The Burning Shadow (4 page)

S
ometimes, Pirra thought her mother never slept.

When the High Priestess wasn't making a sacrifice or dealing with her priests, she was listening to the voice of the Goddess; and always the lamp in her chambers burned like an all-seeing eye.

If you wanted to escape, you had to think fast and grab your chance. Pirra knew that. But now things seemed to be going wrong.

There should have been a rope ladder hanging from the wall. It had been there yesterday—she'd seen a slave climbing over the edge to repair the outer face of the House of the Goddess—but today there was only a crow and a thirty-cubit drop.

From the Great Court, she caught the distant smells of juniper smoke and roasting swordfish, then a roar from the crowd: The bull-leaping was about to begin. The crow flew off with a startled croak, and Pirra crouched behind one of the huge limestone bull's horns that lent the top of the wall its spiky grandeur.

It had rained in the night, and the horn felt slippery and cold. With a scowl, Pirra pondered her next move. This was beginning to look like a mistake.

And yet it had begun so
well
. She'd been pushing through the throng on her way to the Great Court when she'd become separated from her slaves. She'd seized her chance and fled.

The storeroom had been shadowy and deserted: a long way from the Feast, and heady with fumes from its man-high jars of wine. Pirra had scrambled up one, then through a repair hatch, and onto the roof. It was flat-trodden clay limed a dazzling white, and beyond it lay more roofs: a whole shining hillside of shrines, cookhouses, chambers, smithies, and workshops. Her vast stone prison.

Keeping low, she'd raced over them till she'd reached the edge of the westernmost roof. Between her and the outer wall lay a gap: a passageway without a roof. She'd jumped it, thudding onto the outer wall and grabbing one of the bull's horns.

That was when she'd realized that the ladder was gone.

Now what to do? Behind her, a nasty fall to the passage. Before her, that thirty-cubit drop, then a jumble of rocks leading down to the settlement, whose mudbrick houses huddled against the great House like calves against a cow. Beyond them—freedom.

Because of the Feast, the settlement was deserted, except for a magpie hopping about on the rocks. Perfect. But how to get down without a ladder?

Hooking one arm around the bull's horn, Pirra leaned over. She spotted a window in the wall directly below her. If she leaned a bit farther, maybe . . .

A familiar voice shouted her name.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Userref her slave stood in the passage, frozen with horror.

“Pirra what are you
doing
?”

Furiously, she motioned him to silence, then turned back to plan her escape.

Down on the rocks, the magpie was gone. In its place stood a woman with unkempt brown hair and a startling white streak at one temple. Her tunic was ragged and dusty, but she was staring sternly up at Pirra.

Pirra recoiled, slipped, and suddenly she was clinging to the horn and her legs were dangling over the passage. Her sandals scrabbled for a foothold, but the wall's polished gypsum was lethally smooth.

“
Hold on!
” cried Userref. “I'm beneath you now, let go, I'll catch you!”

Pirra struggled to heave herself back onto the wall. She couldn't.

“Pirra!
Let go!
”

She clenched her teeth.

She let go.

“This has to
stop
,” hissed Userref as he marched her back to her chambers. “Think of the trouble if the Great One found out!”

“
Trouble?
” retorted Pirra. “How much worse can it get? In three days she's sending me to the edge of the world to wed a stranger!”

“It's your duty—”

“Duty!” she snarled.

They reached her room and she flung herself onto her bed and plucked savagely at the covering. It was fine red wool embroidered with blue swallows, and it smelled of lampsmoke and captivity.

“Yes, duty,” insisted Userref. “Your mother is High Priestess Yassassara. Everything she does is—”

“For the good of Keftiu, yes I know. Last year she tried to barter me for a shipload of copper. This year it's tin. All for the good of Keftiu.” She was nearly thirteen, and she'd spent her whole life shut up in the House of the Goddess. In three days, she'd be sent far across the Sea and shut up again, in a stranger's stronghold, until she died.

Userref was pacing angrily up and down. “These ridiculous attempts to escape! Bribing a water-carrier. Hiding in an empty olive jar. Clinging to the webbing under a
chariot
!”

Savagely, Pirra attacked another embroidered swallow. Userref made it sound so childish; and he hadn't even mentioned her preparations for surviving in the wild. Haunting the cookhouse to learn how to gut fish. Hoisting her big alabaster lamp over and over, to make herself stronger. Stomping barefoot on a pile of oyster shells to toughen her feet. She'd even bribed a guard to teach her about horses . . .

