Very late, Priya woke also and held her close. "Rest now, Mistress. Fretting will not change our course, nor will it alter what is to come."
Sheyshi snored.
"Let the peace of the Merciful One embrace you, Mistress."
"It is hard to find peace," said Mai in her smallest voice. "I am afraid."
Priya kissed her. Held tight in those arms, Mai was able to sleep.
NOT LONG AFTER dawn, the women of the family took their morning khaif in the shade of the veranda. A trio of girls came first, bearing trays, and after them a procession of stern women of various ages: young, mature, and aged. Mai looked in vain for the friendly young woman who had brought them dinner last night.
The aroma of paradom melded with the sharp spice of khaif and the scent of freshly baked buns. That combination of spicy khaif and sweetened bread with an even sweeter bean curd core made Mai's heart race uncomfortably, but it was evident by the casual demeanor of the women that this was their accustomed morning feast, the appetizer to their day.
At length, the long silence was broken.
"I trust you rested well?" demanded the wrinkled grandmother over the rim of a very fine, thin ceramic cup.
"Yes, verea. Thank you."
They had pulled around pillows and couches the better to examine her.
"And the meal brought last night was to your taste?"
"Yes, verea."
"You didn't eat all of it. You left half of the soup, all of the cabbage, and one dumpling."
The cabbage had been the nastiest thing Mai had ever tasted, and the sour sting of the soup had made her mouth go numb. She smiled her market smile, and said, "Concern for my husband left me with little appetite, Mistress. I beg your pardon."
"Few like the way we pickle our cabbage," said the old grandmother, "but you've turned a pretty phrase by way of thanking us for our hospitality." She had wispy hair, gone to silver and let loose to straggle over her shoulders. No horns peeped through, and there wasn't enough hair to cover horns had they been there, so after all the Ri Amarah were ordinary people, not the children of demons. In a way, Mai was both disappointed and relieved. "What do you think of these sweet buns? Our baker is the best in the city."
"I've never tasted anything like them before."
Several of the women chuckled.
"A truthful statement!" agreed the old grandmother. "None make them but our own people. Do you cook?"
The question surprised her. "Even my husband did not ask me that before we wed."
"He was obviously not looking for a cook," said the old grandmother tartly. "As any person can see, looking upon you, a pretty girl, with a pretty smile, and pretty manners. Do you cook?"
"I learned to cook the specialties of our house, as do all the girls raised in the Mei clan. I can embroider a sleeve, although none of my work was considered elegant enough to be worn outside the house on festival days. I can mend. I have some small skill at carving, taught to me by my uncle."
"Can you brew a cordial or bind a lotion?"
"I was not taught such things. But I know which herbs to blend as teas and simples for remedies for common complaints."
"Distill and mix perfumes?
"No."
"Prepare silk for dyeing?"
"I've scoured wool, and applied the mordant, and thereafter dyed those skeins. We did that commonly. Our clan raised sheep."
"Can you read?"
"No."
"Paint figures and images?"
"No."
"Can you sing?"
"I have been told I have a passable voice."
"Can you dance the lines?"
"I don't know what that is. The festival dances, certainly. Everyone learns those."
"Can you reel and spin?"
"I have spun thread, and carded wool."
"Silk?"
"Silk is not grown where we come from. We buy silk at the market, but only for bedroom clothes and festival garments."
The women smiled, and one coughed behind a raised hand.
Grandmother was not done. "Can you weave?"
"Not well. Others in my household showed greater skill, so I was sent to other pursuits. Anyway, most of the weaving was done by our-ah-" Recalling Eliar's impassioned speech against slavery, she chose another word. "By our hirelings."
"What did you do?"
"I sold produce in the market."
"With your face uncovered?"
"I beg your pardon?'
"With your face uncovered? It is not the custom of my people for women to walk about in the streets exposed to the world's staring eye."
"I beg your pardon, verea, but it was not the custom in my country for women to conceal their faces."
"No need," said the old grandmother with a pointed smile, "to bite me, young one. It seems to me that those who set you in the marketplace hoped to gain by displaying your pretty face, as much as their produce. Can you keep an accounts book?"
This was too much! "Of course I can!"
"I'm finished," said the grandmother. A woman rose from a bench and took the old woman's cup. Another rose from a padded couch and helped the old grandmother to rise, then led her across the courtyard. None here wore slave bracelets. Mai could not distinguish between servants and family members. They moved off, some gathering up trays and cups and a few moving among the troughs to inspect the dusty soil and the spiky paradom. A pair found brooms and began sweeping the veranda.
A woman of middling years, similar in age to Mai's own mother, knelt beside Mai.
"We've much to do, as you can imagine, verea," she said with a kind smile. "There's a great deal of serious business in these preparations, and all must work if we wish Olossi to be ready to withstand what will come. You'll have to remain here. However, now that Grandmother has approved you, my daughter can keep spoken company with you."
"I thank you," said Mai. "I am called Mai, of the Mei clan. I never had a chance to say so."
Mai saw a resemblance to Eliar in the way the woman narrowed her eyes as she smiled. "It's not our way to exchange names as one might trade goods or coin in the marketplace. I am the mother of Eliar, who brought you here. Ah! Here she is."
The young woman who had smiled so sweetly at Mai last night appeared at the inner gate. She hurried across the courtyard. Her nose was red and her cheeks blushed as from steam, and the skin of her arms was damp to the elbows, pink with heat. Like her brother, she had a handsome face, rather square, with heavy eyebrows, a small nose, and eyes as black as ink and sharp as a brushstroke. Her hair was pulled back away from her face and bound atop her head under a beaded net.
She offered a courtesy to her mother, a dip of the knees, a crossing of the arms before her breast. Then she slid out of the outdoor slippers she was wearing and found a pair of indoor slippers from those lined up along the edge of the veranda. Eliar's mother left together with the other women. They left a single tray with a ceramic pot of khaif and six sticky buns, together with saucers, cups, and serving utensils.
Sheyshi rifled through their belongings and, finding a hem to repair, set to work. Priya sat quietly on a pillow at the edge of the veranda, watching the shadows change as the sun rose above the eastern wall. She had her eyes half closed as she did when she fell into the trance through which one rises to the heart of the Merciful One. Mai did not want to disturb her, so she walked out into the courtyard and sat on a bench in the shade of the grape arbor.
Eliar's sister settled beside Mai and, in a bold show of complicity, tucked her hand into Mai's elbow and pulled her close. "That can't have been fun. Did Grandmother pluck you, one feather at a time?"