Thasha shuddered. It could have been her. It would have been her, if she had stayed much longer. When a single story about the world pursues you all day, every day, and even prowls the edges of your dreamlands, it soon becomes hard to remember that that story is just one among many. You hear no others, and if you remember them at all, it is like remembering snowflakes in the midst of a steaming jungle: silly, fantastic, almost unreal.
Of course, that was exactly the point.
But even as these thoughts came to her, Thasha felt a stab of guilt. Hadn't the Sisters themselves taught her all this about her mind? This, and a thousand other lessons? That there was more to love in this world than gossip and rich food and a dress from the Apsal Street tailors? And she thanked them with hate. By detesting them, laughing at them inwardly. By slandering them to her father. By dropping out.
She looked down at her hands. There was an ugly scar on her left palm that looked as though it had been made with a jagged stick. Almost two years ago, on her fifteenth night in the Lorg, Thasha had run to this bench in tears, guilt like she had never dreamed of hammering in her chest: guilt for existing, for not loving the Sisters as they loved her, for letting her father waste his fortunes in sending her here, where she spat on every opportunity. Guilt for questioning the Sisters, guilt for trying not to feel guilty. It was unendurable, this guilt, even before the elder Sisters caught up with her. We warned you, they said. We told you exactly what you would feel. A girl who chooses to be weak may hide the truth, but her heart knows. What does it know? That its owner is a vain and useless blight upon the earth. A canker. A parasite. Tell us we're wrong, girl. Thasha could only sob as they prattled on, adding up reasons for grief, and then she reached out and snapped off a brittle rose stem and drove it straight through her left hand.
The Sisters shrieked; one hit her on the back of the head; but the act of mutilation saved Thasha's life. She knew it: another minute and she would have died of self-loathing. As it was her head cleared instantly, and she thought, How obvious, how brilliant, to make us love them for torturing us! And before the Sisters marched her to the infirmary Thasha swore that however long she stayed, she would think her own thoughts and feel her own feelings when she sat on that bench.
Yes, she had become a woman here. By fighting them.
Thasha rose now, and with grateful fingers bid her bench goodbye. Then she turned and moved swiftly toward the fish hatcheries. She could see the Mother Prohibitor's red cloak through the translucent glass. Don't explode, don't attack her, she thought. You're almost free.
Some girls would never know freedom again. The Lorg had no graduation process. You simply stayed until you found a way of leaving, and there were not many of those. You could drop out in highest disgrace, which was Thasha's choice, even though the furious Sisters had promised to warn every other school in the city of her 'spiritual deformities.' You could murder a Sister, which was slightly less disgraceful. You could be recalled by your parents, as Thasha had begged her father to do in fifty-six letters, starting her first night in the Lorg. You could (this was Thasha's invention) climb Sister Ipoxia's weeping cherry until the rubbery tree bent over with your weight and dropped you over the wall; but the local constables had sharp eyes, and hauled runaways back to the Academy at once, for which they received the blessings of the Mother Prohibitor and a handful of coins.
Or you could marry. This was the one entirely legitimate way out of the Lorg. The school sponsored two Love Carnivals a year, when the Sisters dropped their teaching, gardening, wine-making and catfish cultivation to become frenetic, full time matchmakers. One of these started in just three days: by then Thasha wanted to be far from the Lorg. Her timing had enraged the Mother Prohibitor. Someone had heard her shout in the vestry: 'Three hundred men seeking Love Conferences, and she renounces? What are we to tell the nine who put her at the top of their lists?'
(Nine suitors, girls had whispered behind Thasha's back. And she's only sixteen.)
As the Sister who taught Erotic Dance had told them yesterday (exhausted into something like honesty; her skills were in great demand this time of year), one needn't be rich to attend the Lorg. The school also recognized merit-that is, beauty. Thasha's classmates included a number of exceptionally lovely girls from modest households. Not a bad investment for the Lorg: what their families could not pay, their future husbands would gladly make up for in matchmaking fees.
