Constellation

by Sharon Lee

  “Our young Inas is fortunate, is she not, Sister?” Humaria murmured, her soft voice blurry with the combined effects of weeping and the tea.

  “How so?” asked Shereen, watching her closely, in case she should suddenly droop into sleep.

  “Why,” said Humaria, sipping tea. “Because she will remain here in our home with our father, and need never marry. Indeed, I would wonder if a husband could be found for a woman who reads as well as a man.”

  Shereen blinked, and bent her head, fussing with the fall of the hijab across her breast. Inas watched her, abruptly chilly, though the night was warm and no breeze came though the windows that stood open onto the garden.

  “Certainly,” Shereen said, after too long a pause. “Certainly, our father might wish to keep his youngest with him as long as may be, since he shows no disposition to take another wife, and she knows the ways of his books and his studies.”

  “And certainly,” Humaria said, her eyes open now, and staring at Inas, where she knelt, feeling much like a mouse, and not so bold, so bold at all.

  “Certainly, on that blessed day when the gods call our father to sit with them as a saint in Heaven, my husband will inherit all his worldly stuffs, including this, our clever sister Inas, to dispose of as he will.”

  At her father’s direction, Inas had read many things, including the Holy Books and domestic law. She knew, with a scholar’s detachment, that women were the lesser vessel and men the god-chosen administrators of the universe the gods had created, toyed with and tired of.

  She knew that, in point of law, women were disbarred from holding property. Indeed, in point of law, women were themselves property, much the same as an ox or other working cattle, subject to a man’s masterful oversight. A man might dispose of subject women, as he might dispose of an extra brood cow, or of an old and toothless dog.

  She knew these things.

  And, yet, until this moment, she had not considered the impact of these facts upon her own life and self.

  What, indeed, she thought, would Safarez the merchant’s son, do with one Inas, youngest daughter of his wife’s father? Inas, who read as well as a man—a sinful blot so dire that she could not but be grateful that the Holy Books also stated that the souls of women were small, withered things, of no interest to the gods.

  Humaria finished the last of her tea, and sat cradling the blue cup in her plump, pretty hands, her eyes misty.

  “There now, sweet, rest,” Shereen murmured, capturing the cup and passing it to Inas. She put her arm around Humaria’s shoulders, urging her to lie down on the couch.

  Inas arose and carried the tray back to the cooking alcove. She washed and dried the teapot and cup, and put the crackers back in their tin. The sventi she left out.

  She was wise in this, for not many minutes later, Shereen slipped into the alcove, veils dangling and flame-colored hair rippling free. She sighed, and reached for the leaves, eating two, one after the other, before giving Inas a swift glance out of the sides of her eyes, as if Shereen were the youngest, and caught by her elder in some unwomanly bit of mischief.

  “Our sister was distraught,” she said softly. “She never meant to wound you.”

  “She did not wound me,” Inas murmured. “She opened my eyes to the truth.”

  Shereen stared, sventi leaf halfway to her lips.

  “You do not find the truth a fearsome thing, then, Sister?” she asked, and it was Inas who looked away this time.

  “The truth is merely a statement of what is,” she said, repeating the most basic of her father’s lessons, and wishing that her voice did not tremble so. “Once the truth is known, it can be accepted. Truth defines the order of the universe. By accepting truth, we accept the will of the gods.”

  Shereen ate her leaf in silence. “It must be a wonderful thing to be a scholar,” she said then, “and have no reason to fear.” She smiled, wearily.

  “Give you sweet slumber, Sister. The morrow will be upon us too soon.”

  She went away, robes rustling, leaving Inas alone with the truth.

  * * *

  THE TRUTH, BEING BRIGHT, held Inas from sleep, until at last she sat up within her chatrue, lit her fragrant lamp, and had the books of her own studies down from the shelf.

  In the doubled brightness, she read until the astronomer on his distant column announced the sighting of the Trio of morning with his baleful song.

  She read as a scholar would, from books to which her father, the elder scholar, had directed her, desiring her to put aside those he might wish to study.

