“Among how many millions?” she said. “How long did it take you to find her? And how much longer do you have until it’s all over, until they’ve destroyed you so utterly that you become as we are here?”
“Ah, but you aren’t from here, are you?” the sanisi said. “You’re one of them.”
“It’s a long contest.”
The sanisi walked toward her. Leaned in. They were separated only by a sheet of tangled, translucent air. “A contest I am better suited to in this moment. Let’s discuss.” He drew his weapon, a plain steel blade.
“Crude,” Kalinda said. But she did not doubt his ploy would be effective.
She gritted her teeth and hissed out one final litany. The air she had trapped within the glass bead embedded in her arm burst, spilling the poison it carried into her blood.
Her body began to tighten and seize. They had told her there would be no pain.
The sanisi did not drop his barrier. She remained caught against the wall while her muscles tightened. Her jaw locked.
She wished then that her final words had been better. She wanted to sing of her own life. Her battles and her babies. She wanted to tell the last person she was to ever see the journey that brought her to this world, and how terribly hers was broken. She wanted to spin long about the horrors this sanisi would encounter in the coming months. Words of anger and warning. Portent.
Her vision blurred. The sanisi’s face was unreadable.
“A peculiar game,” the sanisi said. “I wonder. Are you saving her life to ensure your world survives or ours?”
Kalinda felt the darkness coming. Her stomach began to clench. Pain radiated through her torso. But she had been told there would be no pain.
13
When Anavha Hasaria – then Anavha Lasinyna – was five years old, he hit his sister on the mouth. She had called him something – a name, an insult – he couldn’t remember. She bawled and punched him back, in the throat, and told him he was unnatural.
Then she told his mother.
His mother took him by the ear and brought him out to the chopping block outside the kitchen, scattering the dajians. She took one of the big, bloody knives left there from the gutting of chickens, and pushed up his skirt. Her big hand covered most of his thigh. She cut him, there on the inside of his thigh, a cut that surprised him more than it hurt. He screamed as the blood welled.
“This is the way Rhea rewards violence in boys,” she told him. “Commit enough of it, and she will bleed you dry. You touch any of your sisters again, and I will cut you piece by piece and feed you to the dogs.”
The wound had healed slowly but completely and did not even leave a scar. It taught him how deeply he could cut.
Anavha did not understand, at first, his difference. He looked like his sisters, longhaired and thin. One could not tell them apart unless they were dressed up to go somewhere and his mother made him wear a girdle and coat, and belled trousers, usually white. He hated the color, because he always got it dirty. It did not matter when his sisters got their own clothes dirty. That was natural, his mother told him. Girls did such things. They spoke with loud voices.
When Anavha turned ten, his mother brought him to the religious quarter, and the priests said Rhea had spared him for her service. He was to be owned by a woman and her kin, to bring them pleasure, and children, for the good of Dorinah, the will of Rhea.
The men in the mardanas told him he was blessed. Boys who survived to puberty were restricted from brute physical labor. They did not cook, did not clean, and were not to be engaged in any strenuous education beyond the sexual. Men led a life of leisure, never to worry about money, subsistence. The fact that he still breathed proclaimed Anavha’s importance to the world. Yes, young boys coveted what Anavha and the other men were. They envied the endless preparation: the dressing, the washing, the oiling, the styling, because it meant they were alive.
Anavha learned his purpose in the mardanas. He began at fourteen, awkward and unsure, encouraged to learn from poor women seeking children or pleasure who paid the temple eight dhorins for the privilege. He couldn’t become erect. He was introduced early to a philter drunk with wine that kept him hard for hours; he would lie in bed at night, still in pain from three hours of copulation and an induced erection that could not be fulfilled, merely worn off. His body was not his, they reminded him. It belonged to Rhea.
It was in the mardanas, his first year, that he began to cut himself. Small cuts on the insides of his arms. Just enough to release a thread of blood, leave no scar. He would sit in his room in the mardana listening to the sounds of pants and cries coming through the walls. He sat naked in front of the mirror, studying his every pore, the angles of his body. The blood would come, and he’d dab at it with a little kerchief he kept in a drawer. When the kerchiefs got too stained, he burned them.
