Freedom's Apprentic Page 20

  The horses were happy to see me. Happier than I deserve. I hadn’t even provisioned myself with treats, so I took some carrots from a sack in the corner of the barn to feed my horses, then brushed their coats. They didn’t need brushing any more than the sitting room needed dusting, but they appreciated the attention. “You’re going to be fat and soft by spring,” I scolded them as I worked.

  “We take them out for exercise whenever we can,” the stable girl near me said. “The weather’s been bad lately.”

  The stable smelled of straw, horse, and wood smoke; it was warm and dimly lit. After a while, the servants sat back down again and resumed their game; I worked my way to the back of the stable and found a comfortable spot, half hidden behind sacks of grain and polished horse tack. The servants were paying no attention to me at all. Either Tamar forgot to tell them to keep an eye on me, or they’re too busy with their game to remember that they’re supposed to. Tamar was much closer friends with the kitchen staff; the stable hands were their own little circle, not one that was as kindly disposed to her. Now, perhaps, is my chance. I glanced at the servants one more time, then laid out the unfinished spell-chain and the pincers that would let me close the circle.

  I found my way to the borderland quickly, and no unseen hands shoved me out or caught hold of me. Catching my breath, I looked around and saw a spirit shining in the darkness like a candle flame. I’ll have you. You are mine.

  My spell-chain was in my hand, and I flung it out, encircling the spirit. I heard a scream of despair. I could see the lights, encircling the spirit like a net, like a cage; inside the circle, I could see the spirit. It was male. My first impression was of a blazing bird, like an eagle on fire; then of a vast cat, the kind that could eat a man as its prey. The aeriko flung itself against the imprisoning circle, jerking it like a fish against a line. I held on, wondering what would happen to me if the spell didn’t hold. But it did.

  I twisted the necklace, making the circle smaller. Within, the aeriko became more frantic, more desperate, like a landed fish fighting against the air that drowned it. I twisted again, and the aeriko screamed again, then began to weep, as Burkut had.

  I have to do this. I twisted again, again, making the circle smaller and smaller. Finally the aeriko faced me, its hands bound against its sides, held prisoner by the spell. I looked across the chain of fire into my prisoner’s face, into its eyes.

  “No,” it whispered, looking at me, and for a moment, I saw Alibek’s eyes, as he’d begged me not to take him back to Kyros.

  Don’t let it sense your weakness! I urged myself, but I stood frozen.

  “Not you,” the djinn said.

  I saw Thais’s eyes, cold and distant; Nika’s eyes, proud but terrified; Burkut’s eyes as he collapsed, weeping to the sands. I saw Uljas bow his head to refuse to look at me, the day that I took him back to Kyros.

  You don’t talk about freeing horses. Are horses slaves? Horses don’t talk. Only people talk. People and djinni.

  The djinn raised its hands and stretched them toward my face; I felt a shiver run down my back like a drop of melted snow as it touched me.

  I can do this. I can. I can take it, it can find Prax and get Prax out for me, and I’ll let it go.

  I heard the hiss of Prax’s breath as he drew his improvised knife and attacked me with it, in his last desperate bid for freedom. I’ll die before I go back there. I had taken the knife away from him with barely a scratch, and brought him proudly home . . .

  All that remained was to close the circle.

  I dropped the chain. “Not today,” I said to the djinn. “Go in peace.”

  The light vanished. The chain vanished. And I fell from the darkness into the stable. It was dim, and I could hear the servants laughing over their game. Before I could change my mind, before Zivar or one of the other sorceresses could steal the chain and the karenite from me, I grabbed a hammer off the wall, threw the chain onto the stone slab of the floor, and smashed the karenite on the necklace into dust.

  I hear the bird, I thought as nausea suddenly overpowered me. The bird that Zivar spoke of, the dark vulture of vast size that settled on the roof, shadowing her with its wings. I think I know now what she might have been talking about.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I walked back into Zivar’s house. My anger toward Tamar was gone, but exhaustion weighed me down with every step. I did make it up to Tamar’s and my room before collapsing into bed, my boots still on. Tamar was sitting by the fire. “I’m tired,” I said, and tossed the necklace onto the floor, lay down, and closed my eyes.

