Date: 2015-12-08 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Young Adult; Romance; Novella; Fiction; Young Adult Fantasy; Short Stories; Science Fiction Fantasy
Description: This gorgeous romance from World Fantasy Award finalist Kate Elliott is a prequel to Court of Fives, the epic story of Jessamy and her struggle to do what she loves in a society suffocated by rules of class and privilege. Kiya is a Commoner who has just arrived in the bustling city of Saryenia. Esladas is a member of the Patron ruling class and determined to prove himself in the army. His plans are disrupted by the outgoing and beautiful girl who sells him fruit in the market, though, despite the fact that neither of them speaks a word of the others language. Brief conversations and stolen mom
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Night Flower

A Court of Fives Novella

Kate Elliott

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Esladas stood at the railing of the ship that had brought him across the Fire Sea to the land of Efea. In the distance lay the noble city of Saryenia with its twinned royal hills and the gleaming roofs of monumental temples and expansive palaces. The famous lighthouse, clad in marble, shone in the afternoon sun from a promontory at the mouth of the harbor. The city was magnificent—and daunting.

“Cities shouldn’t be this large,” griped one of his companions, a tall youth named Cahas. “Where will we find a place to stay? What if people cheat newcomers like us on the price of food and lodging? I spent all my savings to get here. I can’t go home if it doesn’t work out.”

The young men around them murmured anxiously in agreement: they were eight in all who had met and stuck together during the course of the long overland and overseas journey. Esladas had their same fears, but he had ruthlessly trained himself to show an impenetrably serious facade to the world no matter how nervous he was feeling. “You know why we came. As the poets say, in Efea a man from Saro can be anything he wants. Even lowborn men like us.”

“Sounds like Esladas has an idea,” remarked one of the twins mockingly, and his brother added, “More than I can say for you, Beros.”

“Hear me out. What if we eight enlist in the army as one group? So we can stay together? We can give ourselves a name and even a badge to mark our fellowship.”

“Wouldn’t it be impious to give ourselves a badge like lords do?” Cahas asked.

“We have flown from Saro and the laws that choke men like us while rich lords profit off our work. Why shouldn’t we give ourselves a badge? We’ll call ourselves the Firebirds, for everyone knows they are courageous and never tire, no matter how far the journey. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to have familiar faces around me. Like Cahas said, the city looks cursedly big and strange, and I wouldn’t want to find myself lost and alone.”

He paused, hoping his voice disguised how intimidated he felt by the colossal splendor of the city they were about to enter, for it was utterly unlike the single main street, modest temple to the gods, and market held only once a week in the town where he’d grown up.

But they all agreed eagerly. They were scared too, even though not one of them would ever have said so out loud.

The newly pledged Firebirds disembarked into a harbor of wonders that included sailors from all around the Three Seas as well as men of Saroese ancestry who had made Efea their home generations before. Esladas tried not to stare; he really did. But there were people with skin in shades like every color of soil: yellow, red, brown, black, and even a few as white as goat’s milk. Never in his life had he seen people without straight black hair like his own, and yet here walked folk with hair that was coiled or wavy, hair the color of ripe wheat, of fire, of tree bark.

The heat was tremendous, but it was the light that really staggered him: so strong and so pure.

He asked directions to the customhouse. This two-story building stood at the midpoint of the wharves, where its wraparound porch and big open windows gave a full view of the harbor traffic.

“Why are we going in here?” asked Cahas as they climbed the steps and got in line.

“Because the ship captain told me it’s the only place we can change money.”

“What’s wrong with our Saroese money?”

“The laws are different here. We have to use the local money.”

When Esladas’s turn came he stepped up to the counter, where a clerk waited beside a slate board with the exchange rates. The clerk was clearly Saroese by ancestry, but he looked unmanly with his clean-shaven face and his hair cut short.

“Greetings of the day. I want to change my money. Can you also direct my friends and me to the office where we can enlist in the army?”

