'Engaged to Lady Vachir in the nick of time,' said Qacha. 'Now the khan's warriors will unite with hers.'
'Could Khasar come to Song for Evela?' I asked Koke.
'I'd bet a mare on it. He'll be here before winter, that's my guess.'
I think about taking my lady away, but where would we run? Without a gher in winter, we'd die as fast as the honeybees. Cold is its own kind of tower.
Day 79
That boy Osol who winked at me, I saw him today winking at one of the cutter girls. I guess he's just a boy who winks. It doesn't matter, not in the least. And I'm not going to think about him anymore.
Day 80
It's not as though I would've married Osol.
Day 82
Last night I saw Qacha staring at her hands --split fingers, raw skin torn from washing. Scrubber work is hard on the hands.
'My mama was pretty at my age,' she said.
Then this morning, Cook saw Qacha rubbing mare's milk butter all over her fingers. There was screaming and cursing, and when it all died down, Gal and I found Qacha sitting on the ground outside the kitchen, weeping and too afraid to enter. I'd never seen her cry before. Her face showed a welt the shape of a wooden spoon.
'Cook says she'll have my hair torn out if I come back in. But my papa can't keep me in the stables and I've nowhere to go. If I leave the city, I'd have to leave Papa, and Koke... how'll I ever see Koke again?'
I could've sung her a song of comfort, but that wouldn't cure the cause of the sobbing. I guessed she'd hoped the butter would keep her hands pretty. Someone once said I had beautiful hands.
'Gal, come with me a minute, will you?' I said. 'Qacha, I'm going to go see if we can't get Cook in a good mood before you ask for your post back.'
Cook was sweating over a pot, greasy black smoke rushing at her face.
I said, 'We're caught up on all the pots and--oh, Cook, you look hot as a fire stone. Would you let Gal stir for you a moment while you sit a step back from the heat?'
'For a moment,' Cook said, though she looked suspicious.
I sat her down, brought a stool for her feet, and begged a chance to rub her shoulders. While she rested, I hummed.
What ails Cook? I wondered, humming, touching her shoulders, trying to get a sense of her pain. Soon my hum turned into a song. I started out singing the song for body aches, for tiredness that runs over all of you like water over stones, the one that begins, 'Tell me again, how does it go?' I could feel Cook want to get up and I thought I'd lost her, but then I guess she chose to let herself feel better for a time. Her shoulders relaxed beneath my hands.
Taking the tune for body aches, I wove in the words for common pain, 'Swan on her nest and the sunlight just so,' while touching her shoulders, her back. I guessed her feet were sore, too, but I didn't dare touch them or she might figure out what I was up to. Her face was singed from smoke heat, her hands raw around calluses, and I closed my eyes and thought of the sound of the song going into those areas. She sighed, and I knew she was allowing the song to sink in. But there's usually something deeper than simple pain.
I tried weaving in a new song, the one for heartache that goes, 'Tilly tilly, nar a black bird, nilly nilly, there a blue bird.' I sang it softly, like you should when the hurt's buried deep and you want to ease it out slowly. It was just a guess, but who in all the realms doesn't have some heartache? Her shoulders tightened, then relaxed. I thought to go deeper.
'Prick, prick, blood on the cloth,' I sang, now joining the song for body aches with the one for betrayal. No sooner had I begun than Cook lowered her head and sighed, long and sad as a wind stuck in a chimney. Suddenly, that large woman seemed as small and fragile as any tiny girl.
'Enough, I need to get back to work,' said Cook, pushing me off and standing, but now her voice had lost its hard edge.
I rushed back to Qacha and told her now was a good time to apologize. When she asked to be a scrubber again, Cook scolded her right proper, but there wasn't fire behind it. Within an hour, Qacha was scraping pots beside us.
'I've never seen Cook so calm,' she said, already laughing again.
Gal asked, 'Do you muckers have the changing powers like the desert shamans? Trick things into being what they're not?'
Qacha and I laughed. It was an absurd idea.
'Just the opposite,' Qacha said. 'The songs nudge things to be what they really are--a healthy body, a heart as calm as a baby's in the womb.'
I agreed. 'But there's no power in them, they're just songs.'
'Well, I don't know about that, Dashti,' said Qacha. 'I could hear you singing back there, and I've never known someone to combine two songs together. That was clever. And choosing the right songs just for Cook--it's quite a feat to tame a beast like her.''
'Cook did it, I just helped,' I said.
My lady sidled up close to me, asking for a hand with a pot she couldn't get clean, and we all set in to work as hard as silence permits. A bit later, I noticed that Gal kept sneaking peeks at me, her face thoughtful.
Later that night in the dark by our hearth, I'd just dropped off to sleep, my head on Qacha's leg, when something poked me. When I opened my eyes to darkness, I gasped, for a moment terrified that the whole world
