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  I said nothing, just closed my fist around the necklace and walked out.

  I can avoid her. Or wait her out.

  But Tamar was friends with the servants, and Zivar’s servants were everywhere. Had she passed along word to dump water on my head if it looked as if I was meditating? The sickening pain of being dragged out of the borderland wasn’t something I wanted to relive if I could avoid it.

  Maybe I could pretend to sleep. Not real sleep—though I sometimes went to the borderland in my dreams, I didn’t think I would be able to bring along the spell-chain. Of course, Tamar would guess that if I were “sleeping” somewhere other than my own comfortable bed, I might really be meditating. Well, perhaps I could go back to the room and lie down. Not tonight. Tonight she would guess. But maybe tomorrow. For now . . . for now, I realized, I was hungry. I didn’t want to go back to the room because I thought that if I had to face Tamar’s smirk, I would slap her. I headed for the kitchen.

  The kitchen was busy. It was time for the evening meal, and even if Zivar was uninterested in eating more than a few sips of broth, the servants were all hungry. Food was loaded onto trays and carried up to Zivar, up to Tamar, out to the stable. Someone dished me out a bowl of chicken stew and I sat down at the kitchen table to eat it, mostly ignored by the busy staff. Someone ladled in more when I finished what I had, refilling my bowl until I pushed it away. There was a cup of wine, as well, though I barely touched that, and bread. When I’d finished, I slipped back out.

  I should make another attempt tonight. Tamar would be expecting me to try again, and might stop me. But once she’d stopped me twice, she might begin to relax a little. I would have a better chance tomorrow—or even later tonight—if I let her stop me again now. I headed for Zivar’s workroom.

  It was quiet and dark, but when I stepped inside to light the lamp I heard someone say, “Stop, I like it dark.” Zivar. Trembling, I turned. In the dim light I could just make out her shape, slumped at her worktable.

  “It’s Xanthe, isn’t it?” she said. “Or Lauria. Tamar calls you Lauria, some of the time.”

  I shivered. “It’s me,” I said. “Lauria is a . . . nickname.”

  “Of course. So is ‘Zivar’; I’m sure you guessed as much. The servants have given me to understand that you also know my secret now.” She leaned forward. “They seem to think that you own Tamar; that I would kill you to protect my secret, and keep Tamar with them. They favor that idea, as they are fond of Tamar. But I am fond of you. Is Tamar your lover?”

  “None of your business.”

  “We both know a few things that are none of our business, I think.” I heard her let out her breath in a faint, dry chuckle. “Have a seat.”

  I sat.

  “I’ve been well shadowed for a while now, but that hasn’t stopped me from listening. It’s a matter of habit, I suppose. And it’s always stood me in good stead. Who is Prax?”

  I shivered. “A slave that I would like to free.”

  “What if he doesn’t wish to be free?”

  “I don’t think he’ll refuse. He’s in a mine.”

  “I see.”

  I wished she’d let me light a lamp. I couldn’t make out her face in the darkness at all.

  “So you plan to steal him, then free him, using the spell-chain that you made. That you almost made.”

  I tightened my fist around the necklace. “Yes. Are you one of the Younger Sisters?” I didn’t really care about the answer to that question, I just wanted to push back.

  “No. They’re as cliquish as the High Weavers, in their own way. I had no sister-apprentices, in my ‘studies’ with Mila. In fact, I avoid Mila’s old apprentices rather assiduously. There is one of them who might recognize me.”

  “Only one?”

  “Mila had seven apprentices, and four of them never looked twice at Mila’s slaves. Of the three who did, two are now dead. The one who remains knew my name, though. If she saw me, and looked past my robes and spell-chains to my face, she would probably know me.” Zivar began to crack her knuckles, one by one. “Fortunately, she lives in Penelopeia.”

  “What is it that you want, Zivar?”

  “From you? I wanted your karenite. Are you happy with our bargain?”

  “Yes.”

  “As am I. Good. You’re welcome to stay until the snow melts.”

