When I reached the river, Shoni was among the handmaids in the ford, stepping carefully across the flat rocks, her bowl balanced on her head. It had only been a day, but I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
I waited until she reached the shore safely to acknowledge her. “Greetings, sister. Are you well?”
“I am.” The mutinous look in her eyes said otherwise. “And you?”
Glancing around for spies, I lowered my voice. “Oh, Shoni! I don’t know if I can bear this.”
Shoni freed one hand to give me a quick, surreptitious pinch. “You can!” she hissed. “Be strong!”
I did my best.
I filled my bowl and returned to my master’s household, ringing the bell to summon his wife, my mistress Alaya. She, too, welcomed me to Shakrath’s service before performing the ritual of a hundred ablutions. I fetched a bowl for Atika, the elder daughter, who did not deign to greet me. When she had finished, I went back to the river and fetched a bowl for Amina, the younger daughter, who performed the ritual carefully under the watchful eye of their governess. And at last, in the waning hours of the afternoon, I hurried to fetch a bowl for the governess Resalin before the gates of the city were locked at sundown.
By the end of the day, my head and neck and feet ached, and I was so exhausted, I could barely pick at the food the silent Keren servant brought me. I fell onto my pallet and slept like the dead.
The next day, I did it again.
And the next, and the next, and the next, until the days began to blur into an endless stream.
Our only respite from our duties came once a month on the first day of the new moon, the day on which that poxy old desert chieftain was granted his vision three hundred years ago. On that day, the Shaladan rested and prayed, and the handmaids were permitted to return to the temple that our heads might be freshly shaved. Spirits save me, to think that I’d dreaded the prospect when I left the temple! Youthful vanity be damned—three days into my service, and the first new moon couldn’t come fast enough for me. For the space of a blessed hour or two while we waited our turn in line, we were able to converse with relative freedom, so long as we didn’t speak ill of our service. Shoni was particularly adept at making sure she and I were near the end of the line.
Were it not for new moon days, I think I would have lost my wits in the years that followed.
Let me be clear—and I do wish to be clear in light of what happened—no one in Farad Dhoul’s household was unkind to me. Not by Shaladan standards, which do not reckon forcing me into a life of service to a god I came to resent with every fiber of my being to be a cruelty.
No, I was fed well and lodged like a member of the household. As I grew hardened to the labor and able to more swiftly accomplish the task of fetching five bowls of water from the river over the course of a day, the governess Resalin encouraged me to listen to the girls’ afternoon lessons that I might enhance my understanding of Shaladan history and the worship of Shakrath. Although I could scarce have cared less about either, it passed the time. I learned to speak in a manner befitting my unwanted status. I conceived a certain fondness for Amina, the younger daughter. At eight years of age when my service began, she was only a few inches taller than me, too young yet for head-scarves and earrings. Having only ever known my elderly predecessor, Amina was inclined to treat me as an interesting new playmate.
After his initial greeting, Farad Dhoul himself seldom spoke to me. My mistress Alaya had cause to reprimand me for minor breaches of etiquette on occasion—not many, mind you, for I had an abiding fear of being banished to the desert—but she did it without rancor. Only once was she obliged to order me to fast for the day in punishment, and afterward, she gave me one of her nicer not-terribly-worn head-scarves so that I might know that she bore me no grudge for it. In four years, I never had to report to the temple for a whipping.
And yet I chafed.
Do you wish to know more about the Shaladan? Let me tell you, the Shaladan are slow. They have a saying: Swift in battle, deliberate in all other matters. Every thought uttered, every motion made, is slow; endlessly, agonizingly deliberate and slow. They can spend hours lost in contemplation of Shakrath’s ineffable majesty, and they simply cannot comprehend that others cannot—or have no desire to do so.
There were times on the kneeling-mat, waiting for a member of the household to finish his or her ablutions, when I could have rent my robes and screamed and wept out of sheer frustration.
One hundred ablutions. I thought that until the day I died, I would never understand it.
