4

When Sediya saw Warning, she sank to her knees and wept.

“The hells!” Marit knelt beside her. “What’s wrong?”

The tears ended as abruptly as they had begun. Sediya wiped her cheeks with the back of a grubby hand.

“You’re one of them after all,” she said without looking Marit in the eye. “Are you going to kill me now, or after you’ve taken me back to Walshow, in the ceremony of cleansing?”

“I’m not one of them!”

She indicated the mare. “You ride one of the holy ones, the winged horses.”

“These others do, too?”

“Yes.”

“How many are there?”

Sediya glanced sidelong at her, then away, but Marit caught that awful need to believe that all might be well when after everything the woman had seen—really, it was a stupid thing to hold to but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help wanting there to be hope.

“I have seen four with my own eyes—twilight, sun, blood, and the one who wears green—but there’s another they speak of, the one even the rest fear. They come and go out of camp. The one wearing the Sun Cloak is the worst, that was the rumor among us slaves. I used to smear my face with dirt.” She faltered, staring at her hands. The two leftmost fingers on her left hand had been broken and healed crooked. “Are you the one others fear so much?”

“I’m not one of them,” Marit repeated, teeth clenched. “What ‘ceremony of cleansing’ do you mean? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Sediya sang in a thready voice a horrible desecration of a holy chant. “ ‘The weak die, the strong kill, and the cloaks rule all, even death.’ ”

“Sheh! That’s not a proper chant.” But seeing the woman cringe, Marit forced her shoulders to relax and her hands to uncurl, trying to appear less threatening. “How did you manage to escape?”

She brushed her belly, caught herself doing it, and winced. “After a while they get careless. They thought I was grinding grain over behind a tent. I just walked away.”

Marit knew the signs. She could evaluate people quickly. “Had they just raped you? Is that what made you run?”

She started talking, fast and low, her shame like a rash. “After a while you get torn and you never heal. Now I bleed and pee all the time, it leaks out of me, there’s nothing to hold it in. Maybe it would be better to be dead after all. What clan will ever want me as a wife for one of their sons? I have nothing to hope for. I’ll go back with you. Please don’t let them kill me.” She never once looked up.

“We’ll find a place for you to shelter,” said Marit, so furious she had trouble tugging in air. “We’ll go back the way I came, to the southwest. It’s safe there.”

Sediya heaved a sigh, then settled to sit crookedly along one thigh as if it were uncomfortable to sit straight down cross-legged in the normal manner. She plucked a strand of grass from the ground and wound it around her crooked fingers. “Where are you from?”