Miri was in shock and hardly noticed as she was grabbed roughly and led out through the broken door. One by one, the younger novices were led out, and screams cut short inside the nunnery indicated the fate of the other nuns.
Miri thought of the purity dagger around her neck. Despite what her grandmother had said, there was still time to use it. But she found her hands were tied behind her. When had that happened? Looking around in a daze, she saw thirty or forty warriors. Many were wounded. All were unmistakably Kitran: big, bearded, oddly proportioned in the way that set the Kitran apart from all other people.
She was separated from the other women, while the Kitran commander—judging from his fancy armor—talked to two other men and gestured at her. Miri was forced to stand under the sacred gate, and then her arms and legs were tied to the posts on either side. To her dismay, they stripped her, not just of her outer robe but her inner robe and then, everything. She was helpless. She looked down at the small silver knife hanging between her breasts; it was useless as well.
The commander came up to her and grabbed her by the throat, forcing her head up.
“You are the one who caused the town to fight, aren’t you?” He spoke her language badly. A perfect savage, she thought.
Miri could hardly speak with him choking her, but she forced out one word. “Yes.”
“A lot of my men died because of you. This town was going to surrender. It was arranged.” He looked at her and then smiled cruelly. “This town was going to burn—after we took everything. You just made it more costly. You would have fetched a high price on the slave block at Big Camp.” He looked up and down her body and grinned. “A very high price. But instead, you’ll die. As an example. Oppose the Kitran Empire and die.”
He took the silver knife from her by yanking the thin silk cord and breaking it. It hurt her neck, but Miri didn’t think this was going to compare to the pain to come. Fear and cold numbed her. The Kitran commander drew the small blade and tossed away the sheath.
“The slut women of Shila wear these. I’ve often wondered: How sharp are these little blades?”
Before he said anything more, an arrow pierced his neck. Miri saw the look of stunned surprise in his eyes as he dropped her knife and reached up to touch the arrow shaft. Blood gushed from his mouth, and he sank to his knees and then fell face down at her feet. There was blood on her face and her breasts, which she could do nothing about. Miri looked around wildly, but her long hair obscured her vision.
Arrows seemed to be flying from the east and striking the Kitrans. The barbaric warriors cursed and shouted and died. Miri pulled at the leather straps that held her stretched between the posts, but to no avail. The Kitran tried to form a circle, but the attack was unrelenting. Miri noticed one Kitran soldier looking at her steadily. He drew his dagger, and in the faint light of the dawn, she saw the blade was tinged red.
He is going to kill me.
Miri held the Kitran’s gaze, seeing her death in his black eyes. With what seemed like a slow, lazy movement, he raised his arm, but the soldier next to him spun around with a javelin sticking out of his chest, knocking the warrior with the dagger to his knees.
At least fifty men charged the remaining Kitran with swords drawn. Jay and Ven were in the lead. They cut down everyone in front of them with such fast blows that blood fountained up from bodies in their wake. Miri felt such a surge of emotion that she nearly screamed—whether from relief, or joy or anger, she couldn’t say.
Then it was over. Jay came up to her and cut the leather straps that tied her with four quick strokes. She sank to her knees as Ven threw a cloak over her naked body.
“Grandmother is dead. They killed her right inside the nunnery,” she told them.
“Is it so?” Ven said. “They murdered an abbess of Ekon? A matriarch of House Kirdar? My grandmother? Now I’m angry! Now every Kitran will die here today!”
“Calm, brother,” responded Jay. “Do not let your rage overcome you. We do as we must, but yes—they will all die.” Pointing at two of his men, Jay told them to guard the women. Then the warriors of the Scythe moved down the hill, silently, bows at the ready, filled with deadly purpose.
Miri saw that several of the novices had been stripped bare like her. The naked women all huddled together, away from all the dead bodies. One nun steeled herself and went inside the nunnery. She came out with an armful of clothes, a look of horror on her face, and blood on her feet.
