The Four Profound Weaves

by R. B. Lemberg

  But Bashri-nai-Divrah was already dead. The Ruler of Iyar had killed her, just like Benesret had already killed Uiziya. It was hopeless. But I did not know what else I could do.

  “If you give me a coin, I will tell you.”

  The orphan was still there, and their words brought me out of my reverie.

  “Tell me what?” In the desert a child like this could be called by the headmaster’s music to journey southeast and join the School of Assassins. But this child did not seem to have that tell-tale look of blankness. “What would you tell me?”

  “What happened to her.”

  “I know what happened to her.” But something stirred in me, and I dipped my hand into the pocket for a coin.

  The child took it and tested it against their tongue. A coin of silver, a thin coin from the Surun’ encampment, with its three stamped serpents and smoothed ridges. The child’s face was curious as they tasted the silver, and licked the heads of the snakes. Satisfied, the child hid the coin in their shirt.

  “He brought the rod. And it sucked all the life from Juma, so he was withered. Withered all over, not just one limb, like hers.”

  I tried to understand, but this tale did not seem to have a beginning. “What are you talking about?”

  “When Juma’s father came. A month or so ago, now. He was all bent and sad. And he was clean and well-dressed and he smelled of roses, and he said, I do it because I love you.”

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “And all the faces in the rod were leering. His father touched him with the rod, and Juma fell to the ground. I looked at the rod and saw his face there, too. A small one. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came.” The child took a step away from me. “Is this what happened to your sister?”

  “No.” But wave after wave of coldness ran down my back. “What happened then?”

  “The others ran away. But I didn’t. I was afraid, but I wanted to know what happened to Juma. I shook and shook him, but he was already in the rod. I thought his father would kill me. But he just looked sad.”

  I had paid for the child to speak, but their words made no sense to me. “Do you know who can heal this wound? She is not in a rod. There was no rod. She is still alive.”

  The child circled closer again. “Maybe. Maybe she is too big to go into the rod.” But their face was dubious. “Maybe only her leg went.”

  “That’s not what happened.” I felt angry for Uiziya’s body to be judged, but I also felt at a loss. “Do you know who can heal this?”

  “I heard that a physicker comes to the inn at Three Roses. Ask for the special one, from the palace. But you have to have coin.”

  I gave the child another coin. They wanted to show me the way to Three Roses, but I refused. Alone with Uiziya’s body, I tried to push the strange conversation out of my head.

  I had always walked veiled on the streets of Iyar, for our women with magical power were not permitted outside of the Khana quarter unless they were properly veiled. Only Khana women and foreign ones would be permitted deepnames at all; it was illegal for Iyari women to do so, and those who resisted were rebels. As a man or a woman of the Khana, I should be veiled in these streets. My naked face bothered me, the feel of that city air and people’s furtive glances made me feel exposed. Then I began to notice how people gave way to me.

  Was it because I was Khana, and without a veil? But they likely thought me a person from the desert. I wore Surun’ clothing and had called myself Surun’ at the gate. Then why did they give me way? I wondered next if it was out of respect for my burden, but some even bowed.

  I asked an Iyari woman for directions, surprised by how my own words sounded. Among the Surun’ and with Benesret I did not pay much attention to how the changes in my voice affected others. It was just another aspect of my transformation; my friends and even my grandchildren did not remark upon it. Here, in Iyar, my voice rang hoarse and hollow. The woman gave me directions bashfully, lowering her eyes from my gaze, even though I was old.

  Yes, this was the reason. That I was a man, and three-named strong. In Iyar, where women were not allowed deepnames and were taught to always speak softly, it mattered.

  At the hostel, a lie and a bribe took care of us once again. Uiziya was my sister, as I said at the gate, in need of a physicker. We were both snake-Surun’, trader and weaver, hoping for a miracle of healing.

