by Kate Elliott
Avisha waited beside the entrance as the mistress completed her business. She never got tired of studying the beautifully painted screen, with cranes dancing in a field of early-blooming pink-heart on one panel, or a bachelor flock staging for their journey to the drowsy swamps of Mar beneath white-petaled wish-vines symbolic of hopes of finding a good mate on another.
“Meanwhile, ver,” Mai was saying, “it has come to my attention that your factor has changed the unit of measurement from a unit by log to one of standing timber.”
The man she addressed was considerably older, plump, with a primly pursed mouth. He glanced toward Chief Tuvi, who stood behind Mai’s chair. “It’s the usual standard of sale, verea.”
Mai had a pleasing, cheerful voice, quite innocent of malice. “Yet the original contract was made by unit of log. I can’t help but wonder if standing timber may produce less log depending on defects within the trees themselves, which may not be detected until they are split and sawed for building. Really, ver, you have given us such fine quality and quantity of wood, that I would hate to have to ask my factor to begin negotiations with another house.” She smiled. Like the masterly painting of cranes on the screen, you could not help but admire beauty.
“Eh, ah,” said the merchant, stumbling over his tongue. Avisha was sure he had never had such a cold threat delivered so prettily. “I am sure my factor made a mistake, verea. I’ll speak to her at once.”
His glance toward the clerk would have scalded skin. And, indeed, Avisha could smell, from the kitchens, that the plucked chickens had been dumped into a pot of boiling water.
“You may speak to my factor in the office on your way out,” said Mai kindly.
“That would be the young man, who once was Master Feden’s factor?”
“He serves our house. Was there something you wanted to say, ver?”
“Neh, neh. We’ll be on our way.”
They sketched the formal farewells.
“I’m hungry,” said Mai once they were gone. “I’ll take cake and tea in the pavilion, and interview more women.”
“Perhaps you should rest, Mistress,” said Priya.
“I’m not tired. Just so hungry! I feel I ought to have some marriages arranged now that the settlement is rising in the Barrens.” As she rose, she turned a warm gaze on Avisha. “What about you, Vish?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Avisha answered as her gaze skipped to the curtained entrance where Keshad might, if he left the office to consult the mistress, walk in at any moment. But Mai beckoned, so she followed her into the large garden where they sat on benches beneath the repainted pavilion and laughed and chattered as they ate bean curd buns so sweet Avisha could not finish even one while Mai devoured two without apparently noticing that she had done so.
A pair of girls watched over a dozen small children, the offspring of women Mai had hired to work in the compound. Their babble lightened an otherwise cloudy day as they, Zianna among them, splashed in the long pools or played throwing-sticks on the stones. Chief Tuvi stood on the porch that ran the width of the garden. Mostly he scanned the garden, the walls, Mai, her attendants, but at intervals he paused to watch the children’s play with a smile.
Jerad was slumped on a bench beneath the branches of a butternut tree. He slouched over to the pavilion and waited at the base of the steps.
“What is it, Jer?” Avisha asked.
“I want to go home.”
This ridiculous statement embarrassed her. “Don’t be ungrateful,” she said in a low voice, leaning down toward him. “We’re fortunate to have been shown so much favor.”
“You just like the pretty silk and the soldiers smiling at you. You don’t care about Papa at all anymore, do you?”
“How dare you!” That Mai should overhear this only made it worse. She raised a hand, threatening a slap.
“Jerad,” said Mai. “I’m going to cut the rest of the buns into pieces. Can you take them around and see that every child gets one? You’ll have to make sure the greedy ones don’t take more than one. They’ll try. Especially that little Nanash. He’s quite a sneak.”
“I don’t like him,” said Jerad stoutly. “He pinches when he thinks the adults aren’t looking.”
“Well,” observed Mai as she sliced up the buns with a knife, “I think he saw some very bad things, so naturally he is frightened all the time. Just like you did, Jerad, only it seems you are able to treat others kindly instead of taking out your fear on them. That shows a good heart and a good nature.” She offered him the platter.
