk. We had fallen so far behind during the day that camp was entirely set up by the time we reached it. The other women had built the yurts, lit a fire, and started dinner. I let Maydan remove Kara’s saddle but insisted on grooming her myself; it wasn’t as if it was that strenuous a chore. I had underestimated how utterly exhausted I was, and when I was half done, she took the brush from me and I didn’t protest.

  I slumped to the ground beside Tamar, hating my weakness, hating myself for having been so careless as to get injured. Tamar handed me a bowl of lentils and rice, which I ate without even really tasting them. I washed them down with water, refused the skin of kumiss, and went to get my blanket; all I wanted was sleep.

  Janiya stopped me as I was returning to the yurt. “Tamar says that you went to get the cook pot, that you noticed it had been forgotten.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering what I’d done wrong now.

  “Why didn’t you tell someone else to go get it?”

  I shrugged. “Everyone else was busy. I thought it would only take a minute; I hadn’t realized how hard it would be to lift the pot.”

  Tamar saw Janiya talking to me and joined me; her nervousness was palpable. She glanced anxiously at me, and shot Janiya a hostile look. “We didn’t get that far behind,” Tamar said.

  “You went after Lauria,” Janiya said to her. “Why?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Tell someone else to go look for her? I was the one who noticed she was missing. I didn’t think it would take long to find her, and if she’d fallen behind because of her injury, I could ride after the rest of the sisterhood and tell them to slow down.”

  “But she hadn’t fallen behind because of her injury.”

  “Not then, no,” Tamar said, her voice impatient. “She was struggling with the pot, so I loaded it up and we went. What did we do wrong now?”

  “Nothing,” Janiya said. She slapped a blue bead into my hand, then one into Tamar’s. “For showing initiative. The initiative you failed to show that first day, when I sent you out looking for karenite. You acted as sisters and free women, not as slaves.”

  “For getting a pot?” I blurted out.

  “It’s no simpler than getting water for yourself before heading out for a walk in the desert,” Janiya said. She gave us each a cordial nod and walked away.

  Tamar was grinning; I shook my head, hovering between elation and disgust. I would never figure these women out. Ever. My mission was doomed, then, unless I happened to pass the tests by luck, which seemed unlikely. I threaded my new bead on the leather thong, then strode into the yurt, threw down my blankets, and went to sleep.

  I woke early, before the sun was up, and had to get up to relieve myself. The sky was just beginning to lighten; I stepped out of camp to squat in the long grass, and became aware after a moment or two that an aeriko was watching me.

  I quickly finished my business, uncomfortable with the audience. I hadn’t yet decided how to tell Kyros what had happened—I hadn’t expected him to send the aeriko back so so
on. “What now?” I whispered. It said nothing, hovering in the air. “Did Kyros want more information?”

  “Who is Kyros?”

  I realized that the aeriko was unbound—or perhaps this was Janiya’s aeriko. I bit back a Greek curse and said, “Did Janiya send you?”

  “No one sent me.”

  Well, that was something. “What do you want with me?”

  Silence and the shimmer. Then: “You are followed by one of my kind.”

  That would no doubt be Kyros’s aeriko. “I see,” I said.

  “An enslaved djinn. A slaver wishes to spy on you.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Was it trying to be helpful? Or to find out if I knew who’d sent the spy?

  Silence again. Then the shimmer vanished like a faint star behind a cloud, and I knew I was alone.

  I wasn’t going to be able to sleep after that sort of conversation, but I was still hurting too much to go start on any useful work. After shivering on the edge of camp for a short time, wondering what to do with myself, I went and sat by the embers of the fire.

  Ruan was the first of the sisters to get up in the morning. “Oh,” she said as she stepped out of the yurt. “So that’s where you went.”

  “Did you miss me?” I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s such a disappointment when I don’t get woken up in the middle of the night.” She wandered over closer to the fire and tossed on some fresh fuel. “You must think you’re quite the newly polished sword, little blossom—wounded in your first fight, everyone hovering over you like a clutch of hens with a limping chick.”

  “I’m sure everyone’s wounded sooner or later,” I said. “You, for instance, clearly had your face rearranged at least once.”

  “You certainly have a high opinion of your wit.”

  I squinted. “Maybe twice.”

  “Do you want to see the wound I took defending the sisterhood, little blossom?” Ruan pulled up her tunic to show a long, ragged scar along her side. It had clearly been a much deeper wound than I’d taken—in fact, it was amazing that she’d survived it. She let me take a long, incredulous look, then dropped her tunic and walked away without another word.

  The sisters spent the morning settling into the camp they’d set up so hastily the night before—unpacking food, sorting out things that had been jumbled together when they had to load up in a hurry, exploring the area. “We’d have had to move soon anyway,” Saken said. “The grass near our old camp was nearly grazed out.”

  I helped where I could, but found myself mostly shooed away to rest in the shade along with Jolay. She didn’t seem nearly as frustrated by her injury as I felt by mine; in fact, she almost seemed to be making the most of it, sending her friends running to get her water when she was thirsty so she didn’t have to budge from the shade. I felt restless and bored, and sick to death of embroidery. I cut a fresh thread and grudgingly poked the needle through the black felt, thinking back to the endless hours I’d spent under my mother’s eye as a child. I’d hated embroidery then, too.

  In early afternoon, there was a shout from someone at the edge of camp; she could see a cloud of dust in the distance. The news flew through the camp like a swarm of gnats, and even Jolay got to her feet to gather at the edge of camp to see what was going on. “They tracked us,” Ruan muttered furiously, then glanced over at me as if it were somehow my fault.