  I heard Tamar pick up the necklace; I could hear the soft click of the beads as she turned it over in her hands. “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “Good,” she said. I wondered if the beads would still be singing, if I saw it in the borderland. “Good.” Another rattle as she put it away somewhere. “I’ll get you some lunch.”

  “Don’t bother,” I was going to say, but it seemed like too much effort.

  I expected to feel better the next morning, but I didn’t.

  It was strange, the bone-weariness I felt. It went so much deeper than mere exhaustion.

  Tamar nagged at me to eat.

  There was an ache, somewhere beyond my heart. I wanted to make it go away. Carving out my heart with a sword was the only thing I could think of that seemed as if it might help.

  Up. Up!” Someone shook me violently. It wasn’t Tamar. I curled up, resisting, but the hands only shook me harder. “Open your eyes, you lazy girl. Up!”

  It was Zivar. I let her drag me out of bed. There was a hollow where I’d been lying, like a bird’s nest.

  “I have discovered the secret of flight,” she whispered to me. It made no sense, but I didn’t care enough to ask for her to clarify. “And that will cure your melancholia. Come on, out out out!”

  My boots were gone; Tamar must have pried them off my feet. Zivar dragged me downstairs in my socks, then out into the snow. The sun was shining, and the air was still but very cold. Zivar was shivering, but her cheeks were flushed as if it was midsummer. “Now run,” she said. “Run back and forth! If only we can get up enough speed, we’ll be able to fly by ourselves, no aerika necessary. Come on!”

  She was dragging on my arm, so I stumbled after her, blinking in the dazzling sun. Back and forth across the courtyard we ran. My hands and feet ached in the cold; we slipped and slid on the packed snow and skidded into the wall of the stable.

  “This isn’t working,” Zivar said after a time. “All right, back inside. I’ll have to think of something else.”

  The servants had gathered to gape, and Tamar met me with a warm blanket to wrap around my shoulders as she hurried me back upstairs and sat me down in front of the fire. Zivar trailed behind her, still talking.

  “. . . .melancholia,” she was saying as I sat down.

  “But I broke the spell,” I said. “I smashed the binding stone. Why . . .”

  “You heard the cry of the aeriko,” Zivar said. “You looked into its eyes and knew its hate. I think perhaps that’s what does it. That’s why I always work as fast as I can.”

  “Is that really the reason?”

  “Who knows? It’s what I tell myself when I work. Anyway, we’ll cure you yet. Let me just think . . .” And out she went.

  Tamar held a cup to my lips. I drank, expecting tea, but it was broth, salty and very strong. I spluttered, then drank it anyway.

  “You’re wasting away,” Tamar said.

  “There’s plenty of me left.”

  “Will you eat? I’ll send for food,” she said, but by the time the food had arrived, I had gone back to my nest.

  But now I couldn’t sleep, not the way I’d been sleeping. Night came, and I still couldn’t sleep, staring into the darkness and thinking of Prax. I failed you. I had a chance, and threw it away.

  My failures lined up in front of me like soldiers on parade, and I counted them, from fail
ing Kyros to failing Burkut to failing Prax, Thais, and Sophos’s harem. The ache beyond my heart overwhelmed me, and I knew I deserved to be punished. I thought of Uljas’s scars from his beating at Kyros’s hand: I deserve no less. I deserve worse. I deserve to be sold into a mine, like Prax, to be forced to work in darkness, not knowing whether it is morning or night.

  For some reason the thought was almost appealing: driven to work myself to death, at least I would probably be distracted from the unending ache that swallowed my days. I wondered if I could persuade Tamar to sell me—we’re always buying, never selling—so that in one way, at least, I could finally pay for my crimes.

  And if she sold me to Prax’s mine? If I were face-to-face with Prax, what would I tell him then? I’ve made myself one of you. I’m here with you, do as you like to me.