For what?

Her one success had been preventing her mother from marrying her off to a Makedonian Chieftain. Pirra had greeted his emissary smeared in donkey dung, with a crazy grin and the scar on her cheek picked out in henna. Her mother had punished her by forbidding a fire in her room all winter, and—which was much worse—by giving Userref twenty lashes.

“
Why
can't you accept your fate?” cried Userref. “Why can't you be content with what you have?”

Pirra glanced about her, and the familiar panic sucked the air from her lungs. The cedarwood roof beams weighed down on her and the windowless walls pressed in on all sides. The green stone floor was cold as a tomb, and the broad-shouldered columns flanking the doorway looked like tall men standing guard.

“None of it's real,” she muttered.

He flung up his arms. “What does that mean?”

“This lily in my hair isn't a flower, it's just a piece of beaten gold. The octopus on that jug is made of clay. Those dolphins on the wall are painted plaster. They're not even proper dolphins, the painter got their noses wrong, he made them look like ducks. I bet he's never seen a real dolphin. I bet he never . . .” She broke off.

I bet he never stroked its flank, she thought. Or held on to its fin and let it carry you out to Sea, while Hylas stood in the shallows and . . .

Thinking of Hylas made her feel even worse. For a few days last summer, she'd escaped from Keftiu and he'd been her friend. Well, sort of her friend, although they'd fought a lot. At times she'd been hungry and terrified out of her wits—but she'd been free.

“You're thinking about that barbarian,” Userref said accusingly.

“His name is Hylas,” snapped Pirra.

“A
goatherd
.” He shuddered. Like all Egyptians, he regarded goats as unclean. “Is that why you never wear that lion claw I gave you?”

“He gave me a falcon feather, so I'm keeping the claw for him, it's only fair.”

“But you'll never see him again—”

“You don't know that—”

“—and I got that claw for
you,
to keep you safe.”

“I don't
want
to be safe!” she shouted.

“Well then, the next time you decide to dangle from the roof, I won't catch you, and you can break your legs!”

Pirra grabbed her pillow and flumped onto her side.

There was a furious silence.

Userref sat cross-legged on the floor beside the incense burner and tented his kilt over his knees. Frowning, he straightened the pleats in the linen. He centered the eye amulet on his chest and passed a hand over his smooth-shaven brown scalp. His fingers were shaking. He hated losing his temper. He said it was an offense against
maat,
the divine order of his animal-headed gods.

Beneath her pillow, Pirra touched the little wooden cat he'd carved for her when she was eight. It was yellow with black spots, he called it a “leopard,” and you could make its jaws open and shut by pulling a thong in its belly. She was too old for it, but she loved it so much that when her mother had ordered all her playthings taken away three summers ago, she'd hidden it in the secret hollow under her clothes chest.

“It would be so much easier,” said Userref quietly, “if you simply
accepted
your fate.”

“Like you? You told me once that to live outside Egypt is to be only half alive.”

He sighed. “Better half alive than dead. Your mother won't pardon you again. You know that.”

His handsome face was severe, but as he spoke, he was stoking the incense burner with his special blend of iris, terebinth gum, and snakeskin—which he said helped shed sorrows as a snake sloughs off its skin.

Pirra's eyes stung. Userref was more like an older brother than a slave, but in some ways, they would always be apart. He missed Egypt so much that he shaved his head in mourning, and his greatest fear was that he would die in a foreign land, because then he wouldn't meet his parents and brother in the afterlife. And yet he'd never once tried to escape. His gods had decreed that he would be a slave on Keftiu, and he must obey their will.

The heady fragrance of incense stole through the chamber. Userref met her eyes and smiled. “I'll be with you in Arzawa,” he said. “I'll look after you. I always do.” As he spoke, he gripped his eye amulet. Pirra knew this was his way of taking an oath.

“I know you will,” she said.

What she couldn't tell him was that she too had made an oath.

She had sworn that she would not let herself be taken to Arzawa. That somehow, whatever it took, she would escape.

I
t was still dark when Pirra woke up.

The lamp by her bed gave off a smoky glow and a whiff of jasmine. Mice scurried in the roof and she heard the distant click of loom-weights.

Curled on her side, she clutched the little lizard-skin pouch that held her falcon feather and the lion claw. She wondered what Hylas was doing, far to the north across the Sea. Maybe he'd found his sister. Even if he hadn't, at least he was free.

