Freedom's Gate

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Show your friend how it’s done, blossom,” Ruan said to Tamar.

  Tamar shot her arrows. Ruan didn’t push her this time, and they thudded solidly into the target. She silently collected them and took her place by me again.

  I took my turn. This time one of my arrows hit the target, but none of the others did.

  Tamar’s turn again. Ruan edged toward her. Tamar glanced at her, then resolutely shot at the target. A hit. She nocked another arrow and drew the bow back. This time, Ruan shouted, almost in her ear, “Look! What’s that?” Despite knowing that Ruan was just trying to distract Tamar, I glanced to the side. Tamar didn’t even look up; the arrow hit the target, dead center, and she got off another shot before Ruan slammed her body against hers, knocking her off-balance and her next shot wild.

  “Get the hell off of me!” Tamar snarled, rounding on Ruan.

  “This is how training works,” Ruan said. “Got a problem with that, blossom?”

  “What exactly am I supposed to be learning from this? I suppose you can hit a target when someone slams into you?”

  “I’m not exactly as gifted as you are. It’s hardly a challenge for you to just stand here and shoot, is it?”

  “Then maybe I should go work on shooting from horseback some more,” Tamar said.

  “Oh, poor blossom. You don’t like your training?”

  Tamar clenched her teeth, turned back to the target, and actually managed to get two arrows off before Ruan shoved her again.

  “Speed,” I said.

  “What?” Tamar whirled to face me, still off-balance from Ruan’s push and ready to spit venom—at either of us.

  “She’s trying to teach you to shoot arrows quickly,” I said. “In a battle, you’d need to seize your opportunities to shoot as many as you could, as fast as you could. If you stood, drew, aimed, and thought about it, there wouldn’t actually be time to make your shot.”

  “Very good,” Ruan said, though her voice dripped a distinct lack of sincerity. Tamar’s eyes widened, and she turned back to the target and took a shot. Ruan lunged toward her, and she ran a few steps, turned, and shot again. When she’d loosed all the arrows in her quiver, she gathered them up, and then returned, panting for breath.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to realize you were allowed to dodge,” Ruan said. “If the other blossom hadn’t figured it out, how long do you think it would have taken you, little slave?”

  The blood drained from Tamar’s face. “What did you call me?” she said hoarsely.

  “You heard me.” Ruan turned away to pick up her own bow.

  “Put your bow down,” Tamar whispered.

  Ruan turned back, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Are you challenging me to a fight, little girl? Little harem girl?”

  “Ignore her, Tamar,” I whispered. “She’s itching to hurt you.”

  Tamar’s lips were pinched and her face was the color of dry sand. I glanced from her to Ruan’s smile and felt my stomach churn. Until the other yields, Ruan had said. Tamar couldn’t fight—she could shoot better than anyone I’d ever seen, but it didn’t even occur to her to dodge Ruan’s body-blows until I suggested it. But she was stubborn. She was even better at being stubborn than she was at firing a bow. Ruan’s going to break her arm, I thought, because short of that, Tamar won’t ever yield.

  “I’ll give you one chance to apologize,” Tamar whispered.

  Ruan just smiled at her, waiting.

  “I challenge you,” I said, my voice cutting across Tamar’s. “Your words insulted both of us.”

  “But—” Tamar turned to me, her eyes wide.

  Ruan just shrugged. “One blossom is the same as any other, as far as I’m concerned. I could snap either of you like dry straw.”

  I handed Tamar my bow and quiver—the more she was holding, the less she was likely to try to jump into the fight herself. I’ll put up a little bit of a fight, then yield. I came home with enough black eyes growing up . . . Ruan set down her own bow and smiled at me.

  “Anytime you’re ready,” I said.

  She began to move in a slow circle around me. “Slaves make me sick,” she said.

  “We’re not slaves,” I said, turning slowly to keep my eyes on her.

  “Oh, that’s right—you ‘took your freedom.’ But it certainly took you long enough.”

  I heard a hiss of breath from Tamar.

  “You slaves outnumber your Greek masters. If you just one day decided to snatch the weapons out of their hands, you could kill them all. Free yourselves and solve a lot of problems for the Alashi.”

