“Nor will we take you this time,” Idite said kindly, patting Briony’s hand. “You would be welcome, but you are a stranger to the Great Mother and Dan-Mozan my husband says it would be wrong to teach you the rituals, since you are a guest.”

“So why do I have to dress in a special way?”

“Because afterward we are going out to the town,” said Idite. The women behind her all murmured and smiled. “You have not been outside the walls of the hadar since you came. My husband thought you deserved to go outside today with the rest of us.”

She was not certain she liked the word “deserved,” which made her feel like a child or a prisoner, but she was excited at the thought of seeing something other than the inside of the merchant’s house. A cautious thought occurred to her. “And Lord Shaso…? He says it is allowed?”

“He is coming, too.”

“But how can I go out? My face is well-known, at least to some…”

“Ah, that is why we must begin to work on you now, king’s daughter.” Idite smiled with mischievous pleasure. “You will see!”

By the time the sun had crept above the walls and morning had truly come, Briony sat alone in the women’s quarters waiting for the others to return from their prayers, which were apparently led by a Tuani priest who came to the hadar and held forth in the courtyard. She lifted the beautiful little lotus mirror Idite had placed in her hands, wondering at the changes the women had made. Briony’s skin, fair and freckled, at least in summertime, had been covered all over in powdery light brown paint from one of Idite’s pots, so that she was now only a shade or two paler than Shaso himself. Her eyes had been heavily lined with kohl, her golden hair pulled back so that not a wisp of it showed beneath the tight-fitting white hood. Only her eyes had not changed, the green she had shared with her brother Kendrick as pale as Akaris jade. Idite and the other women had laughed at the contrast, saying that her eyes in that dark skin made her look like a Xixian witch, that she needed only flame-colored hair to complete the picture. This had made her think of redling Barrick, and to her horror she had suddenly found herself weeping, at which point everything had stopped while her eyes and cheeks were dabbed dry and repairs were made. The kohl had to be reapplied completely. As she looked in the mirror now, Briony saw a black spot of it that had dripped from her jaw to her wrist, and she dabbed it away.

Where was he? Where was her brother now?

For a moment a wave of such pure pain washed over her that she could barely breathe and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly shut. Every kindness that the people of this house did her only made her feel more lost, the life she knew farther away. She could live without the throne of Southmarch, even without Southmarch itself, strange and lonely as that was to contemplate, but if she could not ever see her father or her brother again she felt sure she would die.