hour of the day or night.
Her visitor slipped round the screen, entering the room: it was only Nuana.
'Where have you been?' said Nuana.
'Molychosh,' said Yen Olass curtly, using the Eparget word which meant 'pasturing', and, by extension, denoted retirement or a holiday.
'Sa?!' said Nuana, using the generalized expression for surprise and disbelief. 'An oracle, pasturing? Since when did the Sisterhood treat you so sweetly?’
'What do you want?' said Yen Olass.
Her voice was sharp. She had more than enough to cope with today, without being bothered by Nuana.
'You know what I want.’
'I haven't got it.’
'You must get it!’
'I don't for you or anyone.' said Yen Olass, stretching, allowing herself to luxuriate in the quilted warmth of her bed.
'He beats me,' said Nuana. 'Because you don't get it, he beats me.’
'Get out,' said Yen Olass.
But Nuana Nanalako, a sun-dark Southsearcher woman, was not disposed of that easily.
'He doesn't just beat me, either,' said Nuana.
'You heard me,' said Yen Olass. 'Get out!’
Her cat Lefrey, awakened by these female voices, stirred, stretched, then curled down deeper into the layered warmth of the featherbed dreamquilt.
'You're the lucky one,' said Nuana, advancing. 'He gave you away. You never had to…’
'What?’
'He's a filthy old man,' said Nuana.
Yen Olass got out of bed and stood on the stone floor in her sleep-shift, shivering in the biting morning chill.
'You get out of here,' said Yen Olass, 'or I'll rip your face apart.’
Yen Olass was bigger and stronger than Nuana. And she was angry. After being nagged by Nuana for half a season, Yen Olass had had enough. Unless Nuana retreated – now! – there would be a regular scratching match.
Nuana, confronted by an angry and advancing oracle,
broke and ran. They were both slaves, but if they were caught brawling, Nuana would be the one who went under the spikes. Even the high-born could not lay hands on an oracle with impunity. When Nuana had gone, Yen Olass stood trembling with anger.
Not for the first time, Yen Olass wished she had a proper door which she could close and bolt against the world.
Elsewhere, the warrior Chonjara was already up and about. He had been sharpening a battle-axe. Now he tested the blade: and was satisfied.
Alone in her room, Yen Olass attended to her ablutions, then broke her fast with a barley-meal cake. All things considered, she would rather have been in her cave to the north, eking out a bare existence with pemican and milk curds.
With breakfast over, Yen Olass settled her mind by meditation, contemplating the everspan slumber of the bubbles of light encapsulated in her piece of amber, which was one of the few beautiful things she owned.
Her day was commanded by a single duty, which was to attend a duel at the Enskandalon Square. Seeking to disarm a possible conflict between Haveros and Chonjara, Lord Alagrace had banqueted the fathers of those two famous warriors, hoping that he could persuade the fathers to tell the sons to end their quarrel. Instead, the fathers had taken up that quarrel themselves, and were now preparing to fight to the death.
Before combat, Yen Olass would give a reading for the fighters. This was no delicate matter of statecraft or high politics; she only had to provide two arrogant old men with an excuse to apologize to each other, and thus to evade the intolerable demands of honour.
With her meditations finished, Yen Olass donned her outdoor clothes, tucked a rug under her arm and picked up her nordigin, the lacquered carrier box safeguarding her Casting Board and her 365 Indicators. Thus equipped, she made her way to the Enskandalon Square. She was the first to arrive: there was no other life in the square except for a few old women, dressed in black, who were sweeping away the snow on the far side of that empty expanse of white.
Yen Olass had arrived very early, because that was her duty: the Sisterhood believed that an oracle should avoid the temptation of making a grand entrance, and accordingly ruled that an oracle should arrive first, wherever possible. She unfolded her rug of double-layer yaquern fur, and settled herself to wait.
After a while, someone entered on the far side of the Enskandalon Square. Slowly, the figure trekked across the snow, eventually revealing itself as the text-master Eldegen Terzanagel. That worthy was dressed in grey furs; his hair was cropped short and dyed grey if it was not grey by nature; he wore a severely-disciplined short-cropped grey beard, and about his garments hung a rope of grey beads, a tuft of grey feathers and one skull, painted grey.
'Is that you?' said Terzanagel.
'Whom were you seeking?' said Yen Olass coldly.
'So it's you,' said Terzanagel, her voice having confirmed an identity which had been put in doubt by snuggling furs and three wrap-around scarves. 'Did Nuana speak to you?’
'Your whorebit slave intruded on my quarters this morning,' said Yen Olass. 'Send her again, and you'll get her back with her face torn off.’
'Yen Olass,' said Terzanagel, managing to sound hurt. 'Why so fierce? Haven't I always done well by you?’
In a sense, he had. When Yen Olass had arrived in Gendormargensis as part of the plunder from Monogail,
Terzanagel had purchased her at auction. This wilful slavegirl had then resisted his advances – to be precise, she had bitten his penis, drawing blood, and had punched him in the testicles. He could have had her skinned alive for that, and many men would have done so without hesitation; however, instead of taking revenge, he had donated her to the Sisterhood, and had paid for the five years of study at the Imperial School needed to equip her to be an oracle instead of just one of the Sisterhood's working slaves.
However, Yen Olass had suffered badly when she had been initiated into the Sisterhood. Besides:
'Anything you did was for your own purposes,' said Yen Olass.
She knew very well that Terzanagel's lifetime ambition was to journey to the Stepping Stone Islands of the southern continent, Argan, so he could complete his research on the life and times of that famous poet of antiquity, Saba Yavendar. Nuana Nanalako came from that region, and Terzanagel, needing someone to teach him the local dialect, had spent two years and a lot of money acquiring that Southsearcher woman.
Unfortunately for Terzanagel, the law forbade text-masters to leave Tameran; to fulfil his ambitions, he constantly sought favour and influence, ^nd his every act of good citizenship was calculated to further this quest. It was said that the Sisterhood could not be bribed; nevertheless, ambitious men did well to ingratiate themselves with that school of oracles.
'Yen Olass, I'm not asking much. All I want is a map.’
'Patience melts snow,' said Yen Olass, which was a local idiom meaning all things come to those who wait.
Yen Olass, I don't have much time. I'm an old man.’
'Tratz!' said Yen Olass, using a word meaning gelding's testicles – or, to translate idiom into idiom, horse feathers.
'I'm sixty years old!’
