Blindly, I followed him into the cave and sat down by the fire. I was still crying, the woman-stone still clutched in my hand. No man had seen we weep before, except Lesharo. I was ashamed and angry. Amasai said nothing, but after a while he got up and brought me a bowl of stew. I put the woman-stone on the dirt floor and took the bowl, though my appetite was gone and my stomach churned. He waited, crouching the way Lesharo did, his elbows on his knees, his hands folded quietly in front of him. But this man’s sleeves were brilliant blue and edged with gold, and his hands were clean and beautiful. And he did not give me strength, as Lesharo gave me strength. This man drained strength out of me.

I bent my head over the bowl, and scooped out some of the stew with my bone spoon. I made myself eat. When I looked at Amasai again, he was holding the woman-stone, turning it over in his hands. I resented his touching it, but said nothing.

“This was a gift?” he asked, smiling at me. We looked into each other’s faces all the time now, as if there were no longer laws for Quelled and Chosen.

“Yes, lord.”

“From your husband?”

“No, lord. The Chosen had not yet designated me to a man The woman-stone is from my friend.”

Amasai looked at me strangely, as though something I had said saddened him. “You will never know covering now, Elsha,” he said.

Confusion flooded me. I watched the fire, and my face grew hot. I suffered in these times he said things I did not understand. The Chosen language was very like our Quelled dialect, but they used words sometimes that were alien to us. He must have known my confusion, because he looked away quickly, and sighed. But he did not explain. The woman-stone turned in his hands, over and over, and he smoothed its rounded surfaces with his thumb, gently. I bent my head lower over my food, and forced myself to eat.

He got up and rolled out his fine sleeping mat on the other side of the fire, and lay down to read a small scrolled book. I watched him over my steaming bowl and through the fire, and listened to the howling of wild animals in the valley below. I thought of the silent shadows of the wolves, and was afraid. But if the man heard them, he took no notice. He glanced across at me after a while and smiled.

“Can you read, Elsha?”

“No, lord,” I said. “But I know my family sign. We have to show the overseer at the mine our sign, and he marks on the board beside it all the loads we bring out. I can read my sign.”

“What is your family sign, Elsha?”

“The lion.”

He drew a small knife from a leather sheath on his belt, and handed it to me. “Scratch your sign on the wall for me,” he said.