should not I ask? You ordered me here and then took so long getting here—” I noticed newly applied kohl around her eyes. She had changed her kaba too. The kaba she had changed into was torn and ragged along the hem, far worse than the one she had worn earlier. The gyuilta thrown over it had been relegated to the scrap heap. I understood then that she had determined to appear both lovely and destitute at the same time. This decision provoked even my curiosity—and I was not one who was naturally curious. I tried to ignore this wonder beside me fearing that asking questions would only drag me into affairs I wanted nothing to do with.
Her eyes busily scanned the eastern arcs near the Great Garden, and peered past the children playing tunes on their reed pipes and bamboo drums near the Sun Fountain and the Water Clock. They looked about the wide circle of the marketplace, and down its adobe-bricked streets fanning out from the Sun Fountain. How could I not be curious? Her eyes searched all the arcs and all the radii of the circle all at once.
At last, she took a brief rest from her surveying and said, “I wish you hadn’t been standing near the college wall.” She tugged my braid hard and her embarrassed eyes shamed me in spite of my innocence. “You’re not young or marriageable anymore. People will think you’re desperate.”
“You put kohl on your eyes—something you never do—and you’re accusing me of looking for an assignation?”
“Daughter, it’s good to have allies.”
I could only sigh at this sudden change of subject, so weary was I from sleeplessness. I only thought: So she’s scheming again? And now we’re getting around to her plot.
“Perhaps the shaman can make you something to help you sleep.”
She shook her head. “You let life bother you too much. When you get to my age, you can sleep even in the worst disasters, even when family members are stolen from you.” She held my right forearm firmly, tightly. Then, clenching my wrist, she dragged me further away from the college courtyard. How I wanted to tie my gyuilta’s trailing hem and scale the wall! To lose myself in song and learning and to leave the poor sad world behind!
“Today is the day that changes our lives, Daughter.” Yes, she had contrived some mad scheme! What Mam was like before poverty, grief, and the Angleni invasion unhinged her mind I don’t know. I suppose she must have been less manipulative, but who can truly know what occurred before one’s birth? Like my lost sister, I was born after the war began, after sorrow and repeated Angleni truce breaking and atrocities had embittered my mother.
“Ydalle sent a news runner to our shop this morning,” she said.
An image of a stout nervous Theseni woman and a long-haired youth flashed across my mind. “The boy in green leggings?” I asked. “With the butterfly beadwork?”
She nodded. “The Pagatsu markings. The boy was one of Taer’s servants.” She raised her eyebrows, indicating I should be impressed that Taer’s servant had visited us. I shrugged.
A self-satisfied smile spread across her face. “Even though the Angleni destroyed our livelihood, they haven’t destroyed your Mam’s ability to keep old friends and make new ones. Even here, the Good Maker has blessed us with allies.”
She was right, of course. Mam was greatly liked. In our native village, it was even rumored she was to be appointed to the council as a Beloved Woman. She would have sat among the Kluna clan elders of the Theseni tribe. What honor that would have brought her! But we had left the Kluna region and had come to Satilo. I had thought we were merely fleeing the Angleni who now occupied so much of our old region, but I had always wondered why she had chosen Satilo, a town with a population that was mostly Ibeni.
She craned her neck, glancing behind me, then spoke through cracked front teeth as we loitered near the sword seller’s shop. “You’ve heard your father speak of his old friend, Taer, haven’t you? The Disa of Scha Menta’s army?” Her eyes glowed with scheming.
“The First Captain everyone calls General Treads Lightly? That Taer?”
“Think of it, Daughter! We know the Disa of King Jaguar’s army personally!”
I drew in my breath. Partly from sleeplessness, partly from disgust and wariness. Her plot was becoming all too clear, even to my muddled brain. “Mam, Father told you not to communicate with Taer.”
“We’re not going to ‘communicate with’ him, foolish girl. We’re simply going to accidentally bump into him. Such things happen. Especially in markets. Of course, if one bumps into someone, the law of hospitality declares he must be invited into your father’s shop for a meal.”
Father’s shop was dingier than all the shops in the market. Grief and illness had tied all our hands and we hardly had strength to make it hospitable. “Mam, reconsider this.”
“Is it wrong to invite an old friend to a meal?” She scratched her head, something she always did when hatching a plot. “Such things also happen, don’t they?”
“And why do you want to invite him to our shop?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Why? So he’ll see our poverty, of course!”
“Of course.” Why one person would want another to see her poverty was beyond me.
“Taer is an honorable man.”
I suddenly understood all.
She glanced this way, then that, as if the trees themselves were conspiring against her. “He has no patience with commerce. No, he was never one to dwell on such earthly matters. Rich men can afford to waste their time studying the gods. Not that I judge the man. Should General Treads Lightly be seen in the streets bartering, selling and buying when he has servants to handle his money? Even so, today.... “Her voice trailed off.
“Today?”
“Today, Daughter, he comes to the market. Oh, I’ve been waiting so long for this.”
Her face beamed as if a star of ecstasy surrounded it. “For the first time in eight moons!” She almost danced an Ibeni two-step. “Ydalle says Taer’s son wants to buy a sword, and when that boy wants something, well, you know how the Doreni spoil their children. So Taer will be helping him choose.”
“Doesn’t Taer have military underlings who can—”
“Tsk, tsk, this boy’s his only real child! And a sword—”
I could not help myself. “He has an unreal child?”
Her eyes hinted at secrets. “Well, there are other—shall we say—concerns.”
“Concerns, uh? Those concerns are no concern of mine. But if he’s so close to Our Matchless King, Taer could easily ask the king for a sword for that spoiled brat of his.”
“Taer’s not one to push himself forward. Ydalle says this boy wants an untested sword, one that doesn’t remember old victories.”
“Can’t he wipe off the old blood like poor warriors do?”
Mam glanced upward at the sun and then at the shadows looming on the ground and waited, pacing. She flung her hand this way and that as if we were discussing some great business. She even lifted my own hand, encouraging me to make the show
