As the warriors whirled, singing a rousing hymn about honor and war and love, I looked up into Linaza’s formidable face. Sightless, she stared down at me, as empty and inanimate as the gnarled trees behind her. But right when I pulled my gaze away from her sandstone eyes, the tips of her wings fluttered.
Just once.
And though it didn’t make any sense, any sense at all, I swore my new scorpion pendant twitched against my throat in response.
“ARE YOU NERVOUS, Simti?”
My friend and I knelt in front of a looking glass, making final touches to our faces.
“A bride always feels nervous on her wedding day.” She flashed me a wobbly smile, but her eyes were shining.
A circlet of copper sat on her black hair. When she moved, the dangling leaves shimmered in the light from the tallow candles spread on low tables around the tent.
The wedding would begin at dusk. Simti’s bride price had been paid—a plot of land and a chest of coins. The dowry had been settled, too. Now? We would feast, and once she and Ilu spent their first night together, lost in one another’s arms, the marriage would be complete.
Happiness flooded through me, but so did a nagging sense of worry over Mirrum, the Koru warrior who had yet to recover.
“All will be perfectly fine, my friend.” I squeezed her clammy hand, trying to pour some reassurance into her, but whether it was more for me or for her was unclear.
Scratching my nose around the colored pastes and powders Nanaea had painted on me, I wrestled with my own nerves. I felt absolutely itchy. I hoped that Mudi was doing what I’d asked. Three drops of the tincture every thirty minutes. That was it. Not too difficult. But as Mudi rarely did anything I wanted her to, only time would tell if she followed my directions. For Mirrum’s sake, I hoped she did.
It had been four days since I’d received the scorpion necklace, and Mirrum had still not recovered to full health. She was sitting up and even taking in some broth, but I wasn’t satisfied. I’d been over to the sickroom constantly to heal her, and had only left her this evening to witness my friend becoming the bride she’d always wanted to be.
Only this time, Simti’s groom was very much alive. Since we’d all escaped the tomb in Alu, she was free to marry whomever she wanted instead of a dying lugal.
“Kammani, you’re not messing up my handiwork, are you?” Nanaea squawked from the corner of the tent. She knelt, a threaded needle between her lips, wrestling with the hem of Iltani’s tunic.
A difficult task, since Iltani was currently in it.
“I wouldn’t dream of ruining your efforts, Sister.”
“Good. It’s been nearly impossible to find more face paint in the Libbu. The merchants are carrying hardly any.” She plucked the needle from her mouth and wriggled it into the fabric.
My heart swelled watching her work, dampening the worry about Mirrum. We’d become a family of exiles here in Manzazu, establishing our own home. Each of us doing our own share. I’d carved out a little space in our house west of the queen’s Palace for me, Nanaea, and our little brother, Kasha, though it was filled day and night with the noise of everyone else who’d left Alu with us. I’d miss Nanaea when she eventually left me for her own marriage.
My stomach fluttered as I stood and busied my hands straightening up. I grabbed a basket and tossed discarded tunics and beads into it.
“Watch it, Nanaea!” Iltani grumbled, sipping on her cask of sweetwine, the Manzazu brew she couldn’t leave alone. “I’ll be dotted like a leper when you’re finished with me.”
Sweating, Nanaea pushed her damp black hair back from her forehead. “Stop fidgeting and you won’t get poked. This is a difficult stitch!”
Nanaea had apprenticed herself to a seamstress and was excelling in her craft, though dancing was more of her passion. But since Manzazu had dancers in droves, it made more sense for her to learn a trade that could support her. I missed the shine radiating from her eyes when she danced, though, which was happening less and less the more she worked on her craft.
Maybe one day she’d have time to return to what she loved.
Iltani bent to a table, selecting a juicy bit of fish out of some oil and popping it into her mouth.
Nanaea tugged on a seam and looked over her shoulder at Simti. “How did you get the embroidery in your tunic so perfect?”
“You forget that I’ve been sewing clothes for my family for years.” Simti bent to the looking glass, pursed her lips, and pinched her cheeks. “But not applying face paint. It isn’t blended right.”
“Didn’t Arwia say before she left this tent that nothing you do will make you any lovelier?” I stuck my basket on my hip. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the entire city.”
She blushed. “Thank you, my friend. Now come here. I need to fix something.”
I knelt, and she twisted a bud on my flower crown. “And you look beautiful today, too. You’ve slept recently, which is an improvement.” She smiled, and the gold powder that Nanaea had dusted on her brown cheeks shimmered in the candlelight.
“And you are a stellar liar.”
“Me?” She placed a hand on her chest in mock indignation. “I lie about nothing.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She grinned. “Well, perhaps only once and that was to get Ilu’s mother to love me as much as she loves Dagan. Is he here yet?”
“Yes, he walked with me from the Koru’s sickroom. Mirrum is still fighting the illness.”
Simti’s eyes softened. “You look worried. Will she heal?”
“I think so. But there’s a tincture that will hurry things along if Mudi will use it instead of just pleading with the Boatman.”
He didn’t help anybody.
Unease filled my belly as I recalled the Boatman scooping Lugal Marus in his bony arms and disappearing into the Netherworld from the tomb. Mudi had told me—repeatedly to the point of nausea—that the Boatman was once a warrior, cursed to his post for murdering innocents in war. She said he spoke to healers because he was trying to gain his freedom by helping prevent the deaths of as many lives as he took. But despite her telling me to listen to what he had to say, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The breaths I heard in my ear when I was pounding out a new tincture in my mortar made me shudder. The glimpses of his face right before I fell asleep every night stole my breath.
Communing with the spirit world went against everything logic told me to do.
Kasha burst into the tent, his dark curls falling down past his shoulders. Since he’d escaped the Palace, he’d refused any trimming, saying he’d been shorn like a sheep once too often in his life. Now he would live his life as he wanted. This morning, I’d made him wash himself, but I’d let him win the haircut argument. At least it was clean.