  “But what do you want? Not from me. From . . . magic. From the djinni.”

  “I wanted freedom. I wanted power. Now . . . Now, I suppose I would most like to see an end to my own darkness. And perhaps . . .” She laughed, a little roughly. “I don’t like the Sisterhood. I don’t like the Younger Sisters. I would like to see magic scattered throughout the world, not controlled like gold coins from a locked chest. It’s why I agreed to let you watch me. Every sorceress that the Sisterhood does not control is one more mouse in the granary.”

  “Yet you still checked to make sure I was female.”

  “I won’t have a smelly man about the place.” She paused, and I heard her sigh in the darkness. “I like that rule,” she admitted. “Sooner or later, a man will learn magic, and the Weavers won’t find out in time to have him killed, and then things will change. But for now . . . men have their swords, their shields, their horses, their armies. Alexander conquered the world with those things. But this is our power, the power of women.”

  I remembered thinking something along those lines, about sorceresses, a long time ago. A very long time ago.

  “Lauria.” She used my real name. “What do you want?”

  “I want to free Prax, and the others I’ve sworn to free. And then as many more as I can.”

  “Only the rivers’ return can free them all,” Zivar said. Her tone was sarcastic.

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t believe the rivers’ return would matter. Ligeia has seen the spell-chain used to bind the Jaxartes—yes, there’s a spell-chain for that. It’s a single loop, so long that if you unwrapped it and held it out to its full length it would be taller than my house. It could be worn around someone’s neck, if you looped it enough times, but it would be heavy. The beads are mostly blue, apparently. And it has hundreds of pieces of karenite, since it takes many, many aerika to keep the river bound.”

  “It’s just a spell-chain that binds the rivers?”

  “The Jaxartes. The Oxus—well, it took a great deal of aerika to build the tunnel under the mountains, but once the channel was built, it doesn’t actually require any magic to keep it flowing. The Jaxartes, though, is bottled up in some valley in the mountains. It’s not natural. It’s held there by aerika who do nothing else.”

  “Have you ever seen it?”

  “No. I haven’t traveled a great deal. Flying makes me nervous.”

  “If it’s bound with a spell-chain, though . . .”

  “Yes, the binding stones could be broken, one by one. You’d have to lay hands on the spell-chain to do that, though, and it’s not as if the Sisterhood leaves it just lying around. I think that’s what the worshippers of Arachne are getting at with their story. Haven’t you heard this one? They say that Arachne has ordered her servants the spiders to find the secret heart of the Weavers’ power. When they find it, Arachne will destroy it. Then the rivers will return and the Danibeki will be free, because the power of the Weavers will have been broken. That’s why the Greeks kill spiders.”

  “I always thought that was just to dishonor Arachne.”

  “It is. And there’s no secret heart for the spiders to find, just a spell-chain that could be remade if it were ever stolen and smashed. Why doesn’t Tamar want to let you finish your spell-chain?”

  “She doesn’t want me to enslave the djinni. Tamar didn’t grow up worshipping Arachne—she grew up worshipping the djinni.”

  Zivar let out a dry chuckle. “If they are gods, why can the Sisterhood enslave them?”

  “Well, right. But Tamar doesn’t see it that way.”

  “What are you going to do?”
>
  “Wait. And keep trying.”

  “Good luck,” Zivar said, and fell silent. After a few moments, I edged out of her workroom, and went to find somewhere else to meditate.

  I settled down, finally, in the downstairs sitting room where Zivar had first received us. I saw one of the servants, from the corner of my eye, as she passed by; no doubt word would be passed to Tamar. Well, there was nothing for it; I didn’t really expect to succeed this time anyway. I meditated on the beads, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to find my way to the borderlands this time. After a while I kicked off my slippers, pulled my feet up, wound the chain around my neck snugly enough that any meddling would wake me, and went to sleep on the cushions.

