“Kneel before me,” he commanded, expecting and getting instant obedience. We knelt on the white silk floor and looked up at him, our fear so strong it must have blazed from our eyes. “It is good you obey so promptly,” he said, nodding his bead as he looked from one to the other of us. “You are now bedinn of our tribe, bound to obey us in all things. Should we feel you do not obey promptly and properly, we will see you taught the lesson of failure. All men here are hizah to you, save for those who wear the mark of bedin themselves. You will be taught the proper manner by those who have been bedin longer than you. Learn quickly, for their lessons are not as sharp as those from hizahh. Bedin, attend me.”
He had gestured toward the robed and veiled woman who knelt to one side, and she quickly stripped off the robe, rose to her feet, and hurried to kneel again in front of the man who had called her. She was naked under the robe she had worn, her veil secured to her long blond hair, the slender bronze chain previously visible only across her forehead now clearly banding her brow and the entire top of her head. Once she was on her knees, she bent forward with her forehead to the silken floor, her arms place gracefully behind her and crossed at the wrists, her mind quivering with fear even as she fought to relax her body. The man stared down at her a moment, vaguely dissatisfied with something, then abruptly pulled a leather string from his swordbelt and crouched to tie her wrists behind her. I thought for a minute that the tying was some sort of ritual, not actually meant to hold her, but her mind winced at the tightness of her bonds, proving they were no mere frill or technicality. When she was bound tight she raised her head from the floor, kissed the man’s hand and whispered, “Hizah, I beg to be allowed the honor of serving you.”
The man straightened and gestured her erect without answering her, then looked at us again.
“You will remain here till another comes to guide you,” he said, then turned and left with the veiled woman close on his heels. As soon as the curtain had settled, we were as completely alone as it’s possible to be in the midst of a campful of strangers.
“What did he say?” Findra whispered almost immediately, her voice shaky. “Where are we and what’s going to happen to us?”
I shrugged and translated what the man had said, ending with, “Hizah translates roughly as, ‘Lord of one’s every breath’ or ‘Shaper of one’s destiny.’ Bedin means nothing less than slave, and that’s what’s been done to us. We’ve been made their slaves.”
Findra’s mind tried to reject the concept, but she was a good deal more practical than that. She settled back on her heels and closed her eyes, then searched inside herself for acceptance of the situation. She, like the other four women with us, was trying to adjust to something she’d never considered having to adjust to, something that came as a considerable shock. I could feel the shock they felt, that and their attempts at adjustment, but couldn’t reach the necessary level for adjustment in my own mind. I wrapped my arms around myself, hearing again how glibly I’d spoken of being made a slave; the words were right and the tone was proper, but the requisite acceptance to go along with them just wasn’t where it should be.
Some of the women were whispering to one another, so when I detected the approach of a mind I gestured them to silence. A veiled woman slipped into the room, possibly the same one we’d left at the pool, but it was almost impossible to tell. Her mind read just the same as the mind of the woman who had followed the man out, except for the lack of active fear. Our robes were gestured to, showing that we were to bring them with us, and then we were hurried out of the tent.
After putting on our sandals and slipping into our robes, we followed our new guide to a smaller, plainer tent close to the center of the camp. A brown cloth covered the entrance of this tent, and after taking off our sandals again we followed our new guide inside. Behind the hanging was a single-room tent, the cloth of the walls and floor a plain brown. Women sat or lay all over the tent, one or two sleeping, the rest either tending to chores like sewing or polishing, or seeing to their own bodies. They all tensed when we entered—even the sleepers stirring in sudden discomfort—but seeing who we were put them at ease again. They were all blond, veiled and completely naked, and all wore small-linked bronze bands around their heads.
“Fold your robes and lay them there,” our guide said, pointing to a neat pile of robes of various browns before slipping out of her own robe. “When you leave this tent, you are to wear robes of the darkest brown, for you have not yet been favored. When you have finished, I will instruct you further.”
“Why do they all wear veils and nothing of clothing?” I asked, taking off my robe reluctantly. I didn’t like the idea of sitting or walking around in nothing at all, but it seemed to be the prevailing style there.
“It is the wish of our hizahh,” the woman answered, watching the robe-folding with a critical eye. “Lay the robes gently but firmly, so that they will neither crease nor slide from the others. Should any portion of our tent be found in disarray, we will all face the lesson.”
Her tone was so ominous I wouldn’t have had to pass on the emotions behind it even if I’d intended to. After I translated for Findra we all took care finishing up with the robes, then followed the woman to a corner of the tent where we could sit down.
“At darkness, all hizahh in the camp will see you veiled and banded,” the woman said, looking around at us. “These things you must remember above all others: no word may be spoken in the presence of hizahh, save at their command, and all bedinn must kneel immediately in the presence of hizahh. Should either of these rules be broken, you will immediately face the lesson for failure.”
“What does such a lesson consist of?” one of the women asked, her voice hesitant but the intention to know firm in her mind. We had to know, even if we didn’t want to.
“The girl who fails is whipped,” the woman whispered.
“The pain is so great one is unable to breathe beneath it, the lash so cruel one’s flesh is cut to nothing by it. And yet, this is not the greatest fear of the lesson. The greatest fear is that one may be whipped many times and sent to the bedin tent to heal—or one may be whipped to death upon the instant. It is impossible for one to know beforehand, for all proceeds at the whim of the hizah. We are nothing, and easily replaced. You yourselves, all of you, cost far less than a simple pack seetar, and will not be treated as well as the beast save you are chosen to bear young to the hizahh. To be chosen so is highly unlikely, for this tribe boasts many child-bearers born to it, none of whom have been bedin. They are kept far from the eyes of all, and never is a bedin allowed in their presence. Our service is solely for the use of hizahh, our lives theirs to direct forever.”
A shudder passed through me at the finality of that statement, a shudder that wasn’t felt by myself alone. But the present situation was something I couldn’t seem to come to terms with under any circumstances, real or not, caring or not. I just wanted to turn away and ignore it all, all the while telling myself that doing that couldn’t really cause my death. My world had never been that way, and I didn’t want it to be that way now.
“And—what of the last of us, the girl Alsim,” one of the women asked, her mind sick with fear over what answer she would get. “I have not seen her since we awoke, and none has mentioned her. Has she also been made—bedin—or has she somehow escaped our lot?”
“She remained with the savages,” the woman answered heavily, her eyes filled with pity above her veil. “The hizahh attempted to buy her as well, yet the savages wished to retain one female for their own use. Her suffering will not continue overlong, sister, for the savages do not care for the captives they take. She will soon die from lack of food and the continued use of the stupor drug, therefore must you take heart and rejoice in her coming freedom.”