'Why, so was I! Who is Nallo?'
'My father's wife.'
'She's not your mother?'
Avisha looked at Zi, sprawled on the shawl and snoring with toddler snuffles in the blessed shade. 'My mother is dead. My father remarried soon after. That's Nallo.'
'A second wife! Is she kind to you, or awful?'
'She's got a murderous temper, and she slapped me once! But then Father got angry at her, and he never loses his temper, so she apologized and she never did it again. How I wish she was here. She's very tough-minded. Nothing scares her.'
'Where is she?'
'They took her to the reeve hall. They said she was chosen by an eagle and she has to be a reeve even though she doesn't want to be one.'
'Is that how it goes? You get chosen by an eagle? Even women?'
'Of course even women,' said Avisha. Really, outlanders were so ignorant! 'If an eagle chooses you, then you have to be a reeve. Isn't it that way where you come from?'
'We don't have reeves where I come from. Although I suppose that's not true anymore. I come from here, now.' The girl's expression brightened momentarily, then darkened as she recalled a bitter thought. She sighed heavily. 'Hu! Enough of feeling sorry for myself. What of your father, then? Where is he?'
It was like being slapped in the face.
'My father's dead, isn't he?' Avisha snapped.
The girl flinched, and the echo of the words — not the sound but the ugly anger in her own voice — made Avisha cringe with the vivid memory of the ruined village, the swarming flies, the sweet stink of rotting flesh, and the acrid stench of burned houses. Of the way the mellow green cloth of her father's jacket and trousers had rucked up around his corpse. She mustn't bring that anger with her now, or she'd never save herself and the children. She heaved in breaths, shaking.
The outlander draped an arm around her shoulders. 'You're safe here.'
'How can we be safe?' Avisha sobbed into her hands. She'd hammered it in for so many days. 'We've no close kin. We owe rent to
the landlady, so she wants to sell our labor, so we'd have to become slaves. All I can hope for is that some outlander I don't know might want to marry me because people say I'm pretty, and that counts for something, although you must wonder what I'm frothing on about thinking too well of myself since I must look like a field hen with my feathers all every-way for I haven't had a bath in days and our clothes must be stinking, and all torn besides. And I have the little ones and I can't just let them go. I wouldn't anyway, and it would be a terrible dishonor to my father's memory to sell their labor just to save myself. Now what will we do? Who will want us all? Why would anyone agree to take us in?'
Her voice became brisk and competent. 'Priya, bring me a cup of sweet ginger cordial.'
Avisha gulped down sobs and raised her head, but there was no one else in the garden. The little ones still slept. They were so very tired. She was all they had, now that Nallo had been dragged from them. She hadn't leisure for weeping. She was an artisan's daughter, accustomed to working hard, not some city-bred girl lounging in elegant fashions and thinking she could get forty cheyt — whoever had forty cheyt altogether except maybe the temples! — from some outlander to marry him.
With a fierce scowl, she rubbed the tears from her cheeks and swallowed her fear and her anger. 'Eiya! I don't know what came over me. Best I leave you, verea. I'm sure you have your duties to be about. I wouldn't want you to get beaten for shirking.'
'No, I wouldn't want that either. Here is Priya and she's brought some ginger cordial. Won't you taste it? It's very good. It's my favorite right now, for it settles the stomach. Priya, maybe some juice for the two little ones, although I don't think we should wake them yet.'
A woman with amazingly dark skin and round outlander features offered her a cup with a kindly smile. Dazed, she took it and sipped the most glorious sweet ginger concoction, sharp but light on the tongue. Its bite rose to her eyeballs, making them water.
'Eihi! That's good!'
The girl stood, her expression transforming as she smiled. The older woman took several steps back. Belatedly, Avisha turned to look behind her.
'Here you are, Mai.'
A man walked into the garden, wiping wet hands. He wore black, like the Qin, and he was accompanied by a middle-aged Qin soldier with the typical round face and merry eyes of the foreigners and by a huge man with a slight slump and a complexion rather like the pretty girl's. Outlanders, all. The man was not handsome but not ordinary. He halted with his hands out in front of him, registered Avisha's presence, and looked around the garden as if expecting a tiger to leap out and devour him. Of course he noticed the sleeping children. He looked back at her. Really, he was a fearsome man with a commanding stare, a sword swinging casually at his hip, and a way of looking at you that made Avisha feel she had done something very wrong.
Then he looked away. The older woman handed him a cloth and he finished wiping dry his hands.
'You are returned.' The young woman used that same cool voice Avisha had noticed when she and the little ones had first stumbled into the garden, but Avisha thought she understood it better now: it was the voice of a woman holding her emotions in check.
'We are returned, and we have seen much to interest us. Who is this?' He pointed at Avisha. 'Who are those children?'
'Don't point with your finger, Anji. It's considered rude. This is Avisha. And that is… ah, Jerad, and the little girl is Zi'an, I think.'
'Zianna,' said Avisha reflexively. 'Zi'an would be a boy's name although that would be very old- fashioned.'
'Thank you,' said the girl. 'Avisha, this is Captain Anji.'
Avisha rose hastily and brushed off her horrifically rumpled and dirty clothing.
'Where did she come from?'
'From the courtyard gate.' Mai indicated the stand of pipewood. 'Now that I think of it, Chief, how will I ever convince the Ri Amarah to allow one of their daughters to visit me if I can't promise a secure house?'
The middle-aged man narrowed his eyes. 'That door was secure at dawn, for I checked it myself.' He trotted over to the gate.
The captain's gaze assessed Avisha. He was like the temple clerks, toting up numbers that might not bring them any personal benefit but needed accounting because that was their job and one they were
accustomed to doing well. 'Who is she? Certainly not one of the Red Hounds, for they don't admit women to their ranks. An assassin from the temples, perhaps?'
Mai seemed amused. 'She's a girl from a village. These are her siblings. She hopes to find a husband among the troop.'
'Ah.' He handed the cloth to the older woman and turned to look through the open door, into an interior Avisha could not see. 'Nothing I need concern myself with, then. Mai, I have an idea Keshad might actually be useful.'
The older soldier walked back to them, shaking his head in disgust. 'When I find out who left that unsecured, I'll whip him myself.'
'Tuvi-lo,' said the captain. 'Where did the prisoner go off to? He was right behind us.'
Inside, a familiar voice rose. 'Don't touch that! Don't you know a priceless vase when you see one? What kind of five-burned fool are you?'
The splintering crash of ceramic meeting floor answered the question. Gales of laughter followed this assault, accompanied by a few choice swear words that genuinely shocked Avisha, for the only person she had ever heard say such rude things was the disreputable village drunk.
'Who did that?' demanded Mai in a voice meant to carry indoors. 'If that vessel was truly valuable, then the owners of this house will have to be paid its value out of your own portion. What a waste!'
Her words cut short the laughter. Three young men filed into the garden. One was smirking, one was still stifling laughter, and the third was fuming with such intensity that Avisha expected steam to rise from the top of his