At fifteen, he was wed to a woman whose name he knew by reputation: Syre Zezili Hasaria, the most passionate and devastating of the Empress’s commanders.
He did not meet Zezili Hasaria until the day of the wedding in Rhea’s temple in Daorian. He felt very small in the immense temple, cloaked in white, coat and hood, tunic, belled trousers. Zezili’s four sisters were also there, eyeing him over; though there was some resemblance among them, he did not mistake any of them for her.
Zezili dressed in Rhea’s purple – purple trousers, tunic, lavender short coat. She wore a black leather belt and ornamental sword, a jeweled dagger. She was, indeed, handsome: tall and broad-shouldered, boldly feminine, with a spill of straight dark hair knotted with purple ribbons. She was a little dark, being half dajian, and her brows nearly met over large, dark eyes. Zezili held herself defensively, as if she expected a fight to break out at any moment. When Anavha stood next to her, he found he was a hand shorter than she. He liked the solid bulk of her, the steadiness.
She will take care of me, he thought. She will protect me.
His first night with Zezili, she made him strip in her bedroom in her country house. She cuffed him across the mouth, drawing blood. She told him to kneel. He was so startled, he did not even cry out.
She took his chin in her hand and said, “You’re mine. All of you. Every bit of you. You’ll service my sisters, because it’s required. But never forget you’re mine.”
She took out a blade and cut her initials into the flesh between his shoulder blades. When she finished, he was trembling. He heard her set the knife down at her feet deliberately, with a solid thud. He saw the sheen of his blood on the blade. She licked at the blood of his wounds. He gasped. She reached for him and found him, absurdly, embarrassingly erect.
“Well,” Zezili said with a laugh, “they paired me well.”
Zezili was a brutal mistress, demanding, violent. She entertained herself with him until his vision was hazy, pain and desire twisting his insides, turning his voice to a high-pitched wail, begging for release. Yet when she finished with him, he felt somehow obscene, disassembled. She knew him for what he was.
And he loved her for it.
He sat awake nights and cut himself while she was away; the insides of his arms, his thighs. He spent time examining the big blue veins in his wrists, wondering if Zezili would mourn him if he died, or simply have him replaced, as she would her dog or one of her dajians.
But he always put the knife back down and stored it at the back of the drawer of his dressing table behind a box of white powder, among the kerchiefs. He hoped Daolyn would find it someday, or Zezili, and ask, “What’s wrong?”
When Zezili came home for leave this time, she dragged him to bed immediately. Then again twice the next day.
After, he bathed. She attended her foreign guests.
He sat at the end of his bed and began the old ritual, the simple cuts. The knife was comforting in his hand. The knife was something he could control.
He concentrated on the lines, the perfect symmetry. It calmed him.
As he cut, the air around him stirred. His vision blurred. Blood welle
d down his thigh. A strong wind knocked him back. Bloody haze crept across his vision. The knife slipped, plunged deeply. He cried out.
The world opened.
He fell against the bed, knocking his head. But then the bed was gone. He continued to fall back into… nothing. Darkness. He screamed and scrambled back toward the light. Cold bit at his skin. The air around him swarmed with a fiery mist.
As he groped back into the room, the door opened. Daolyn stood there. Her face contorted. She put her fist to her mouth.
Anavha sat on his knees. Began to shake. His ears popped. The black portal winked out. Half of his bed went missing with it, and the red gauze across his vision lifted. The floor was scorched. Something tickled his lip. He wiped his face and saw his nose was bleeding. The terror was so deep, he could not move. Could not think.
Zezili shook him.
His wife was shaking him.
He told her about the door.
She slapped him.
Anavha began to cry in earnest.
“But he’s not a sorcerer,” Zezili said. “He was tested as a child, just like anyone else.”