  The room we got was of stone, rough-hewn and laid thickly with carpets. They were of poor quality, loosely woven, garish with green and chapa-diluted madder, which made the color look more pink than red. The designs of the carpets were rough, too—diamonds and circles piled on without rhythm or meaning. If I were still trading, I would refuse this offering. I could have afforded better rooms, but this got us closer to the Rainbow-Tiered Court of the Ruler of Iyar.

  I made Uiziya comfortable on a low bed piled with these badly made weaves. I paced until my legs ached so much that I could pace no more. I ordered food without either meat or fish; a desert custom, I said. I’d made it up on the spot. My people would eat fish but not meat; if I asked for fish, it could reveal me as Khana, and my people were not welcome in Iyar outside of our quarter, unless in possession of papers. I had never before concealed being Khana.

  Secrets. Always secrets. I was weary of secrets, and wanted to go home, wherever it was. Perhaps I just needed to be alone.

  A physicker came, and I paid him, but he told me nothing I had not already known. Uiziya did not wake, and I felt rotten to have shown the physicker her body, for he had shuddered at the sight of Uiziya’s leg, but gave us no aid. What healing did I seek anyway? What repair could be had for a wound that was woven from death?

  Why had I come here? For hope, but I did not know what hope meant anymore. A carpet. A life. Whose life? Mine, or Uiziya’s? I no longer knew. But I was stubborn, and did not want to give up.

  I put a sash around my waist and went down to the court once again. I asked if they knew someone else. A better physicker, someone who knew wasting illnesses and would not shy away from uneasy visions of illness.

  A special physicker. The one who comes from the palace.

  “I have coin,” I said, and bribed them even more lavishly this time, weaving my deepnames into the silver to sweeten the offering.

  Back in the room, I paced among stifling, thickwoven carpets. Uiziya was not dead. She wasn’t withered dry, or gone into some rod. She had woken briefly before, and would wake again. She had to.

  The second physicker came. A shorter one, bald and more lavishly dressed, his eyelids painted in green. He brought potions and ointments, and an odd, swinging speculum on a long chain, and he took his time examining Uiziya’s leg. But I saw his eye wander and rest upon the carpet of sand, rolled and tucked into a corner.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  The physicker spoke evasively. “There’s many a treasure in the Collector’s Rainbow-Tiered Court. Treasures smelted and strung, treasures hammered and burnished, treasures wrought and treasures woven. But among the treasures at the palace, none are greater than the treasures hidden.”

  “It’s just an old rug. My sister used to be a weaver in her youth.” I shrugged, pretending indifference I almost but didn’t quite feel. “But if you heal her, if she wakes up and speaks, then I have coin and will pay you lavishly.”

  The physicker nodded, his gaze sliding off mine. “I can give her this for easy sleep.” He showed me a deep green vial. “In the morning I’ll come again. I’ll prepare special potions to help her regain both con- sciousness and vitality. Does this seem amenable to you?”

  “Will she walk again, physicker?”

  “Your sister has sustained a grave wound,” the physicker said. “How did she come by it?”

  “Her aunt.”

  He frowned. “She might relearn to walk. And the goddess Bird might come to her with new flesh in her beak, as a gift. But you should not hope for it.”

  “You are harsh,” I said. “Unnec
essarily. This isn’t a jesting matter”

  “I do not deal in false promises.”

  It made me trust him, somehow, that he told me to hope for her life, not her wholeness. “You will come at dawn?”

  “Yes,” he said. “After the last move of the dawnsong is sung from the roofs of the Khana quarter.”

  “Then I’ll wait for you.”

  “Yes,” said the physicker. “Do.”

  Night had fallen in the springflower city of Iyar. I paced in the room, denying my body its pain. Uiziya slept quieter now, her breath more even and eased after taking the physicker’s potion. I should sleep, too, but I couldn’t. I had to go somewhere. Do something.

  Do a particular thing, and the need for it gripped me like my hands had once gripped Bashri-nai-Leylit’s moving chair, after she could no longer steer it with her deepnames. The knuckles of my hands flexed and tightened in memory. I had made the moving chair for her. And now I wanted to make another.