  My thoughts were thick; I tried to imagine what Prax would say to that, and couldn’t. Perhaps like Uljas, he had sworn to kill me, which was what I deserved, after all. We are both in darkness, I thought. And I see no way out.

  I did sleep, finally.

  I dreamed, some nights, when I was asleep, but I had none of what I’d come to think of as my “true” dreams. Zhanna didn’t come find me; neither, fortunately, did Kyros. My thoughts, during the waking hours, were slow and muddled. Thinking about anything felt like wading through hip-deep mud. I would get stuck with each new step and lose my way. I settled into imagining the mine, which for some reason was easier. The heaviness of the stone; the darkness of the pit; the constant hunger, the exhaustion.

  I will be unable to ride there in the spring if I don’t get out of bed soon.

  I rose, and sat by the fire. I will be the world’s most useless slave, more useless than Burkut.

  It was dark and I couldn’t sleep, and thought again of the mine, seeing myself face-to-face with Prax as I’d faced Uljas. I am one of you now. Do as you like to me.

  And? asked the Prax of my dark imaginings, surprising me. And? This helps me how?

  I am an offering. You can kill me. Have your vengeance.

  I don’t want your sacrifice. I want to see the sky again.

  But . . . I have a confederate on the outside, I thought earnestly to Prax. A friend who can help us escape.

  That’s it. My blood went cool, suddenly, as I turned the idea over and considered it. If I have nothing to lose, if I’m willing to risk slavery, beating, death . . . why not?

  Prax was not a shaman, nor were we connected through blood, so I couldn’t communicate with him in dreams. But Tamar and I could talk, by night, even over large distances. Even if I were there, how would I get them out? The slaves would outnumber the guards, but the guards had fear on their side, and weapons. They were strong, not worn almost to death from the work in the mine. And by night, they put all the slaves down below, so that they couldn’t run.

  Opening my eyes where I lay, I saw a shadow skitter across the wall—a spider. Venom, I thought. Arachne’s weapon makes us strong. The Alashi tipped their arrows with venom, giving themselves an advantage in fights against the Greeks. The slaves would have no weapons they hadn’t managed to wrest from the guards. Then I remembered the cook at the inn, the innkeeper who beat her when everyone became ill. The food at the mine will be cooked by slaves. The pots are scrubbed by slaves. And the guards and the slaves probably do not eat the same food. I could bring something . . . a little bit of spoiled meat, to add to the guards’ stew.

  The guards are not likely to be very effective when puking their guts up.

  Tamar could wait until the guards were ill, then come to help us out of the mine . . .

  It would be easier with help. Perhaps we should free Sophos’s harem first . . .

  I lay awake through the night, thinking.

  I was tired in the morning, but I felt as though I could see daylight again. I just needed to think of a way to free Prax, I thought. Now that I have a plan, of course I feel better. I got up and stretched, shook out the covers to air the bed, and helped myself to a cup of tea from the kettle by the hearth. Tamar came in a few minutes later and stopped in the doorway, looking as if she’d seen a ghost. “You’re out of bed!”

  “I had an idea,” I said. “Is that food on that tray? I’m starving.”

  “You are starving!” Tamar set down the tray and lifted my arm, encircling my wrist with her fingers. “You’ve barely eaten in weeks. Here, eat what’s on the tray. I’ll go get more.”

  There was a cup of broth, which I ignored in favor of the bread, cold meat, and yogurt. I was finishing it off when Tamar returned. She dumped more food on the tray and sat down to eat her own. “There. Eat up. Are you feeling better?”

  “This tastes really good.” How had I never noticed before how good cold roast mutton could be? “Really good.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.” Tamar eyed me a little nervously as she ate her own bread.

  “I had an idea. About freeing Prax.”

  Tamar leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “Well . . .” I finished a mouthful of food and washed it down with tea. “Remember at that inn we stayed at, how sick everyone got? The meat must have gone bad. What if we let some meat spoil on purpose and used it to poison the guards’ food, up at the mine?”

  “Hmm. I suppose that’s the start of a plan,” Tamar said cautiously. “How would we get the spoiled meat to Prax?”

