Jasoi pulled her helm free. It took a hank of reddish hair with it. Zezili had never seen hair that color on anyone but a Tordinian. Jasoi sheathed her dagger.

“You’re just jealous,” Jasoi said. She still ended her sentences with a rising intonation and slushy consonants; a typical Tordinian accent, though she had been in Dorinah for two decades.

“No, I’m practical. You should have buzzed your head when you got lice.”

“It wasn’t a problem.”

“Eight hours in a chair getting insects picked off my head is a problem,” Zezili said.

“What did you want, Syre?” Jasoi said, tucking the helm under her arm.

“You have the legion,” Zezili said. “I’ll be going into Saolina this morning.”

“Yes, Syre.”

Zezili kicked awake one of her pages – some rosy-cheeked kid from Daorian – and had Dakar groomed and saddled. Some days, she suspected Dakar was better groomed than she was.

She took the main road into Saolina, three hours of riding past sprawling farm holds bursting with children and dajians. The popular refrain in the cities was that the farmsteads produced rice, yams, and the entire country’s children. City women tended to have the number required to avoid taxation, but country women often had twice as many. Children were cheaper than dajians and tended to be a good bit more loyal.

Zezili’s mother lived in a modest three-story brick house built around a dead bonsa tree that was at least as old as Dorinah. Curtains of weeping moss trailed from the skeletal branches. When Zezili knocked, the house dajian said her mother had gone to the salon. Zezili rode on, down into the central spiral of the city. At the end of the winding road was the Temple of Rhea. The way was lined in artisan and market shops.

She reined in Dakar outside the salon, a nondescript building faced in marble with a painted red awning. She tied up Dakar and pushed inside.

Like most salons, Saolina’s was a buzzing hub of activity. Zezili found salons a little beneath her station these days – she had dajians to do her hair – but for most of her life, her mother brought her here twice a week to have her hair trimmed, rolled, curled, and heated. Four women and one man sat in the waiting area, drinking tea and gossiping about local politics. The man was conservatively dressed and seemed to belong to two of the women, sisters from the cast of their faces. The air smelled of burnt hair, boiled agave, and pomade.