“Where is my staff?” Marit asked.

Lord Radas exhaled.

The woman shook her head. “Lost, with the others. We would dearly wish to find it.”

“I don’t even know what it is, or why it matters,” added Marit, hoping to sound disingenuous. “ ‘The staff of judgment.’ So the tales say.”

“The symbol of our authority,” said the woman. “So it is doubly a cause for celebration that you, Kirit, possess yours.”

The girl’s stare was so flat that Marit did wonder if a demon had crept into that cloak. “We pass judgment, then? We kill the many bad people?”

“Yes, Kirit. We will kill the many bad people.”

47

On Wakening Rat, the last day of the Month of the Ox, Avisha woke trembling and wiped her face with dry hands as she rose. Sheyshi was still snoring. Outside, the Barrens still lay in shadow. Avisha lit a lamp and washed herself with water from a basin. She dressed in a taloos she had never worn, winding the cloth tight. After combing out her hair, she pinned it up in coils as for a festival day. Slipping on sandals, she padded to the kitchen gardens with the basin clasped against a hip and poured the water over flourishing rows of immortal sun, whose petals were edible and whose roots could be ground up into a soothing medicinal good for pregnant women taken by nausea. The sun broached the horizon, painting the sea with light.

One of the kitchen women looked up, smiling. “That’s cloth I’ve not seen before. Good quality, too! You going to sit on the bench today?”

Avisha blushed.

“You know, that girl from Dekos village, she is already pregnant! So they are saying.”

“Is that the girl who got a belly full in Olossi?” Avisha asked. “That one who had to come out here before all of us? The chief wanted the soldier whipped.”

“Aui! That one! Neh, those two made the offerings in Olossi and came here already married, but without a feast. That Dekos girl, first day the altars were up, she and her lover they sat on the bench. Don’t you remember? It was only a week ago.”

Twelve days ago Avisha had been in the middle of a roaring conflict with Jerad about his fights with other boys, which had ended with him storming off to sleep in the stables. Chief Tuvi had assured her he was being looked after by the Qin soldiers, and anyway he was always following Jagi around.

“I was too busy to go down into town. Let me get Zi.”

The little girl was snuggled in with other small children belonging to the kitchen workers.

The kitchen woman touched her on the shoulder. “Let her sleep, Avisha. You don’t want her fussing to distract you, eh?”

“Maybe it would be better to wait until the next auspicious day. I’m not a Rat, to find good fortune on Wakening Rat, but I am an Ox, and I don’t want to sit on the bench next month, Snake Month. Snakes are good people, of course, serene and wise, but that doesn’t mean I want to make such a big decision in a month dedicated to an animal known to be strict and secretive, liable to hide its hostility in a crack in the ground and then strike when least expected.”