Eyes wide, he took it gravely. “Yes, Auntie.” Shoulders straight, he marched off to distribute the sweets.
“Thank you,” mumbled Avisha, thoroughly ashamed.
“Hu! I grew up in a clan surrounded by siblings and cousins. You think that wasn’t anything I didn’t hear ten times a day?” She slurped her tea, set down the delicate cup—more fine than anything Avisha had ever handled in her life but everyday ware here—and called out. “Chief! Another round of interviews now.”
“I’ll separate out fourteen, Mistress. No more.”
“You’ll need a rest afterward, Mistress,” added Priya.
“I am overwhelmed by superior numbers.” Mai smiled.
In the weeks she had lived in the household of the captain and his wife, Avisha had learned that Mai’s smile hid more than it revealed.
Mai continued in a murmur meant only for Avisha’s ears. “Don’t they see that the interviews are the worst part? I’d rather have them all done than drawn out over weeks.”
“More will keep coming,” said Avisha. “Until all the Qin are married. As women hear, or decide to try their luck, or see how bolder women have fared.”
Mai sighed.
Priya leaned over, resting a dark hand on Mai’s belly. “Are you weary, Mistress?”
“Yes, but not tired!”
“Here they come,” said Avisha.
The Qin soldiers were never really off-duty, although as far as Avisha could tell they had a fair bit of leeway in going about their tasks. Rather more than a dozen men filtered into the courtyard, in addition to the guards who were on duty, as a group of hopeful women were herded into the far end of the garden and then cut out in family groups when it was their turn to come forward.
A pair of cousins dressed in gaudy town fashion wanted to know how much coin they would be paid to marry the outlanders. They were dismissed.
A poor widow who would soon be too old to bear children was given a string of vey and sent away.
A nervous girl came forward with her even more nervous uncle, and had little enough to say for herself, but when Avisha questioned her she relaxed enough to admit she could tailor.
“Come back tomorrow with samples of your work,” said Mai. “If you are willing to set up housekeeping in the settlement we are building in the Barrens on the western shore of the Olo’o Sea, your skills will be useful. Think about it.”
Several of the Qin soldiers marked the girl with interested gazes as she and her uncle left.
A frowning woman strode forward, dragging a young woman pretty enough except for the splotchy red mark across her right cheek. “This is my daughter. I would be happy to see her wed without any bride-price—”
Tuvi leaned down to speak in Mai’s ear. “With that demon’s mark on her face, none of the men will take her.”
The girl saw, and interpreted, his expression, and hid her face with a hand.
“What will happen to her, verea?” Mai asked the mother.
The woman’s disappointment was easy to see in the way her hand had tightened on the poor girl’s wrist, as if the girl had been rude. “Some of the clan have suggested selling her labor as a slave, but it would shame our family to have it known we’d been forced to do so. We haven’t the dowry for her to go to the temple.”
Mai fished in her sleeve and pressed a gold cheyt into the woman’s hand. The woman stared, too shocked to close her hand over it. “See that she goes to the temple,
for the sake of your clan’s honor.”
An audible murmuring rose from the crowd of hopeful women. They shifted, moving back as Keshad pushed through and trotted up to the pavilion ahead of the next supplicants. He mounted the steps with a handsome frown on his face as he sketched a greeting to Mai. He did not even look at Avisha, but why should he? She was nothing to him! Nothing at all.
“Greetings of the day, verea.” A woman addressed Mai with the confidence of a person whose position is secure. She was dressed in a taloos of elaborately embroidered silk that proclaimed her wealth and station. “I am Bettia, of Seven Fans House.”
“Greetings of the day, verea,” said Mai politely. Her gaze drifted to the young women standing behind Mistress Bettia. “Who are these?”
The prettier girl was staring at the ground, but the other, eyes wide with shock, gaped at Keshad as her lips moved, forming his name. Avisha glanced at him, but he was fiddling with his factor’s staff, a short wand about the length of his forearm whose narrow end was crowned with a band of ribbons and a pair of seals fixed to leather cords. He looked like he wanted to lash something, or someone.