Miri dressed herself in a white silk robe and went over to the sacred gate. She looked on the ground for her purity knife. It was right beside the dead Kitran commander. She picked it up and gazed at it. Should she use it? Had she been sufficiently dishonored such that suicide was the proper end? She imagined the act: bringing the blade up to her throat and then the sudden thrust.
No. No. She hadn’t been dishonored. She had done what she thought was the right thing. It had been the right thing. The Kitran commander had said it himself. They were going to burn the village, kill the men and the old, and sell the rest into slavery. She found the sheath and, making a new knot in the silk cord, she hung it around her neck.
An hour of additional fighting was required before the Kitran were driven out of the town. Despite Ven’s fury, a few Kitrans were taken alive. They would be brought back to Birumaz for questioning and subsequent execution. Once the fighting was over, to Miri’s keen relief, Diasu came up the road to the nunnery, carrying one of Miri’s robes in her arms.
Diasu admitted she had hidden in a secret place in the basement of the inn, beside the innkeeper’s wife, under several sacks of rice.
To Miri’s extreme and lasting sadness, Diasu told her that nearly all the Birumaz soldiers had died in the fighting, including Captain Ronant and Vice Commander Sorst. Somehow Miri knew Sorst was dead before she was told. She had known it when the drums stopped beating, as though it had been his heartbeat that resounded through the town during the battle.
The Scythe was marshalling in the market square, and Miri and Diasu slowly walked down to see them. She got down on her knees along with everyone else still alive in Marsolil and formally gave thanks to the warriors of the Scythe for their aid. Many people had died in the town, but more had lived. Miri briefly hugged her cousins, Jay and Ven, and then returned to the inn, where thankfully no one had been murdered. She collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.
When Miri returned from Marsolil to Birumaz, she returned as a hero, a living incarnation of Princess Juksora. Her role in the defense of Marsolil was magnified, given more weight than the truth, which was easy since there were almost no survivors other than the townsfolk. At the direct request of High Lord Palsomo of House Kirdar, her father was officially pardoned, his record scrubbed clean. He was summoned back from the north and offered his old post with the navy.
Miri was formally presented at the illustrious palace of House Kirdar with an elaborate ceremony. Her heroic deeds were read out to the assembled guests while she stood next to High Lord Palsomo. Even as all this was happening to her, Miri seemed at a distance from the events. It was as though she were watching herself do these things, but it was somehow not her.
She told no one of her feelings, not even Diasu. An unbridgeable gap had emerged between them. Miri could not explain why. But it didn’t trouble her. Nothing troubled her, except her dreams where she saw her grandmother’s throat slit and Sorst’s head on a spear. The latter was odd because that was something she hadn’t seen; by the time she entered the central square, the heads of Sorst and Captain Ronant had been taken down and respectfully reunited with their bodies.
Not unexpectedly, she was also treated as something of a pariah. What really happened to Miri at Marsolil was known and talked about by the highest-ranking members of House Kirdar; admittedly, a small group of people with no interest in having the true story spread. A total of perhaps sixty men of the Scythe brigade had seen her naked, strung up be
tween two posts like a murderer about to be executed. Nearly all of those men were supporters of House Kirdar, to the bone. The story that was told around Birumaz and later, throughout Shila, was very close to the truth—just not the whole truth.
The key question uppermost in the minds of House Kirdar’s leaders was: Had she been raped? The surviving witnesses from the nunnery all said no, and the old women who tested her concluded she was still a virgin. Yet Miri’s stigma remained.
Her marriage was formally called off, excused by a sudden illness on the part of her once-promised husband. At least her family could keep the gifts already given them. After her broken marriage became known, a dozen officers sent matchmakers asking for her hand. This meant that some men in the army either didn’t know what had happened or didn’t care.
Miri would have been willing to accept one of the offers, though she found that she had no feelings for any of the men. However, the leaders of House Kirdar now saw Miri in a new light. Because of what had happened at Marsolil, she had become a gilded woman, a new piece on the chessboard of marriages and alliances.
