Olo'o Sea, a green sway of reeds carpeted the shallows while blue sky melded with blue-green sea out beyond the last channels. She licked her lips, but all she tasted was her own anxiety. She let the cloth close.
'You're out early, ver,' said the boatman, speaking to the hirelings as they set the curtained palanquin on the dock. 'Your mistress or master can't wait, eh?'
'Don't ask me,' said one of the hirelings brusquely. 'We were hired to carry the palanquin at Crow's Gate and were told to deliver it to the boat and wait to deliver it back to Crow's Gate. Can we get going? Cursed cold out here by the water. We want to go wait in an inn.'
Mai had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, but not for the cold; it was for a covering should she need to conceal her face. Miravia sat on the narrow bench opposite, clutching the baby beneath her long cloak. She had looked so fragile at the beginning of this journey, and therefore Mai had handed Atani over to her as soon as they were hidden inside the curtains of the palanquin. Holding a baby gave one a measure of stability.
The palanquin was heaved up, pitched right and then left, and settled into the boat. Coins changed hands with a clink of vey counted out in pairs. The boatman grunted as he poled away from the dock. He made no attempt to converse. The boat rolled as they hit choppy waters, and then they glided through a long calm stretch and at last bumped up against another pier. The tang of salt was now flavored with a brush of bitter incense. A whisper of bells chimed an ornament to the hiss of wind and water in reeds. She heard the slap of feet running down to meet the boat.
'Eh, this isn't our early day, ver. What were you thinking?' The voice was cheerful, followed by laughter from others on the shore.
Mai slipped a folded piece of paper through the curtains. 'Take this to the Hieros, I beg you. I assure you, she will want to read it.'
A person wrenched the message from her fingers.
After a moment, the first voice said, 'Go!' and footsteps raced away. 'Bring the palanquin onto the dock. Quickly, you clod-foots.'
With much pitching, the palanquin got hoisted out of the boat and set on mercifully firm ground. Mai rubbed legs and arms sore from the journey smuggled in the chest. Miravia shut her eyes.
'Eh, that was a good game, the last of the hooks-and-ropes tournament,' said the boatman, determined to make the time pass by visiting with the unseen loiterers. 'You see it?'
'You think we get a festival day off? Wasn't there a new team competing?'
'A militia team, yeh. I was impressed. They'd only been practicing together for four months, at the order of the commander, and yet they came in third at the stakes. They'll win next year.'
A new voice chimed in, older and female. 'You see all the checkpoints and such they're setting up? I'm not sure I like it!'
The boatman snorted. 'I don't mind! Better than fearing bandits and criminals, neh?'
Outside, the voices argued about the new road regulations. The curtains stirred, and a tooth-filled snout poked into the palanquin. A scaly shape shimmied in so fast Miravia shrieked, and Mai gasped, and the baby woke and began to cry.
Outside, the temple folk laughed.
Inside, a ginny lizard nudged Miravia's leg and tried to crawl up onto the bench beside her.
Mai snatched Atani from Miravia. as her friend smothered laughter and crying beneath a hand clapped over her own mouth. 'I–I — I never thought I would see one,' she whispered. 'I read about them in books.'
Mai was struggling with her taloos and at last got the crying baby latched on. He began sucking noisily. The ginny backed down from Miravia and spun so quickly it seemed it had levitated, turning with a whip of its long tail. It nosed at Mai's feet, showed the merest edge of teeth, and tried to climb up on Mai's lap.
'You will not!' she said indignantly.
Its crest lifted, and a spasm like faintly glimmering threads of blue traced its knobbly spine. Atani let go of the breast, milk squirting his round face as he turned his head. Almost as if he knew it was there.
A voice called. 'Heya! The Hieros says to bring up the palanquin right away!'
The ginny scrambled out, curtains swaying in its wake. The palanquin rose; they rocked. The baby burped and burbled and, like any newborn, complained as he rooted, seeking the breast. Their bearers were less experienced than the hirelings who had carried them smoothly from Crow's Gate to Dast Olo's docks; Mai could not get a moment of stillness to let the poor little one fasten on, and by the time they were dropped roughly to solid ground, he was wailing, inconsolable.
Miravia twitched aside a lip of curtain to peer outside. Her eyes widened. 'It's a lovely garden!'
If joy had a fragrance, it might be something like this: flowers exhaling, the sun shedding warmth, the earth sighing, the air braced by a light breeze off the salty inland sea. Atani got hold again and began suckling. Mai sighed as the milk flowed, and a tingle of well-being, the breath of the Merciful One that penetrates all living things, coursed through her.
Miravia opened the curtain a little wider. 'There's a pavilion here. How pretty! But I don't see anyone, just plants. Musk vine. Both orange and yellow proudhorn. Heaven-kiss. Look at those falls of purple muzz! I've never seen so thick a flowering!'
'What if we're not supposed to see onto sacred ground-?'
'You say that now?'
Their gazes met. They both began to giggle, then to laugh, the anxiety and tension like water overtopping a cup, pouring over the lip, coursing everywhere.
'Are you coming out?' The voice was old, strong, and not kind. But it wasn't angry. Like Anji, it expected to be obeyed.
Miravia grasped and released Mai's hand before pushing aside the curtain. Mai tucked Atani into the crook of an arm and followed.
The Hieros sat on a low couch under the pavilion's roof. Miravia and Mai kicked off their sandals and climbed three steps to kneel on pillows in front of her. For a while there was silence as Atani nursed contentedly. A spectacular taloos wrapped the old woman's slender form: silk of the most delicate sea-green hue. Woven with an inner pattern of scallops like waves, it might have been an actual layer of water skinned off the surface of the deeps of the inland sea and spun into fabric.
The baby let go of the breast, smacked his tiny, perfect lips. As
soon as Mai burped him he closed his eyes and sighed into a doze. She adjusted her taloos and shifted him to the other arm.
'I admit,' said the Hieros, examining first Mai and then Miravia with a cool gaze, 'that I did not expect to see the wife of the outlander captain enter the precincts of the holy temple, not after he expressed so strongly to me on a separate occasion that his wife would never set foot in Ushara's temple. Yet even less did I expect ever to see the face of a Ri Amarah woman.'
Miravia glanced at Mai, and Mai nodded. 'I am named Miravia, ken Haf Gi Ri, daughter of Isar and his wife, whose name I am not free to mention.'
The Hieros looked at Mai. 'Why have you come?'
'We have come, Holy One, to ask you to give refuge to this woman.'
'You have not come — one newly a mother and the other soon to be married, so it is rumored, to a rich man of poor reputation in Nessumara — to gain some pleasure in our gardens?'
'No!' said Mai, genuinely shocked.
The Hieros's expression darkened as a storm front occludes the horizon.
Mai plunged on. 'I beg you, Holy One, listen to my petition. Miravia has run away from her family. She does not want to marry the man they've chosen for her.'
'Does not want to marry? Is she asking to dedicate herself as a hierodule at the temple?' She surveyed Miravia with a look that made the girl blush to a sodden red.
'I am not, begging your pardon, Holy One,' Miravia said hoarsely. 'Meaning no disrespect. It's just-' She gulped out words between sobs. 'Oh, what good will it do, Mai? No one will help us! Everyone will just tell me to accept the marriage for the honor of my clan! I would have been better off to sell myself as a debt slave!'
'Do you believe you would be better treated as a debt slave, you who are Ri Amarah and scorn all those who sell their bodies and their labor?' asked the Hieros coldly.
'Yes! It would be better! My life in Nessumara will be like living in one of the hells. But maybe I should just let
