‘Please, Aunty. Today is our divining day.’
Cook brought her face close to mine, so suddenly I stepped back.
‘Forget,’ she hissed. ‘Your new life began today. This is your fate.’
She walked away. Her words smarted as though I’d been lashed with a whip. Forget.
I gritted my teeth. It had only been a day, but even if it had been a decade, I knew I would not. As I joined Kizzy at the table, I knew I would remember as long as I lived. Like the felled trees, my roots ran deeper than anyone could reach. They could never wrench them from me.
Kizzy saved me what she could – a crust of bread and a lump of flesh so charred it could have been fish or hog – but as more barrels of fish were brought in and the fires freshly stoked, the meagre offerings we were allowed to eat only served to make my stomach gurgle and writhe.
There was a frisson of giggling when two fresh sides of beef were carried in by six young men. The meat dripped blood over the rush-strewn floor, and the men looked likely to outstay their welcome until Cook waved her butcher’s knife at them. They dispersed with many a wink and thrown compliment.
‘Did you see Nicholai?’ said Dot to Szilvie, her face flushed. ‘His beard is coming in.’
‘What about Gheorghe? Nicholai’s still a boy,’ said Szilvie dismissively. I noticed she had not joined in the giggling. I was liking her more as the hours wore on.
‘Nicholai tumbled Elena last week though,’ said Dot. ‘And those hands are very large.’
‘Tsk,’ said Szilvie, the corners of her mouth twitching. ‘I doubt he knows what to do with them.’
Kizzy and I were silent as stones, and Dot turned to us as she reached blindly for another fish, her hands retracing well learned pathways. ‘Anything you like the look of?’
I shook my head.
‘Got a boy back home?’
‘All our men are murdered or now working on farms outside the walls,’ said Kizzy, and Dot’s grinning face fell. Kizzy’s chin was trembling and I knew she was thinking especially of Fen. I squeezed her upper arm.
‘Kisaiya, calm. He’ll be all right.’
‘Calm?’ She spat the word back. ‘Have you a slave’s heart, Lillai? How is any of this all right? How can you bear it?’
She walked away. My hurt ached like a splinter beneath the skin. I felt sore from Kizzy’s words, Cook’s reprimand. From Malovski and her probing fingers, her cold eyes. And my pain was sharpest and deepest because of MamÄ and Old Charani and our lost camp.
‘She’ll calm down,’ said Dot, and I knew it was an attempt at friendship, at reassurance. But she did not know Kizzy as I did: she was never quick to forgive, her tempers leaching from her slow as charged air after a thunderstorm.
I said none of this to Dot, smiling to show my thanks for her attempt at comfort as I reached for another fish.
‘How do they eat so much?’ I asked. ‘Does the boyar have visitors?’
‘Always,’ sighed Dot. ‘It’s a condition of the pact.’
She said these words as though they had a significance beyond their usual meaning. Travellers had pacts, of course. To never turn away a hungry traveller, to leave the places we camped as we found them. And there were older traditions around pacts: soul pacts to bind secrets or make promises.
‘What sort of pact?’
‘The pact that rules these lands. It’s law, really.’
‘Who makes the laws?’
She shot a look in Szilvie’s direction. The girl had been called to the central table to knock dough into round loaves, and Dot leaned towards me conspiratorially.
‘Did Malovski tell you anything of the Dragon?’
Her low tone was nervous. I felt the hair on my own arms stand up, as though her anxiety were catching.
‘No.’
‘Nothing of the visitors, the offerings?’
I shook my head impatiently.
‘What’s this about offerings?’ We both jumped. Szilvie was standing behind us, hands on her hips, floury palms powdering her skirts.
Dot flushed. ‘I only was telling her what you told me.’
‘Then it’s not much at all, hardly worth telling. You know Cook’ll learn you with a slap if she hears you talking about it.’ She turned her glare on me. ‘Any of it. And what if Mira hears? Do you care about anyone’s feelings, Dot?’
Dot shrugged off Szilvie’s anger with the practised air of someone who has done so many times before. ‘Fine. You’ll hear of it eventually.’
‘I want to know now,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Szilvie, her glare softening a little. ‘You don’t.’
By the time we were done preparing dinner and the serving girls came to fetch the platters of sliced beef, stuffed fish, and the endless mountains of steaming vegetables, my neck ached and my shoulders were in spasm. I rolled them and they clicked, full of knots.
‘Mira,’ called Szilvie across the kitchen. ‘Time to check your throat.’
I turned in time to see Mira shake her head.
‘It has to stay clean,’ said Szilvie sternly. ‘If it gets infected, you may lose your tongue too.’
‘She bit it when they throttled her,’ whispered Dot. Kizzy regarded her coolly.
‘I doubt she appreciates you gossiping about it.’
Dot rolled her eyes. We watched Mira reluctantly cross the kitchen as Szilvie set down the cloth and bottles. She pulled Mira onto a stool.
Mira’s eyes flicked from Szilvie to Kizzy and me, and Szilvie said, ‘She doesn’t like people watching.’
I didn’t think she had much hope of privacy with Dot around, but I went with Kizzy to busy myself with wiping down the tables.
‘I’ll talk to Cook,’ Kizzy’s voice was low and determined. ‘Ask her to divine for us.’
‘I already tried,’ I said.
‘You did?’ Her voice is surprised. ‘Well, I’ll succeed.’
I blinked up at my sister, surprised at her arrogance and then again not at all. Though others, likely myself included, were sweaty from the fires, pores large in their flushed faces and hair stuck to their foreheads, my sister looked as fresh-faced and lovely as if she had just returned from foraging.
I shot a look at Mira and Szilvie. Mira was gargling with something that made her wince, and when she spat the liquid was dark with blood. I pulled my attention back to my sister, the back of my neck flushing hot with anger for Mira.
‘We need to be careful, Kizzy.’
‘Careful? Why?’
‘Because I do not want to see your voice crushed from your throat,’ I hissed, just managing to keep my voice down. ‘I do not want to see you beaten, or taken from me, or forced into anyone’s bed.’
‘But you are making it easy for them,’ spat Kizzy. ‘You are being so obedient, they will see you as a slave, as nothing.’
‘Let them,’ I said, reaching out suddenly for her cheek, and cupping it in my hand. ‘They cannot know what I am thinking. I want to survive this, Kizzy. I want to see Kem and Albu again.’
Kizzy’s eyes burned into mine, their soft brown transformed into deep pits of dark fury.
‘Surviving is not enough for me.’ She jerked away from my touch, still shaking her head. ‘I will not accept this fate.’