rode out to meet them. He had a whip in his hand. He slashed her across the shoulders so hard she screamed from the shock as pain cut deep. But even dizzied and stunned, she did not fall from the mare's back.
Not until he brought the whip down a second time, and a third and fourth and fifth and more. The pain of lashing washed her entire body and her hands went numb and her legs lost all feeling. She tumbled to the ground, and struck her head.
A silver mist, sparkling with bright flecks of burning ash, swallowed her in its pale wings. She blacked out.
Vomiting, she came to, the vile liquid spitting down her chin. She was splayed on her stomach on the hard floorboards of one of the wagons. Sun shone in her eyes, making her gag and retch.
The young man was yelling at the old man. 'Yah yah yah! Yah yah yah!'
The old one shouted back. 'Yah yah yah! Yah yah yah!'
The wagon shifted as the young man clambered up and tugged at her felt jacket, then grabbed the waistband of her trousers and yanked.
She kicked. The old man connected with the whip, and the crack made her wheeze with fear and pain, only it hadn't hit her. The young one shrieked, gabbling, and the old man yahhed furiously. The curtain dropped, cutting off the painful light, and she was left alone. Her head throbbed so badly. Men yelled in the distance, echoing and buzzing.
The wagon lurched forward. She coughed and spat, and her insides clenched. Bile spewed. Ashamed of her weakness, she wept.
She slipped out of sleep in a drowsy half-awareness. A wagon rocked beneath her with the comforting rhythm of home. Except
the air smelled wrong, too dusty, too bitter. Iron braces shackled her wrists. Tugging, she came up short like a hobbled horse. What nightmare was this?
When she opened her eyes, a sea of cloth billowed around her. Her stomach roiled. Dizzy, she retched until nothing was left to bring up, and then kept retching because her body would not stop trying to cast up its leavings. Or its heart. Or its soul.
She was trapped in demon land.
She smelled the place before they reached it. The air stank of manure and urine, of an overhanging mildew and the rotting sweet corruption of garbage left in the sun. The dust tasted as if it had been crushed too many times beneath the haunches of dogs and the thighs of dirt-stained women who never were allowed to wash.
She heard such a clamor beyond the accustomed tromping and scraping of the caravan that she wondered what battle they had wandered into, but from within her cage she could see through only a slit in the canvas that widened and narrowed as the wagon jounced. A tent wall. A child's dirty face. More tents, oddly textured and aligned, not proper tents at all. A woman walking with a basket balanced atop her head. A flowering tree splendidly clothed in stark white blooms, a thing of rare beauty that made her close her eyes because it hurt to see beautiful things in demon land.
They rattled to a stop. Men shouted in tough, argumentative voices. A whip cracked. She flinched, but no cord struck her.
She tested the limits of her chains, pushing with her feet, pulling and tugging while careful not to make the sores at her wrists worse than they already were, for they were raw and weeping. The peg fixing one chain shifted, like a breath let out. She jerked with all her might.
The wagon lurched forward, pitching her onto the floorboards. She tasted blood on her lip, licked it, savoring the flavor. What lives, bleeds. As long as she bled, she had not lost her soul.
She counted back days, so she would not forget. Probably the eastern merchant meant to cheat her; he could not be trusted. One year held eighteen passages of the moon, and each passage of the moon held twenty-four dawns. She had been careful to keep count
as the caravan rumbled east out of the lake bed and up into new country.
Twenty days she had been chained in the wagon, allowed out at dusk to walk around under heavy guard. Three days before that she had watched her brother ride away. Today was a new day, the end of her first month of being a servant. If she had survived this, she could survive another seventeen months.
They passed into shadow, as though night had fallen. Then they emerged into light, and through the slit she saw they were in a confluence more crowded than the assembly at the Targit River. Stiff tents raised out of wood were packed one up against another. Truly, who ever thought there was so much wood in the world? Other tents were built of stone, just as it said in the tales, or of a clay-red rock with squared corners. No one raised proper tents here.
Folk moved along the open spaces, thoroughfares packed with people trudging and carrying and pushing wheeled carts and barking dogs and crying children until her head hurt. The howl never let up, only muted when they came around several corners and thence past a wall and into a quieter enclosure. The wagon halted. The dray beasts were unhitched; they crunched away over dirt to slobber at a trough. The smell of water was like sweetest honey on her tongue, for she'd had nothing to drink that day.
She set to work on the peg, bracing her feet against the wagon, straining, pulling, until she was sweating and in a rage with frustration. Her left wrist had begun to bleed.
Blood means life.
She heard the old man's voice, answered by that of a woman. She swung around to face the approaching threat. The entrance flap was untied and swept back.
An old woman with a commanding bearing stared belligerently in at her. She was dressed in such an astounding wealth of silk that Kirya knew she must be a headwoman of great consequence. The old one grunted with displeasure, and another woman clambered into the wagon to unlock the chains. Cautiously, Kirya crawled out of the wagon. She stood in a space surrounded on all sides by high walls. Dusty green trees shaded the trough at which dray beasts watered. A boy swept fresh droppings into a pan, but when he saw her, he stopped working to stare with mouth dropped open.
Grooms turned, pointing and whispering. A girl half hidden in a doorway stepped out into the sun to squint at her.
'Yah yah!' yelled the old woman at the loiterers.
Folk abandoned the open space. Only the old merchant, the headwoman, and a trio of cousins remained. The women in their embroidered caps and bright silks looked very much alike with broad faces and reddish-clay complexions.
'Are you human, or demon?' Kirya asked.
The old woman grabbed her hands, clucking over the sores on her wrists as she scolded the old man in a withering harangue which he ended by throwing up his hands and walking away. This impertinence toward the headwoman passed without comment. Kirya found herself led to a long wooden tent with a narrow door guarded by two men holding staffs and barred by wooden beams that must be shifted before the door could be opened.
Inside was a confusing mash of walls, women, cloth, and doors, and beyond it a space surrounded by a high wall. Girls and young women pressed forward to touch her as she was led through their ranks into a place with a pair of vast copper tubs. Now, again, she must strip and bathe, only this time twenty or more females, mostly young but some old, sat on or stood behind benches and stared with eyes wide and whispered comments but not a breath of laughter. The tub soon muddied, and she stepped out to stand dripping on cold tiles. A child brought a cloth, and she dried herself. The old woman fanned herself on a stool as she examined Kirya with the implacable gaze of a headwoman who considers the impact of a stranger come into her tribe.
She gestured. A girl hurried forward to collect Kirya's discarded clothing. Kirya grabbed for it, but the old woman slapped her on the wrists with a quirt — right where the sores made them most raw — and Kirya yelped and withdrew her hands as she was left naked.
A girl brought perfumed soap, and indicated the other tub, filled with clean water. While Kirya washed herself again, and washed the grime out of her hair, the old woman searched through the soft leather pouch that held Kirya's mirror, her comb, her cup and spoon, and the beaded nets Mariya had given her. The old woman handled these things and set them aside as of no value. No doubt she could not respect a woman without bow and knife.
Silks were brought, and their colors held up against Kirya's body, and comments made — yes or no by the swaying of heads and clatter of hands and excited whispers. They dressed her in silk of unspeakable softness,
