“Vesti and Pos would never forgive me.”
“As well they should not. We would lose all face in the community if we let her be taken for the long walk. Did you even think of that?”
“Of course I wouldn’t let her be taken, my sweet. I was just shocked at how much he demanded.”
“Because he is ruled by greed and free to take what he wants because the prince protects the magistrates because they protect him. If we have a fourth boy, I’ll pledge him into the temple and with my tutoring he’ll shake things up!”
Elilas laughed nervously.
“Enough of this, darling,” Danis added. “It’s settled, and she’s safe. Let’s go back in.”
Their footsteps approached. Asvi folded her hands in her lap and said nothing as they came in. She liked for people to assume she was as hard of hearing as Meklos had been the last few years. Elilas entered the room and crossed to her. He stiffly held out a bracelet of polished obsidian and carnelian beads strung together on a silver chain.
“Your family vouches for you, Mother. With this tithe signified by this bracelet, we take on the responsibility of caring for you even though you can no longer bear sons and are too weak to ease the burdens men carry in this harsh world.”
A flash of ire twitched at the corner of Danis’s eyes as she gave a sardonic smile. But she said nothing and made no retort. What retort could there be?
In the entry hall, Herel began admitting visitors, come to pay their respects. The first were the neighbors along the street who had seen the magistrate arrive and depart. As word spread, more arrived. Bavira brought a tray of pancakes, quickly consumed, and Danis sent out to a bakery for five trays of rosebud cakes. It seemed blasphemous to Asvi to serve cakes bought at a shop to visitors in her own home. But she was just too tired, and anyway it was no longer her place. Danis would make such decisions from now on. A stronger mother-in-law would have ruled her son’s wife, as Asvi had been ruled for years, but no one ruled Danis. Asvi could not imagine even trying.
Her youngest brother arrived with a pair of actors in tow. While much of the family still lived and herded in the foothills, he was a city man now, a playwright educated with the money brought in by their new trading connections. The bright gold sash slimming his torso and his hair plaited to look like dragon scales gave him the flair of a man of fashion. He greeted Elilas first, of course, then lingered longer, speaking to Danis in bent-headed confidences, before coming over.
“You should do your hair differently, Asvi,” he said with a brotherly kiss to her cheek. “This style is so outdated and never suited you anyway. Let me see it.”
She gazed at him blankly, trying to sort out what “it” was. For an instant she could not even recall his name.
Belek! As a girl she’d had most of the household chores and the childminding to do, with her mother ill for long stretches after each of her pregnancies. Little Belek had just learned to walk when her father had taken her downslope to try his luck with her on the marriage market in the flatlands.
Belek took hold of her wrist and examined the bracelet. “Those are fine-quality beads. They’d have lost face if they’d not paid the tithe for you.”
“He’s my son!”
“Sons have discarded mothers before this. Or lost them through no fault of their own.”
They exchanged a look, for, however little they understood each other’s lives, they shared the knowledge of how their father had lost his own mother in this way, as he had reminded Asvi constantly as she grew into marriageable age. His father—Asvi’s grandfather—had died when her father was still a boy. He’d been eldest of the surviving children and thus the one responsible, since, at sixteen, he was considered a man. His mother had no surviving brothers or father, and her male cousins lived too far away to care. When he hadn’t had enough to pay the tithe, his mother had been taken by the temple and sent up the long walk into the eastern mountains as an offering to the dragons, who were all that stood between the human settlements and the demons. He’d never seen his mother again, of course. He’d never forgiven himself for not being able to save her.
“I’d scrape together the money no matter how many loans I’d have to take out,” Belek added. “People like us can’t afford to be shamed as uncaring hill folk who chain their daughters to the cliffs for the dragons to take.”
“No one ever did that. Young women are far too valuable to throw away!” exclaimed Danis, gliding up beside him with a sly smirk on her bountiful red lips. “It’s just a story playwrights tell because nubile youth plays well on the stage.”
She solicitously fussed over Asvi, pouring her a fresh cup of hot tea and arranging and rearranging a platter of tiny rosebud cakes on the table set to Asvi’s right. Strangely, Asvi noticed that Danis’s elegantly slippered foot had somehow come to rest against the side of Belek’s expensive leather shoe.
Over her head, Belek quoted a few lines to Danis from what was evidently a new play he was working on. “‘Why do we chain ourselves to the yoke of the old land when we stand on soil budding with fresh blooms?’”
“Tendentious.”
“How about this? ‘On what secret paths does the soul tread toward its beloved?’”
Danis raised an eyebrow, quirking up her mouth until he flushed.
“Ai! Belek!”
He looked up from his rapt contemplation of Danis’s skeptical expression. A man wearing the ostentatious clothes of those who want to flaunt their money had just entered the room. The fellow beckoned to Belek with the expectant obliviousness of an individual who always gets what he wants.
“Oh, good, I was hoping he would come, since he’s expressed interest in bankrolling the next production,” Belek remarked to Danis, and left them.
Before Danis could follow, Asvi grasped her hand and tightened her grip until Danis bent close.
“Are you well, Dear Mother? I know this must be an ordeal. You need endure only a little longer.”
“Are you lovers?” Asvi whispered, thinking of how devoted her son was to this woman whom she’d never really understood.
“Lovers?”
“You and Belek?”
Danis laughed merrily as she glanced toward the two actors, handsome men with fine features and dashing smiles. “No. I’m not his type. But I do have a secret, Dear Mother. I help him write his plays.”
“Women aren’t allowed to take part in the theater. It would be indecent.”
“An antiquated custom held over from the old lands. I know you won’t tell.”
She withdrew her hand from Asvi’s grip as a flood of new visitors swept in. Everyone carefully did not see her; it was considered impolite to greet the widow until after the crossing ceremony was complete, since she was legally dead the instant her husband died. Anyway, she’d been seated in a corner out of the way, as easy to overlook as a modest wooden stool set amid an ostentatious stage set.
Danis, secretly writing for the theater!
The thought, blending with the constant flow of visitors in and out like the rush of waters, reminded her of the time she had traveled to the sea as a girl. Her father had taken her the twenty days’ journey to the harbor city of Farport, where Meklos had been supervising the family’s farthest warehouse. At that time, Meklos was still a fourth son, a man who might consider a sheepherder’s reasonably pretty daughter as a marriage prospect because his older brothers hadn’t yet died and left him to be headman quite unexpectedly.