It was a thriving enterprise. The girls nearly always consented. Marriage to a wealthy stranger felt like charity once you believed you deserved nothing more than contempt.
The Mother Prohibitor was a lanky, quick-moving old woman; in her red rector's cloak she put one in mind of a scarlet ibis looking for dinner among the tanks of newly hatched fish. When Thasha opened the door of the glass house enclosing the tanks she looked up sharply, and gestured with a dripping hand-net.
'My eyes begin to fail me,' she said, in her surprisingly deep voice. 'Look at their tail spines, girl. Are they yellow?'
Thasha gathered her cloak and knelt by the tank. 'Most are yellow-tailed, Your Grace. But there are some with green stripes. Very pretty fish, they'll be.'
'We must catch them. Those green ones. All of them, right now.'
She held out the net. Thasha noted the great emerald ring on the woman's pale hand. Girls gossiped about that ring: it bore the words DRANUL VED BRISTФLJET DORO-Where thou goest, I follow fast-in silver Old Arquali script about the priceless gem. Some girls thought the phrase a magic charm. Others held that it was the motto of a secret order, not the Lorg merely but some guild of crones scattered across the world and elbow-deep in the plots and schemes and stratagems that ruled it. Thasha felt the old woman watching her. She took the net from her hand.
The tank was shallow, and Thasha caught the dozen or so green-tailed hatchlings in a matter of minutes, dropping them one by one into a bucket next to the Mother Prohibitor.
'They will not be pretty fish, Thasha Isiq,' said the old woman when she was done. 'They will not be any sort of fish much longer. The Accateo now specializes in bili catfish, these yellow-tails. A more succulent meat, they have. They fetch an excellent price, and the Slugdra ghost-doctors will also pay for their intestines, which they use in love potions. There, Sister Catarh has brought your street clothes.'
Thasha looked up quickly at the Sister in the doorway, who set down a bundle tied with string, bowed and withdrew.
'I will thank you not to grin like an imbecile,' said the Mother Prohibitor. 'Get up! So you're leaving. Did you meditate this morning on your tragically altered fortunes?'
'I did, Your Grace.'
'You're lying, naturally,' said the old woman, her tone matter-of-fact as she churned the water of the tank with her cane. Thasha bit her tongue. Legend held that the Mother Prohibitor felt a needle in her side whenever a girl lied in her presence. Thasha hoped for a few more opportunities.
'Failure,' the Mother Prohibitor was saying, 'is not an accident. Not a thug who grabs you in an alley. It is a liaison in a darkened house. It is a choice.'
'Yes, Your Grace.'
'Be still. The bane of that choice will pursue you. Though you flee to the ends of the earth, it will dog your heels.'
Really, thought Thasha. We live just nine blocks away.
The Mother Prohibitor took a letter from her robe and studied it, as one might a fruit gone suddenly and swiftly rotten. 'Failure withers the lives of those who choose it. That is why it has no place in our curriculum. Only two girls this century have left in disgrace. I praise your good father'-she raised the letter-'that he has kept you from becoming the third.'
'He sent for me!' The words burst out of Thasha before she could stop herself.
'While you wear that robe you are a Lorg Daughter, and will obey me,' said the Mother Prohibitor. 'Yes, he sent for you. Do you know why?'
'Perhaps he misses me, Your Grace. I know he does.'
The old woman just looked at her.
'Are you of the faith, child?' she asked. 'Do you believe that there is a Tree in Heaven, the Milk Tree as we name it, and that this world of Alifros is but one of its fair fruits that in time must ripen and fall, or be picked by Rin's own hand?'
Thasha swallowed. 'I don't know, Your Grace.'
The old woman sighed. 'The truth will find you, if you are half the young woman you seem. Go now with our blessing, and know that the voices of your sisters old and young will be raised in song, that the Angel who guides all