The Keren are a quick folk; quick to laugh, quick to love, quick to anger, quick to forgive and forget. Beside the slow, ponderous grace of the Shaladan, we are as quick and darting as sparrows on the wing; and as fragile and short-lived, too.
Walking through the market with my bowl balanced atop my head, I could not help but be conscious of the quick blood beating in my veins, hot with desire and envy. Although I dared not acknowledge them, I saw boys I had known grow into young men with sinewy limbs and quick, ready smiles.
Any of them could have been mine.
One of them should have been mine.
By sixteen, I felt as ripe and bursting as a plum. My body was strong with labor, my skin was glossy with the health imparted by a rich diet. Beneath my blue robe, my breasts were full and high and firm. I yearned to be touched, stroked, held; I yearned to do the same in return.
In the silence of my own thoughts, I prayed to the myriad nameless spirits of field and stream.
Let me be free, I prayed; and then, daring more, let us be free. Let the true sons and daughters of the Kerentari valley be free of our Shaladan masters.
Although I cannot say for sure, I suspect the spirits were unaccustomed to being asked for great things. By and large, the prayers of the Keren people were as modest as our hopes and dreams. Living for centuries under Shaladan occupation, we had long ago accepted our roles as a simple given truth, something we could alter no more than we could the weather. And had I not been chosen as a handmaid, I daresay I would never have thought otherwise.
Oh, well; there was more to it, but that came later. All I knew at sixteen was that I wanted my freedom.
At eighteen, with five strands of finely-wrought silver around my neck, I began to gain a deeper understanding of all that the loss of that freedom entailed.
Children.
I’d mourned the loss of my family, the family into which I was born. I’d mourned the loss of the husband with whom I would never lie. But it wasn’t until the day that I saw my older sister Juna in the market that I began to mourn the loss of the family of my own that I would never have. Juna had married a rope-maker’s son, and she’d been entrusted to mind the family’s spot in the marketplace for the first time that day. I stopped short and stared at the sight of her, two little boys tugging at the coarse undyed fabric of her skirts and a third babe at the breast. My sister glanced up absently, then stared back at me, open-mouthed in shock. As I stood there in my fine blue robes, my silver bowl balanced atop my shaved head, five strands of silver draped around my neck, I saw her look of shock give way to pity.
In that moment, I would have given anything to trade lives with her. I would have given a great deal just to talk to her, to meet my little nephews and the newest babe.
But no, even that small pleasure was forbidden to me. It was forbidden to us both. I watched Juna remember and look away, bowing her head over the small figure of the babe suckling at her breast.
My own breasts ached in sympathy and I felt a profound emptiness deep inside me. I would never know a man, never hold a babe in my arms. The household of Farad Dhoul would be all the family I would ever have. I would serve as a handmaid of Shakrath until I was too old and weak to complete my duties, and then retire to the temple and wait to die.
Oh, I had known all this, of course; but on that day I felt the knowledge of this settle into my flesh and bones.
“What’s wrong, Dala?” Amina asked me lat
er that day; little Amina, the closest thing I’d ever have to a child of my own, who now stood a full foot and a half taller than me. At twelve years of age, she’d recently donned the head-scarf and dangling earrings of a young lady. “You seem sad.”
“It’s nothing, young mistress.” I made myself smile at her. “Only that I saw my sister in the market today, and it grieved me that I could not speak to her.”
Amina blinked. “Oh, but surely…surely it is nothing to the honor of being chosen to serve Shakrath?”
“Surely you are right, young mistress,” I murmured.
“Here.” She worked a bracelet loose from her wrist and held it out to me. “Wear my bangle today! It will remind you of the gifts that Shakrath has showered upon you and cheer you.”
I averted my head to hide my tears as I accepted the bangle. “Thank you, young mistress. You are too kind.”
Amina smiled at the compliment. “You are very welcome, Dala. I do not want you to be sad.”
