Dawn spilled light over a cloudless sky. The eastern mountains rose stark in the distance. She stood gazing at them for far longer than she usually had a chance to do. For the first time in her entire married life she had no one she had to tend to, no porridge to cook at dawn and meals to prepare for later, no child’s clothing to mend that had gotten torn the day before, no invalid’s bedpan to empty. No reason she was required to turn away from the splendid vista that had hung beyond her reach for her entire life.
Sparks drew long to become dancing threads of gold and silver and bronze. The dragons were flying over the peaks and spires of the Great Divide, as they did at dawn and dusk, too big not to see and too far away to see properly. But they were always magnificent and deadly. Like the eastern massif, they were a barrier no one could cross.
The latch of the bedchamber door rattled softly before the door cracked open.
Feloa spoke in a whisper. “Mistress? Are you awake? Your son is concerned because you’re not in the kitchen yet.”
Asvi turned as the door opened farther on well-oiled hinges. An older woman took a step into the room. She was dressed in a drab gray-green skirt with a work apron tied over a faded blouse.
“He’s dead,” Asvi said.
“Ah.” Feloa’s gaze flashed toward the bed, whose curtains were tied back for the summer months. The shape lay under the blanket like the topography of a broken hill. A white sleeping cap hugged the unmoving head. “Shall I tell your son? He is the master now.”
A great lethargy settled on Asvi. Even to think of dressing seemed as impossible as climbing the eastern mountains to look over the wilderness of demons said to lie beyond the stony peaks.
Feloa’s eyes widened. “Mistress, you must sit down.”
She steered Asvi to the dressing table and its birch-back chair. Asvi sat obediently. The mirror was shrouded, since vanity could never be tolerated in a house where the master was dying.
“Stay there, mistress.”
Feloa walked to the bed and held the bedside glass with its water over the dead man’s nose and slightly parted lips, now tinged blue-gray. When it was clear he was no longer breathing, she set down the glass and went out. Asvi heard her descending the stairs, heard voices in the entry, heard the front door close. Maybe she dozed, because the next thing she knew, Feloa was back.
“He’s gone to the temple, mistress. Let me help you dress before he returns with the priest-magistrate.”
Asvi pressed a hand against Feloa’s sleeve. Words welled up from an urgent spring.
“Feloa, I won’t let them cast you out to take the long walk.”
Her lower lip trembling was the only visible sign of emotion Feloa allowed herself. “Mistress, you have always been kinder to me than I deserve.”
“Have I?” Asvi muttered as an utterly unanticipated anger boiled up from her gut in response to Feloa’s submissive words.
A surge of energy agitated her. She had to get out of this room or she’d suffocate. Maybe she’d already suffocated and these last years had been her wandering in the desert of perdition that was the only fitting reward for unfilial sons and disobedient women.
She stalked to the wardrobe to fetch the brown mourning dress every bride was given on her wedding day, to be worn at the death rites of men. Brown was the color of widows and fatherless girls. In the ancient days of old, when the people had lived in a far-off land, before they’d boldly journeyed to these shores, any woman obstreperous enough to outlive her husband would be buried with him. From earth, into earth, so it was proclaimed at the temple on every Twelfth Day as a reminder of the way people had once lived more purely and closer to the gods. The temple was more merciful now. And there were the dragons to think of. The dragons to assuage.
But of course she was safe from that. She had sons.
After unfolding the dress, she pulled it on over her shift, needing Feloa’s help to do up the back buttons. Women like Feloa had to make do with front-buttoned mourning dresses. For all that he poured his profits straight back into the business and never into fripperies or conveniences for his household, her husband had insisted on certain niceties for his wife that would be visible to others.
Feloa shadowed her downstairs and into the kitchen, where Bavira had already folded up her sleeping pallet and stoked the fire.
“You sit down, mistress,” the girl said. “I’ll make the porridge.”
Since her husband was no longer alive to complain if his morning porridge hadn’t been made by his dutiful wife’s hands, Asvi sat. But it chafed her to sit. Her mind was filled with fog, and yet her body was restless.
She rose. People would come to pay their respects. They had to be fed: ginger pancakes, buns filled with red bean paste, fruit tarts, spicy meat paste, flat loaves of faring bread baked with salty cheese because it was the traditional food of travelers. She would add sage and parsley to give the bread a more pleasing flavor.
She pulled on her kitchen apron and by rote began assembling the ingredients she’d need. Just two months ago she’d brought a tray of one hundred folded pancakes filled with sweet cream and early season berries to the memorial of her last uncle, youngest of a gaggle of brothers.
“Mistress, you should rest,” objected Bavira anxiously from where she stood by the porridge pot.
Feloa said, “Let her be. The work comforts her. She likes it best in the kitchen.”
It was true enough. Meklos could have hired a cook, but he preferred to be seen as a man so successful that his wife would never allow another woman’s hands to make food for him. Since it was bad luck for a husband to set foot in a wife’s kitchen, the kitchen had become her treasured domain. Her whole heart and attention could fall into the food. Batter to be mixed. Dough to be rolled out and braided. Rosebud cakes to be decorated. Savory pinwheels to be rolled up, sliced, and baked.
“Mother! What are you doing?”
Her eldest son appeared in the kitchen doorway. When little, Elilas and his brothers had spent plenty of time in the kitchen with her, but now that he would inherit the headship of the house, he hesitated, not wanting to bring ill luck to the home he’d lived in his whole life. His wife, Danis, pushed past him, easy with him as Asvi had never been with her own husband.
“Your mother wants everything done right with the food, just as she always has,” Danis said, coming to the table where Asvi was kneading dough. “Dear Mother, I am sorry to interrupt you. The priest-magistrate has come. You must attend him in the parlor for the ceremony of crossing.”
Asvi’s hands stilled, fingers laced through the comforting texture of dough.
“Oh,” she said in a low voice.
“I’ve sent a servant to the tea shop for a full tray, but you should have been in the parlor to greet him,” said Elilas with his usual hint of impatience.
Feloa had been making pancakes. She took the pan off the top of the stove and came over to the table with a damp cloth to pat flour off of Asvi’s face and wipe her hands clean. “I’ll finish the kneading, mistress.”
The ceremony had to follow its proper course.
Asvi took off her apron, then paused at the door. “Do the pancakes first. Bavira, bring the last tray of sesame dumplings for the priest.”
“Mother! He’s waiting!”
The parlor was a formal room used only for entertaining visitors and decorated to impress with lacquered chairs, embroidered couches, a polished side table, and a glass-fronted cupboard to display the delicate cups and saucers used for important guests. The priest-magistrate was standing with hands folded behind his back, studying her husband’s collection of precious demon eyes, hard gleaming spheres like gemstones. To hold one in your hand could kill you, but each of these was encased in a net of silver thread to confine and dampen its toxic magic.