A Thousand Nights (19 page)

“Shoo, now, little bird,” said the henna mistress. I was not exactly sure to whom she spoke, and she sounded so like my sister’s mother that I moved before I thought. That made
her laugh, to command her lady thus, and the serving girl was smiling as she took her leave. The henna mistress held out a hand. “I will take the tea, lady-bless,” she said to me.
“They may search your rooms, but they do not search mine. If you need it, send for me. You always have an excuse to, because you can say you want the henna.”

I passed the package to her, and she tucked it into her dress. There was too much of my own self that I could not control, but I had these women, and I would have this.

“Now you must go,” she said to me. “Sit straight on your cushion. Speak only if he addresses you. Take small bites and chew them overlong before you swallow. Do not drink the
tea until it has cooled, and if your hands shake, sit on them.”

She did not lecture me for manners’ sake, but for fear’s. I nodded, mouth dry in the heavy warmth of the bath, and she embraced me as she would her own daughter.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

“May your smallgods find you, lady-bless,” she said to me. I had longed for conversation since coming to Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, and it seemed that at last, some of the women were
willing to risk attachment to me. I smiled at the henna mistress, and then she turned me around by my shoulders and pushed me out the door.

The air in the corridor of the bathhouse was still full of that heavy heat, but the air in the water garden was cool. The sun was over the qasr walls, and all was shaded. A light breeze blew the
scent of the evening-blossom flowers toward my rooms, which had all their doors and windows open to catch the wind. I could not linger, though, for Lo-Melkhiin waited for me at the entrance. When
he saw me, he extended a hand, the perfect picture of courtliness, and I crossed the garden to meet him.

“My wife,” he said to me, his warm fingers closing around mine. He did not pinch, and there was no fire. He merely took my hand. “Thank you for dining with me this
night.”

He said it as though he had invited me and I had agreed to it, rather than the invasion that had taken place.

“I apologize that we have not dined together yet, save for the night of the starfall,” he continued. “I confess, the realm takes up so much of my time, and you were so patient
with me that I was inattentive. I beg your forgiveness.”

I did my best not to look at him. I wondered if he had spent too long in the sun, or if I had. If he thought to charm me, he would have an uphill path to walk.

“Come,” he said to me when it became apparent that I would not play with him. “The meal is laid.”

In our father’s tents, we eat well. There is meat every evening, and lentils and chickpeas to fill the bowls. We have bread and oil, and our father brings back spices when he travels,
because my mother loves to experiment. We eat everything together, sharing and knocking fingers in the serving trays, and there is laughter and family at every meal.

This was nothing like that. There was bread and oil, but they were set in dishes so fine, I thought if I held the ceramic up to the sun I might see through it. There was a decanter made of
glass—more than I had seen in one place in my whole life—filled with wine, and a jug of water next to it for mixing. The meat was cut into small pieces, and arranged to look like the
body of one of the mean-spirited long-feathered birds I sometimes found in the garden. The bird’s real neck and head completed the display at the front, while behind, its plumage matched the
blue of the tablecloth. I did not recognize the smell of the spices, and there were other dishes I could not recognize.

“I must remember to speak with the cook tomorrow,” Lo-Melkhiin said, still as conversationally as he had in the garden. “Usually he presents each course, so that we might
appreciate its artistry, but tonight I do not wish to be disturbed. Please, my wife, take your seat.”

I sank onto one of the cushions, my spine as straight as I could manage, thanks to the henna mistress’s instructions, and tucked my feet neatly into my dress. When I put my ankles
together, I felt the matching signs the henna mistress had drawn on my heels recognize each other, and they warmed my cold blood.

Lo-Melkhiin sat beside me. If we had sat across from one another, we would not have been able to see each other because of the bird. I could see the raised platform where my bed was, but I did
my best not to think about it.

I sat still as Lo-Melkhiin poured and mixed the wine, and set each kind of food on a plate. There was one cup and one bowl. We would share. If he tried to feed me with his own hands, I would
bite off his fingers. He took a long drink of the wine, and passed it to me. My drink was much shorter, barely wetting my mouth. It was stronger than I liked, in any case.

He began to eat, making no move toward me, and so I ate too. I took pieces of bread and wrapped them around each morsel I ate, chewing for as long as I could.

“I cannot make you afraid of me,” he said. I was glad I had taken a small bite; otherwise I might have choked. Instead, I swallowed neatly, and took a sip of the too-strong wine
before I looked at him.

“I do not waste my fear,” I said to him. “I have told you that.”

“I know,” he said to me. “You fear nothing because the desert will get you in the end, regardless. It is predictable, like the water clock. I had thought to be unpredictable,
and see if that would set you off.”

“I have herded goats, my lord,” I said to him. “They have taught me what it means to be unpredictable.”

“You have studied birds, too,” he said to me. His eyes were like the far horizon when a sandstorm lurks beyond it.

“I have studied nothing,” I said to him. “I am no Skeptic. If the desert has taught me and I lived, then it is because I learned.”

“Yes,” he said to me. His hand closed around an eating knife he did not need. “Somehow, you live.”

MY OWN EATING KNIFE WAS too far away for me to reach without being obvious that it was my intent to seize it. Since the food was already cut, I had seen no reason to keep it
close. If I lived, I promised that I would never be so thoughtless as to let Lo-Melkhiin get his knife while I didn’t have mine again. I did not think I could defeat him, but I could slash
his face and give him a memory of what my death cost him.

