Shadow Gate

26

The long night begins.

It is not night always. She counts the days and polishes her mirror. She accepts a name, Azalea, a white flower. She might laugh with Mima and Ebba and Noria over a joke as they are scrubbing floors, or during a song they are teaching her while they

grind kernels to flour in big stone bowls, or when she makes a mistake speaking a word, saying 'I comb my chair' instead of 'I comb my hair'. She might sit on a bench with her friends in the shade of a tree and drowse in afternoon's lazy heat. She might appreciate the melting sweetness of fruit in her mouth. She might close her eyes with the pleasure of perfumed soap and warmed water coursing down her skin.

But after the twilight bell she pretends her body does not exist. The customers don't like her to close her eyes. She gets whipped for that. If her eyes are closed, then it's like she is dead, a pale corpse, and while there are a few demons who might like to imagine they are rutting into the empty shell of a corpse, mostly they imagine other things and those other things mean she has to keep her eyes open to show she is alive.

But that doesn't mean she has to see. After long enough, she can be blind with her eyes open.

One morning, six months into her servitude, they woke to discover that the girl who rocked side to side and never spoke had thrown herself into the well and drowned.

Twenty-three days after that, Ebba stabbed with an embroidery needle one particular customer who was trying to do something to her the old woman would not speak of afterward, and as the days passed the bleeding from her flower wouldn't stop and turned into a horrible infection that killed her.

Fourteen days after the dead girl was hauled out of the compound to be thrown into the waste pits, eight of the girls got a flux, maybe from eating tainted meat, and five died after days of agonizing cramps.

The best-earning girl, after Kirya, got pregnant, and died from a bad batch of purgative.

The next day, the old woman took Kirya to the market and sold her to one of the masters of a passing caravan, handing over the girl, the mirror, and the beaded nets.

'Bad ghost,' she said, in a rare moment of honest assessment. 'Demon eyes unlucky'

But the men could not take their eyes off her pale hair and pale skin and blue eyes. They had a long journey to make, many

months traveling east on the Golden Road across the Qin pastures and farther east still through the fabled wastelands of the bone desert. It was good in such circumstances to have entertainment and, really, you could do anything you wanted to a demon because it wasn't human.

When she tried to run away, the guards caught her, and after they were done with her, the master whipped her, and after he was done with her, he chained her to the whores' wagon so she couldn't run.

She lost count of the days.

One of the guards took her mirror and gave it to another of the caravan whores, and when she tried to get it back, the master whipped her.

Without her woman's mirror to show what is truth and what illusion, she might as well be dead, her shell an empty vessel that imitates the motions of life. Maybe it is better that way. Maybe everything that came before was the dream, and she is after all a demon and the ones who torment her are human, just as they say they are.

The caravan was plagued with bad luck. Dead birds littered the path they followed. A way station where they usually picked up water and supplies had been abandoned. A guard crawled away into the night, raving, and was never seen again. A water hole known as safe proved to be tainted, and everyone got sick with a flux that felled a number of sheep and three grooms and left the rest trembling and weak. Which was a respite for her.

A company of Qin soldiers clattered past, in a hurry to get to the border on some military errand, so they only stole what they could easily carry on their horses – wool thread, vials of western spice, saddle blankets, silver bars – but when they ripped open the canvas entrance to the whores' wagon and saw her, they made warding signs, hurried back to their horses, and cantered off as if fleeing from an approaching storm.

Which hit several days later.

The sandstorm raged for an eternity. When they dug themselves out, two wagons and a pair of dray beasts had vanished beneath the shrieking winds and blowing sands, and four drovers trapped in shelter without water had died of thirst.

Outside her wagon, the master said, 'We sell the demon in the next town. The old bitch spoke true: demon eyes bring bad luck. So, take your turn now if you still want.'

The next five days were the worst she had endured even after everything that had come before.

In the town, the master took the precaution of bribing a priest to certify her as human even though everyone in the caravan knew she was the demon who had called down the storm and poisoned the spring. Then he sold her in a private auction.

Before he handed her over to her new master, he slapped her, and said, 'Now I hope you will suffer as you made us suffer.'

Her new master examined her with the ugly lust she had come to recognize in male faces, but he did not touch her even after the merchant collected his coin and departed. He made her hide her hair and face under a draped cloth, and led her out of the private room in the merchant's hostel into a courtyard where two other persons fell into step beside him as they crossed under the hostel gate and out into the town.

'For Girish?' asked one.

'For Girish. Better a slave than a wife.'

'Yes, Brother. Girish cannot be allowed a wife.'

She was surprised, because they spoke the same kind of demon speech Mima had taught her. It was the speech all the merchants and guards knew, but in the towns, people usually used other words if they weren't speaking to the merchants.