The clerk blinked several times, then laughed. “Good Goat, man! I can barely understand you with that thick accent. Where are you from?”

“The town of Heyeng in the province of Everlasting Janon.”

“Never heard of either. Which kingdom?”

“Saro-Urok.”

“Ah.” He began counting out coins, making sure Esladas saw every part of the transaction so he would know he wasn’t being cheated. “A piece of advice, if you want it.”

“I’ll always listen.”

The man smiled. “Don’t take rooms in the Harbor District, because prices are much higher. If you are determined to enlist in the army, then you can find accommodation by the East Gate that will be cheaper as well as closer to the camp where you’ll train.”

“My thanks.”

“Another thing. With that long hair and those beards, you and your friends might as well shout that you are fresh off the boat and ripe for getting taken advantage of by dishonest people who prey on newcomers. If I were you, the first thing I would do is go to a barbershop and get your hair cut and beards shaved off.”

“It’s an offense against the gods for a man to cut his hair!” objected Cahas from behind Esladas.

“We’ll be struck impotent,” muttered one of the twins, and his brother added, “I thought you already were, Beros.”

Esladas raised a hand, hoping they’d listen. “If I’d wanted to stay in Saro, I’d have stayed. This is a new land, and they do things differently here. We have to let go of the past.”

Yet as blithely as the words rolled off his tongue, not long after, in a barbershop two streets away, he had to fix his hands to his knees to avoid swatting away the razor that a local barber set to his throat. All his life he’d been taught that if a man cut his hair or beard he would lose his potency and strength. Yet the hair fell away painlessly and he felt no different. Let it be the past cut from him. He was a new man now.

The long walk with his friends to the East Gate both bewildered and astounded him. It should have been a simple enough trek: a street called the Avenue of the Soldier ran from the West Gate to the East Gate, so the barber told them, and they had only to follow it. But nothing had prepared him for how wide the avenue was, enough for four carriages abreast, now filled with a crush of wagons and pedestrians and more horses than he had ever seen in his life. Cahas stepped in horse manure and cursed, and it was all so confusing that none of them found the misfortune funny.

The local Efean people with their dark brown skin and coiled hair were easy to tell apart from the Saroese. Besides their looks, the Efeans spoke a language without a single familiar word or phrase in it. Esladas might as well have been dumped into the sea and told to breathe underwater. But he was determined not to panic, just as he’d learned not to panic at home when facing his volatile father.

Efean men were everywhere, pushing wheelbarrows and hauling carts, working on roofs and in bakeries, going about their business and always moving out of the way of Saroese men—even newcomers like him and his friends. There were Efean women too, more women than ever appeared out in public where Esladas had grown up. As numerous as stars in the sky, the poets sang, and he saw the truth of the phrase now. They walked in groups carrying bundles and baskets on their heads and usually with a gaggle of well-behaved children in a neat column behind them. The contours of their thin, sleeveless sheath dresses hugged their curves, leaving so little to the imagination that he flushed as they jostled past without any self-consciousness because men might be looking at them.

Cahas elbowed him. “Good Goat, are you blushing, Esladas? Look at this, friends!” He gestured to grab the attention of their companions. “A man who never cracks a smile or laughs, so serious he is, never flustered by one setback on the road, and here he is blushing like a dainty bride upon seeing her husband for the first time without a stitch of clothing.”

Esladas gritted his teeth.

“The poets say that Efean men let their women rule over them and that’s what made them so easy to conquer by the Saroese,” Beros chimed in.

His twin laughed. “Yes, Beros, I’m sure you would beg for a bit of conquering yourself. What do you say, Esladas? There are some pretty flowers here. You can pluck a fresh one now and get a proper wife later.”

Esladas let their laughter and teasing wash over him. He’d endured far worse from his five older brothers. Instead he studied everything around him, even if he did skip over the women as well as he could for fear of blushing again. Most of all he noticed the many soldiers marching in disciplined lines or loitering in the courtyards of taverns with mugs of beer in hand. None of them wore the haughty faces and rich clothing of the highborn. These were men like him, come from the kingdoms of East Saro, West Saro, and Saro-Urok to make their fortune in Efea.

