a dagger she's hidden in her bosom!'
Mai sobbed, and Miravia embraced her, and then they both began to laugh because laughing was better than crying.
The sixth bell tolled across the settlement to mark the final descent into night.
Miravia shrieked and scrambled to her feet. 'I have to go! I said I would meet him-!'
'No!'
'Yes!' How Miravia's face glowed at the thought of meeting a lover she ought not to have. 'I thought, if I just devour him, then I'll have done it and I can think more clearly. And he'll have slaked his thirst, and he'll leave me alone and stop pestering me!'
'You go to the temple?'
'I go every week. I don't have to obey my family's strictures any longer. Why should I deny myself?'
To know that the women and men of the Hundred worshiped at Ushara's temple was one thing. To see Miravia making ready to leave with a reckless look in her eyes left Mai stammering. 'B-But Chief Tuvi is a good man.'
'Yes, he is a good man. What has that to do with anything?'
'I am hoping — you two could marry.'
'He's as old as my father!'
'You were about to be married off to a man twice as old! That makes him half as young! He'll treat you kindly, and leave you alone to run your business affairs as I do mine. Then we'll always be together.'
'Oh, Mai.' Miravia bent to kiss her. 'You're the one who sheltered me. Without you, and all you risked for me, I would be in Nessumara now in a cage. If you don't want me to go to Ushara's temple, I won't go.'
Mai smiled ruefully as she snagged Miravia's scarf off the floor. She'd bought this scarf for Miravia months ago, admiring its beautiful color. The scarf was a gift of friendship, not an obligation to bind Miravia to Mai's wishes.
'Of course if you want to go, you must go. I will not rule you as I was ruled. Hold still.' She tied it to conceal Miravia's hair, adding a pretty knot for flair. 'Go on.'
At the curtain, Miravia grinned. 'Anyhow, Mai, who is to say I cannot meet a lover in the temple and marry a different man?' Then she was gone.
Mai stared at the curtain as it rippled and stilled. The lamps burned. The shadows lingered. Was she sad? Happy? Bewildered? Upset? She hardly knew what to think, and yet the memory of Miravia's deliriously hopeful expression made her smile.
Priya slipped into the chamber, crossed to her, touching her hand. 'Plum blossom, are you well? So Miravia has gone off to meet the Devourer, has she?'
'Should I have dissuaded her, Priya? Keshad's rather unpleasant, but she thinks him handsome.'
'I believe she acts wisely. The flame may burn hot and short, and then afterward even if there is pain at its death, it will be extinguished. Held apart, it will smolder for far longer than if it is allowed to consume the fuel of desire. Or they may find they truly care for each other.'
'Two clanless people do not marry for love, Priya.'
'What do you suppose O'eki and I did?'
When she had traveled with Anji and his soldiers across the desert and alortg the mountains and over the Kandaran Pass, almost every day had exposed a new vista whose unexpected contours surprised her, elated her, scared her, or made her look twice.
She stared at Priya, who stood exposed as a person whose depths she had never bothered to contemplate. 'I never thought about you being married. It never seemed important because-'
The woman's gaze softened. 'Because we were slaves. Yet we had no contracts, no property, no freedom to barter with, no clan to please, no family obligations because we were torn from our families. Because we were slaves. So we pleased ourselves. Your father could be a harsh master, but he was fair in his own way. He allowed us to marry, as long as we did our work and never let our association interfere with the household. He allowed O'eki to earn coin on the side with the hope of buying us free in time. Not every master in Kartu Town was as generous.'
'I'm a fool,' said Mai. 'Forgive me, Priya. I never even looked. Or thought. Or wondered.'
'You are no fool, plum blossom. You are young, and yet even so in your own way, wise enough to let Miravia go although I know you wish her to marry Chief Tuvi.'
'Do you think Tuvi wants to marry her?'
'I think he wants to please you, Mistress. Or please the captain through pleasing you. Difficult to say. Perhaps both. He's an honest man. He goes to the temple now and again to please himself-'
'Chief Tuvi goes to Ushara's temple?'
Priya chuckled. 'Does that surprise you?'
'Of course not. It's just — Aui! It's no business of mine.'
'He has enough obligations within the household that I do not suppose he feels a desperate need to take on a wife and, later, children.'
'But every man wants wives and children in order to be content!' She heard her own voice and laughed. She wiped her eyes and sighed. 'I sound like my mother and aunt and all the other wives in the Mei compound. They must say so, mustn't they?' She swallowed. 'Have you gone to Ushara's temple, Priya?'
Priya merely smiled, saying nothing, keeping her secrets.
'I'll never go,' said Mai.
'No,' agreed Priya. 'Married to the captain, as you are, you will never go.'
Hands clapped outside the entrance. O'eki stepped inside with such a look that Mai tensed. 'Mistress,' he said — and broke off.
Two burly men dressed in the southern style pushed past him, still wearing their boots. For an instant she saw one holding a long knife and the other a drawn sword; so had red hounds tried to kill her in a plain white room in the women's quarters of an unknown inn in an unnamed city in the empire.
She lunged for Atani's cot.
Priya tugged her to a halt. 'Mai! Stop!'
The haze of her vision cleared. They weren't holding weapons: one held a scroll and brush and inkpot, the other a baton carved from ebony wood and inlaid with strips of gold, a factor's staff of authority.
Sheyshi rushed in behind them, took one look at Mai's unbound hair, and hurried over to the pillows to collect combs and hairsticks. 'The mistress is not dressed to receive visitors!'
Words are no obstacle when the wind blows in. O'eki stepped to one side, holding the curtain back. Anji's mother strode into the room and halted, surveying the plain canvas walls, the scatter of pillows, the three small chests that contained Mai and Anji's traveling clothes and necessities, a tray with cups and pitcher and basin set to one side, the enamel pisspot set off to one side on the open porch, recently emptied and rinsed. She looked at O'eki, at Priya, even at Sheyshi.
Never let it be said the market had not taught Mai to think on her feet.
'Sheyshi, please offer a pillow for our guest,' she said in the same gracious voice she would use when offering a tough customer a few almonds to nibble before getting down to serious bargaining.
'I see you are not dressed to receive visitors,' said Anji's mother.
'At this time of night I am accustomed to receiving only my husband. Unfortunately he is not here to greet you.'
'I am not come to speak to my son.'
Sheyshi placed the best-quality pillow — embroidered in silver and red and gold thread with butterflies and bees — near Anji's mother.
'Am I to sit on the floor like a slave?'
'Honored Mother, it is the custom in the Hundred for all people to sit on pillows, on the floor, just as it is the custom here to do many things differently from what you and I may have been accustomed to in the places we lived before this.'
'Do not condescend to me. You, a humble merchant's daughter, cannot in any way compare your circumstances to mine. Is there no stool? No camp chair? No captain's bench?'
Maybe there had been once, but these artifacts had vanished over the last year. Mai had a chair in the