  “We’d ride up there and you’d pretend to be selling me as a slave. I’d have it with me.”

  “Are you crazy?” Tamar slammed her bread down on to her tray. “Or maybe you’re just joking?”

  “We can talk to each other in dreams. I can’t talk to Prax, or anyone else down in the mine. If I’m there, and you’re on the outside, we could make plans . . . once all the guards are sick, you could come in and help us get up out of the mine.”

  “All by myself?”

  “Well, I was thinking maybe we’d free Sophos’s harem first. Do you think you could convince the slaves from the harem to come help you?”

  “No. I don’t think they’d do it. So this plan isn’t going to work.” She turned away from me. “Think of something else.”

  The shutter rattled and I jumped. “Oh, yes, it’s snowing again,” Tamar said with a shrug. “So we’ve got some time to come up with a better plan. You spent a month in bed—”

  “A month?”

  “—but there’s still months of winter left. We’re not going anywhere soon.”

  I was ready, I thought—ready to load up our horses and head north, ready to do whatever it took to get Prax out. But it was the coldest part of the winter; an ocean of snow would have to melt before we could travel, and there was nothing I could do just now except wait.

  Fearful of slipping into another bleak melancholy, I threw myself into activity. I got up every morning to groom our horses and take them out for some exercise if it wasn’t snowing hard; the snow in the courtyard was trampled down now and the horses could move. In the afternoons, I would put on my boots and all the clothing I owned and go for walks through Casseia. After snowfalls, they would have bound djinni scoop up the snow from the streets and dump it outside, so that the residents could walk around the city without too much trouble. It was appallingly cold, however, and even after a short walk I would be shivering, my toes numb and my face aching.

  After my walk I would join Tamar in our room. I had told her about the travelogue and she was curious, so I had begun to read it to her. “Reading really isn’t that hard, you know,” I said, putting the book down one day. “I could probably teach you your letters, and then you could read to yourself.”

  “Eh.” Tamar sounded deeply dubious. “I might be able to puzzle words out, with practice. It’s easier to have you read to me.”

  “What if it comes in useful, once we’re working on freeing Prax and the harem?”

  “It will be more useful if you’re really good at the dream speech. When are you going to start practicing?”

  “I’d have to go to the borderland again.”


  “That’s right.”

  I shrugged. “I’d rather not do that until I have to.”

  “If it’s going to send you down into the darkness again, wouldn’t it be better to find that out now?”

  “Eh,” I said.

  Tamar rolled her eyes. “Fine, then. As long as I can find you in the night, we should be fine. Right?”

  “I’ll try it,” I said. “Tonight.”

  If I was going to try to speak to someone in my dreams, though, it seemed silly to take the risk just to talk to Tamar. After all, I could talk with her in the night just by waking her up. No, if I were going to travel to the borderland and visit another shaman in the dark hours of the night, I wanted to see Zhanna. She hadn’t visited me in a long time. I wanted to know why. I wanted to be certain everything was well with her.

  The last time she had visited me, she’d told me that it would help me to find her if I could hold something of hers, or something that reminded me of her. I didn’t have my vest anymore, of course, though it made me feel strangely warm to think that Zhanna had kept mine. Zhanna always smelled of incense; the smell clung to her hair, especially. If I could find some incense . . . It was too late to go hunting for it.

  When I thought of Zhanna, there were a lot of memories that came to mind: her matter-of-fact response to my nightmares, her laughter when Tamar and I had tried to learn how to meditate, her face as she chewed thoughtfully on her lip, trying to decide how to answer a question. But thinking of an object that reminded me of Zhanna, that was hard. She’d had cropped hair and plain clothes and a black vest, like every other member of the Sisterhood, plus a box of feathers and other items for her shamanic rituals. The embroidery on the back of her vest had been flowers, nothing special. No, that wasn’t true; I pictured Zhanna working on her vest and remembered the exact picture. She’d done flowers down one side, and then a larger picture of a hawk. A feather, perhaps? I didn’t know where to find one of those, either, not this time of night, in the dead of winter.