The houses of the Chosen were clustered about a small but busy marketplace at one end of the valley. This was a poor community, and the buildings were not grand. We were guests in the best house, but it was vastly different from the great house at Jinnah where we had stayed. Here, only the Firelord was given a bed. I slept in my furs on the wooden floor next to the fireplace. The house had only two rooms, this lower one for living in, and the upper rooms where the host and his wife and family slept. The lower floor was kitchen, entertainment hall, living place, and sleeping chamber for the Firelord and me. Outside there was a tiny stable where the Firelord’s donkey was housed, and a small yard walled with stones, where pigs and household hens were kept. There was a goat, too, for milk, butter and cheese.

I could stand in our host’s door and look straight down the valley to the tents of the Quelled, crowned in mist. It tugged at my heart to see those tents. I stood and looked at them often, and on the second day the Firelord came and stood beside me, leaning on his great divining staff. He had not yet begun to look for firestones; when he was ready, he would divine. I felt his golden eyes on me, and wondered if he knew my yearning.

“You wish to visit the Quelled?” he asked gently.

“I wish to look upon a friendly face, my lord,” I said, “and talk with someone eye to eye.”

“Then go,” he murmured. “But be discreet. The Chosen here have been most tolerant, but they will not approve of my handmaid visiting the tents.”

So I went up into the foothills with Kallai, around the back of the mine, and let him hunt the rooks there; and afterwards I went down to the tents of the Quelled.

A little girl, not branded yet, was playing on the stones outside her tent. She jumped from stone to stone, chanting to herself, swinging a small dead sparrow. She saw the three bloodied rooks I carried, and her eyes went round. Then she noticed Kallai on my other hand, and her mouth fell open.

“Is he alive?” she breathed, dropping the sparrow.

“Yes,” I smiled. “See – if you come near, quietly, he’ll move his head and look at you If you move very slowly, he might let you stroke his breast.”

She came near and lifted her hand, and Kallai ducked away, beating his great wings. I spoke to him, and he grew calm. But the child had backed away, sucking her thumb, her eyes on Kallai’s beak.

“Does he bite?” she asked, still with her thumb in place.

“Only his food,” I said. “His name’s Kallai. What’s yours?”

“Lori.” She still looked suspicious.

“Is your caretaker here, Lori?”

Lori nodded, and ran into the tent. She came out with a harsha not much older than myself. I was surprised, as I had never seen a young caretaker before – and never a harsha like her. She had an exceptional face, spirited and fearless and strong. I noticed that her right arm was crooked and paralysed, so she could not work in the mine. She saw my brilliant scarlet dress beneath my black fur, my brand, my Firelord’s sacred sign – and her face coloured. She knelt on the ground, and touched her forehead to the dusty stones.