As he would. He was determined on it.

By the time they reached the East Gate, they were exhausted and a little ill, for they hadn’t yet regained their land legs after the sea journey. Esladas liked the look of the second boardinghouse they saw, and once he had bargained for beds for a week his friends collapsed.

“Doesn’t anyone want to look around the nearby streets? Maybe find the closest market?” Esladas asked.

Cahas gestured toward the curtained door that led from their dormitory into the boardinghouse’s courtyard. “It’s almost dusk. It’s probably dangerous to walk around at night.”

But Esladas could not sit still. He paid a coin for a cheap bath, the cool water exactly the refreshing wash needed in the oppressive heat, then ventured out alone after the woman who ran the house assured him it was perfectly safe.

Here in a city of a foreign land he had the freedom to walk as he wished. No one knew he was a poor baker’s youngest son, the one with no prospects. Here he was free to join the army and, if he performed well, hope to rise to the exalted rank of sergeant. He might earn enough money to set up his own household, to live in a home with lively boys whom he would never scold and slap, not as his father had done. He would never mock his own sons as his father had mocked him for his aspirations.

As dusk pulled shadows over the world and eased the blistering heat, Esladas wandered, amazed by how many people could afford to hang oil lamps to light their gates. At home, at night, the poor huddled in darkness and even the rich could barely afford enough oil for a single lamp. Here an entire market blazed in front of him, and people laughed and chattered and shopped as if a night market was an ordinary occurrence. Beneath canvas awnings, local women spoke loudly in public, mingling openly with men as they sold fruit, vegetables, and freshly cut flowers so vibrant he had to halt to absorb the heady smells.

This place! Nothing in his dreams had prepared him for its intensity.

He gaped at a table on which sat baskets of ripe persimmons, their orange skins gleaming in the lamplight. Persimmons were the stuff of his childhood holiday yearnings, for he and his brothers had been allowed to share a single one at the Festival of the Sun, and as the youngest he had never gotten more than a single spoonful of soft flesh.

Buying one seemed like a risky gamble. Did the old woman selling them speak Saroese? How would he bargain? What if she cheated him, asked too much? He wouldn’t even know. Yet suddenly that shining orange fruit seemed to him to symbolize his entire endeavor, as if getting hold of the most beautiful thing in the market would become the talisman of his future success.

A splendidly melodic laugh rang out, causing him to turn.

A young Efean woman stood a few steps away from him, where three hanging lamps cast a glow over her face. Delight poured like an embrace from her smile, made the whole world seem to curve around her as if she had briefly become the heart of all existence.

She made a jesting comment to a person he could not see. Then, not looking where she was going, she took a step back to get out of the way of a man pushing a wheelbarrow, and tripped on a guide rope. She flailed, her feet slipped out from under her, and she fell backward toward a bucket full of liquid.

Esladas leaped forward and caught her around the waist, gathering her weight into the fold of his arm. Her mouth popped open in surprise. She tensed at first, then began to laugh again, relaxing into his grip. Her eyes lifted to his as her smile flashed as brightly as a thousand suns might rise to forge a blinding sky.

*   *   *

Nothing could have surprised Kiya more than to find herself tucked in the secure grip of a very strong arm attached to a young Saroese man.

An insistent thought wedged into her mind: Well! The Saroese are not all ugly. Not like I’ve been told all my life.

He hadn’t said a single word, standing so still with her held in the circle of his arm that she noticed the nicks on his chin and dabs of dried blood from where he had shaved that morning. He was stunningly good-looking in a way that struck her as exotic and entrancing.

“My thanks, Honored Sir.” She eased herself out of his grip a little reluctantly.

He let go immediately, his expression as grave as if he had just delivered ill news and was waiting for her reaction. An urge to speak to him overwhelmed every other notion in her head. He looked so serious. Maybe she could get him to smile! His smile was probably gorgeous.

