“Papa, you’ve said this twelve times.”

He smoothed down the hair of one, twisting the end of her braid, and tugged out a wrinkle in the cloth draped over the shoulder of the other. “They have to prove themselves to you, girls, in the same way you have to prove yourselves to them. They’re folk just like any other, even if they look different than we do and have different ways.”

Avisha wiped her forehead again. Taru have mercy! It was so hot. Thunder rumbled, but the clouds hadn’t yet gotten to the city. Her hair felt stringy and tangled, however much she had tried to keep it combed and clean. She’d washed out her one good taloos a day ago, in a stream, but it had gotten stepped on and there was a big smudge of red clay dirt smeared across her hips. She hoped her face was clean, but Zianna would keep rubbing her hands in the dirt and then patting her big sister’s cheeks.

“I have to pee.” Jerad’s body was jiggling as he tried to hold it in. Tears dribbled down his face. “I don’t want to wet myself out here in front of everyone.”

If only Nallo were here!

But Nallo had been marched off to the reeve hall. They’d probably never see her again.

A shout from the gate startled her. A troop of grim Qin soldiers dressed in black rode into the courtyard from the street. She’d seen them during the long march from the Soha Hills to Olossi with the other refugees, but except for the day she and Nallo had encountered them on the trail, she’d not spoken to one. Every gaze shifted to stare with fear or apprehension at the newcomers.

If Nallo were here, Avisha knew what she would do.

“The hells!” She grabbed the boy by the wrist. “Come on.” She jiggered the latch and found the door unlocked. They slipped through while every eye in the courtyard was fixed on the Qin soldiers.

She closed the door behind them and sank against it, breathing hard. A stand of hatmaker’s pipewood screened the door. Jerad fumbled at his trousers—she’d made him put on his only pair so he would look respectable—and with a snivel of relief let go of his water. The spray rattled so loudly Avisha thought the whole city must hear, but the clamor of horses in the courtyard drowned him out. Her arms ached, and she looked around to see if there was anywhere she might put down Zi.

They stood in the shadowed corner of a walled garden. A larger garden lay beyond a second wall, green with fruit and nut trees, but this modest garden was laid out in a square with beds and troughs for medicinal plants, now overgrown and neglected, and stands of pipewood or shrubs of rice-grain-flower and purple-thorn and other such useful plants set against the walls. In the corner opposite her hiding place, a second door stood ajar. Just a few steps from it, a young woman sat on a bench. With her shoulders bowed, she was weeping too softly to be heard, but weeping nonetheless, wiping her face with the back of a hand as she lifted her head.