labor?'
'That I chose to flee — at a great cost to me — losing my family — never to see my dear brothers and mother again — has nothing to do with my statement that slavery is always wrong! You mistake the general for the particular, Chief Tuvi.'
He smiled. 'Maybe I do. But I don't understand how the Ri Amarah can insist that slavery is always wrong and then keep
their women closed away behind walls. My mother and sisters would never have put up with that!'
'If the world is not as it is meant to be, then we must work to correct it.' She turned with passion to Mai, grasping her arm. 'You must dislike hearing us argue!'
'Was that an argument?' asked Tuvi, his pace not faltering.
The four soldiers kept an even distance at all four points. As they passed the thatched roof of the council square, six council members chatting over a morning tea rose to greet Mai.
'Verea! Well come. That you are here makes the day bright.'
'Will you preside over an assizes before you leave again, verea?'
'You have not come alone, verea?'
'No, indeed,' she replied, greeting each one by name. 'Here is my sister, Miravia. She will be running my household in Astafero.' Mai studied their expressions as they eyed Miravia's face; they clearly knew what she was, rumor having traveled ahead. 'If there is ever any question that needs my attention when I am in Olossi, that for some unlikely reason you cannot solve yourselves although I cannot imagine why that would be so, then you must bring the question to Miravia's attention. She will write a message which can be flown to Olossi by a reeve. She has my complete trust.'
'Ah! Eh! Very good!' They revised their expectations, smiled more warmly.
Tuvi settled back as Mai stepped into the shade with the women. She asked after their businesses and their families. Mistress Sarana had married a Qin soldier and was noticeably pregnant; it wasn't so many months, really, since the first marriages had been blessed at the gods' altars. Maybe that rice had been nibbled on early! But wasn't that the way folk did go about things here, casual about sex in a way inconceivable to any woman in Kartu Town? Yet when she thought of how Anji had slapped her, her cheek still burned.
'Verea?'
'Just wondering how your daughter is, Mistress,' she said to Behara, now head of Astafero's council. 'I hear she ate Chief Deze's rice!'
'She did, and we hope there will be fruit soon, but too early to tell, eh? Anyway, he's been posted to West Track, so she'll live here for now and he comes to visit as often as he can.'
That was the way things worked in Astafero. Some of the newly married women chose to migrate to new towns to follow their husbands on assignment. Others remained at the settlement, with families growing as kinfolk who were struggling to eat came to live where there was work and food to be had. Miravia watched and listened, not saying a word.
When Mai extricated herself from the conversation, they walked down into the market with its familiar dried fish smell. There were new shops set up in crude storefronts with canvas walls and older shops newly refurbished with brick. They sold cloth, banners, harness, tools, dishes and serving utensils of everyday quality, storage chests of precious wood, baskets, bedding, mats, and spices and bean paste shipped or carted in from elsewhere. Miravia trailed behind as Mai chatted with every person she knew and met new people, because folk were coming to Astafero as people did where there was security in an insecure world. Yet Miravia did shyly smile at people who, despite being taken aback by her features, politely engaged her in the casual talk of the marketplace. At length, they worked their way down to the main gate. Mai surveyed the further sprawl of brickyards, smithies, fish racks, workshops, and the green patches of burgeoning fields watered from the underground channels still being dug. But she did not suggest venturing past the gate's shadow.
'The Ri Amarah have lived in the Hundred for four generations, and you not even two years, but you are treated as a cousin while my people are still seen as outlanders,' said Miravia in a low voice. T want to be part of the Hundred, Mai. Not an outlander all my life.'
Tuvi had climbed the ladder to the parapet and was speaking to the soldier in charge of gate duty; the two men were pointing quite rudely — how she would ever cure the Qin of finger pointing she did not know! — at some object or movement much farther out.
Mai took a deep breath. 'If you were to marry Tuvi-'
Miravia pushed a sandal into the dirt, digging a hole.
'Not now, I mean! No hurry!'
'It's too early,' Miravia muttered, cheeks scalded red although it wasn't hot.
'Of course!' Mai took her hand, tucked it into the crook of her own elbow, and indicated the market. 'Best I go back to nurse Atani. Do you want to stay in the market?'
As easily as Miravia had taken to walking in public with her face exposed after so many years locked behind walls and veils, she was not ready to brave the market alone. Her smile was wan as her flush faded. 'I'll go back with you.' She clutched Mai more tightly. 'Without you, I would be in Nessumara now. That you gave me shelter… I can never repay you.'
Tears slipped down Mai's cheeks, but she never minded these swells of pure emotion, which like the wind off the mountains came as if from the heavens, a blessing from the Merciful One. 'This is not a matter of exchange. We are sisters. I would no more be here without you than I would be without my husband.'
'Mai!'
'You don't need to thank me any more than I thank you for welcoming me into your heart when I first came to Olossi, when I was alone and without a sister.'
Miravia choked down her sniffles under broken laughter. 'Now we will fall upon each other wailing and moaning.'
Then they laughed so hard Chief Tuvi looked puzzled as he climbed down the ladder. But he did not react as a love-lorn man would; he neither sighed nor smiled to see their laughter. If she meant to coax this match into existence, she would have to work carefully.
'Let's go up,' he said instead, brow wrinkled. 'The captain will be wondering what became of you.'
At the base of Liya Pass lay the town of Stragglewood, so called for the way the woodland was cut in strips and spurs into the hills where folk had taken the easy routes to collect and transport wood. The town was a way station for trade over the Liya Pass, which connected the region of Herelia to the main road leading southeast to Toskala along the Ili Cutoff.
Approaching on the road at dawn, Marit surveyed markedly tidier surroundings than those she recalled from the last time she had come through, twenty-one years ago. Every field boasted recently erected boundary stones. Young orchards were laid out in ranks spaced so evenly she guessed they had been paced out by the same person. She passed ruined foundations marking where poor clans' hovels had been demolished. A livestock fence ringed the garden plots, and compounds like a tannery, lumberyard, and byres whose stench and noise were kept outside the town. An imposing inner palisade circled the actual town buildings; at its gate a pair of middle-aged men stood on a platform that allowed them a view of both fields and forecourt.
Their gazes, briefly met, betrayed minds dismayed to see a cloak riding up to their town in a month in which an assizes court was not scheduled. A very bad omen. They shielded their faces behind hands.
'Holy One.' The shaven-headed elder spoke through his hands. 'Forgive us. We had no word or expectation of your coming. The assizes is not readied for your pleasure.'
For my pleasure?
Warning snorted, tossing her head.
'What awaits me at the assizes?' she asked, cautious in her choice of words but sure she must speak boldly if she meant to continue the ruse.
Beyond the gate, people gathered in the forecourt, the squeak of leather rubbing, a rattling cough, a capacious yawn.
A man called out. 'Heya, Tarbi! It's past time to open the gates and let us out to our labors, eh?'
The shaven-headed man climbed out of sight. Hands fumbled at chains; bars scraped; the gates were pulled open. In the forecourt stood at least fifty folk carrying hoes, spades, axes, and other implements. More were walking up. Seeing her, half the folk dropped to their knees as if they'd been felled by a sledgehammer. All raised