  I slept peacefully, somewhat to my surprise; a tray waited on the table for me when I woke the next morning, with fresh bread and steam rising from the glass of sweet tea. I felt slightly hung over. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since the last time I’d slept, woken, and eaten breakfast at a proper hour.

  I looked out the door and saw a servant quietly sweeping the immaculate hall. Tamar knew I was awake, or would know, soon enough. How to avoid the eyes of the servants? It would be an almost impossible task. I sat down and ate my breakfast. This was a large house; perhaps this morning I would take the time to explore more thoroughly.

  I spent the morning confirming that this was indeed a very nice house. In addition to the rooms I’d visited—the workroom, the guest room, the sitting room, and the kitchen—I found a number of others. There was a narrow room with a long table, presumably used for formal parties, if Zivar ever held them, which I doubted. The servants appeared to occupy a large set of rooms on the ground floor; I poked my head in and withdrew quickly when I was met with a stony glare. They were large and comfortable, fit to house the keepers of Zivar’s secrets. The most interesting room was the library. It had a large window for light, and a shelf of books. The window was unshuttered, and the room was extremely cold; it probably got more use in the summer. I was intrigued enough to look through the books, but nearly all were in a strange foreign script—Persian, I guessed—and I couldn’t read them. Of the volumes in Greek, one was a travelogue from someone who had wandered quite far beyond the territory of the Alashi, and one was a book of instructions for proper sacrifices to Athena.

  I tucked the travelogue under my arm and closed the door behind me. The servant polishing the floor never so much as looked up. I bit my lip and went back downstairs.

  The servants undoubtedly had instructions to tell Tamar if I took out the necklace to meditate; they might have been warned to tell Tamar if I lay down to take a midday nap. But would she have told them to tell her if I sat down and started reading? I might as well try. I curled up by the fire in the sitting room, lit a lamp for extra light, slipped the necklace into my lap where it was hidden by the folds of my tunic, and opened the travelogue.

  The author had clearly wanted to save money on paper, because the handwriting was so tiny and cramped I had to squint to make out some of the words. In places, water or wine had been spilled, rendering it illegible. Still, it was interesting enough that after a few pages of pretending to read, I had started reading in earnest. The traveler was a man named Photios who worked for a merchant company with an aerika caravan. Except instead of sticking to the established trade ports, he seemed to spend a great deal of time using the aerika to explore. The travelogue was more of a long letter than anything else; he was reporting back on what he’d found. Zivar backed a merchant company, the servants had said. Perhaps she had backed the exploration mission. It seemed quite possible that this had been a letter to her.

  On the trip he described, Photios had gone to the very edge of the world, beyond the people who sold silk and tea, to an island. The people on the island had little contact with magic, beyond employing rudimentary shamans to keep the aerika from causing trouble, but they had the most excellent metalsmiths that Photios had ever seen. He lacked the funds to buy a sword to bring back, and noted that on a modern battlefield, they hardly posed a threat to the Sisterhood of Weavers. Still, if magic were somehow removed from the equation, he thought they would be a remarkable foe. He finished with the regretful note that they were unfriendly and suspicious of foreigners, and that it would not make a comfortable place to retire.

  So she was looking for a place to run away to. I turned the page; the next place Photios described was in the other direction, a cold land with mountains and pale barbarian warriors. Enough of this. I gripped the necklace. It was fascinating, but . . . I have work to do.

  I set the book aside for a moment, stretched, took a sip of tea, nodded at the servant who was replenishing wood in the fireplace, and bent my head over the book again. But I wasn’t looking at the text now; I looked at the sparkling crystal in my lap as my fingers ran over the tiny carved horse, over and over again. I knew the note to listen for, and listen I did, until I could follow the sound to the borderland like one would follow the trickle of water against rock to find a stream . . .

  And there I was, in the singing darkness. I eased the pincers out to my lap, where I could use them.

  I need to work quickly, I thought. It won’t take long. But as I turned, searching for a spirit to bind, I felt a sharp blow against my chest. This time, however, the force came from within the borderland itself, and a moment later, I could see Tamar standing beside me. “You’re going to ruin everything,” I said.