After that day, I took a different route through the market to avoid seeing my sister and her little ones. It meant my journey to and from the river was a little longer, but no one in the household commented on it.
It was on the next new moon day that Shoni pulled me close to her as we waited in line at the temple to have our heads shaved, putting her lips against my ear as she used to do when we were initiates gossiping in bed; only it was something far more dangerous than gossip that she whispered to me. “When you go to the river tomorrow at dawn, make your way to the far bank, near the bamboo thicket, and wait for me to beckon to you.”
Alarmed, I drew back from her. “Why?”
Shoni gave me a sharp pinch on the arm. “I’m trusting you with my life telling you this!” she said in a furious whisper. “Do you want to be a handmaid for the rest of your spirits-forsaken life?”
I shook my head.
“Then do it.” She let go my arm.
I spent the rest of the day in an agony of suspense, torn between terror and excitement. What in the world could Shoni be thinking? A deliberate breach of etiquette—no, not even a breach of etiquette, but an abandonment of our duty—that severe would earn us both whippings for certain, maybe even the prospect of banishment. For Shoni, the latter was even likely. In the past four years, she’d been whipped more than once for carelessness that bordered on outright disobedience. I slept poorly, tossing and turning on my pallet, dreading the coming dawn.
By the time the bell rang, summoning me to my duty, I had half resolved to ignore Shoni; and yet I found my feet carrying me along my old, familiar route through the marketplace. Although the market wasn’t open yet, the vendors were laying out their wares and I saw my sister among them, carefully arraying coils of rope on the dusty ground.
Did I take that route knowing that the sight of Juna and her little ones would goad my heart?
Or did I take it knowing that it would gain me a few spare minutes of time on my journey?
Both, maybe.
At the ford, there was a knot of handmaids in the center of the river, exchanging such pleasantries as were permitted to us during the execution of our duties. At first I thought they meant to block my path as I picked my way across the flat stones, taking care not to let the shallow rushing water dampen the hem of my robe. But no, they moved aside to let me pass, closing ranks behind me, and I saw that none of them wore more than seven strands of silver around their necks.
On the far side of the river stood a thicket of bamboo, green and dense. “Hssst!” Shoni’s head poked out of a gap and she beckoned urgently to me. Carrying my bowl tucked under my right arm and holding up the skirts of my robe with my left hand, I went to her. “This way.” Catching my arm, she led me down a narrow pathway through the towering bamboo.
At the end of the path there was a small clearing, with several handmaids and a dozen men in it.
Men.
All Keren men, I thought at first, some of them from the northern slopes of the valley, taller and broader and lighter-skinned than us southerners. And then one of the tall ones lifted one arm and pointed at me with a fierce, hard grin, and I saw that his eyeteeth were curved and sharp and his eyes themselves…spirits save me, his eyes were green and his pupils were vertical like a cat’s.
No, not northern Keren.
Jagan.
They were conferring amongst themselves. The one who’d pointed at me was nodding. He hadn’t taken his gaze off me and I couldn’t look away from him, either. I’d never seen one of the Jagan before in my life, and yet it felt as though I knew him. My ears were filled with the sound of my own rushing blood, and then beneath it I heard a voice that sounded like a thousand voices at once whispering through the bamboo say, now, now, the hour is upon us.
My knees began to tremble and I dropped my bowl.
“Hush!” Shoni picked it up and thrust it at me. “Make no noise! It’s worth our lives to get caught.” She lowered her voice. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
I clutched my bowl tightly. “I don’t understand.”
He was picking his way across the clearing toward me. I stood as though rooted to the spot. “For three years now, our people have gone hungry,” he said to me. “I prayed to the spirits of wind and stone, and I had a vision. You were in it.”
I swallowed. “Oh?”
He pried one of my hands loose from my bowl and held it. His hand was warm and strong and callused. “Yes.” His thumb rubbed over my skin, his green gaze intent upon mine. My pulse hammered in my veins, between my thighs. “You were holding our son. How are you called?”
“Dala,” I whispered.
