I would not even swallow the constriction out of my throat in front of her. I answered, “Yes,” as if I had given the matter little thought.

“There is none like you,” she said. She tangled her fingers in my hair which had long ago unraveled from its boy’s plaits. She could never leave my hair be, a thing I have found in other women since, as if the color or the texture magnetized their fingers. The knot in my throat was growing; I glanced at the cloth on the loom to get my anger back and ease it. She saw my glance. “This is your warrior’s cloak I am making.”

That undid me.

“Mother,” I said, “maybe I shall not be needing it,” then bit on my tongue, I was so vexed with myself.

“Tuvek,” she said softly, “now we have the truth. What do you think will be done to you?”

“No woman knows the Rite,” I said.

“True. But she knows the men survive the other side of it. And am I to think you less than them? You, better than any?”

“I flinch from none of it,” I said arrogantly, because she expected too much of me at that moment, “but I think I may die. So be it.”

Then I saw that she also was uneasy, that she had only spoken as she did because she was frightened. Her hands tightened on me.

“Kotta,” she said, “do you hear this?”

I jerked around, angry again certainly at this. I had thought we were alone in the tent. Now I saw the shadow beyond the loom, the blind healer-woman, resting her great arms on her knees. It was an odd thing with Kotta, though her eyes were sightless, she seemed to see everything there was, as the boys learned early when they tried to steal from among her things. Near big as a man, raw-boned, her blind irises shone blue as slate from her shireen. She was often to be found where you did not think her to be. She helped the women bear, and healed ills and wounds, and she was frequently with my mother. It was common women’s talk about the krarl that Tathra would have died of her brat, and the brat too, if Kotta had not aided the birth. I had arrived on a morning of victory after some battle between Ettook’s Dagkta and a Skoiana krarl, but Tathra fought harder than any warrior to get me born. She had conceived no other child and some said this was also Kotta’s work, as a second bearing would be fatal to Ettook’s out-tribe bitch-wife.

Kotta’s enamel earrings clinked when she shifted and stared right at me as if she saw every feature.

“You distrust the tattooing,” she said.

“I distrust nothing,” I said, furious and cold as only fourteen can be.

“You do well to distrust it,” she said, making an idiot of me. “As you say, it may be bad for you. Nevertheless, I hazard you will recover from it, as from the snake’s bite. But I wonder if they will waste their ink.” I did not understand. I was about to throw some harsh sentence to her, and leave the tent, when Kotta added, apparently for no reason, “That loom is from Eshkiri city. There was an Eshkir woman once among the tents.”