Lo-Melkhiin twisted the handle, and then balanced the blade upon one of his fingers. It did not cut his skin. The lamplight gleamed on the bright bronze as he spun it, throwing spots of light on
the walls of my room and then twirling them into a spiral. It might have been pretty, had I not imagined spots of blood following in their wake.

The only thing I had within easy reach was the salt cellar. It was still full, and the grains were coarse. It would be as though I threw sand in his face, if I hurled it at him. It might buy me
time to get the knife.

Lo-Melkhiin threw the knife up in the air, and it spun in a whirl of light. I leaned toward the salt, ready, but when he grabbed the hilt again, it was only to twist it down and stick the point
into the table. I hovered, unsure of what he might do next, and then he bent toward me.

“It won’t be a knife, my love,” he said to me. His voice was low. “I can promise you that.”

He sat up and clapped his hands. The serving girls came back and cleared the table, except for the wine, and then a man came with a packet. Lo-Melkhiin took it and waved him away. He opened it,
and I saw maps of the desert. Where the qasr was, and where all the villages were marked. Many of the places had a red mark through them, and I felt what little supper I had managed roil in my
stomach. Those were the places that had given him a wife.

“Would you like to see how I plan a hunt, my wife?” he said to me.

“No, my lord,” I said to him. “I have my own tasks.”

It was not precisely true, but I did have the spindle and the white thread I had spun when I had gone into the vision to see my sister. I could weave it, I supposed, though I did not have a lap
loom, so I was not sure what I would use. The serving girl who carried away the ruined tablecloth saw me with the thread in my hands and nodded. She returned with a loom shortly, and I sat down to
weave while Lo-Melkhiin plotted his desert horrors.

There are two ways to sit while you are weaving. My mother and my sister’s mother had made sure that my sister and I learned both. The first way I much preferred, as I was meant to,
because it was more comfortable. I could sit that way for hours, at need, but if I did that tonight, there was the possibility that I might slip into the weaving trance, and I did not wish to do
that while Lo-Melkhiin could watch. The second way, I sat on my own foot, and if I did not shift sides every now and then, breaking my concentration, the foot would fall asleep and I would get a
cramp. The first way was how my mother and my sister’s mother wove when they were together. The second way was how they wove when they sat in the tents of our father’s caravan, weaving
with the women while he traded with the men.

“Your cloth will be the same quality,” my sister’s mother said to us, “but your ears will hear better.”

I tucked one foot beneath me. Since it was concealed by my dress, it was impossible for any but a weaver to tell how I sat. My shoulders and the slant of my hips might betray me, but I doubted
Lo-Melkhiin knew to look for that. I would merely have to ensure he was not watching me when I shifted.

I began to set the warp. Since I was making nothing in particular, I put the threads as close together as I could, leaving just enough slack in them that I might pass my fingers through, leading
the thread. This would be finely woven cloth when I was done. Perhaps they would shroud me in it, if I finished enough to cover my face before Lo-Melkhiin strangled me.

He labored over his maps, to what end I did not care to guess, and drank freely from the decanter without mixing. I hoped that meant he would fall asleep at the table and not make it to the bed,
but in my heart I knew better. He would no more take risks with me than I did with him. At least the knives were gone. Despite what he said, I knew that it was much easier to slit something’s
throat than it was to smother it.

Once the warp was set to my liking, I took a long loop of thread off of the skein and coiled it around my fingers. My mother told me that her mother had had to use a needle to pull a fine warp
apart, because her fingers were so gnarled with age, but mine were still fine and thin. I could pass the thread through the warp using my fingers to pull up the threads I wanted, and push back
those I didn’t. I simply had to be careful not to stretch it too far.

I switched feet, and began to weave.

When my sister and I had seen ten winters each, she became ill with a fever, and I did not share it. This was not our way. We had always done everything together, and though I was hale while she
burned and wept for her mother, I longed to join her on the pallet. My brothers told me I was foolish, and in my heart I knew it, but she was my sister, and I missed her when I walked to the well
on my own.

On the third day after she fell into a fever, my mother sent me for water again. I went willingly enough, as I was glad to do my part to heal her, but I knew I could not carry as much water by
myself, and wished she would send one of my brothers instead. Our father insisted that they be out with the cattle, as they were calving. So to the well I went, with a smaller jar and a heavy
heart.

I drew water as easily as I could have done alone, and had just got the pail to the crest of the well when a sound in the bushes on the far side made me look up. My heavy heart stopped beating
altogether. There was a sand viper, and I knew that if there was one, there had to be another somewhere close by; they do not hunt alone.

We stared at one another for a long moment, the snake and I, and no second one revealed itself. I had no stones with me, as I could not carry them and the water jar at the same time. The snake
did not move again, and after a long, hot moment in the desert sun, I dared to move. I poured the water into my jar, and released the pail back into the well. Then I bent and picked up the jar, and
walked backward, keeping my eye on the viper as I went. It watched me go, motionless as ever, and finally disappeared back into the bushes when it realized I had gone outside its striking
distance.

I told my sister when she was well again, after our father had cut away all the bushes around the well so that no snakes might hide in them.

“Perhaps it saw that you were alone and did not strike,” she said to me. “Perhaps it was alone too, and knew you shared a spirit at that moment.”

“Perhaps I am very lucky,” I said to her. “Or perhaps I do not look like I would taste very good.”

She laughed.

The weft snaked through the warp as I bid it, and I felt the viper again. I looked up in Lo-Melkhiin’s eyes, though he still sat at his table and his maps. I switched feet, not caring if
he saw me do it, and bent back to my work. I had no stones, and I could not stop a viper, but I could be patient.