“That’s the strangest part. He was as peaceful as a lamb. The girl said it was because of the poppy brew she gave him; it takes away the pain for a time. Can you imagine? Sami lost a lot of blood, but she says if he survives until morning, he may recover.”
“What do you think of them? Sita and her Anen tribesman?”
The other woman sighed. “I think they bring changes with them, as all new things do. But whether those changes are good or bad, I cannot say.”
Sita stared at the makeshift splint she’d assembled with the materials they’d brought her. At Sami’s relaxed, sleeping face. There was still no color in it, but that would come. Isis willing, that would come.
She must have dozed off, because when she woke again witha need to make water, the infirmary was suffused with thick darkness. Sita stumbled to her feet and groped her way to the door.
“Oh!”
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she bumped into someone just outside the house. “By Amun, you frightened me,” Sita said, putting a hand to her chest. She squinted at the face of the visitor and saw it was the tall gray-haired woman who’d caught her and put Karim on his knees when they’d first arrived in Perset.
The woman regarded her but said nothing.
She was a formidable figure, with steely eyes and simple garb designed for movement, not fashion. The woman seemed an unusual choice for a warrior, but a warrior she was. Sita vividly recalled running through the streets to find Behkai, when the woman dropped out of the air, soundless, effortless, and caught her with the ease of a leopard pouncing on a gazelle. So much had happened over the past several days that Sita hadn’t thought about the woman since that encounter.Who is she, I wonder?
“Did you need something?” Sita asked.
The woman shook her head.
Sita waited for more of a response, but none came.
“Well then, how can I help you?”
The woman waited, as if Sita might make the connection on her own. When Sita remained confused, the woman made two fists and crossed them in front of her chest. She bumped her wrists together twice.
She doesn’t speak, Sita concluded, and tried to guess at the meaning of the gesture. “You’re…stopping something?”
The woman circled one hand, as if to say,Keep going.
“You’re protecting… Oh! You’re protecting Sami and me! You’re standing guard!”
The woman nodded.
There was something about her—perhaps it was her gray hair or her quiet strength—that reminded Sita of Nebet. She thought of her beloved attendant back in Thonis with a pang of desperate longing. A childlike desire for Nebet’s work-roughened hand on her cheek. She thought of the grief Nebet must feel, not knowing if Sita was alive or dead, and wished she could send her a message on the western wind.
I’m all right, she’d say.I’m safe.
When Sita returned from relieving herself, the woman hadn’t moved from her post. Sita stopped to lay a hand on her arm before returning to the shadowy infirmary. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She slept soundly until morning.
***
When Sita opened her eyes, blinking into the bright sunshine, Sami was looking back at her from his mat.
“Hello,” he said. “Is there anything to eat?”
Sita scrambled to his side and lay a hand on the boy’s forehead. It was cool and dry. She checked the splint to see if the wound had bled through the padding, but it too, was dry.
“How do you feel?” she asked him.
Sami struggled up on an elbow, wincing as his leg shifted slightly. “Hungry.”
Sita smiled. She laughed. “You’re hungry,” she said, giddy. She stood and ran out of the infirmary in bare feet, her hair a wild tumble. She found the silent woman where she’d left her, and Sita enveloped her in a sudden embrace.
“Did you hear?” she said as the woman awkwardly patted her on the back. “He’s hungry!” She shouted the news to the still-quiet houses, to the sleepy faces that appeared to see what all the fuss was about.