“Mistress?” Silea poked her head around the door-hanging.

“Go 'way,” muttered Pirra. “I'm asleep.”

“Nonsense.” Silea bustled in with a pile of clothes. “Up, now! We want you looking your best for the Feast.”

Pirra glanced with dislike at her chief slave girl. Silea took orders from the High Priestess, for whom she also spied.

Another girl brought a tray of walnut cakes and barley milk, with a pellet of frankincense for Pirra to chew to clean her teeth. A third girl combed her dark hair and twisted it into coils, while Silea none too gently got her dressed. A shift of fine saffron wool, a split blue overskirt embroidered with flying fish, a tight scarlet jacket, and a tasseled belt of gilded lambskin. Her feet were still hennaed from yesterday, so Silea just re-did the dots on her palms and forehead, which Pirra was always rubbing off.

As Silea wielded the tiny ivory wand with sharp little jabs, Pirra wondered whether the slave girl had told the High Priestess of her mistress' failed attempt to escape—or was keeping it quiet, since it reflected badly on her. Either way, she was in a rotten mood.

On impulse, Pirra snatched the wand and hennaed in her scar. There. Her bronze mirror showed her a stark red sickle that cut across her cheek like an open wound.

Silea's plump face puckered with outrage. “The Great One
won't
like that.”

“That's the point,” Pirra said drily. “And don't pretend you're annoyed, you love it when I get into trouble.”

“Oh
mistress
!” chided Silea, opening her eyes wide.

“Oh
Silea
!” mimicked Pirra.

The Feast of Blue Swordfish was in its seventh day, and Yassassara would be conducting the rites in the Great Court. Pirra sent the others ahead, saying she'd follow later with Userref. Silea didn't like that, but Pirra gave her one of her stares, and not even Silea was brave enough to insist.

Shortly after the slave girls had gone, Userref came in. He crossed his arms on his chest and eyed Pirra with suspicion. “You're not going to try anything else, are you?”

“Of course not,” said Pirra; but her mind was darting like a trapped sparrow. Two more days till she was sent to Arzawa—and she'd run out of ideas.

Instead of making for the Great Court, she headed for the Court of Swallows, where the common folk gathered.

“What do you hope to find there?” said Userref.

“I don't know.” She only knew that she couldn't face her mother. Whether or not Silea had told her, Yassassara would know by now. She always did.

Sacrifice was over for the morning, and the Court of Swallows was noisy with peasants bartering their wares and consulting the cheaper seers. There was a smell of sweat and sesame, dust and honey and blood.

A woman hawked wine from a wineskin, with a stack of rough clay beakers in the crook of her arm. A fisherman roasted octopus over an olive-kernel fire and kept an eye on a pail where more waited their turn in a squirming mass. An old man guarded his little earthenware bulls from a gaggle of slack-jawed children. “They're not toys,” he snapped, “they're offerings. No touching if you don't pay, and I only take almonds or cheese.”

Three peasant girls stood gossiping in their feast-day best. When they saw Pirra, they fingered their necklaces of painted limpets and gazed enviously at her gold collar and the green jasper lilies in her ears. She wondered what they'd say if they knew that
she
envied
them
. They could walk out of the gates whenever they liked.

Suddenly, she felt eyes on her.

In a corner beneath a rickety reed shade, a woman sat cross-legged on the ground, watching her. With a shock, Pirra recognized the white magpie streak in her hair.

Almost against her will, Pirra went over to her. Userref followed, clicking his tongue in disapproval.

Close up, the woman appeared to be just another wandering seer. The Sun had burned her the same dusty brown as her tunic, and her sandals curled up at the ends, like a donkey's untrimmed hooves. On a wovengrass mat she'd scattered some bunches of wilting herbs, but she had no takers and she didn't seem to care. Her face was slatted with shadow and sunlight—it was hard to tell if she was young or old—and her forearms were ringed with small round scars that looked like burns.

She stared at the scar on Pirra's cheek. “How did you get that?” she said baldly.

“How
dare
you!” cried Userref. “This is the daughter of—”

“It's all right,” said Pirra. Then to the woman, “What's your name?”

“Hekabi.” She spoke Keftian with an accent Pirra couldn't place. “Your mark. How?”

Pirra blinked. “I did it last summer. I burned it to stop my mother wedding me to the son of a Lykonian Chieftain.”

“But
how
did you burn it?”

“What does that matter?”