  Janiya bit her lip and shook her head; I saw her hand go to something tucked under her shirt. She’d been keeping an eye on the bandits, and was confident this wasn’t them—but what if the bandits had split up and the aeriko had chosen to interpret the other group as the “bandits” he’d been asked to watch for? I itched to take Janiya aside and ask to use the spell-chain myself.

  Then Janiya pulled her empty hand back and said, “Right. We have to assume it’s them. Jolay and Lauria, take your weapons and hide yourselves away from camp—I don’t want you fighting unless it’s your only chance of survival. Tamar, you can go with them to help protect them if they’re found. Everyone else, get your weapons and horses; we’re riding out to meet them.”

  Tamar bit her lip, then fetched her bow—the one she’d practiced with seemed to be her bow now—and her thumb-ring and arrows. Jolay had a bow and a long knife, and I took my sword and grabbed a waterskin for good measure. It was daytime, and there was no guarantee we’d be hiding anywhere near water.

  Jolay took the lead. Tamar and I followed her along the river and then away from it, heading over a low rise. After a few minutes of walking she found a spot shaded by a little bit of overhanging rock; long grass grew around it, and once we settled down on the ground we were invisible to anyone who didn’t stumble across us.

  “How will the sisters find us?” I asked.

  “Well, eventually I’m sure they’ll stumble across our starved and withered bodies . . .” Jolay said. “Oh, don’t look so stricken, Tamar! I was joking. Janiya will blow the horn when it’s safe to return, three long blasts.”

  We settled in. Jolay was out of breath and cradling her injured arm. I passed her the waterskin and she gave me a wry smile and a nod of approval. “Very good, blossom,” she intoned. “You remembered to bring water without being told. Beads all around!” I couldn’t help snickering at that.

  I strained to hear the sounds of battle—shouts, the clash of metal, anything. I heard the wind moving through the grass, and a moment later, the piercing whistle of a bird nearby. Below that, I could hear the hum of insects. If there was a battle going on, it was too far away to hear. Jolay took a drink of water, then leaned back against the rock and closed her eyes. Tamar sat with her bow in her hand and an arrow out, even twitchier than I was.

  “Do you just hate this?” I asked Jolay after a few minutes.

  “Hate this weather?” She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me. “No, I think it’s rather fine.”

  “Not the weather.” I rolled my eyes. “Being wounded. Not being able to fight. Not knowing what’s going on.”

  She rolled her eyes back at me. “Of course I do. Why would you feel the need to ask?” She shrugged with her good shoulder. “But hating it won’t heal my arm any faster.” She closed her eyes again. “Relax,” she said. “It will all be over soon.”

  I strained again to listen, but could hear only the wind, the birds, and Jolay’s even, regular breathing. Tamar tapped the ground with the point of her arrow; after a few minutes, Jolay opened her eyes and saw her and said, “Don’t do that. You’ll dull it.” Tamar bit her lip and stopped.

  I wished I’d at least brought along my vest and a needle, or something to do. Anything. Jolay still looked relaxed enough to nap. I couldn’t hear anything. Tamar set the arrow down and switched to ripping up the long dry grass from the ground, then shredding it. I wanted to pace, but that would pretty well destroy the whole point of hiding. Also, my ribs hurt more when I was walking.

  Finally we heard three long blasts on Janiya’s horn. Tamar put her arrow back in the quiver and picked up my waterskin, and Jolay led us back to camp.

  The first thing we saw as we approached were the camels—lots of them, and with short, sparse hair instead of the luxurious silky coats our own camels had. Then we saw a dozen newcomers standing by the camels—men, I realized after a minute. “Merchants,” Jolay exclaimed in relief and pleasure. “That’s who was raising the dust. Not the bandits after all.” Her eyes glinted. “And men. Oh my, this should be interesting.”

  “Don’t you have a summer friend?” Tamar asked.

  “Yes, Maydan and I keep each other good company. But Ruan . . . Erdene . . . well! It’s like getting a sack of sweet oranges out of season.” She lowered her eyes in false demureness, then glanced up to see if she’d made Tamar smile. She had.

  Janiya motioned us over. Two of the newcomers were clearly the owners of the caravan; they were well dressed and conversing with Janiya. “This is Amin, and this is Gerhard,” Janiya said. �
�They’re silk merchants.”

  Amin and Gerhard turned to us and bowed. Though they were dressed identically, in loose robes that covered them from their heads to their feet, they couldn’t have looked more different. Amin was very dark-skinned, much darker than any Greek or Danibeki I’d ever seen; Gerhard had the palest skin I’d ever seen, so ivory he almost looked ill, and yellow hair. His eyes were pale blue, like the morning sky. Amin’s eyes were a rich dark brown and very large, and his hair was tightly curled like sheep’s wool. I realized I was staring, and averted my eyes as I muttered a greeting.

  “You and your men are welcome to join us for dinner,” Janiya said to them, glancing at me with a hint of exasperation. I wondered if she worried that I was going to grab one of these men as a bed partner for the night, a desire-crazed girl with no “summer friend” to keep her company. I couldn’t think of any way to reassure her that wouldn’t have sounded even more foolish, so I started to edge away instead. “When you make your camp,” she continued, “please set your tents a little removed from ours.”

  “As you wish, gracious lady,” Gerhard said in accented Danibeki, and bowed again. “We would be honored to join you at your meal.”

  “We may have some goods to trade with you,” Janiya added. “More than just karenite.”

  Gerhard raised an eyebrow at this; Amin gave her a brilliant smile. “We would be delighted to discuss it after we’ve seen to our camels. May we draw water from your stream?”

  “Of course.” Janiya nodded her permission and the two men led their camels down to the river.

  The tangible fear was gone, replaced by a festive mood. The sisters hadn’t even put their weapons away, but had gathered by the door of the yurt to discuss the newcomers in low voices. “Did you see Gerhard’s eyes?” Erdene was asking.