“Just imagine how embarrassing it would have been if I had found myself and everyone around me splashed by that bucket of urine while people stared! You saved me quite bravely, risking yourself in such a way.”

Instead of answering, he stared at her. Efean men never gazed rudely in this way, as if they had the right to gobble up your face and form without permission. But then he took another step backward and glanced at the ground, at the wall behind her, at his hands, and finally back at her. He tapped his chest and spoke words in Saroese, which might as well have been jackals howling at the moon for all she could understand him. Unlike a jackal he had a nice voice, low, brisk, and tuneful.

And those eyes, so deep a brown that the shadows made them seem black. This was certainly the most amusing thing that had ever happened to her in her sadly dull life.

“Kiya!”

Uncle Wenru strode up like a storm coming in. He halted several steps away with a teeth-grating grimace that looked completely out of place on his usually good-natured face. It was an even greater shock to Kiya to see her proud uncle bend his head and speak submissively to the ground rather than eye to eye with the foreigner. He spoke words in Saroese, turned to her with a look like a splash of scalding water, and continued in Efean.

“I’ve given him our apologies for you troubling him. We must leave now before there is any greater disturbance.”

“But we just got here. You said the night market might be a good place for me to get work.”

“Don’t argue with me! I brought you to the city with the understanding that you would obey one rule. What is the rule again?”

She sighed. “Never, ever speak to Saroese men.”

The Saroese man’s gaze flashed between them, trying to sort out the exchange, and it suddenly irritated her that he might think she and Wenru were a couple; they were close in age because her mother was the eldest of many siblings, of whom Wenru was the youngest.

“What if I don’t want to leave the market yet, Uncle?” she said too loudly, although she knew better than to let herself be bothered about what a stranger might think of her. “Because I need to thank this man first for saving me from a most unfortunate fall.” She turned to the stranger. “My thanks for your quick action, Honored Sir. I am called Kiya.”

When he shook his head with polite incomprehension, she finally realized that, unlike every other person she had ever known, he could not speak Efean.

She tapped her hand to her chest just above her heart. “Kiya.”

“Ah! Kiya.” With a crisp nod, he patted his own chest and added, “Esladas.”

Before she could reply, Wenru fixed a hand under her elbow, speaking Efean in a conciliatory tone meant to put the stranger off the scent; the man would hear nothing but a pleasant flow of words he did not understand. “Kiya, we are leaving right now. Imagine he is a rabid dog who hasn’t started foaming at the mouth yet, and you will understand my concern. Just smile and back away.”

How could Kiya do otherwise but obey the uncle who had agreed to give her the adventure of her life—a year in Saryenia!—against the rest of the family’s wishes? She flashed a parting smile at the stranger, who still had not moved, like he had grown roots right there. But Wenru hustled her away before she could see if the man smiled back.

“I should have known,” he muttered as he guided her through the market.

“Known what? I tripped and he caught me. That’s all. Apparently he doesn’t even speak a single word of Efean.”

“Listen, Kiya, you don’t really have any idea of how beautiful you’ve become in the last year. I know you’ve been busy trying out lovers and discarding them. It’s common among girls your age.”

“The boys my age are so boring, Uncle. I can’t even tell you!”

He chuckled. “Yes, I know. I was one once and slept with more than you have.” Yet even as he joked he did not relax his unyielding grip on her elbow as he guided her briskly through the streets without giving her time to soak up all the astonishing sights she hadn’t yet been allowed to see.

“You have grown up in a village so far from here and so lacking any riches that the Saroese never come there. So I will say this again, and this time you will listen to me. Do not speak to Saroese men.”

“But why not? You just say so but you’ve never explained why.”

“They are not like us. They don’t respect women. They cage up their daughters like livestock. To them, any woman who has sex with a man who is not her husband is deemed a criminal.”

“That can’t possibly be true. I don’t believe you.”

“We don’t even have words for the rude things they call women. What’s worse is they will take what they want without asking permission because they think men have the right to grab whatever they please as long as other men aren’t stopping them.”

