A Thousand Nights (20 page)

He watched me for a time, and then went back to his work. When I felt his eyes were no longer on me, I breathed in a long breath. The snake did not always strike. Sometimes it waited. Maybe I
did not taste very good. The thought made me smile, in spite of the danger, and I let myself sink a little bit deeper into the weaving, though I still sat upon my foot to make sure I worked nothing
strange. My fingers found the rhythm and my threads followed it.

We had many working songs and prayer chants. Some were meant only for the ears of my sister and my mother and my sister’s mother, but some I might sing for my brothers or any of the
relatives who lived in our father’s tents. There were other songs for when a caravan came to visit us, though that did not happen very often, and there were songs that we girls made up to
suit ourselves as we worked when our mothers were not with us.

I picked one of my favorites now. It had a soft melody that belied its natural rhythm. A man might think it a lullaby, fit only to soothe a child to sleep, but when its steady beat was put to
thread, it helped to guide, to lead even the newest of weavers through the steps to a finished cloth. We had sung it together, my sister and me, and all the girls with fair voices who sometimes
wove with us. It was not meant to be sung alone, and was missing parts, but I liked it enough that I could put in the pieces that were not there, even if Lo-Melkhiin could not.

I was halfway through the third verse when I felt a shadow, and knew he stood beside me. I forced myself to finish the line I wove, hands as steady as I could manage, though the viper hovered
even closer. When I was done, I set the loom aside, and looked up at him.

“My love, you sing a man to sleep,” he said to me. He had not seen the real purpose of the song, and that made me glad. “Come to bed, then.”

He did not touch me. I took the pins from my hair, and shed the dress so that I stood before him in henna and shift alone. If he knew what the symbols meant, he gave no sign. I did not think he
did. Men did not, usually. It was only women’s art, after all.

“Come to bed,” he said to me again.

I turned my heart to stone, and climbed into bed with the viper.

FOR FOUR MORE NIGHTS, Lo-Melkhiin came to me for supper, then the evening’s work, and then to bed. The henna mistress drew her signs on me each time, and the girls coiled
my hair and pinned it, and put me in a dress of fine make. Each night, the henna burned a little stronger, the pins stuck fast to my hair, and each dress had the embroidery of the most delicate
touch.

Lo-Melkhiin’s maps were marked, and the cloth grew under my hands. I kept the eating knife close to me when I could, and sang the songs from our father’s tent when I could not. If he
noticed, he did not care. Each time he invited me to bed, it was the last thing he said to me, and never once did he touch me. There was none of his cold light, nor any of my copper fire, yet I did
not feel at all weakened. The henna kept my copper fire strong. Each morning, he was gone before I woke to a steaming cup of tea on the table beside my bed.

When I woke, I went to the bathhouse. It was empty when I arrived, but before I could take off my shift one of the attendants appeared as always, like I had rung a bell for them. They took the
shift away and brought me a new one while I soaked the night’s henna away. It did not disappear entirely. Often the henna mistress merely traced over lines, renewing them and their power in
my skin. Perhaps that is why they burned with greater intensity when she put them on my body. It was the same for my hair. While I sat in the bath, they brought a trough of heated water to the
ledge behind my head. If I put my head back, they combed my hair in the water. It leeched some of the color, but not all of it.

When I was dried and dressed, I went to the weaving room. I opened the door without knocking, as was my custom, and was surprised to find that all the women looked up at me, rather than keeping
their eyes on their work.

“Oh, lady-bless,” said the oldest weaver, “it is only you.”

“Only me?” I said to her, taking an empty seat amongst the spinners. They passed me a basket, whorl, and leader thread, and I began my work.

“Lady-bless, Lo-Melkhiin has come here every day since he woke up from his illness.” This from the spinner who often spoke before she thought. “He watches us, and sometimes
lays a hand upon us, and tells us our work is good.”

The old weaver made an impolite sound. My hands were busy, so I couldn’t use them to cover my mouth. Instead, I stopped my smile before it showed. The old weaver did not think that
Lo-Melkhiin would know good thread if it tripped him.

“I swear, lady-bless, we did not tempt him here,” said the spinner. “He just appears.”

“The lady does not care if he finds one of you pretty,” the old weaver said.

Again, I had to hide my smile. Jealousy was the last emotion I would feel if Lo-Melkhiin took to pursuing the spinner-girls. I was more concerned with what they had made after he touched
them.

“Tell me,” I said to the spinner. “Where is the thread you spun after he came and saw you?”

“I burned it, lady-bless,” she said, looking down at her spindle at last, though it did not spin. “It was not fit for use.”

“And her three years in this room,” said the old weaver. “She has not muddled her thread since she first came to me. He scared her that much.”

They showed me the other pieces then. An embroidery full of snarls, more lumpy thread, wool carded so badly it might not have been carded at all, and a loom that they had been forced to cut the
warp from so that they could start afresh.

I watched the spinner. Her thread was clean now, and even as ever, though her hands shook slightly as she fed wool into her work as the spindle dropped. She had seen the viper in him, I knew,
and she worked still, because she did not know what else to do. I caught her whorl so it would not undo, and put my hands on hers. Copper fire spread between us, more than when I had touched the
healer, and she stopped shaking.

“There,” I said to her. “Everything will be all right now. When Lo-Melkhiin comes, send a girl for me, and I will come after, and help you clean up the mess.”