  The book she read in the lamplight was surely one which her father would find of interest. A volume of Kenazari mythology, it listed the gods and saints by their various praise names and detailed their honors.

  Nawar caught her eye, “the one who guards.” A warrior’s name, surely. Yet, her mother had been named Nawar. A second aspect of the same god, Natesa—“blade dancer”—in the Kenazari heresy that held each person was a spirit reincarnated until perfected, alternatively taking the form of male and female. The duty of the god in either aspect was to confound the gods of order and introduce random action into the universe, which was heresy, as well, for the priests taught that the purpose of the gods, enacted through mortal men, was to order and regulate the universe.

  Inas leaned back against her pillows and considered what she knew of her father’s third wife. Nawar had been one of the married women chosen as guardians of the three dozen maiden wives sent south from Kenazari as the peace tithe. Each maiden was to be wed to a wise man or scholar, and it had been the hope of the scholars who had negotiated it that these marriages would heal the rifts which had opened between those who had together tamed the wildlands.

  Alas, it had been a peace worked out and implemented locally, as the Holy Books taught, and it had left the mountain generals unsatisfied.

  Despite the agreement and the high hopes of wise men, the generals and their soldiers swept through Kenazari shortly after the rich caravan of dowries and oath-bound girls passed beyond the walls of the redoubt. Fueled by greed, bearing off-world weapons, they murdered and laid waste—and then dispersed, melting back into the mountains, leaving nothing of ancient, wealthy Kenazari, save stone and carrion.

  The priests of the south found the married escorts to be widows and awarded them to worthy husbands. Reyman Bhar had lately performed a great service for the priests of Iravati, and stood in need of a wife. Nawar was thus bestowed upon him, and it had pleased the gods to allow them to find joy, each in the other, for she was a daughter of an old house of scholars, and could read, and write, and reason as well as any man. Her city was dead, but she made shift to preserve what could be found of its works, assisted gladly by her new husband.

  So it was that numerous scrolls, books, and tomes written in the soon-to-be-forgotten language found their way into the house of Scholar Bhar, where eventually they came under the study of a girl child, in the tradition of her mother’s house . . .

  The astronomer on his tall, cold column called the Trio. Inas looked to her store of oil, seeing it sadly depleted, and turned the lamp back ’til the light fled and the smoky wick gave its ghost to the distant dawn.

  She slept then, her head full of the myths of ancient Kenazari, marriage far removed from her dreams.

  * * *

  THEIR FATHER SENT WORD that he would be some days in the city of Lahore-Gadani, one day to west across the windswept ridges of the Marakwenti range that separated Iravati from the river Gadan. He had happened upon his most excellent friend and colleague, Scholar Baquar Hafeez, who begged him to shed the light of his intellect upon a problem of rare complexity.

  This news was conveyed to them by Nasir, their father’s servant, speaking through the screen in the guest door.

  Humaria at once commenced to weep, her face buried in her hands as she rocked back and forth, moaning, “He has forgotten my wedding! I will go to my husband ragged and ashamed!”

  Shereen rushed to embrace
her, while Inas sighed, irritable with lack of sleep.

  “I do not think our father has forgotten your wedding, Sister,” she said, softly, but Humaria only cried harder.

  As it happened, their father had not forgotten his daughters, nor his mission in the city. The first parcels arrived shortly after Uncu’s prayer was called, and were passed through the gate, one by one.

  Bolts of saffron silk, from which Humaria’s bridal robes would be sewn; yards of pearls; rings of gold and topaz; bracelets of gold; ubaie fragile as spider silk and as white as salt; hairpins, headcloths, and combs; sandals; needles; thread. More bolts, in brown and black, from which Humaria’s new dayrobes would be made, and a hooded black cloak, lined in fleece.

  Additional parcels arrived as the day wore on: a bolt each of good black silk for Shereen and Inas; headcloths, ubaie; silver bracelets and silver rings set with onyx.