“How can you be sure all Saroese men think like that? How many have you spoken to?”

“I’ve spoken to enough.”

“How many is enough? They can’t be all alike any more than the people in our village are all alike.”

“You’re not listening to me. They invaded us eighty years ago and set laws in place that make you and me lesser people than any Saroese man and woman.”

“How can we be less? How can anyone be less?”

He dragged her to a halt at the side of a street as a curtained carriage swept past. A pale Saroese girl peeked out through a slit in the curtains. When Kiya met her gaze with a neighborly smile, the girl frowned as if insulted that Kiya dared catch her eye, and let the curtain drop.

“Efean men can’t fight in the Royal Army. It’s against the law. All business licenses obtained from the Queen’s Palace are reserved for women of Saroese ancestry, for Patrons, as we call them here. Efean women can only lease the right to run a business and must pay a portion of their earnings to the Patron who sponsors their business. You don’t understand because you’ve spent your life in the village. It’s the one place we are almost free of them. But not here, Kiya. Not here.”

All her delight in her first trip to a night market withered as Wenru marched her to the courtyard of the distant relatives from whom he rented a room, then sent her to bed.

In the morning, of course, he left for work at the inn where he was employed as a groom.

She stood for a bit in the gate of the compound, one of several that opened onto a plaza at the intersection of five lanes. A fountain surmounted by the carving of a butterfly splashed water into a basin. Efean women and girls stood around chatting, waiting their turn to fill buckets. In the three days Kiya had been here, she’d noticed that no Saroese ventured into the narrow streets of this district, which was called the Warrens. To see them you had to go out into the wide avenues and grand buildings of the main city, which Wenru had made plain she was not allowed to do without his escort. She’d been so excited to have a chance to live for a year in Saryenia, to see the wide world before returning to the village for the rest of her life, but now it seemed she had far less freedom here than she had in the village.

Still, she’d never had patience for brooding. Sulking got boring fast, just like lovelorn boys who kept bringing flowers to her family’s compound even after she had kindly explained that she wasn’t interested.

The women of the house were busy with their weaving and brewing and food preparation. She went to the kitchen to find their host, an elderly woman named Dame Marayam.

“May I help in some way, Honored Lady?”

“No, no, you’ve only been here three days,” said her host with a smile. “You are still tired from such a long journey. Please take your ease.”

But I’m so bored just sitting around, Kiya wanted to say, and dared not, because she didn’t know if city folk would find it impolite. In the village, people always accepted help if help was offered, but maybe the courtesies were different here. It was all so bewildering, not just Saroese customs and how Efeans were meant to behave around Patrons, but even relations among Efeans themselves. She wandered to the open gate and loitered there as people passed. Everyone out there knew where they were going, had a place where they belonged; everyone except her.

Watching the splash of water down the sides of the butterfly fountain made her think about how she’d have gotten splashed with foul-smelling urine if the young man hadn’t caught her. He’d been strong and assured, the muscles of his arm taut against her back. How swiftly and decisively he had moved!

She licked her dry lips and tried out the word, without sound.

Esladas.

Then, glancing around to make sure no one could hear, she whispered it. “Esladas.”

*   *   *

At dawn Esladas and his seven companions sat in the courtyard of the boardinghouse and counted their remaining coins.

“If we don’t find work in a week we’ll starve,” groaned Cahas.

“I knew this was a bad idea, Geros,” said Beros, to which his twin replied, “You’re the one who wanted to come!”

Esladas rose. “The army camps are outside the walls. The sooner we enlist, the sooner we’ll feel settled and secure. Let’s go.”

He struggled to control giddy waves of nervousness punctuated by swells of excitement as they walked out the massive East Gate of the city. This was the first step into the life he’d long dreamed of and worked toward. They crossed by bridge over the canal that encircled the walls and trudged along the road, squinting against the sun and the heat. They had taken the innkeeper’s advice and each man had purchased a cheap leather flask for when he got thirsty.