  Her eyes were bright, like stars against the twilight. “I’m not going to let you,” she said, and pushed me again.

  The blow coming from the borderland itself didn’t force me out the way the wet rag had. I pushed her back. “I am a sorceress,” I shouted. “You can’t tell me what to do here!”

  “You may be a sorceress, but I am a shaman,” Tamar said. She raised her hands, palms toward me—and though I felt no blow, I found myself abruptly back in the sitting room. You are not permitted here, her voice echoed in my ears.

  I threw down my book and leapt to my feet. “Tamar,” I shouted, no longer caring who heard. “Tamar!”

  Tamar was waiting for me in our room. “Leave me alone!” I shouted as I came in.

  “What makes you think—”

  “I’m not stupid, Tamar. I know you’ve been having the servants watch me, and I know you just pushed me out of the borderlands!”

  “Nurzhan has told me that when the cold fever has Zivar, she sometimes thinks that people are conspiring against her. Perhaps you’re beginning to catch that fever yourself,” Tamar said, primly.

  “Leave me alone, or I’ll, I’ll—”

  “Hurt me?” Tamar stood up. She was short, barely up to my shoulder. “Kill me? Your blood sister?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I turned away. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m a shaman,” Tamar said. “And what you want to do is wrong.”

  “Are we going to free the horses, too, while we’re at it?”

  “The djinni are not like horses. You know that perfectly well. And we will never free any djinn you bind, you know that perfectly well, too. Just as Zivar will never have enough spell-chains, you will always have one more thing you need that djinn to take care of for you, always.”

  “No, Tamar, listen to me . . .” I had expected her to interrupt me, but instead she turned toward me, waiting, listening to hear what I said. “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I want you to give up on the idea of becoming a sorceress.”

  “I’m not going to do that.”

  “It’s not just because you’ll be enslaving djinni,” Tamar said. “I’ve had the chance to hear stories about Zivar from her servants. Lauria, you don’t want to do this! There will be no going back, do you understand that? Don’t go through this door.”

  “What if I take one week to think about your advice?” I said. “If I promise to think about it for a week, if I give you the spell-chain to hold while I think about it, at the end of the week will you promise to bac
k off and let me do what I’ve decided to do?”

  Tamar thought it over. I took the spell-chain out of my pocket and held it out so she could see it.

  “All winter,” Tamar said. “If you let me hold it all winter, and you still want to do this in the spring, I’ll agree.”

  “That’s too long. How about two weeks?”

  “No.”

  “Three weeks.”

  “All winter or nothing,” Tamar said, and reached for it.

  I snapped the necklace out of her grasp. “I’ll wait you out,” I said, spun on my heel, and walked out of the room.

  My head ached, and I felt as sick as I had when Tamar had slapped me with a wet rag to drag me back from the borderland. But this time it wasn’t the shock of the sudden return that had caused it, but my anger and frustration with Tamar. I thought I could trust her. She’s supposed to be my sister, my ally, someone I can turn to . . .

  We had argued almost since our escape from Sophos, but we’d never fought before, not like this. Fear caught at the corners of my mind, as well. After I bind the spirit, will she refuse to speak to me? All winter? Will she turn her back on me come spring?

  Downstairs, there was a servant dusting the dustless sitting room. I started to sit down, to read the travelogue a little more, but I was too angry. I need a walk. I went to the front door and looked out. The snow was deep, up to my hips, but there was a well-trod path out to the stable. The stable, of course! How long had it been since I’d seen my horses? Too long. I sent a servant to get my boots so that I didn’t have to see Tamar, pulled them on, and ran across the courtyard to the stable.

  The stable hands leapt to their feet as I came in; their morning chores accomplished, they appeared to have been gossiping over a dice game. “Just pretend I’m not here,” I said, but they skulked off to various tasks, looking busy even if they weren’t. I shook my head and went to groom Krina.