“Dala.” He sighed my name softly, the sound like the breeze rustling through the bamboo thicket. “Dala, I am Valek. And we are meant to be together, you and I.” Letting go of my hand, he turned to the others. “The spirits have spoken truly! The hour of shared destiny is upon us.”
If Shoni hadn’t caught my elbow to steady me, I might have fallen over. “I don’t understand,” I said again.
“I’m sorry.” She gave my elbow a squeeze. “I was sworn to secrecy.” Releasing me, she placed one hand on the shoulder of a grave-faced Keren man of middle years. “This is my Da,” she said with pride. “All of you, listen fast and hard to what he has to say.”
There was a plan, and it was simple and terrible.
Keren rebels armed with nothing more than kitchen knives and clubs stood not the slightest chance of rising up against our Shaladan masters without Jagan aid. The Jagan fighters were few in number and stood not the slightest chance of taking the city or prevailing over the many powerful Shaladan without Keren aid.
Therefore, in the darkest depths of the next new moon night, Keren rebels would unlock the city gates to admit a Jagan raiding party.
The handmaids in league with the rebellion would unlock the doors of their Shaladan households. And the Shaladan, taken by surprise in their sleep by an enemy who could see in the dark, would be slaughtered.
Afterward, the Keren and the Jagan would share ownership of the Kerentari valley in equal measure.
“It will be so.” The Jagan clan-leader Valek touched my face. “I have seen it, Dala.” There was a yearning tenderness in his voice. “No more will our mothers and sisters in the mountains starve during years of drought and blight. No more will our Keren brothers and sisters slave for the Shaladan and live on their leavings.”
All I could think about was the amount of innocent blood that would be shed. “Surely you don’t mean to—”
Shoni glanced at the sky and started in alarm at the lateness of the hour, grabbing my arm again. “Handmaids, quick! We dare stay no longer.”
The enormity and daring and, yes, awfulness of the conspiracy was almost too much to ponder. I moved through the remainder of the day as though in a waking dream. Farad Dhoul reprimanded me for dawdling, his tone grave and disappointed, and I nodded in blank acceptance. I made four more trips to the river, my feet finding the way of their own accord. I passed my
sister Juna’s spot in the marketplace without seeing her or her little ones.
I remember only that Shoni approached me at the ford on my last journey to the river. “Tomorrow at dawn,” she murmured, after a quick glance around. “Same place. Valek wishes to see you alone.”
“Alone?” I echoed. She gave me a significant look, and I flushed in sudden understanding. “Oh.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Will you be there?”
A handmaid with at least twelve strands frowned in our direction. “I don’t know,” I said and fled, water slopping over the sides of my bowl—a breach of etiquette that was reported before sundown.
I went to bed hungry and dazed that night.
How many times had I prayed that the spirits might grant freedom to me and my people? Many, many times. And yet I had never reckoned that it might come at such a terrible cost.
I prayed for guidance and received none.
I prayed for wisdom and found none.
Valek.
His face swam before me, high-boned and lean beneath a thick shock of black hair. Like the Shaladan chieftain centuries ago, he’d had a vision. The lush Kerentari valley, it seemed, inspired visions. Only this time, I was at the heart of one.
In the morning, I went to him. Once again, the handmaids conspired to block me from view that I might slip through the gap in the bamboo grove and find my way to the clearing.
He was waiting for me. No one else was present.
“I don’t…” My voice sounded faint and weak and uncertain. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“Dala.” He beckoned to me. “Come.”
I stayed where I was.
Valek laughed and approached me instead. “Set down the symbol of your servitude.” He took the bowl from my unresisting grasp and placed it on the ground. “What is it you do not know?”
“You,” I whispered.
“But you do know me.” He cupped my face in his hands, and his breath was warm against my skin. “I have seen it, Dala. You and I are the stone on which our people will found our lives together.” He stroked my lips with his thumb, slow and lingering. “Will you tell me you do not feel it, too? How can you believe otherwise?”