  Humaria and Shereen fell upon each new arrival with cries of gladness. Shereen ran for her patterns; Humaria gave the saffron silk one last caress and scampered off for scissors and chalk.

  Inas put her silk and rings and bracelets aside, and began to clear the worktable.

  Across the room, the guest screen slid back and a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with red string was placed on the ledge.

  Inas went forward, wondering what else was here to adorn Humaria’s wedding day, even as she recognized her father’s hand and the lines that formed her own name.

  Smiling, she caught the package up and hurried, lightfooted, to her room. Once there, she broke the red string and unwrapped the brown paper, exposing not a book, as she had expected, from the weight and the size, but a box.

  She put it aside, and searched the wrapping for any note from her father. There was none, and she turned her attention back to his gift.

  It was an old box of leather-wrapped wood. Doubtless, it had been handsome in its day, but it seemed lately to have fallen on hard times. The leather was scuffed in places, cracked in others, the ornamental gilt work all but worn away. She turned it over in her hands, and rubbed her thumb along a tear in the leather where the wood showed through—gray, which would be ironwood, she thought, from her study of native product.

  She turned the box again, set it on her knee, released the three ivory hooks and lifted the lid.

  Inside were seven small volumes, each bound in leather much better preserved than that which sheathed the box.

  Carefully, she removed the first volume on the right; carefully, she opened it—and all but laughed aloud, for here was treasure, indeed, and all honor to her father, for believing her worthy of so scholarly a gift. She had read of such things, but this was the first she had seen. A curiat—a diary kept of a journey, or a course of study, or a penance.

  These . . . Quickly, she had the remaining six out and opened, sliding the ubaie away from her eyes, the better to see the handwritten words. Yes, these detailed a scholar’s journey—one volume dealt with geography, another with plants, another with minerals, still another with animals. Volume five detailed temples and universities, while volume six seemed a list of expenditures. The seventh volume indexed the preceding six. All were written in a fine, clear hand, using the common, or trade, alphabet, rather than that of the scholars, which was odd, but not entirely outside of the scope of possibility. Perhaps the scholar in question had liked the resonances which had been evoked by writing in the common script. Scholars often indulged in thought experiments, and this seven-volume curiat had a complexity, a layering, that suggested it had been conceived and executed by a scholar of the highest learning.

  Carefully, she put volumes two through seven back in the box and opened the first, being careful not to crack the spine.

  “Inas?” Shereen’s voice startled her out of her reading. Quickly, she thrust the book into the box and silently shut the lid.

  “Yes, Sister?” she called.

  “Wherever have you been?” her elder scolded from the other side of the curtain. “We need your needle out here, lazy girl. Will you send your sister to her husband in old dayrobes?”

  “Of course not,” Inas said. Silently, she stood, picked up the box, and slipped it beneath the mattress. Later, she would move it to the secure hidey hole, but, for now, the mattress would suffice.

  “Well?” Shereen asked, acidic. “Are you going to sleep all day?”

  “No, Sister,” Inas said meekly and pushed the curtain aside.

  * * *

  THE DAYS OF THEIR father’s absence saw a frenzy of needlework. At night, after her sisters had fallen, exhausted, into their beds, Inas read the curiat, and learned amazing things.

  First, she learned that the geographical volume mislocated several key markers, such as the Ilam Mountains, and the Sea of Lukistan. Distrustful of her own knowledge in the face of a work of scholarship, she stole off to her father’s study in the deep of night, and pulled down the atlas. She compared the latitudes and longitudes given in the curiat volume against those established by the geographical college, verifying that the curiat was off in some areas by a league, and in others by a day’s hard travel.

  Next, she discovered that the habits of certain animals were misrepresented—these, too, she double-checked in the compendium of creatures issued by the zoological college.

  Within the volume of universities and temples were bits of myth, comparing those found in Lahore-Gadani to others, from Selikot. Several fragments dealt with the exploits of the disorderly Natesa; one such named the aspect Shiva, another Nawar; all set against yet a third mythic creature, the Coyote of the Nile.

