She counted back days, so she would not forget. Probably the eastern merchant meant to cheat her; he could not be trusted. One year held eighteen passages of the moon, and each passage of the moon held twenty-four dawns. She had been careful to keep count as the caravan rumbled east out of the lake bed and up into new country.

Twenty days she had been chained in the wagon, allowed out at dusk to walk around under heavy guard. Three days before that she had watched her brother ride away. Today was a new day, the end of her first month of being a servant. If she had survived this, she could survive another seventeen months.

They passed into shadow, as though night had fallen. Then they emerged into light, and through the slit she saw they were in a confluence more crowded than the assembly at the Targit River. Stiff tents raised out of wood were packed one up against another. Truly, who ever thought there was so much wood in the world? Other tents were built of stone, just as it said in the tales, or of a clay-red rock with squared corners. No one raised proper tents here.

Folk moved along the open spaces, thoroughfares packed with people trudging and carrying and pushing wheeled carts and barking dogs and crying children until her head hurt. The howl never let up, only muted when they came around several corners and thence past a wall and into a quieter enclosure. The wagon halted. The dray beasts were unhitched; they crunched away over dirt to slobber at a trough. The smell of water was like sweetest honey on her tongue, for she’d had nothing to drink that day.

She set to work on the peg, bracing her feet against the wagon, straining, pulling, until she was sweating and in a rage with frustration. Her left wrist had begun to bleed.

Blood means life.

She heard the old man’s voice, answered by that of a woman. She swung around to face the approaching threat. The entrance flap was untied and swept back.

An old woman with a commanding bearing stared belligerently in at her. She was dressed in such an astounding wealth of silk that Kirya knew she must be a headwoman of great consequence. The old one grunted with displeasure, and another woman clambered into the wagon to unlock the chains. Cautiously, Kirya crawled out of the wagon. She stood in a space surrounded on all sides by high walls. Dusty green trees shaded the trough at which dray beasts watered. A boy swept fresh droppings into a pan, but when he saw her, he stopped working to stare with mouth dropped open. Grooms turned, pointing and whispering. A girl half hidden in a doorway stepped out into the sun to squint at her.

“Yah yah!” yelled the old woman at the loiterers.

Folk abandoned the open space. Only the old merchant, the headwoman, and a trio of cousins remained. The women in their embroidered caps and bright silks looked very much alike with broad faces and reddish-clay complexions.