  She used to be a slave, whispered the rational—the Greek—part of my mind, but the rest of me was too angry to listen. “It must seem awfully simple to you,” I said. “I suppose in your world, all the slaves in every household would simply rebel on exactly the same day. No planning necessary. No discussion, no risk of betrayal . . .”

  “How long do you have to be a slave before you’ve had enough?”

  “Fourteen years, if you’re Tamar,” I said.

  “Ah yes, but she escaped with you. I heard the story. If it hadn’t been for you, how long would it have taken?”

  “How long would it take you to gather the courage to flee barefoot through unknown desert with no food and no water?” I asked. “If you don’t have the supplies you need to get across, you’re almost guaranteed to die.”

  “I’d die of thirst a thousand times before I spread my legs for any Greek,” Ruan spat. “It doesn’t get much worse than that.”

  I heard Tamar suck in her breath, and that was when Ruan charged me, aiming her first punch for my injured side. I’d planned to let her take me down easily, but in that moment, I was so utterly furious all I wanted was to see Ruan bleed. I dodged the blow, caught her wrist, and jerked her off-balance, kneeing her in the stomach as she passed. She stumbled and almost caught herself, but I slammed into her once more and knocked her again off-balance, then punched her in the face. She stumbled back, clasping her bleeding nose.

  Speed, some part of my mind whispered to me. Don’t give her time to recover. She took a swing at me, but it was easy to dodge; she was seriously off-balance now. I caught her arm and twisted as I stepped behind her; she yelled out in pain and kicked at me, trying to get away. One kick connected and I let go, but followed with a hard kick toward her knee. I knocked her legs out from her and she hit the ground hard.

  I jumped onto her chest and slapped her as hard as I could across the face. “That was for your insult to Tamar,” I hissed. I slapped her again. “That was for your insult to me.” Again. “And that was for your insult to my mother.”

  “I yield,” Ruan croaked.

  I climbed off her.

  Only then did I realize how many of the sisters had gathered at the edge of our target-practice field to watch. One of them was Janiya, and I felt sinking horror in my stomach. Whether this was the normal way to settle differences—as Ruan had told us, I belatedly remembered—or not, I had a hard time believing that it was exactly approved of. No army actually approved of fighting in the ranks.

  Janiya jerked her head, and Maydan went over to examine Ruan. I thought I saw the twitch of a smile on her lips, quickly concealed, as she gave Ruan a rag to press to her bleeding nose and helped her to her feet. “I think you’ll live,” she said, clearly trying to sound sympathetic.

  Janiya looked from me to Tamar. “How did this start, exactly?”

  “She called me a slave,” Tamar said, lifting her chin.

  “Ah. Then why weren’t you the one who gave Ruan a bloody nose?”

  “I tried,” Tamar said, sounding petulant. “But Lauria—”

  “The insult was to both of us,” I said.

  “I’m sure it was,” Janiya said. “Well.” She looked from me, to Tamar, and back to me. “I can’t approve of fighting in the ranks, no matter how grave the insult. I’m sending you both out on shit-pickup duty tonight, to gather up the fresh animal droppings and spre
ad them out to dry for fuel. You can consider that your punishment.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tamar whispered.

  “On the other hand, it’s nice to see you two standing up for yourselves, finally.” She handed each of us a blue bead.

  “I can’t think of a more deserving person to get a bloody nose,” Zhanna muttered, and she wasn’t concealing her approving smile at all. I glanced at her, and then back to Janiya. Janiya was looking at me with a cool, appraising look, and I felt my fear return. No slave fights like that. Well. I hoped I could come up with a good story before she asked me about it. Right now, the elation of having had Ruan yield to me with no more immediate consequence than manure pickup—well, that made it awfully hard to regret the fight.

  CHAPTER TEN

  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 Alashi 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 ass-kisser she’d been during my short tenure in the harem. Probably.

  Saken summoned me after the midday meal for a lesson in swordsmanship. “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 finishing 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 this—clearly 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 kumiss to pass 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 passing around the kumiss; 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 shimmer in the air. I sup
pressed 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 identity, 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 Alashi 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 shimmer shifted 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 prickle 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.