a lost hope. Then a smile suddenly lit her face and she seemed much younger than her forty-two years. Such joy I hadn’t seen in months. I knew without being told that Taer was in sight. “He’s come. Look! Over there, near the horse dealer! No, don’t look! He’s the Doreni in the buckskin leggings and the green tunic. No, no, I told you not to look.”
I looked, and saw a muscular well-built man standing beside a slender, almost fragile-looking boy. The boy’s unbraided waist-length black hair flew wild behind his back, as if the wind delighted in playing with it. Neither boy nor man cloaked themselves in the finery of the rich. Both wore green tunics and green caps embroidered with their butterfly clan pattern. Their clothes seemed woven from cotton, hemp or other common fabric; neither wore pearl-encrusted gyuiltas, as the rich were wont to do. The older man wore boots, the boy soft leather shoes with the clan markings. Although the cold moons were barely past, their heads, arms and shoulders were uncovered. When I saw how the man’s braided silver hair glistened, and how his body exuded strength and quiet power, I spoke without thinking. “Indeed, Mam, even from this distance Taer is good to look at.”
“Wait until you meet him!” She smoothed out the kohl around her eyes. “His nose looks like the curve of a bear’s back as it turns away to protect its young.” She breathed a long wistful sigh. “Beautiful jade-gray eyes. Almond-shaped like all the Doreni—but kind, not fierce like the other slant-eyes. He wasn’t one for war when we were young. How he rose so high in the King’s ranks, I’ll never know. He’s too pale, though. Almost as light-colored as an Ibeni. If he had a little more cinnamon in his blood, like most of his people, I would have chosen him when my parents asked me who I wanted to marry. Yes, and our lives would have been much different. But, the Good Maker forgive me, I was foolish and love-struck and I chose Nwaha. Your father had happy, hopeful eyes then. He was a nice brown, too. Dark, but not too dark. He was weak, although I did not know it then. Yes, that was my mistake—”
“Being honorable is no weakness, Mam,” I said, interrupting her. Mam’s bitterness against Father was like boiling water—always seething over.
“You can call it whatever you want. You’re not married to him. The past is gone, though. Taer’s married now and even if...” Her voice trailed off, then she spoke again. “Yes, he’s married. Waihai! Bad luck all three times. Ydalle says his third wife is the worst of his misfortunes.” She bent forward and whispered conspiratorially, “An adulteress.”
I shrugged, so she added, “The mother of a bastard child.”
Gossip against the rich is all the poor have to digest, but gossip always upsets my stomach. When I didn’t bite at her tidbit, she said, “I’ll tell you that little story later.”
“Mam, Doreni women who commit adultery have their noses cut off, or they’re stoned or cast out into the marketplace. I’ve heard no marketplace gossip that Taer has done this, and warriors aren’t known for indulging wayward wives. Tell Ydalle to stop spreading false stories.”
Mam clutched her chest as if some great disappointment weighed on her heart. “Why the Ancient One gave me a daughter with whom I cannot share my heart—I don’t understand!”
“Ask the Ancient One. Surely he knows we would both have been happier if I had been born male.”
She winced, but didn’t answer me.
“Do not make a fool of yourself with this rich man, Mam. Let me travel across the Lingan Plains to find work. I’ll—”
“No! Never! I’ve lost one daughter. I won’t lose another.”
“Or you can hire me to an Ibeni farmer across the river.”
“Did you not hear me? I said—”
“But, Mam, I have strong hands. I can—”
“Those Ibeni bleed even their own children dry. No, no blood-work for my daughter, and no travelling to parts unknown either. Ydalle says Taer’s house is full of servants and former captives. When a woman marries a fool, she learns to create her own destiny. One more servant won’t rob him. Maybe he’ll hire you as a favor to Nwaha. The Doreni are unlike the Ibeni. They don’t worship gold as much. Perhaps Taer will make you his concubine.” She grinned and raised her eyebrows.
“I don’t want to be a rich man’s second-status wife, Mam. I don’t even want to marry.”
“Stop frowning like that! It makes your forehead look ugly.” In those days, unmarried Theseni women wore a sheer full veil that reached from the forehead to below the neck. My mother lifted my veil. With the hem of her gyuilta, she wiped some unseen, unfelt something from my face. “Work with the little charms you have. Learn to smile. A girl as dark as you can’t afford to be too high-minded. You want your father sold into slavery for his debts? Is that what you want?”
Her face contorted into the smug triumphant smile she always wore whenever she bested me. “Now, daughter, throw your gyuilta over your shoulders and walk with me, your arm in mine. The Creator will make my old friend recognize me.”
LOIC: Encounter
As I walked to the sword trader’s shop, a man dressed in a shaman’s vest walked past me. He eyed me suspiciously, glowering, as if the spirits had told him some harsh thing about me. As he passed by, I suddenly remembered that all swords were dedicated to one spirit or another. Instantly I resolved not to buy a sword at all, but rather to make one. In that way, no spirits could enter it and I would not be forced into a league with them.
I told my father my intention, but not the reason for it.
He said, “You want to make your own sword? You have no skill in sword-making, and the new swords imported from Ibeniland have such power, grace and—”
“No, Father,” I said. “I shall make my own sword.”
“How strange your whims have become since Krika...”
I shook my head, hinting he should not speak another word.
He stared at me in silence for as long as it takes for a hawk to wing across the sky. At last, he said, “It is I who should tell you when not to speak. Not you who should tell me.”
“Why do you insist on speaking about Krika when I do not wish his name to fall from your lips? And don’t call my desires ‘whims!’ Don’t presume to think you know my soul so well that you can judge my desires!”
“I knew your soul once,” he said wistfully, “and what I didn’t know you told me.”
“’Once’ is a time and times ago. ‘Once’ no longer exists for me.” I pointed at the blacksmith’s shop. “As for the sword, will you allow the comrades in our armory to help me make it or not?”
He turned his face toward the ground. Since Krika’s death, he had tried often to rekindle our old closeness. I understood his heart, yet I could not forgive him. I chided myself for this because in most matters he was so good a father. Thinking to make the mood between us lighter, yet not wanting to actually apologize, I said, “King Jaguar will smile when he sees the sword I’ll make.”
Laughter was always ready on Father’s lips. “He’ll smile when it breaks in your hand. But go ahead. Buy what advice you can from the blacksmith.”
In those days, I often knew the thoughts of those around me and I suddenly saw his thoughts. An eighteen-year-old boy who is petted and worshiped by all the women of his clan: why should he listen to an old man of forty-five? How can he understand that his father is powerless against the spirits?
It was not “thought-reading” as the Angleni called it. Nor was some demon responsible for it. Knowing another’s thoughts seemed nothing more than a natural extension of understanding and insight. What else could Father have been thinking?
When I returned from the blacksmith’s shop, he was speaking with a horse dealer. Collecting and breeding horses had become his chief occupation since the war ended. Yes, let me praise my father! He was noble and good and his victories helped stall