  Bashri-nai-Leylit. My lover. My leader. My best friend. My captor. She held such power over me. I let her because I loved her. Why didn’t you leave? my Surun’ friends asked me. You could have just left. You and all these women who tired of your way of life Yes, I could, and they could. Some women left for trading journeys and never returned, leaving their children behind to be brought up by grandmothers. But most did return. Our people’s women were held together by strong webs of love and kinship. Of oreg-mates, lovers. Of sisters and friends. Of grandmothers and their lovers. Of children and their lovers. Those who loved you held you in shape, even if this shape was all wrong.

  My lover, my Bashri-nai-Leylit, she did not want me to be a man. If I became a man, then she could not love me, she said. And I loved her. Benesret had woven a cloth of winds for me, a promise that I could come back and transform my body at any time, but Bashri had begged me to stay by her side. I gave her the cloth of winds in the end. For safekeeping. Give it to me when you’re ready, I said, but she never did.

  Still, I had made the moving chair for her when she ailed, and steered it for her after she no longer could move. She was dead now, but my hands still remembered the feeling of the cool white metal I gripped as I walked behind her.

  Uiziya was not Bashri. She wasn’t my lover. But I was responsible for this wound. If I hadn’t asked Uiziya to come with me, she wouldn’t have been injured. And I thought—I thought she betrayed me, when she never did.

  I got up at least, and called on my three powerful deepnames. Uiziya slept soundly. I warded the door with my magic, then took what I needed and stepped out. There was time yet, before the dawn.

  The streets of Iyar were even more fragrant at night, adorned with primrose blooming on balconies and in the tiny gardens; I saw the small purple flowers they called gugrai opening on the parasite vines that cloaked the walls. I wanted to put on a veil, but couldn’t find it.

  I edged closer and closer to the Khana quarter, my hands gripping at air.

  It felt strange to be back. The great double doors of the quarter were open as always at this time of night. It was shameful for Iyari to trade with the Khana people in daylight, so they sneaked in under the piercing regard of the stars. I walked under the outer gray walls, my hands surreptitiously touching the boulders of the quarter, shaped and chiseled before my great-great-great-grandmothers’ time. If I squinted hard, I could sense old magic buried in the stone, deepnames planted here centuries ago.

  Two Raw Guards flanked the open gate. These were automata created by Khana men for the protection of our quarter from the aggression of outsiders. The Raw Guards were gigantic, fashioned of white enameled metal, unmoving except for their emerald and lacquer eyes, which followed each guest as they entered the gates. Occasionally a Raw Guard’s white surface would ripple with the dark wriggles of holy Birdseed writ, and then the automaton would bend and push a person away, gently unless they resisted.

  I leaned on a nearby wall and watched the Raw Guards from the shadows for a while. The Khana men made these Guards, made them beyond the white walls of the inner quarter. The Khana scholars. When I was young, I dreamed of making such automata, pinnacles of craftsmanship and faith, but all I had was a secret workshop underground where women labored, making small objects too mundane and unimportant for the labor of men. My greatest work there had been a moving chair for Bashri-nai-Leylit, a work of nothing much in comparison to the Raw Guards.

  It was nothing much, but for decades, this work defined me. The underground artifice, and wearing men’s clothes, and the companionship of my mentor and my friends who were into such ways, and the scandalous gossip of others.

  I missed the work.

  I did not miss the others judging me. How they’d say, It’s just the old . . . I could not even bear to pronounce my old name in my head. Just the old—Just Bashri-nai-Leylit’s old lover running around the quarter in men’s clothing! I was not ready for that regard, not then, not again, now that my truth has been made manifest in my body. I wished I had grown out my beard like the men of my people, not shaved it in Surun’ style, but it was too late to undo that.

  Finally, I pushed myself off the wall, trying not to dwell too much on my fear. I wore Surun’ clothes—would that be enough to conceal me? They knew me. At least, they thought they did. My searching hands grasped a thin piece of fabric in the folds of my garment. The veil had been with me all along.

