Dakon understood the king’s caution, however. Sachakans would most likely be amused if Kyralians caught a few of their misbehaving ichani and threw them out of the country. But if Kyralians dared to kill Sachakans for merely attacking one little village and slaughtering a few commoners, the Sachakans might decide the empire needed to put their neighbour back in its place.
And if the Sachakan emperor’s grip on his own people was as weak as it was rumoured to be, he would not be able to stop them.
The sun warmed Stara’s back as the wagon climbed the shoulder of the hill. As the horses hauling the heavily laden vehicle reached the top of the rise, the view beyond was revealed, and the young woman caught her breath.
A great city fanned out over the land before her. At the limit of its spread was the coast, and the dark sea lay beyond. The apex of the fan was the mouth of a river. The buildings and roads that radiated from that point were linked by the concentric curves of connecting thoroughfares.
Arvice. She smiled. The largest city ever built. I’m home at last.
She had waited fifteen years for this. Fifteen long years since her father had taken her and her mother to Elyne and left them there. Now, at last, he had sent for her, as he had promised so long ago.
As the line of wagons continued down the other side of the rise it moved into shadow. She shivered and drew her shawl up around her shoulders. For fifteen years of her life the sun had set over water, painting the city of Elyne gold and red. Now if she wanted to see a spectacular meeting of sun and water she would have to wake early enough to catch the dawn.
It feels like I’ve travelled from one side of the world to the other.
The climate was similar in Elyne and southern Sachaka, however. She almost wished it wasn’t. The same kinds of plants fed the same kinds of animals. The same types of trees bore the same kinds of fruit stolen by the same kinds of birds. The same views of fertile farmland surrounded her. Only occasionally did she notice something unfamiliar and exotic – an unknown bird, or a strange tree.
The mountains had been more exciting and interesting, with their cold stone precipices, towering spires, and trees that sprang stunted and twisted from impossibly steep inclines. The wind had sung with the voice of a demented, ageless woman and the air had been crisp and clean.
Once or twice the wagon drivers had spotted distant figures on unfeasibly high paths above. Ichani, they said. They had assured her there was little chance they’d be robbed. The ichani had no use for the dyestuff her father traded, and even if they had been tempted to steal it to sell, the pottery jugs it was transported in were too heavy and fragile to be worth carrying along those precarious mountain tracks. They knew there’d be no money on the wagon, and minimal food.
The wagoners had given Stara men’s clothing to wear, however. A woman of her beauty was worth stealing, they told her, using flattery to persuade her to co-operate.
They hadn’t needed to flatter her. She had liked dressing in the trousers and shift. Not only were they more practical than the dresses she usually wore, but she felt almost as if she was actually working for her father already as she helped the men with the lighter duties to enhance her disguise – much to their amusement.
She doubted her father would give her this sort of work to do when she arrived in Arvice, though. As the daughter of a Sachakan ashaki, she would be set to more dignified tasks. Like making trade deals and entertaining clients. Or overseeing the dye-making process and ensuring orders were filled and delivered.
She was well trained for the responsibility. Her mother had performed such work in Elyne for years, and included her daughter in every part of the process. Stara had hated it at first, but one day it had occurred to her that her father might want her back sooner if she was useful to have around, and from then on she had dedicated herself to learning everything she could about his trade.
Stara smiled to herself as she imagined listing her skills to her father.
I can read and write, do sums and accounts. I know how to talk a client into paying twice what he meant to, and be happy to. I know where all the dyes are made, and how, which minerals set them and what kinds of cloth take them best. I’ve learned the names of all the important families in Elyne and Sachaka, and their alliances. And most useful of all...I can...I have...
She felt her heart skip. Even in her mind it was hard to imagine telling him her greatest secret. One she had never even told her mother.
A few years after arriving in Capia, Stara had befriended the daughter of one of her mother’s friends. Nimelle had just been apprenticed to a magician, and was disappointed to find how few other girl apprentices there were. The girl had tested Stara for magical ability and found plenty. But when Stara had asked her mother what she would do if her daughter had magical ability the woman’s answer was firm and unhesitating.
“I need you here with me, Stara. If you became a magician’s apprentice you’d have to live with your master for many years. Do you want to be separated from your mother as well as your father?”
Stara could not bring herself to abandon her mother. When Nimelle had heard this, she had called it a “waste’. She offered to set loose Stara’s magical ability herself, and teach her the basics – but she must keep it a secret. Stara had eagerly agreed. Since then Stara had taught herself to use her magic, borrowing Nimelle’s books and practising with her friend.
I’m going to miss Nimelle, she thought. She was the only person who never treated me differently for being half Sachakan.
They’d both blinked away tears at their last meeting. But Stara suspected Nimelle would be too busy to miss their friendship soon. Granted her independence as a higher magician last summer, Nimelle had married in the autumn and was now expecting her first child.
I’ll be too busy helping Father to pine for her, either, she told herself firmly. We have both started new lives. Yet she was already looking forward to Nimelle’s first letter.
The wagon was now travelling along a long, flat road shrouded in the gloom of dusk. Now and then walled enclosures appeared, bringing back memories of the typical Sachakan mansions, with their endless sprawl of curved walls coated in white render.
She also noticed the slaves working in the fields. She felt slightly discomforted whenever she saw them. Too many years in Elyne had taught her an aversion to slavery, yet she could also remember adoring the slaves who had looked after and indulged her as a child.
I’m sure life is a lot better for a house slave than a field slave, she told herself. But as Mother said, “slavery is slavery’. She had hated it, and Stara knew it was part of the reason her parents had parted and her mother had returned to Elyne.
There were other reasons, Stara knew. Some she had been told, some she had worked out herself. Her mother had run away from her family in order to marry the man she loved, then discovered that he was a different person at home from the one he’d been in Elyne. He needed to be, she had explained to Stara. You have to be tough and cruel to survive Sachakan politics and make slaves obey you. Yet she couldn’t bear to see the effect it had on him. Eventually he had allowed her to return to Elyne. A harder man would have made her stay, she had admitted. Or kept both of their children.