“I’m a merchant, as you are, verea,” said Mistress Bettia in the manner of a confidant, “but in the recent troubles two of my house’s warehouses burned down with our stock inside. I find we cannot afford to keep the number of slaves we’re accustomed to. I thought you might wish to purchase the remaining debt of these two. They’re hard workers. They would make good wives.”
Avisha was pretty sure that Bettia was thinking, “good wives for outlanders.” She wanted to knead her heel into that proud merchant’s gold-slippered foot until the woman squealed for mercy.
Keshad bent down between them, a faint aroma of cloves wafting from him. Probably he washed and dressed his hair with an infusion of clove oil and other herbs. She wondered what it would be like to wash those lustrous curls.
“Don’t take them,” he whispered.
Mai smiled. “Mistress Bettia, I fear I cannot say yes to such a proposition. I have made a policy not to accept the entanglements of debt. Only free women need apply.”
“Had you advertised that before, and I missed it?” said Bettia with a shake of the head that brought attention to the cunning ornamentation of ivory combs and beaded braids that no doubt took her attendants half the morning to prepare. “Yet I see here Master Feden’s slave, now serving you as factor.” She made a crude show of looking surprised as she addressed the slave who had mouthed Kesh’s name. “Why, Nasia, you came from Feden’s house, did you not?”
The slave mumbled something.
Chief Tuvi made a business of coughing, and Mistress Bettia looked at him. She blinked first, smiled as if she was in pain, collected her slaves, and retreated.
“What was meant by that performance?” Mai asked.
“She hopes to set spies in your midst.” Keshad’s lovely eyes narrowed as he brooded. “She’s known for trading information as well as fans, screens, scrolls, and lamp shades. Eyes and ears placed inside the house of the outlanders would be valuable, indeed.”
Mai considered this with no apparent change of expression, stroking the smooth silk that covered her bulging abdomen. Avisha, who knew her own face shouted every least thought and emotion, envied her that smooth countenance. “Would it not be prudent to accept such a person into the house? Better to know who will be spreading tales than to have one sneak in who we do not know of.”
“There’s truth to that,” said Tuvi. “Let them think we don’t know.”
“Maybe so,” said Keshad. “If we don’t give ourselves away. Also, verea, if you hand out charity in such a public way, you’ll cause everyone to come just to eat out of your hand.”
“I felt sorry for the girl, knowing no one wanted her.”
“They will take advantage of your good nature, verea,” said Keshad passionately.
Chief Tuvi glanced at Kesh, and made a show of clearing his throat. “Are you growing tired, Mistress?”
“No. Let’s go on with the interviews.”
Jerad crept up to the edge of the pavilion and tugged at Avisha’s arm. “Vish? Can I go to the stables?”
The chief signaled a new family group to come forward. Mai smiled at the party of humble farmers—a father and daughters by the look of them. Keshad was pretending to look at his hands but was in fact studying Mai under lowered eyes.
Did Kesh love Mai? And why wouldn’t he? Mai was beautiful, and kind, and well-mannered, and very clever.
“Vish!”
“No!” she whispered, wishing she could tweak one of Jerad’s ears to make him stop bothering her at always the wrong moment. “You’ll just get in the way.”
He rolled his eyes as he tugged at a fold in her taloos. “No, not by myself. Jagi said I could go with him and learn to groom a horse! Please.”
Jagi was standing by the small gate painted with a winged horse. He touched his forehead, saluting her. She flushed. “All right,” she muttered. Jerad dashed off without replying, cutting so close past the new supplicants that they halted, trying not to look fools and yet also chuckling to see a child so free to run about the garden, which was a reassuring thing when you thought of it: a local boy at ease among the fearsome soldiers.
Chaji was not in the garden, maybe because he had already chosen her. A few matches were already being spoken of, and one girl was supposedly pregnant, a thing that had infuriated Chief Tuvi so much he had beaten the soldier who admitted to the act and demanded the girl be sent away for being a bad influence. Mai had intervened, though, and instead the pair had been carted off to the settlement in the Barrens to begin married life together.