She walked three paces behind them through the confusing babble of what she now knew was called a street. This one stank as usual but besides that twisted and turned and changed direction, yet since she kept her face shrouded and her gaze fixed on his feet, she saw nothing except the red-clay earth on which they walked, the well-made leather sandals he wore, and the occasional

piles of steaming manure from dray beasts which they must avoid. The person he conversed with had soft, dark feet encased in good leather sandals. The third person, with big hairy callused bare feet, remained silent.

Once the master paused to talk to another man, making elaborate greetings in babble words but afterward slipping into the speech she could understand.

'A good harvest, eh, Master Firah? We drink plenty of wine next year from your grapes.'

'If we have any wine to drink! What think you about the meeting with the Qin commander? I like not the new regulations, and the high tax. What think you, Master Mei?'

'I think we obey, or the Qin kill us. For me, an easy choice. For you, a different choice?'

'Heh heh, no, not at all. Just talking.'

'My brother Hari got arrested and taken away for "just talking".'

'Sorry to speak of it. My apologies, Master Mei, for reminding you of your family's ill fortune. Any news of your daughter, eh? I hear talk from my wife that maybe now the girl is old enough, a marriage may be arranged. We have a good, strong son, sure to inherit the business. If you are interested, come talk.'

The master grunted irritably. 'I do not speak of my daughters out on the street.'

'My apologies. My apologies.'

They walked on.

The sandaled companion said, 'Brother, Firah has much coin and a good vineyard.'

'Not for my orchid.'

'True. True. We can do better for her.'

'She is too young for marriage!'

'Heh, Brother! She is old enough, fifteen now. Plenty old. And maybe we can offer that teakettle as part of the bargain.'

The master's voice was his whip. 'Enough!'

'Pardon, Brother. Pardon. I mean no disrespect. So, eh, ah. Is the slave a pretty one?'

'It is a slave.'

'] hope it was cheap. He'll damage it soon enough.'

'Maybe not this one.'

After more turns, they walked under a gate into a dusty courtyard that smelled of dusty water and dusty leaves.

'Take it into the storehouse,' the master said.

He went away. The barefoot one led her into a building. As soon as they walked into the dim confines she began to shake, for here exactly were cribs like the cells of the brothel. She was afraid to cry, because crying got her whipped. They walked to the end of the corridor and into a room with a window onto another courtyard shining so brightly green that the colors made her eyes hurt. A fountain splashed, moisture tickled her nose. She clutched the cloth tightly around her head, but kept a slit open toward the window so she could see the beautiful green foliage and the flowers, orange and white and pink, nestled along the branches. Four young children played beside the fountain; a woman seated on a stool nearby mended clothing.

The door opened.

'Look it over,' said the master. 'You'll see why I bought it.'

A hand tugged on the cloth, and she released it and cringed as she saw five people staring at her: the master and another man who looked enough like him to be his brother, two women, and a huge barefoot man. All but the master made warding signs.

The two women were likely cousins or sisters. They stared at her for a long time, then looked at each other, as sisters and cousins will, sharing stories in the tilt of a head and the shift of a mouth and the way an eyebrow lifts. Then they looked at the master and his brother, at the stiff way the men were standing.

The older of the woman said, 'Mountain, take its clothing off. I don't want to touch it.'

Reluctantly, the big man minced forward and began the difficult task of removing her clothing without actually touching her.

'It's a demon, husband,' said the younger one. 'Look at those blue eyes! Just like cornflowers. Bad luck! Why do you bring a demon into our clan?'

'For Girish.'

'Grandmother won't like it,' said the brother.

The master snorted.

The older woman said, irritably, 'Grandmother has been letting Girish do as he pleases. I've already been put to the expense of purchasing and training new slaves. She's blind to his habits-'

The master's expression darkened. 'Do not speak of my honorable mother in such a tone, Wife!'

She flinched. 'Pardon, Husband. Pardon.'

The younger woman broke in, 'What if it is diseased? It could infect everyone-'

The slave tugged off her dirty undertunic. She stood naked before them. The master's hand strayed low, but with a deliberate shift he reached up and scratched his jaw instead. The brother had no such control. Her pale skin and pale hair and blue eyes never ceased to excite and horrify. That was what demons were: an evil lure to tempt people into the wastelands where they would be devoured down to the bone.

The older woman's horror receded as her gaze narrowed with calculation. 'No other man in Kartu can claim to own a demon. It might content Girish, now that he's clamoring for a wife.'

'An allowance, and the demon,' said the brother. 'That might shut him up.'

'Pardon, Husband,' said the younger woman to the master, 'pardon me that I speak out so boldly, but if you perhaps might be willing to tell Girish also that you will take the demon away from him if he molests the slaves.' She hesitated, dipping her head submissively.

'I am not unaware of the trouble Girish has caused you, or of his disordered and repulsive habits,' said the master with a stern frown that squelched conversation. 'Let us see if this contents him.'