  Then, she discovered that the whole of volume five had been machine printed, in perfect reproduction of the fine hand of the scholar. So the curiat was not as ancient as it appeared, which gave her cause to marvel upon the scholar who had created it.

  Minerals—well, but by the time she had found the discrepancies in the weights of certain ores, she had made the discovery which explained every error.

  She had, as was her habit, waited until her sisters retired, then lit her lamp, pulled up the board under the carpet, and brought the box onto her chatrue. She released the three ivory hooks, opened the lid—the box overbalanced and spilled to the floor, books scattering every which way.

  Inas slipped out of bed and tenderly gathered the little volumes up, biting her lip when she found several pages in the third book crumpled. Carefully, she smoothed the damaged sheets, and replaced the book with its brothers inside the box.

  It was then that she noticed pieces of the box itself had come loose, leaving two neat, deep, holes in the wood, at opposite corners of the lid. Frowning, she scanned the carpet, spying one long spindle, tightly wrapped in cloth. The second had rolled beneath the chatrue, and by the time she reached and squirmed and had it out with the very tips of her fingers, the cloth covering had begun to unravel.

  Daintily, she fingered it, wondering if perhaps the cloth held some herb for protection against demons, or perhaps salts, to insure the books kept dry, or—

  There was writing on the inside of the cloth. Tiny and meticulous, it was immediately recognizable as the same hand which had penned the curiat.

  Exquisitely careful, breath caught, she unrolled the little scroll across the carpet, scanning the columns of text; heart hammering into overdrive as she realized that she had discovered her nameless scholar’s key.

  Teeth indenting her bottom lip, she unrolled the second scroll next to the first, and saw that she had the complete cipher.

  Breathless, she groped behind her for the box, and extracted a book at random.

  Slowly at first—then more quickly as her agile mind grew acquainted with the key—she began to read.

  Illuminated by the cipher, it was found that the volume geographical did not concern itself with mountain ranges and rivers at all, but was instead a detailed report of a clandestine entry into the city of Selikot, and a blasphemous subterfuge.

  I regret to inform you, oh, brother in arms, that our inf
ormation regarding this hopeful world was much misleading. Women are not restricted; they are quarantined, cut off from society and commerce. They may only travel in the company of a male of their kin unit, and even then, heavily shielded in many layers of full body robes, their faces, eyes and hair hidden by veils. So it is that the first adjustment in our well-laid plans has been implemented. You will find that your partner, Thelma Delance, has ceded her route and her studies to a certain Scholar Umar Khan. And a damnable time I had finding a false beard in this blasted city, too. However, as you know to your sorrow, I’m a resourceful wench, and all is now made seemly. Scholar Khan is suitably odd, and elicits smiles and blessings wherever he walks. The project continues only slightly impeded by the beard, which itches. I will hold a copy of this letter in my field notes, in the interests of completeness.

  Farewell for now, brother Jamie. You owe me a drink and dinner when we are reunited.

  * * *

  INAS WAS SLOW WITH her needle next morning, her head full of wonders and blasphemies.

  That there were other worlds, other peoples, variously named “Terran” and “Liaden”—that was known. Indeed, Selikot was the site of a “spaceport” and bazaar, where such outworlders traded what goods they brought for those offered by the likes of Merchant Majidi. The outworlders were not permitted beyond the bazaar, for they were unpious; and the likes of Merchant Majidi must needs undergo purifications after their business in the bazaar was concluded.

  Yet now it seemed that one—nay, a pair—of outworlders had moved beyond the bazaar to rove and study the wider world—and one of them a woman. A woman who had disguised herself as a man.

  This was blasphemy, and yet the temples had not fallen; the crust of the world had not split open and swallowed cities; nor had fires rained from the heavens.

  Perhaps Thelma Delance had repented her sin? Perhaps Amineh, the little god of women, had interceded with his brothers and bought mercy?

  Perhaps the gods were not as all-seeing and as all-powerful as she had been taught?