Qinnitan gestured for Pigeon to wait by the doorway. The laundry-mistress watched her approach, scowling at this clear sign that her day was about to be unfairly interrupted again.

“What do you want?” she said in flat, unfriendly Hierosoline.

Qinnitan made a little bow, not entirely for show: up close, the woman was quite amazingly large and her sun-darkened skin made her seem something carved out of wood, a statue or a ship of war or something else worthy of deferential approach. “You…Soryaza are?” she asked, aware that her Hierosoline was barbarous.

“Yes, I am, and I am a busy woman. What do you want?”

“You…from Xis? Speak Xis?”

“For the love of the gods,” the woman grumbled, and then switched to Xixian. “Yes, I speak the tongue, although it’s been years since I lived in the cursed place. What do you want?”

Qinnitan took a deep breath, one obstacle passed. “I am very sorry to bother you, Mistress Soryaza. I know you are an important person, with all this…” She spread her hands to indicate the sea of washing-tubs.

Soryaza wasn’t so easily flattered. “Yes?”

“I…I have lost my father and my mother.” Qinnitan had prepared the story carefully. “When my mother died of the coughing fever last summer, my father decided to bring me and my brother back here to Hierosol. But on the ship he too caught a fever and I nursed him for several months before he died.” She cast her eyes down. “I have nowhere to go, and no relatives here or in Xis who will take me and my brother in.”

Soryaza raised an eyebrow. “Brother? Are you sure you do not mean a lover? Tell the truth, girl.”

Qinnitan pointed to Pigeon. The child stood by the door with his eyes wide, looking as though he might flee at a sudden loud noise. “There. He cannot speak but he is a good boy.”

“All right, brother it is. But what in the gods’ names could this possibly have to do with me?” Soryaza was already wiping her hands on her voluminous apron, like someone who is finished with something and about to move on to the next task.

This was the risky part. “I…I heard you were once a Hive Sister.”

Both eyebrows rose. “Did you? And what do you know of such things?”

“I was one myself—an acolyte. But when my mother was dying I left the Hive to help her. They would have let me come back, I’m certain, but my father wanted me here in Hierosol, his home.” She let a little of the very real tension and fear mount up from inside her, where she had kept it carefully bottled for so long. Her voice quivered and her eyes filled with tears. “And now my brother and I must sleep in the alleyways by the harbor, and men…men try…”

Soryaza’s brown face softened a little, but only a little. “Who was the high priestess when you were there? Tell me, girl, and quickly.”