Another woman comes to Thrace, securing a linen cradle around his neck and shoulders like a harness so that the child will rest against his heart, the soft fabric protecting the baby’s delicate skin from the stone-hard scales. When that’s done, she gestures for me to place the child inside. After a beat, I carefully tuck him in, adjusting the cloth over his small frame. Thrace holds one of his large taloned hands over the babe, creating a cage with his claws for additional security. The sight does not soothe me. It enrages me more and more until I cannot breathe.
Without warning, or after some silent command among them, the hoard bursts skyward, their bodies twisting and twirling towards Dyeus. As I watch, the only thought in my head is how desperately I want to pull back arrow after arrow and shoot each one of them down to the ground.
CHAPTER FOUR
MY SISTER DOES not rage. She does not weep. She does not do much of anything at all, but eat when told, and nurse when the girl child cries. Kalixta supported me in sending my mother away, letting me be the one to help during this time while I can. Truthfully, my mother could have stayed. There’s room enough. But I wanted Kalixta and my niece all to myself. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone and I want to help while I can. So, I sleep while Kalixta and the baby do. I wake when the girl cries, stroking her back as she latches on to her mother’s breast. When that does not soothe her, I change her wet napkins, and when that’s settled and still she cries, I rock her and cry with her out in the cavernous halls where her howls won’t reach my sister’s ears, giving her the rest she desperately needs. While my sister sleeps and the baby is quiet, I whisper words of strength and resilience to them both. Hope and love.
It is not until the early morning hours on the day before Alixor is to come, while both Kalixta and the baby are deep in sleep that I seek out Ninon. I carry a candle with me through the darkened halls, the lamplight dim along the smooth, worn walls. Her room is quiet and dark, a sharp smell lingering in the air. I pick up a folded parchment on her bed, and thumb it open, reading the words:Meet me there. I don’t have to wonder what it means. I pocket the note in my trousers as I leave her room.
Nevoba is a network of interconnected caverns and caves divided into sectors. The eastern end holds the sleeping chambers for mothers with children, while women over selecting age are given their own private sleeping chambers on the western edges. In the center we have spaces for cooking and gathering. The great hall is used for the rare occurrence of receiving the Sar Dyeus’s hoard, often for letting the children run and play freely, and weekly for deliveries from the farmhands. The upper section on the western side is storage for food, weapons, the stables, and nightly rooming for the farmhands following a delivery. The huntresses spend most of our time here, and once a week we take advantage of the presence of men from the farms.
The delivery won’t come until the afternoon, leaving this area quiet, the hunters out on watch or taking their hard earned break elsewhere. I pass the empty rooms and make my way through the storage area and take the small opening that leads out to the path where we burn our waste. The acrid stench always lingers on the air out here and Ninon and I learned early on in our youth that this was the perfect place to disappear. Other children find this area, too, of course. Like Ninon and I, they discover and claim little crevices or nooks as their own, but no one has ever found ours.
The dark is thick, my candle stub long since burned out, but my feet know the way over each rise and fall of the ground. Soon the familiar scent of burned waste leaves my nose and I smell something else that has me recoiling.
“Gods, Ninon,” I say as I lower myself down into a small gap between the rocks along the base of themountain that frame in Nevoba’s caverns. “Are you alive down here?”
I crouch to crawl through a smooth rock tunnel that opens into a bigger chamber, glowing with the light of a fire. The smoke and scent rises, leaving through fissures in the hard stone earth above. The sunlight seeps in through the cracks, casting shadows and further illuminating the smooth rock walls of our secret hideout.
Ninon sits on her heels, a cloth of fabric wrapped around her nose and mouth and I bring up my shirt to cover my own.
“The text warned of a strong odor.”
“A scent this strong calls for more than mere warning,” I say, squinting.
Ninon grunts her agreement.
“How’s it coming along?” I blink the tears from my eyes.
“Everything is going as it should,” she says. She occasionally stirs the mixture in a pot over the flames. “It’s almost boiled down to the right consistency. During the day it will rest and steep off the flame. Then I’ll run the mixture through cloth, then leave it to rest until tomorrow evening when it’s ready for consumption. Do you understand?”
I look from the pot, back to her. “I do, but why should I need to?”
She shrugs. “In case you ever need to concoct it yourself.”
My brows furrow. “How long will this last?”
“You only need a single drop under the tongue daily for it to work. This amount will last a year, I should think.”
“It’s more than enough, then.” The idea of being trapped in Dyeus, away from Ninon and my sister, ties my stomach into knots.
“We’ll see how persistent Alixor is,” she muses, stirring the mixture slowly again.
“I’m sure I’ll be allowed to return for visits, and it’s not like you won’t be here to make another batch.” I watch her face, waiting.
The pot bubbles and hisses. “You never know.”
My breath hitches in my chest and I look away from her. “I hate when you say things like that.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I know.”
I snap back to her. “No. You don’t. Just because your mother—” I stop myself, pressing my lips together tight. We’ve had this argument countless times before. The words other women and the children from our youth burrow deep, despite Ninon’s strength of heart. And mine.
Her eyes look into mine for a beat, then to the pointed tip of my ear, then beyond, over my shoulder. “How’s Kal?”
Forgoing covering my nose with my shirt, I rub my face with my hands, digging my heels into my eyes. “Exhausted.”
She lowers her mask and scratches her nose. “Is she alone?”
