She rubbed her aching hip, wondered if it was wrong to ask Zoria to grant Shaso a painful cramp—wondered if Zoria could even hear her, in this house of Tuan’s Great Mother. “I’m ready,” was all she said.

They stopped once for water and so that Briony could eat some dried fruit and bread that a wide-eyed servant brought out into the courtyard. Later, several of the house’s women gathered under the covered walkway to watch, giggling inside their hooded robes, fascinated by the spectacle. Shaso showed her more unarmed blocks, grapple holds, kicks, and other methods of defending herself or even disarming an attacker, ways to break the arm of a man half again her size, or kick him in such a way that he would fight no more that day. When the old man was satisfied with her progress he brought out a second wooden dowel and gave it to her, then began to work with her on the skills of knife against knife.

“Do not let your enemy get his blade between you and him once you have closed,” Shaso said. “Then even a backhand thrust can be fatal. Always turn it away, force the knife-hand out. There—see! If your enemy brings it too close, you can slash the tendons on the back of his hand or his wrist. But do not let him take your blade with his other hand.”

By the time the sun had begun to slide behind the courtyard roof, and the women of the hadar had found even their deep curiosity satisfied and had gone back inside, Shaso let her stop and rest again. Her legs and arms were quivering with weariness and would not stop.

“We are finished for today,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “But we will do this again tomorrow and the days after, until I can sleep at night.” He put the dowels back in the oilskin bundle. Something else inside it clinked, but he closed the wrapping and she did not see what it was. “This is not the world you knew, Briony Eddon. This is not a world that anyone knows, and what it will become is yet to be seen. Your part may be great or small, but I am sworn to your family and I want you alive to play that part.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant, but as she looked at the old man and saw that for all his seeming invincibility his hands were trembling as much as hers and his breathing was short and rapid, she was filled with misery and a kind of love. “I am sorry we had you imprisoned, Shaso. I am ashamed.”

He gave her a strange look, not angry, but distant. “You did what you had to. As do we all, from the greatest to the smallest. Even the autarch in his palace is only a clay doll in the hands of the Great Mother.” He tucked his bundle under his arm. “Go now. You did well—for a woman, very well.”