Her voice became brisk and competent. “Priya, bring me a cup of sweet ginger cordial.”

Avisha gulped down sobs and raised her head, but there was no one else in the garden. The little ones still slept. They were so very tired. She was all they had, now that Nallo had been dragged from them. She hadn’t leisure for weeping. She was an artisan’s daughter, accustomed to working hard, not some city-bred girl lounging in elegant fashions and thinking she could get forty cheyt—whoever had forty cheyt altogether except maybe the temples!—from some outlander to marry him.

With a fierce scowl, she rubbed the tears from her cheeks and swallowed her fear and her anger. “Eiya! I don’t know what came over me. Best I leave you, verea. I’m sure you have your duties to be about. I wouldn’t want you to get beaten for shirking.”

“No, I wouldn’t want that either. Here is Priya and she’s brought some ginger cordial. Won’t you taste it? It’s very good. It’s my favorite right now, for it settles the stomach. Priya, maybe some juice for the two little ones, although I don’t think we should wake them yet.”

A woman with amazingly dark skin and round out-lander features offered her a cup with a kindly smile. Dazed, she took it and sipped the most glorious sweet ginger concoction, sharp but light on the tongue. Its bite rose to her eyeballs, making them water.

“Eihi! That’s good!”

The girl stood, her expression transforming as she smiled. The older woman took several steps back. Belatedly, Avisha turned to look behind her.

“Here you are, Mai.”

A man walked into the garden, wiping wet hands. He wore black, like the Qin, and he was accompanied by a middle-aged Qin soldier with the typical round face and merry eyes of the foreigners and by a huge man with a slight slump and a complexion rather like the pretty girl’s. Outlanders, all. The man was not handsome but not ordinary. He halted with his hands out in front of him, registered Avisha’s presence, and looked around the garden as if expecting a tiger to leap out and devour him. Of course he noticed the sleeping children. He looked back at her. Really, he was a fearsome man with a commanding stare, a sword swinging casually at his hip, and a way of looking at you that made Avisha feel she had done something very wrong.

Then he looked away. The older woman handed him a cloth and he finished wiping dry his hands.

“You are returned.” The young woman used that same cool voice Avisha had noticed when she and the little ones had first stumbled into the garden, but Avisha thought she understood it better now: It was the voice of a woman holding her emotions in check.

“We are returned, and we have seen much to interest us. Who is this?” He pointed at Avisha. “Who are those children?”

“Don’t point with your finger, Anji. It’s considered rude. This is Avisha. And that is . . . ah, Jerad, and the little girl is Zi’an, I think.”