“You’ve made me think, that’s all. Surely that’s nothing to apologize for.” Briony took a breath. “Sometimes we don’t see the shape of things until we’re a long way away, do we?”

“If I had learned that at your age,” said Idite, “I would have been on the road to deep wisdom instead of becoming the foolish old woman that I am.”

Briony ignored Idite’s ritualized self-deprecation. “But all the wisdom of the world can’t take you back to change a mistake you’ve already made, can it?”

“There.” Idite smiled. “That is another step down the road. Now drink your tea and let us talk of happier things. Fanu and her sister have a song they will sing for you.”

Briony woke on her thirteenth day in the house of the Dan-Mozan to find the women’s quarters bustling. She had still not developed the habit of rising as early as the others—they seemed to get out of bed before the sun was above the horizon—but even so she was surprised by the degree of activity.

“Ah, she awake!” cried pretty young Fanu, and then added something in the Tuani tongue; Briony thought she recognized Idite’s name in the fast slur of sounds.

Briony began sluggishly to pull off her nightdress so she could don her own garments, but the women gathered around her, waving their hands and laughing.

“Don’t do!” said Fanu. “Later. For Idite wait.”

Briony was grateful that she was at least allowed to wash her face and scrape her teeth clean before Idite arrived. The older woman was beautifully dressed in a robe of spotless white silk with a fringed girdle of deep red.

“They won’t let me dress,” Briony complained, shamed by Idite’s splendid clothes and feeling more than ever that she was too large and too pale for this household.

“That is because we will dress you,” Idite explained. “Today is a special day, and special care must be taken, especially for you, Briony-zisaya.”

“Why? Is someone getting married?”

Idite laughed and repeated her remark. The other young women giggled. Idite had explained to Briony that most of them were the daughters of other well-to-do families, that they were not Effir’s wives but closer to the ladies-in-waiting of Briony’s own court. Only a few were true servants, and some, like Fanu, were relatives of Idite or her husband. Although Effir dan-Mozan was not a Tuani noble, not in the sense Briony understood it, it was clear that he was an important man and this was an important household, a fine place to send a daughter to learn from a respected woman like Idite.

“No, no one is to be married. Today is Godsday, and just as you go to your temple, so do we.”

“But you didn’t take me the last time.” She remembered well the long morning she had spent on her own in the women’s quarters, wishing she had something to read or even some sewing with which to occupy herself, much as she disliked it.