“It will be a healthy boy,” said Miravia.

“That’s what everyone says. Naturally I am required to desire a son first and second, and a daughter third.”

“No, I meant that Grandmother says it will be a boy, so it will be.” Miravia sipped thoughtfully at her tea. “Grandmother has been against my coming all along, of course, but Mother said you must be lonely in circumstances to which you are unaccustomed.”

“So poor Tam, by getting murdered, made it possible for you to visit me?”

“Perhaps. But Grandmother herself tended that other soldier.”

“She saved Seren’s life.”

“Yes. I never saw him, of course. That would never be allowed, as I remain unmarried.” Miravia’s tone slid toward a darker edge. “He was very polite to her even when the poison was at its worst. Since he was in unspeakable pain, she determined that even the lowliest Qin soldiers had sufficient good manners and proper notions of propriety as well as discipline to be trusted not to barge in and discover me unveiled. And trusted to guard me, in this house, since of course no household in the Hundred can be trusted to safeguard the dignity of women.”

Mai picked at the tray of cakes and fruit. She was hungry all the time, nibbling constantly. “Even at home I was never confined like this, and certainly my father was strict about the dignity of the women of his household. It’s just that I’m accustomed to being in the market. It’s so dull, being stuck inside the walls all the time.”

“You have plenty of company.”

“That counts for something, certainly, but many of the women will marry and go off to establish their own households. So we must hope. Priya is always with me. And there’s a sweet girl my age among the ones we’re hoping will marry the soldiers. I like her, she reminds me of my sister Ti, but she is not a deep thinker, Miravia, if I may say so. As Ti would say, I think I would die die die if I couldn’t see you.”

Miravia pressed her hand softly.

In pregnancy, Mai’s thoughts had begun to wander down strange paths unknown to her before, or perhaps it was the long journey she had undergone, from being Father Mei’s favored pet in Kartu Town across months of travel through desert and hills and mountains to the fragile peace she had grasped for herself in this new land. Her thoughts, once confined by the limits of Kartu Town, had roamed into a wilderness she did not at all comprehend.

“Is it strange to say,” she said hesitantly, “that even so quickly, I felt when you and I met that we knew each other already?”

“Not strange at all. Souls are reborn, and in their new lives they move toward the souls they have loved in previous lives.”

“Is that what the Ri Amarah believe?”

“What we believe? It is the truth. Perhaps you and I were sisters in another time.”