No, there was no haste to buy.

Not until they came to the street catering to those who knew how to write, with its brushes and inkstones and ink knives. In one shop, a dozen wretchedly preserved scrolls had been tossed into a dusty basket in the corner.

“Look here, Priya,” she said to the slave, drawing her close, hand tucked into her elbow. “Don’t those look like prayer scrolls? Whatever would such a thing be doing in this land, where they’ve never heard of the Merciful One?”

The shopkeeper hustled over. “Verea.” He nodded at Priya, not realizing she was only a slave, and then at Mai, gaze shifting between the two to gauge their relationship. “How may I help you?”

“I’d like to look at these,” Mai said. “What a curiosity!”

“Please, please.” He was a short, broad-chested man wearing a sleeveless vest and loose trousers that fell to just above the ankle. He cleared a space on a table and carelessly dropped several of the frayed scrolls there.

A youth wearing only a kilt belted low on the hips was seated on the floor in the opposite corner at the rear of the shop, twisting hairs into brushes. His well-muscled chest was mostly hairless, quite smooth. He glanced up as if he had felt the weight of her gaze, and grinned flirtatiously right at her. She looked away, although not because she feared a lad’s dazzling smile. The Hundred folk wore much less clothing in public than Mai was accustomed to, displaying a great deal of lovely brown skin. Perhaps it was no wonder Isar did not like his unmarried daughter to walk in the market.

Priya sucked in a sharp breath, a hiss of surprise. She had untied a ribbon and smoothed out the first few turns of a battered scroll, careful lest the ragged tears rip further.

“This is a copy of the Thread of Awakening,” she murmured.

Was that a tear below Priya’s eye, or a stray drop of rain? Priya had always a well-modulated voice, in which Mai heard only affection and wisdom. Tenderly the slave tied the scroll back and peeled open a second.

“Aie!” She sounded as if the sight pained her. “The Discourse on the Seven-Branched Candle. Ill handled for its pains. I cannot imagine how these holy books journeyed here.”

“Yet here they are,” murmured Mai as the woman mouthed the words silently and rocked side to side to the rhythm of the unspoken phrases.

The months-long overland journey with Anji’s company had been hard on Priya, but she had never relaxed her care of Mai, never once spoken of her own fears and aches. Nor had Mai, in the seven years Priya had been her personal slave, ever asked. Anji was the one who had discovered that Priya had been kidnapped years ago from a temple where she served the Merciful One, and marched over high mountains to be sold into slavery far away from her homeland. Her only comment: “I survived because of the teachings of the Merciful One.”