“Fire always matters, mistress. The question is, what does it mean?”

Despite herself, Pirra was unsettled. She told herself this was just some cheap seer who talked in riddles to seem wiser than she was; but this woman was better at it than most.

Brusquely, Pirra asked her where she was from.

“The White Mountains,” she replied.

That might explain the accent, but not the attitude. The White Mountains were far away at the other end of Keftiu, and few people lived there. Those who journeyed to the House of the Goddess were awestruck and humbled. This woman was neither.

“What are you doing here?” said Pirra.

“Visiting my cousin.”

“Who is?”

“A seal-cutter.”

Pirra concealed a surge of excitement. The seal-cutters' workshop was built into the western wall—she'd had her eye on it as an escape route—but the seal-cutters were notoriously reserved, and she'd never managed to gain their trust. This could be her chance.

“So what does a rich young mistress want from Hekabi?” said the woman. “A smoke reading? A telling of the spirits through Hekabi's seeing-stone?”

“I don't want anything,” said Pirra.

“Ah but you do. Yesterday. I saw you on the roof.” Her brown eyes were uncomfortably bright. “The seeing-stone, yes.” She nodded, as if Pirra had made her choice.

Userref touched Pirra's shoulder. “What are you
doing
?” he said in Akean, so that the woman wouldn't understand. “The Great One won't like you meddling with a common seer—”

“That's why,” snapped Pirra, also in Akean.

By now, a handful of peasants had gathered to watch, and they stirred expectantly as the woman set before her a round shallow dish of burnished black stone. Pirra was surprised. The stone was obsidian: rare on Keftiu, and not something a traveling seer would own.

First, the woman filled the dish with water from a greasy skin. Then from a goathide bag she took a nut-sized pellet of searing yellow. She crumbled it in her fingers and rubbed the yellow powder over her palms. “The lion rock,” she murmured.

Sulfur, thought Pirra. She'd seen it once in a priest's medicine pouch. It was used to ward off bad spirits and fleas.

Rocking and chanting under her breath, the woman took three lumpy gray pebbles from the bag and cast them into the water. They didn't sink, but bobbed to the surface.

Gasps from the peasants. “They
float
! What power has she, that she can make stones float!”

Pirra crossed her arms, unimpressed.

The woman drew another stone from her bag. It was round and flat, of white marble with a hole in the middle. “My seeing-stone,” she said with a sly smile. “The spirits gave it me.”

Putting the stone to her eye, she peered through the hole at the floating pebbles. “Ah . . . they do the bidding of the spirits . . .”

“Pirra,” said Userref, “you really can't—”

“Yes I can,” she retorted. Then to the peasants, “Get back, all of you! I must be alone with the seer. You too, Userref. Out of earshot.”

Grumbling, the peasants did as they were told, but Userref stood his ground. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing,” lied Pirra. “Now do as I say. That's an order.”

He didn't move.

“Userref. I mean it.”

They locked gazes. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. Then he heaved a sigh and moved away.

When everyone was well out of earshot, the woman put the seeing-stone to her eye once more and peered at the floating pebbles. “Three will come together,” she murmured. “Yes. That's what my seeing-stone tells me.”

“Three what?” Pirra said coldly. “When? Where?”

“That the spirits don't tell.”

Pirra knelt and leaned closer. She caught the woman's smell of dusty hair and roadside thyme. She whispered in her ear: “Help me escape, and I'll give you enough gold to last your whole life.”

The woman met her eyes and slowly shook her head.

Pirra licked her lips. “Then do it because I ask it. I'm desperate.”

Again the woman shook her head.

“It would be
easy
for you!” breathed Pirra. “You're kin to a seal-cutter, you could share the gold with him; he could help me get out through his workshop and down the wall—”

“No,” said the woman.

Pirra clenched her fists.

Twenty paces away, Userref was staring at her in consternation. She leaned even closer. “Then what about this,” she hissed. “You're a
fake
. Those pebbles float because they're pumice. Peasants don't know that, but I do. And you made that ‘seeing-stone' yourself, I can see the chisel marks.” She paused to let that sink in. Then she added, “My mother—High Priestess Yassassara—deals harshly with fakes.”

The woman recoiled. Her gaze hardened. “You're bluffing,” she spat. “If that was true, she'd have to punish half the wisewomen here.” But beneath her sunburn, she'd turned pale.

Pirra gave her a thin smile. “Do you want to take that risk?”