Three months ago, she had been one of the least important unmarried women of House Kirdar. Now, she was known as a heroine, a woman of the highest character, a rare woman who had demonstrable courage. Her beauty now meant something; it was seen as a reflection of her inner worth. Thanks to her conduct throughout the battle, the diplomats of House Kirdar looked at her with an avid interest, and she was suddenly being tutored by the same teachers who educated High Lord Palsomo’s daughters—truly the finest minds of the western provinces.
For a week, there was serious talk about marrying her to a young prince of House Tols in Sorabol—news that sent her mother into a state of near ecstasy. News that once would have pleased Miri beyond anything, though now it left her unmoved. It was unreal, she thought, and in this she was correct.
The danger of the true story of her public humiliation at the hands of the Kitran was debated in her presence, which she thought was odd. Didn’t they think she cared? Didn’t they know she had come this close to killing herself after Jay had freed her?
The chief diplomat, an uncle of the high lord, said, “We should have just told everyone. Used the girl’s mistreatment as another torch to inflame opinion. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about keeping it a secret.” But it was too late now.
The diplomats of House Kirdar had definitely played up the profaning of the nunnery: four nuns murdered, including the abbess, two novices raped, sacred statues of Ekon smashed. As Sorst had predicted, the Rutal-lil were furious. For more than four hundred years, the Rutal-lil had been the defenders of Ekon in Shila, and they demanded revenge. Their leader, before all the court, called upon King Olvin to remedy the outrage committed by Kitran. The king’s hand was forced, and the Kitran Nakovit had been ignominiously expelled from Sorabol. Cities and towns on the western side of the country had thrown out their Kitran officials, and Birumaz was seen as the leader of resistance, which was no more than the truth. House Kirdar’s reputation stood high.
With the princely marriage abandoned, she was next considered as a spouse for one of the lords of Budin, specifically Lord Onell of the Channel Islands situated between Shila and Budin. He was a powerful man, rich from trade, and his ancestors had often married women from Shila. His wife had recently died, and Miri, despite her youth, could move in as his new primary wife.
But again, the diplomats of House Kirdar concluded Lord Onell’s household was too closely connected to Shila. On the one hand, being out on the islands, there was only a small chance of Lord Onell learning the true story of Marsolil. On the other hand, as a new primary wife, the other wives would have their daggers out for Miri. The slightest hint of scandal would be assiduously dug up, investigated, and used against her.
So the most unlikely marriage prospect—when it was first suggested—ended up becoming the marriage they asked her to attempt. The diplomats concluded that she was the best woman to go to the very center of Serica and seek to marry the new ruler of Kunhalvar. The true story of Marsolil would not follow her, and even if some garbled version did get told in Kunhalvar, Jay and Ven would be able to back her, because they would be coming with her on the journey.
She agreed.
For a week, Miri could have been a princess, living in Sorabol, primary wife to one of the sons of the king. She had come that close to realizing her dream destiny. But she also knew that she had been seconds away from death, and she had to admit that, in a small contradiction of the teachings of Ekon, she was happy to be alive. Happy to be able to play her timbal and read poetry, happy that her father, though very sick, was back in Birumaz.
When she told her parents what the diplomats wanted her to do, there was silence at first. After thirty heartbeats, her mother spoke:
“I know the house leaders have considered this carefully. They were always going to send you into danger, Daughter. Kunhalvar is the ancient heart of Serica. Did not the poet Orjan spend time there and write of the moonlight on the waters of the great Mur River?”
Her father nodded slowly. “I give my consent. The wise men of the family have spoken. Who are we to oppose them on matters about which we know so little?”
Weeks later, the evening before she left Birumaz, her father summoned her to his study and gave her a newly made leather-bound book.
“I had this made for you,” he told her with a wan smile. “The navy owes me for services rendered.” He opened up the book and showed her pages of detailed plans for a warship.