The Barrens did not sound like a nice place, dry and brown, but they could be no more barren than a place where both her mother and father had died and where she had no hope of building a home for herself and the children no matter how much she missed the ash swales, the song of water rushing over the pebbled river shore, the call of the larks that nested in the third lintel over the gate to the temple of Ilu. She did not want to go back without her father braiding cord in his shop and telling her the tales of the Hundred, which he so loved.
“That’s done,” said Chief Tuvi. “Will you rest now, Mistress?”
Mai walked down the garden to the porch and, pausing in its shade, accepted a cup of tea brought on a tray by Sheyshi. The stupid girl had a smudge on her nose.
“Thank you, Sheyshi,” said Mai, more kindly than the ill-tempered little tramp deserved.
As Mai moved into the house with Sheyshi padding at her heels like a devoted dog, Priya touched Avisha’s arm. “Sheyshi has not a lively spirit, as you do, Avisha. It is not surprising the mistress prefers your company to hers. That does not mean she cannot feel excluded. For so long she and I were the mistress’s only female companions. She feels the loss of that intimacy. If you make an effort to be kind to her, it would speak well of your nature.”
Avisha hung her head, too shamed to reply, and Priya was too wise to keep beating that stake into the ground. They followed Mai into the spacious reception chamber with its mirrors and its painted rat screen, a lighthearted series of scenes of taloos- or jacket-clad rats at work counting coin and at play flying kites.
“I’m going to the livestock market,” said Mai to the chief.
He looked resignedly at Priya, and Priya shrugged. Caught by the reflection in one of the mirrors, Avisha saw Keshad standing behind the others but looking at Mai. Avisha shivered. If only he would look at her in that way!
But he did not.
“Will you come, Avisha?” Mai asked.
She hesitated.
“Keshad, I would like your opinion as well. The sheep market is today, is it not?”
“It is, verea. This late in the day the best animals will already be sold.”
“I’m not buying,” said Mai. “I want to see what the lesser quality of animal looks like.”
“I’ll go.” Avisha glanced at Sheyshi’s sour expre
ssion. “Maybe Sheyshi would like to go, too.”
So it was arranged. Avisha went back into the garden to tell Zianna she was going out, but the little girl was napping. A contingent of guards was assembled, the big man pulled from his counting frame to accompany them, and another of Anji’s senior men, Chief Deze, left in charge of the compound in Tuvi’s absence. Sheyshi brought straw sandals suitable for a trip to the market.
They left the house through the warehouse, where women and children sat on the long benches, waiting their turn to be interviewed. The supplicants carried baskets and bags with rice balls and se leaves to eat during the long wait. Children dozed on the floor. Women looked up as they passed, eager to speak, but the escort of Qin soldiers intimidated them.
The sheep market lay down the hill outside the gates of the inner city, on open ground untouched by the building that consumed Olossi’s outer districts. Mai was fascinated by the sheep. She and O’eki asked interminable questions of the herdsmen and farmers who had brought their lots to market. Keshad stuck next to the mistress.
It was odd to walk in public accompanied by the Qin. Chief Tuvi had detailed a dozen soldiers, and while they did not swagger or push, they cleared a path for Mai simply by being armed and alert. Avisha dropped back to where Chaji walked as part of the rear detail. He smiled briefly and then ignored her as his gaze roved the crowds.
Many glances were cast their way, not all kindly ones. A pair of men garbed in the homespun of farmers bent close over a ewe. By the way their eyes watched the Qin, they might have been whispering about the condition of her mouth or they might have been muttering complaints. A woman dragged her daughter out of the path of the Qin, as if she feared they would kidnap the girl.
“A blessing on you, verea. A blessing!” A beggar wearing a greasy red cap and ragged kilt trolled for alms, holding out an offering bowl.
The forward group reached an intersection. Avisha hurried to catch up as Tuvi shouted an order. The soldiers halted, blocking the intersection. Mai turned. Then she smiled.
