I asked Dia, the woman who had been a midwife, if many children lived in Zhev’Na. She looked puzzled. “No breeding is allowed in the fortress. How could there be offspring?”
“I just thought I heard a child’s voice last night. That’s all,” I said. “When Zoe sent me to get the scraps of leather at the tanner’s.”
“Well, children’s voices… that’s different,” said Dia. “I thought you meant new-birthed offspring. There’s child slaves brought in from time to time, though they can’t speak but when they’re told. And sometimes there’s young ones among the Worships”-Worship was the Drudge title for the Zhid-“ones they train to become Worships, too.”
“I thought all the Worships were grown,” I said. “Not many warriors ever came to our camp. Didn’t know Worships could be young ones.”
Dia glanced over her shoulder and gave a shudder. “They’re not nice young ones.”
I dropped the subject, so as not to seem too interested. But on that afternoon I made sure to stand by Zoe while we attacked the mountain of plain brown fabric that was being turned into underdrawers for the Zhid soldiers. “Dia says the Lords breed offspring. Is that true, Zoe? We never heard that in my work camp.”
“Pshaw! Dia would stitch her fingers to a sheet if you didn’t tell her not. The Lords are Worships, and Worships don’t breed.”
“But she said they made a boy that lives here like a prince, so he must be a child of the Lords.”
Zoe wrinkled her pale dirty face and licked her fingers as she threaded her needle. “There is a boy what lives in the Gray House and is favored of the Lords. Gam saw him when she was called to take new towels there. She said he has the mark of the Lords on him, so she was ever so careful and respectful.”
“The mark of the Lords? I don’t know of that. I’m so ignorant, being new here at the fortress.”
Zoe leaned close, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into desert crags. “The jewels, you know.” She laid her finger on her ear tag. “It means whatever you do or say, the Lords will know it. The boy could kill you with a look if he took a mind to. You go careful if you see the mark of the Lords, Eda.”
Gar’Dena had warned me repeatedly not to reveal myself to Gerick no matter what-not until the signal came. A wise warning, it appeared.
The Gray House was the structure that faced the keep across the courtyard beyond the colonnade. On the fourth night of my stay in Zhev’Na, I decided to venture a bit farther afield and see what I could learn about it.
We had worked a bit later than usual, for Kargetha had been displeased with our day’s stitching and made us rip out half of it and do it over again. By the time my companions fell snoring onto their pallets, the compound was quiet and empty. I waited perhaps an hour, then slipped through the darkness to the colonnade, crossing into the next courtyard by way of the opening closest to the corner next to the keep.
As I stood in the dark corner, shivering in the cold air, I longed for a cloak, longed to be anywhere but this awful place. The courtyard between the Gray House and the keep-the Lords’ Court, the women called it-was much larger than the Workers’ Court, and was paved with large squares of stone that were carved with all manner of devices and symbols. Rather than trees or plants, statues of fantastical birds and beasts were set in ordered rows across the barren enclosure. The entrance to the keep was a columned portico at least six stories in height, flanked by gigantic carvings of warriors and beasts, and lit by great bowls of flame mounted above the portico. The bowl torches were so immense and so high, no servant could possibly reach them to set them alight or refresh their fuel. I shuddered, feeling quite small and alone.
The Gray House that faced this portico across the courtyard was more modestly proportioned, but of the same severe, angular construction. No elaborate entry, but only an iron gate opened onto its interior courtyard. Despite four torches that flanked the Gray House gate, I couldn’t see into the darkness beyond it. Few lights were visible in the house, but I tried to note where they were: ground level, just to the right of the gate, second level, just above the gate, and third level, to the rear.
No guards were anywhere in evidence, and I thought perhaps I’d run quickly across the courtyard and peek through the iron gate of the Gray House. Only my uncertainty as to how to proceed made me hesitate long enough to hear the quiet sneeze not twenty paces from me. Despite the chill of the night, I broke into a sweat, while attempting the difficult task of shrinking further into the shadows without moving at all.
Moments dragged past as I huddled in my dark corner, scarcely daring to breathe. At last a man stepped from the corner of the courtyard at each end of the colonnade, just as two guards emerged from the keep. The four met briefly in the middle of the courtyard. Then, while the two who had been on watch strolled back toward the keep, the other two began a circuit of the dark peripheries of the courtyard. Their path would leave them right at the posts so recently vacated. Heart pounding, I retreated into the workers’ compound before they completed their rounds. I would need to go again to learn how often the guard was changed, and how long it took the two to make the circuit. Tomorrow.
Timing would be critical, yet time was very difficult to estimate in Zhev’Na. There seemed to be no clocks, no bells, no criers, no drumbeats, no time signals at all. The sewing women had no concept of time and no interest in it. What difference would it make, they responded, when I asked how they could tell how long it took them to complete a slave tunic or when it was time to eat. They started work at dawn and ended when Kargetha said they’d done enough. They ate when food was given them and slept until wakened. Yet, someone in the fortress had to know the time. The guards knew when to go on duty, and the kitchen servant arrived at what seemed to be the exact same hour every day. Someone dispatched that servant, so someone had to know. It seemed too precise to be guesswork.
Near the end of my first week, when Kargetha spent the morning teaching us to fashion a new style of legging, I finally came to understand it. Late in the morning, the Zhid woman popped up her head and said, “Blast. The last morning hour has struck, and your log brains have not even begun to comprehend what I require. One hour more, and anyone who’s failed to complete one set will go hungry for the rest of the day. Your stomachs are all you care for.” I watched closely, and even with no external signal, Kargetha knew exactly when an hour had passed. Her head came up. Less than a moment later, the kitchen servant arrived with our midday bread.
The signal was inside the Zhid somehow. We who had no “true talent” were excluded from even so basic an amenity as knowing the time of day. The realization made me inordinately angry.
So, I would have to devise my own way of timekeeping. For half a day I fumbled about, trying various schemes. None were successful until I began to count. After four long days in the sewing room, stitching had become as regular as my pulse. The interval of one stitch became one count.
Once I worked at it a while, I could approximate fifty counts quite accurately. I would begin a row of stitches, then sew without counting-not a simple matter when I was so preoccupied with it-and then count my stitches when I believed I had done fifty. I was always within one or two. It took me two hundred counts to walk to the cistern in the corner of the compound, seventy-five counts to walk from the dormitory to the sewing room. We were allowed six hundred counts to eat. I started estimating longer times, and though I was less accurate at first, by the end of two days I could estimate three thousand counts to within twenty stitches. I called three thousand counts an hour. Then, all I needed was a reference, so sunset became nineteenth hour.