“This is my boat. It works.” He stopped and coughed for many heartbeats. Miri gave him a cup of tea, and he drank it gratefully. “Two have been built in the years since I was…sent away, and the captains say they are nimble and sturdy. I have never seen the Mur, but by all accounts it is the mightiest river in the world. My boats were designed to defend our coast from attacks out of Budin, operating in shallow waters. It may be that my warboat will be useful to the Lord of Kunhalvar even though he controls a river, not a sea.”
Miri accepted the book with a strange feeling, as if it had been given to her, but she was not receiving it. Her father noticed her expression, and he guessed her mind.
“Think of this as a gift to your future husband. I call my boat the Pomoz Dragon.”
After brushing up on her Serice, both spoken and written, and a daylong session on the current (and confused) political situation in Serica, she set sail from Pomoz with Jay and Ven, a guide, and chest full of gold and silver.
Diasu had offered to go with her, but Ineba, the former runner boy, now a manservant to her father and growing taller by the day, had made no secret of his desire to marry Diasu. Miri thought it would be wrong to take Diasu away given the near promise she had made to the runner boy and because Ineba’s feat had helped save both their lives. Further, going without a maidservant allowed her to travel in disguise, which appealed to her taste for costume.
This was why Miri was now standing on the deck of a massive Serica warship, staring at fireflies far from home a year after she nearly died at Marsolil.
She had to admit that she had failed in her mission: she did not marry Lord Vaina. It was the fault of that bitch Eun, from House Tols, coupled with Lord Vaina’s self-imposed limit of just four wives! Such self-denial was uncharacteristic of Serice rulers, and Miri found it admirable, even though it dashed her hopes and the plans of her house. If only she had arrived in Tokolas earlier. But then, this was the constant story of House Kirdar: always House Tols was one step ahead. It had been that way for hundreds of years, House Tols ruled in Sorabol, and Sorabol ruled over all of Shila, with House Kirdar usually coming in second.
As failures went, hers was an acceptable one. At least she was married to one of Lord Vaina’s chief advisors. Much could be done from such a position. Advisors had both power and information. Eun, despite her brave words, was just one wife out of four, and until she bore
Lord Vaina a son, she was the least important. Even if she birthed a son, as a woman from Shila, Eun would never become the prime wife. Back at the palace in Tokolas, how often did Eun see Lord Vaina? One day out of four? Miri’s husband met with Lord Vaina every day. With the passage of years, Miri could learn much of value from Sandun.
Here she was, not quite twenty, and her life, once unremarkable, was now the stuff of tales told by storytellers. She had already traveled more than four thousand tik. How much farther would she go? To Kelten? It seemed possible that one day Sandun would return to his homeland, and she would go with him. Perhaps they would sail from Kelten across the lesser sea and visit the fabled islands of the Archipelago. And from the Archipelago, the easiest way to return to Serica was by ship, sailing the Great Sea to Ice Island and its legendary mountain of fire. And from there, boarding a ship to Budin. One day, perchance she would sail into Pomoz harbor, having traveled west all around the world.
She smiled secretly at her fantasy. More likely her traveling days would end when she bore her new husband a child—assuming that he survived the coming battle with Nilin Ulim and his army of Kitran cavalry. She and the Rakeved princess might fight themselves widows less than a month after getting married.
Strangely, the Rakeved girl seemed to love her husband. But then, the princess had known her husband in every sense of the word before getting married. Scandalously, she had lived with her Kelten man for months! Rakeved women were famous for their independent spirit, and Princess Tuomi openly lived up to that reputation.
Miri, by contrast, didn’t know Sandun at all. He was a stranger to her, and from a land she knew almost nothing about. Why had she let the Lord Vaina talk her into the marriage? His reasons seemed so convincing at the time: she would be doing Lord Vaina a favor, his chief advisor was wounded, only the Lady Kirdar could heal him, only a woman from Shila could really understand a scholar from Kelten. Oh yes, her father would have said the Lord Vaina could talk a lamb from the mouth of a wolf. Miri had never known anyone so charming and so persuasive.
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