“So it wasn’t a mistake to ask you to give up a husband?”

She grinned, revealing the spaces between her teeth. “A-zu, I was never interested in a man.”

Ah. There were women who were not, but by law, if their abums gave them in marriage to a man, that’s where they went no matter how they felt about it. “But some women who want to join the Koru warriors might be interested in a man and marriage.”

Her eyes wavered from me to the fire and back. “And those women can choose not to be members of the elite. Only the willing go into this sacred service, and she cannot be married if she does it. She must be focused on the sarratum’s commands. That’s it. Not worried about tending her small children or listening to her husband.”

“But what if her husband tended to her children?”

Ummi snorted, nearly choking on a bite. “Her husband? Ha!”

Dagan leaned forward to slice some meat from one of the birds, and I studied his profile. He would be the kind of man to care for a child. He would take a little one by the hand into the fields and teach the child his ways. The image of him with Kasha in the Libbu sprang to mind. There had to be other men like him, too.

“Well, why are there no men in the Manzazu army?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why are there no women in other armies?”

“That’s a good question.”

“The Koru was started years ago as a small group of women who were part of a larger army of women and men. The sarratum wanted them so they could tend to her safety at all hours. But as the years passed, the men dropped out as more and more women joined, and the Palace realized that an all-female army was an advantage. Other cities often misjudge our strength to their great detriment.” She elbowed me. “It’s something you can use, too.”

“Their underestimation of me?”

She stuffed the remainder of the fish into her mouth and chewed. “You can lure someone right into the palm of your hand. And then?” She squeezed her oily hand into a fist. “You crush them.”

We rose at dawn to train.

After some lessons in finding places to hide and disguising ourselves in plain sight, Dagan and I left Iltani near Humusi’s dagger targets to meet Ummi for grappling training. But before I could even breathe a word, she flipped me over her shoulder onto my back, and told me that I needed to learn the skill, too.

An hour later, I was regretting my agreement. Wiping sweat from my brow, breathing heavily, I squinted into the sun baking my shoulders. Dagan brushed sand from his legs.

“Once more!” Ummi pointed at me to go.

“Last time—then I must move on to something else. I am exhausted.”

She frowned at me. “He’s not even wearing armor.”