He scanned the people working the fields and the folk walking into the city, looking for that one distinctive, laughing face, then shook himself with a frown. Of course he would never see her again. It was like glimpsing a butterfly: a flash of jeweled colors, a moment when the world sparks with an incandescence that staggers you.

A fleeting memory of the weight of her against his arm chased through his body—

“Esladas! Hey! Isn’t this the place?”

Cahas’s braying voice yanked him back to himself. He wondered how long he’d been standing there gaping at the wind. They stood outside a big walled enclosure marked with the sea-phoenix that was the badge of the royal household of the Efean king. The others had become accustomed to waiting for him to make the first move, to ask the first question in any new situation.

A pair of sentries at the gate halted them. “State your business.”

Esladas stood straight, shoulders square, as he imagined soldiers stood. “We are come to enlist.”

“Ahaha, you’re just off the ship from the old country, aren’t you?” Their Saroese had the strange rhythm he kept hearing in the streets of the city: a changed version of the language he spoke. “You have to find a lord willing to sponsor you. Then you’ll train in his camp. The sea-phoenix are the elite, the king’s own regiments. We never take inexperienced men, and not the likes of lowborn country lads like you.”

Anger flared, his hands curling into fists: was it to be no different here than at home, despite their hopes? His companions jostled belligerently, hearing the comment as the insult it was meant to be.

But it was better to find out what gave them away and work to change it, so he forced his hands open and spoke calmly. “How can you tell we’re lowborn?”

“Your accents, your clothes, and the fact that you have no connections and are standing here asking questions instead of producing letters of introduction. Men who walk off the docks have to start where no one else wants to go. That’ll be the desert regiments or the navy. The navy is all right if you don’t mind getting a whipping every week and eating hardtack that will break your teeth.”

“I was seasick the whole time,” said Cahas, and the others nodded.

“Then if I were you, I’d turn back now and look for construction work.”

“Construction work’s not so bad,” muttered Beros, and Geros replied, “Out in the hot sun all day? I don’t think so.”

“What are the desert regiments like?” asked Esladas.

The sentries chortled. “The worst posting you can imagine. Heat blisters you. Sand scrapes your skin raw. Never enough water. Deadly snakes and scorpions whose venom will make your hands and feet blacken and fall off if they bite or sting you. Men don’t die in battle there. The desert kills them.”

A carriage swept in just then bearing a captain’s stamp, and Esladas and the others were forced to scurry aside to let it pass. A file of soldiers jogged behind the carriage, men with a sense of purpose as they moved, skin slick with sweat but not a single wrinkle of discomfort on their stern faces. Esladas followed them with his gaze until they vanished into the dusty haze of the camp.

He wanted that purpose and discipline. That sense of accomplishment.

“Where can we find the desert regiments?” he asked.

“There are three lordly clans who oversee the desert troops: Kusom, Tonor, and Garon. Or just look for the spider scouts.”

“Spider scouts? What are they?”

But the sentries had grown bored with his questions and turned away.

“Esladas?” Cahas poked him in the ribs. “Maybe it’s better to go back into the city and look for construction work. That’s got to be safer than scorpions and spiders.”

It would be safer. For an instant he wavered, but he remembered how his father had first slapped and then mocked him for his dreams: You won’t last a day as a soldier, he’d said. You aren’t as tough and smart as you think you are, Son.

“I’m going to enlist in the desert regiments,” he said to the others. “You can turn back, or come with me.”

*   *   *

Dame Marayam had taken such a liking to her young visitor that she had Kiya wait on her as a granddaughter would. That morning Kiya supported her under the elbow as the dame showed her through the Warrens, halting at each of the animal-adorned fountains identifying the intersections in the crowded lanes. The tour went at a snail’s pace, frequently interrupted by people coming forward to ask Dame Marayam for advice or to settle a dispute between neighbors.

Back at the compound, over a filling midday meal of fish, vegetables, and bread, the old woman grilled her.