Anavha had washed and dressed. He stood now outside the sitting room where Zezili met with their local priest and barely gifted tirajista, Karosia Soafin. The foreign guest had been sent to bed in the quarters across the courtyard. Anavha should have been asleep as well, but the fear and terror of what had happened still coursed through him. He spit out the draught Daolyn had given him to soothe his nerves.
“It’s possible to miss one here and there,” Karosia said. “My concern is not that he is gifted. My concern is the manifestation of his gift.”
“I requested a commonplace husband,” Zezili said. “If he’s gifted, I won’t have him in my house. Those boys go to the Seekers, not the mardanas.”
Anavha wanted to claw open the door and beg her to reconsider. Surely it was some kind of fluke. An accident.
“Is it possible it was someone else?” Zezili asked. “Some untrained itinerant passing through who attacked my house?”
“It is… doubtful,” Karosia said.
“It must have been an outsider.”
“Syre Zezili, my deep concern here is that the ability your husband has manifested has all the hallmarks of a skill we haven’t seen in thousands of years. This is a matter for the Seekers. We should call Ryyi Tulana.”
“Rhea’s bloody bit,” Zezili said, “I have no time for this. He was tested. He isn’t gifted. And what kind of gift is that? Opening spaces to nowhere? Disintegrating furniture? Who ever heard of that? All I need to know is if he’ll harm himself or others again.”
“Without assessing his abilities, I cannot say. If you’ll allow me to bring him to the local Seeker escort for an assessment–”
“He’s not gifted.”
“Syre Zezili, I must humbly disagree. He may even have a very special talent. He may be able to draw on the power of all satellites, perhaps even, well, the dark star… It’s uncommon, but the astronomers say-”
“An omajista? No. That’s all myth and nonsense.”
Anavha pressed his palm to his fluttering heart, trying to calm it. Some part of him hoped to be taken away, to ease the monotony. But hearing Zezili insist that he stay comforted him. Somewhere, beneath all the anger and rage, she loved him very much.
“I’ll have my dajians keep a close eye on him,” Zezili said.
“If you are to keep him here, I suggest that one of my order come to check on him, especially if, as you say, you are to be deployed on a long campaign.”
Anavha heard a rustling. Someone standing. He moved away from the door.
“Thank you for your counsel,” Zezili said. “I will take it under advisement.”
Anavha hurried through the morning light streaming into the courtyard and hid in his room. Daolyn and the house dajians had removed his old bed and set a temporary mattress in its place. He toed the scorched floor. They had not been able to scrub the marks out. The stones themselves had melted.
He sat in front of his vanity mirror and scrutinized his face. Zezili was right, of course. He wasn’t gifted. It had to be some accident. Some trick. Zezili had many enemies. He opened the drawer at his side. Stared at the bloody knife and kerchief there. Perhaps he just needed to be more careful for a while. There was no telling who would want to hurt him to strike at Zezili.
When the door opened, his heart leapt. He expected Zezili. But it was just Daolyn. She closed the door and came up behind him. She began to unplait his hair.
“Where’s the usual girl?” Anavha said. It had been many years since Daolyn took the time to do his hair.
Her strong fingers loosened the tiny plaits. He watched his dark, twisted hair come free, one lock at a time.
“You’ll need to be careful now,” Daolyn said.
“Why?” Anavha said. “Zezili will take care of me.”
“Only so long as you are useful to her,” Daolyn said. “Only so long as she believes she controls you.” She began to knot the front of his hair up, to create a crown that ran from his left ear to his right.
“I am hers,” Anavha said. “She knows that.”
“Perhaps,” Daolyn said. “But perhaps things will change.”
“They won’t change,” Anavha said.
“The only constant is change,” Daolyn said. “Be ready, child.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like,” Anavha said. “I’m all alone here. All I have is Zezili.”
Daolyn tied off his braid and began forming a new one, her face neutral. She smoothed the back of his head, like his mother had done when he was a child. “It must indeed be difficult,” she said, “to be so alone.”
“It is,” Anavha said.