The weaver made another impolite noise, and this time I did smile. I raised my hand to touch her, but before I could, the copper fire leapt from me to her, lighting her eyes and straightening
her spine. She coughed once, and I started in surprise, and then bent back to rethreading the loom as though nothing had happened. She worked much faster now.

I took my seat with the spinners again, and thought about how I might help them. I had spun for a vision, once. Perhaps now I could spin the copper fire into the thread. My mother and my
sister’s mother had laid down lines of strange-smelling salts that our father brought from far away in circles around each of our father’s tents. They did not stop ants and bees from
coming in, but they did stop scorpions. And vipers. Lo-Melkhiin would come in—I could not keep him out—but I wondered if I could spin copper fire to keep his cold light from frightening
the work again.

I took up my basket of wool again, and reached for the whorl. I began to spin, and let myself fall into the trance without fighting between one blink and the next.

This time, instead of flying across the desert, I hovered in the ceiling of the room, where hot, scented air rose and idled before it found its way out the screened windows. I looked down and
saw all the looms at work, all the whorls spinning, and all the needles as they flashed in and out, pulling the silk threads behind.

I could see traces of Lo-Melkhiin’s cold light. Unsurprisingly, they collected near the prettiest of the spinners, the quickest of the stitchers, and the most talented of the weavers. At
least he had some measure of craft-knowledge. I dropped the thread I spun on each light, smothering it in fire, and then moved my whorl on to the next one. When I had cleaned up the leavings, I
turned my thoughts to how I might protect the room.

My mother had left a circle of salts, and that was enough, but scorpions were much shorter than Lo-Melkhiin. Still, that was the best place to begin. Perched on the air near the ceiling, I
trailed the new copper-spun thread behind the whorl as I moved it slowly around the room. Then, because I could not think of another way, I repeated the process near the ceiling, level with where I
floated. The two lines of copper fire reached for one another, but stayed in place where I left them. As I relaxed my hold, the lines blurred. I tightened my grip again, like I would hold a
goat’s legs to keep it from straying, but they fought me harder than any goat I had ever restrained.

I could not stay in the ceiling of the spinning room forever. If my first idea had failed, I would have to let it go, and then try to come up with another. I released the copper fires. To my
surprise and relief, the lines stayed where I had set them. Threads of fire broke loose, reaching up from the floor and down from the ceiling, the way a gage-tree’s roots stretched for water.
They intertwined with one another and flared strong in my vision. I recoiled from the brightness, and dropped the whorl. I fell as it did, and woke up in my seat, the old weaver shaking me by the
shoulders.

“Lady-bless!” she hissed. She did not wish to shout and cause alarm. I knew if I did not wake, she would pinch me, or worse.

“I am here,” I said to her. “It is done.”

“It certainly is,” she said to me, and I looked down at my hands.

I had been spinning undyed thread, as we all were, but that was not the color I had spun and wrapped about the skein at the bottom of my basket. As I had spun white thread when I sought my
sister, I had spun copper thread now, so bright even inside the room that it seemed to have its own fire.

“Lady-bless!” said the spinner.

“You will still your tongue,” said the old weaver. She looked around the room. “You will all still your tongues. This stays between you and your smallgods.”

They murmured their agreement, and I felt a stirring in my blood. The old weaver said
their
smallgods, but I knew at least some of them sent their whispers out to
me
, though I
could not say how I knew it. I nodded to the old weaver, and left them to their work and their prayers. My blood hummed as I went out from them.

In the cooler air of the garden, I paused. Before, Lo-Melkhiin had been content to take his power from men, and inspire their creations. Now, it seemed, he had turned his efforts to the women
who lived in the qasr as well. He was not desperate for power; I could tell by the strength of the cold light in the spinning room. More likely, he had forgotten that women do work,
too—useful work. He thought he could hasten them along as he had the men, and he had, but at too steep a cost. I hoped he stayed away from the kitchens. The head cook did well under
Lo-Melkhiin’s influence, but many of his assistants were women or boys, and I had no desire to eat burned or raw bread.

He had not touched me in five days. Had he learned that my power was made stronger by his? Had he tried to find another source, in hope of weakening me? If he had, it had been a failure. The
henna mistress and the women who dressed my hair had more than enough power in their work to keep me strong. I did not like that in order for my strength to increase, his must too. I did not like
that I relied on him for anything, least of all this. Perhaps it was time to visit my sister in the present, not seek out visions of her past, and see if the cult of my smallgod had done what she
hoped it might.

I was halfway back to my room and the weaving there when it occurred to me that Lo-Melkhiin would have visited more rooms than the spinning room. I had warded that place, but I knew that he must
have left his mark on others, and that the work done there would be just as muddled. A qasr needs a king; so went the saying. That was what men thought. A king needed a qasr just as much, and the
qasr had to operate smoothly, sheep to the wadi, or the flock would disintegrate.

I needed more wool, I thought, and if I could find a way to spin it without turning it impossible colors, so much the better. I resolved to send for a basket, or more, when I had the time and
the privacy to lose myself in a spinning trance. It could not be today. The sun was well past its highest point, which meant I must dress for supper; and then the uncomfortable weaving, with the
viper watching me whenever I moved; and then another still night in bed with Lo-Melkhiin.