In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“You are no slave, Hanna. You are Sorgatani’s luck. These are the only spare clothes we have until yours dry and can be repaired.”

“What of the woman who wears these?”

“She is dead.”

“Then who serves Sorgatani? I know it is said—what you told me once—ai, God! It seems so long ago! You told me that a Kerayit shaman can be seen by no person except her blood kinfolk along her mother’s lineage, her slaves, her luck, and her pura, who is also her slave. How came you by these garments?” She had found, now, a cloth belt and a heavier wool tunic to throw over the silk underrobe. Beneath them came baggy linen drawers dyed a soft purple. The soft leather boots had to be fastened by garters to the broad belt, which was studded with gold plates embossed with the heads of griffins.

“Both her slaves died in our flight, alas, as did all nine of the Kerayit guardsmen who fought so that she might not be captured. Without any to serve her, Sorgatani would have perished as well, because of the geas laid upon her kind.”

“Then who serves her?”

As quickly as she asked the question, she knew the answer. He did not turn, or shift at all, but his shoulders tightened and the angle of his head altered subtly and dangerously.

“You became her pura?” she asked, as shocked as she could be.

He chuckled. “Certainly she is beautiful, but alas, she made no such tempting offer. I accepted the chains that make me her slave.”

“Do you not serve God, Brother? How can you serve both God and an earthly master?”

“Is it not a worthy service to save the life of another, even if she is a heathen? So I do believe. If I did not serve her, she would have died. No one else in Lady Bertha’s troop was willing to take on the duty. In any case, without Sorgatani’s protection, we would have been discovered and killed long ago, and we would not gain a steady supply of meat to feed ourselves.”

“Are you content, Brother?”

“I am resigned, Hanna. God command me to serve. I have discovered that I am often surprised by the unexpected nature of that service.”

She could not interpret his tone, and found that she did not want to think too hard about what he might have sacrificed and what it might mean that she was about to meet a woman who had claimed a relationship to her that Hanna did not remotely understand. “What of Sister Rosvita and her companions? Did Sorgatani find them, too?”

“In a manner of speaking. Following your trail, we fell upon them hiding in the woods and so took them in.”

“Following my trail? That of the Arethousan army?”

“No, although truly it was not difficult to follow the army’s dust cloud as it marched. You are Sorgatani’s luck. Brought so close to you, how could she fail to know where you were? Thus were you found, and rescued. Come, are you ready?”

She sighed as she clasped her belt and smoothed a hand over the bumps and ridges made by the embroidery. Such fine cloth would only be worn by the most noble of princes, in the west, and yet the Kerayit clothed their slaves in this finery. “Yes. As ready as I will ever be.”

Her hair was tangled and she had no comb, but it was cleaner than it had been before. Her stomach growled, and she willed away a flash of dizziness as the wind shifted to spill the fat smell of meat past them.

“Leave your old clothing,” he said. “I’ll see that it is cared for.”

“I thank you.”

She was aware of the camp as a scene unfolding beyond her reach. When they reached the wagon, she mounted the steps and touched the latch tentatively.

“Go on,” said Breschius gently. “Don’t set your foot on the threshold.”

She slid open the door and stepped over the threshold, ducking so as not to hit her head. The Kerayit were either much shorter than Wendish folk, or they disdained to waste space simply to accommodate height.

She stumbled as she entered the interior, assaulted by its disproportion. The inside was larger than it had any right to be. She felt dizzy, but the fit passed as she pushed the door closed behind her and straightened up into a spacious, circular chamber richly furnished and eerily quiet. It had a round, felt roof, although definitely the wagon had conveyed no such thing on the outside. A central pole pierced the smoke hole, and the heavens, seen through that hole, shone with a silvery sheen shot through with flashes of light that might be distant lightning or sparks from a nearby fire.

“What manner of place is this?”

“This is where I live, Hanna. Be welcome here.”

Sorgatani stepped out from the shadows. She was as beautiful as Hanna remembered from her dreams, if features molded so differently from those known in Wendish lands could be called beautiful. Hanna thought they could. She had not forgotten Bulkezu.

Sorgatani’s black hair was braided and pinned up against her head, and she wore as a crown a net of delicate golden chains that fell past her shoulders to brush her robe of golden silk. The simple beauty of that fabric put the gaudy embroidery of Hanna’s tunic to shame, and she had a sudden uncomfortable insight that what had seemed a rich garment to her inexperienced gaze might not be one in truth when compared to the fineness of Sorgatani’s garb.

Hanna advanced cautiously to the central pole. There Sorgatani met her and extended both hands, palms up and open. She did not touch her. She kept a hand’s breadth of distance between them, air that felt alive to Hanna’s skin, as if it had the same breath and soul that animated all living things.