She completed the rest of the hairstyling in silence, the perfectly obedient dajian Zezili always said she was.
But her words unsettled him. He wanted to take the knife from the drawer and throw it away. What would happen if he cut himself again? What would happen if Zezili was wrong?
14
Zezili’s week of leave was complicated again by the arrival of her near-cousin, Tanasai Laosina, as Zezili and Monshara completed their plans for their assault on the largest of the dajian camps, circling around each other in Zezili’s increasingly cramped estate.
Tanasai’s arrival was heralded by pounding on the door and the screaming of Zezili’s name. Her usual greeting. She enjoyed getting drunk and blaming the hardships and shortcomings of her life on Zezili.
Zezili had given Daolyn permission to admit near-kin, but even Zezili was surprised when Tanasai burst through the estate and pounded directly into Zezili’s chamber where Zezili sat astride Anavha.
Tanasai shouted, “Why did she give you this campaign? I was up next for a grand campaign and you gutted it!”
Zezili pushed herself off Anavha and stood, naked. “What’s this about?”
Tanasai’s dark eyes were wild, red-rimmed. She sounded as if she’d been drinking. She pulled off her helm, letting loose her matted mane of stringy curls.
“I come home and the whole city’s talking about it, her giving you some secret campaign. Is she having you take over my legion, too? Is she trying to take off my title?”
Anavha was reaching for his clothes, making little ducking motions, as if hoping Tanasai would not see him.
“She said nothing of the sort,” Zezili said. “Go sit down. I’ll dress. Daolyn will bring you some… tea.”
“I want answers, near-cousin,” Tanasai spat.
Tanasai trudged into the courtyard.
Zezili dressed and met Tanasai in the sitting room. Tanasai had already broken the lock on the liquor cabinet and acquired a flagon of wine.
“So, what’s this business?” Tanasai asked.
“I’m fucking my husband,” Zezili said. “What’s your business?”
“You know what I’m asking.”
“It’s just an errand for the Empress. Not a campaign. We won’t invade Aaldia or T
ordin without you,” Zezili said.
“You better not.”
“I’m on leave.”
“And making the most of it,” Tanasai sneered.
“I don’t have to pay for sex,” Zezili said. Zezili had shared Anavha with her four blood-sisters, but not Tanasai. She couldn’t abide the idea of Tanasai touching anything that belonged to her.
“She always liked you best,” Tanasai said, and Zezili wondered if Tanasai meant her mother or the Empress. Likely both. Zezili’s mother had hated Zezili, but when Zezili’s mother’s sister died, she had hated the burden of caring for wild-haired Tanasai more.
“You know what you came to know,” Zezili said. “Go tend your pasture of drunks.”
Tanasai’s face flushed a deep red. She shoved her helm back on. She sputtered something – maybe something in Tordinian – that sounded like a curse and stepped abruptly out of the sitting room, carrying several bottles of Zezili’s liquor. She marched through the courtyard, screaming at dajians as she went. Tanasai had good reason to want to lead a legion against Tordin. It was the only way she would make a name for herself that wasn’t synonymous with that of a drunkard.
Zezili followed her to the door. Daolyn locked the gate behind her.
“Do I have to let her in anymore?” Daolyn asked.
“No. If I’m not here, don’t let her enter. She won’t be happy until this campaign is over and the Empress sends us to fight the people we should actually be fighting.”
The rest of her leave passed uneventfully. Anavha cried a bit over some perceived hurt or other, and Zezili ignored him until he became docile again. He had no more… episodes. She chalked up the business in his room to some outside anomaly. On the day of her departure, he threw himself at her feet and cried and begged her not to go. Zezili curled a lip in disgust. She made Daolyn pull him off.
She dressed in a clean tunic and newly polished armor, and cinched on her skirt of metal and dajians’ hair. Daolyn checked all of her straps and knots, and Zezili took her leave. Daolyn closed the door behind her. Zezili patted her massive dog, Dakar, in greeting, fed him a treat, and mounted.
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