“Tuvek, before you go where you are going, it is best you learn something.”

I laughed, I was a little drunk—with sex rather than wine.

“Do you think I don’t know my task?”

“I think you know it well enough,” she said. “It is another thing you do not know.”

“What, then? Come, Kotta, I have waited some days for this. A night has only so many hours, and I don’t want to waste them here.”

She got up and drew near me.

“In my tent,” she said, “the Eshkir spoke to me somewhat, as women will speak to women at a need. Her folk were noble, warrior men and consorts of their kings. She was bed-mate to one of the gold-masks who fell on their blades in the fortress: a prince. She counted that honorable, and you took her from it.”

“That is the past,” I said. “The future is now.”

“Maybe. The bird in her breast beats its wings for you, yet her brain rebukes her. I have many essences in my place, liquors and banes. There is a little stone jar in the chest; a drop or two out of it is good for the old men’s pain in the limbs, but more than a drop or two and the heart stops. Your Eshkir has questioned me about these things and, since she is to be the wife of the chief’s son, I have answered her.”

The dark had grown sharp edged, and the wine sour in my throat.

“Well, Kotta?”

“The stone jar has gone with your bride,” said Kotta. “She took it. She understands Kotta is blind, and reckoned Kotta would not observe what she was at. But Kotta has her own way of seeing.”

I stood still, made idiotic by her news. A white surge came and went across my eyes.

“So she will poison me,” I said. “It is she who shall die.”

“The stream runs deeper than you think,” said Kotta. “I have warned you so you can be wary, but try her before you act.”

I was already striding away up the path.

My blood beat like a drum in my head. A million strategies came and went like pigeons flying around in my skull. About six paces from my tent, it came to me how I should find her, that she would change even murder with her looks. And then I knew my scheme as if I had been planning it a month.

I opened the flap of the tent.

The light was soft within. Her hair and her flesh seemed woven from the light. She was masked—it was for me to unmask her on this marriage night—but she had removed her robe, and waited there for me, lying on her elbow, clothed in her body with no need for more. It was a city pose, a courtesan’s pose for a prince to come in and find. It showed all, yet made it secret, a mystery. The shadows ran and draped between her thighs; the dip of her waist, accentuated by her stance, was girdled with silver from the lamp. Her hair hid her breasts and did not hide them; as she breathed, the glistening strands parted like plants beneath the sea. In her other hand, curved back to rest upon her hip, she balanced the silver cup, the bride-drink she must offer me, symbol of herself.