  With trembling hands, I unwound the transparent cloth and tied it around my head to obscure my features. How would this help, I was not sure, but I could not bear the thought of their glances upon me.

  I wanted to run away. This was scarier than Benesret’s tent of bones. The urge to run was overwhelming, but I needed to help Uiziya. She said she did not need my help, but I had to do something. The chair.

  My feet carried me past the unmoving Raw Guards, and into the riot of noise and light.

  Here, Iyari and foreign buyers mingled with each other. Khana women young and old ran around, adding magical candlebulbs to wires strung in a makeshift ceiling over the square, which already trembled with hundreds of these colorful lights. Beneath this riot, embroidered and faded shawls were stretched taut between four poles of the booths, each containing Khana women and their wares—jewelry and glass, clothing and carved razu ivory from the desert, spices from all the edges of the land where the Khana traders were permitted to go. The air was perfumed with turmeric and clove, bahra spice and persimmon wine. I breathed easier here, mesmerized by familiar sights and smells, and at once a stranger to them like never before.

  “Brother!” someone said in Surun’. It took me a moment to parse they were calling to me; I had forgotten all about my Surun’ clothing. “Take a look at this fine honey crystal . . .”

  It was a woman a decade younger than me. Someone I knew.

  I turned away sharply and pushed my way through the crowd. Did she recognize me? I remembered her name now. Morit. Morit-nai-Niglah from the Morit oreg.

  I was halfway to the edge of the square when she caught up with me. “Bashri? Bashri-nai-Tammah, is that you?”

  Hearing my old name hurt. Hurt more sharply than I thought possible. I opened my mouth to correct her, closed it. Said instead, “How did you know?”

  She giggled. “You always run around in men’s clothing, though I’ve never yet seen you in Surun’ men’s clothing . . . It looks good on you.”

  I shrugged to conceal my confusion and pain. “I’ll see you later, all right?”

  Not waiting for an answer, I pushed through the crowd, dove through the narrow side streets as fast as I could.

  I knew my way, and the special shape my deepnames could make to open the old rickety gate. It led down the stairs to another door, and more stairs beyond that, leading me underground.

  The workshop below was lit by candlebulbs that floated under the ceiling, but the room itself was empty. Everyone was at market. My workbench ap- peared untouched, covered by an oiled tarpcloth.

  I took off my veil and put it b
ack in my pocket. Pulled the tarp down. My scrap metal and my tools were all intact, and the complex deepname ward I had installed before leaving had kept them free from rust. Touching the tools anchored me. Man or woman, I was the person who knew how to use them.

  Uiziya needed a moving chair. I had no idea if she truly needed it. But I needed to make it for her. I had failed to heal Uiziya, failed in the first place to stop Benesret before she inflicted the wound. Because I believed Uiziya would betray me. I lacked trust, but I would not betray her now.

  I picked up the metalcutter and made it move with my deepnames.

  Uiziya e Lali

  I came to. Didn’t it always begin like this? There had been a physicker, and the shining grid of deepnames over my withered thigh. And words, his words in Iyari, which I could not understand. But the meaning was clear. He wanted a carpet that could be sold at market—no, not at market. Not sold. Given to someone.

  Nen-sasaïr’s voice, speaking rapidly, as if pleading.

  Darkness.

  When I returned from it, I was alone. The room was empty, warm and perfumed with a heavy, cloying scent that made my eyes sting and water. Lily flowers, there at the corner.

  The door opened, but in the frame, a net of shining deepname light glittered, stronger than any door. Behind the stinging light was a shadowed presence. A guardian of bones—Benesret herself, or someone like her. Perhaps my head was on fire and it was not Benesret. Just a person with bones under their skin.

  “Aunt,” I whispered, and my words reverberated off the old, stained alabaster ceiling, off the fabric- padded walls, echoing into harshness.