But she wasn’t asking Edard, although he had been named commander of the expedition. Tohon nodded, and therefore, it was decided.

31

Life wasn’t too hard in the Qin compound in Olossi, not for a marriageable girl, anyway.

“I help you, Avisha,” Chaji said with a grin, unhooking the full bucket and swinging it over the lip of the well. He set it down on the paving stones. Water slipped over the side to darken the stone.

“I thank you.” Avisha blushed, flattered by his attention.

“That one, too?” His smile crinkled his very pretty eyes as he nudged a second bucket with a booted foot. “I fill. For a kiss.”

Avisha giggled, but she pressed a hand over her mouth and then, seeing the frown that darkened his face, wished she had not. If she made herself disagreeable, none would want her. Behind, footsteps slapped on the paving stones.

“Hu! Chaji, you don’t do it for a price.” Jagi elbowed his comrade aside and slung the empty bucket onto the hook.

Chaji muttered, “Like saying you want no meat when you eat it up with your eyes.”

Avisha felt her ears go hot, but Jagi pretended not to hear, muscular shoulders working as he turned the crank. The bucket splashed into the deep reservoir below, and he hauled it back up while Avisha kept her head down, Beneath half-lowered lashes she surveyed the two men—Chaji with his pretty eyes and pretty grin and Jagi with his broad and rather homely face—her own smile fighting against a fear that it would be unseemly to show how much she enjoyed being the center of their attention.

“I carry them for you,” Jagi said. “To the kitchens?”

“That’s right. Thank you.”

She followed him as he headed for the open gate. The well and the cisterns stood in a courtyard beyond the two gardens, at the highest point in the compound. A complicated system of troughs and pipes brought water from two large cisterns to the pool, the plantings, and the privies, an astounding display of wealth that Avisha still marveled at after weeks living in Olossi. This compound by itself was bigger than the temple complex in her village.

“So, you will marry me, yes?” Chaji paced alongside, hand tapping the ranks of damp cloth in all their bright colors hung on lines to dry. By the smaller cistern, two women pounded wet clothes on stones, pausing to eye Chaji. “You are the prettiest of the girls. You are young. You work hard. The mistress favors you.”

Ahead, Jagi grunted under his breath, but he kept walking through the gate into the passage that separated the open-to-the-air kitchen from the living quarters. He turned left, under the kitchen’s tiled roof, where hirelings standing at long tables plucked chickens and chopped up haricots, onions, and apricots. In the kitchen yard, steam rose from pots of rice and fragrant barsh set over hearths. Ginger tea was brewing.

Avisha stepped up into the shade of the porch and slipped off her straw sandals, while Chaji bobbed on his toes on the walk.