“Did the tour bore you, Kiya? Tell the truth. Lies kill trust, and without trust we are nothing more than soulless shells.”

“I enjoyed seeing all the fountains and all the carvings. But I liked best how the people who came up to you had different stories. Some were so petty. Some made me want to cry. I wanted to laugh a few times but felt it would be disrespectful. Then there were the disputes that seemed so hard to resolve. I noticed how you got the people themselves to come up with a solution by asking them what they most want or need.”

The dame patted her on the hand. “You have a wise heart for one so young.”

If her heart was so wise, then why, as everyone else dozed through the afternoon heat, could Kiya not rest? She’d been so excited when her mother had given her permission to travel with Wenru, who had been working in Saryenia for five years. The chance to see all the famous places she’d heard of—the palaces, the Archives, the harbor, the temples, the glittering Lantern Market and its famous poets and plays—had been irresistible. Instead Wenru made it clear she mustn’t go anywhere without him.

As the shadows drew long and Wenru hadn’t yet returned from work, she thought about the night market. Not that there was any reason to go back there. Everyone in the household was so busy with late-afternoon tasks that not one person noticed as she took a step out the open gate, and another. They all came and went as they wished. Why shouldn’t she?

She strolled through the Warrens, retracing the path she had taken in the morning with Dame Marayam. Walking from fountain to fountain she was just another Efean girl amid countless others. Around every corner there was something new to see, although the excitement fell flat without Wenru beside her to share observations and jokes.

She didn’t dare walk far outside the safety of the Warrens, not with Wenru’s words about the Saroese hammering in the back of her mind. But there was surely nothing wrong with returning to the place her uncle had taken her yesterday. The night market lay just outside the Warrens at the edge of a district of boardinghouses and modest compounds where Saroese working people lived. All the vendors were Efean women, just like at home, and there were plenty of Efeans browsing and bargaining among the humble-looking Saroese men and women out shopping after their day’s work was done. So maybe not all Saroese were rich benefactors as they liked to style themselves by using the word Patron. Maybe Saroese weren’t that different from Efeans in having some families who were wealthy and some who were poor and others, like her own family, who hadn’t any coin but never went hungry.

As Efean folk lit lamps, she loitered over crates of eggplants and radishes, frowned at stalks of dates cut too early (as she would never have done at home), and at length found herself at the stall of an old vendor selling persimmons, right where she had tripped.

Of course the young man wasn’t there. Why would he be? It had been a stupid idea to think he would return, that he had daydreamed about her the way she had about him.

Foolishness, her mother would say.

“You’re a pretty girl, although that face says you’re sad about something,” said the vendor, with the bluntness allowed by age. “A taste of these very fine persimmons will cheer you up! My son grows them at our home outside the walls.”

“They do look like very fine persimmons, but I have to speak truthfully as my mother and aunts taught me and tell you I have no money nor anything to offer in trade. I’m from the country. I don’t even know how much a persimmon would sell for in the city.”

The woman cackled. “The first thing is not to tell people you’re from the country and ignorant of prices, or they’ll cheat you.”

Kiya grinned. “Unless that is my bargaining tactic. See how high a price you name, compare it to the prices I’m given from other fruit-sellers, and draw my conclusions.”

“Ah! Now you’ve put me on my guard. A good bargaining tactic!”

“Just passing the time.” Kiya scuffed the toe of her sandal on the ground, trying out different phrases in her head before she settled on one. “Honored Dame, I see Saroese shopping here. Do you by any chance speak Saroese?”

“Oh, everyone here speaks at least a little Saroese, and many of us speak it well. Some even learn to read and write it to get low-level jobs in the royal administration, but between you and me, Efeans who pretend they will ever be accepted as equals by our Patron masters only mock themselves.”

“Can you teach me the language?”

The old woman scratched her ear, frowning. “No need for a pretty girl like you to be speaking to the Saroese, Honored Niece. Too much chance for trouble.”

“I came to the city to find work, Honored Lady. Wouldn’t it be helpful?”

“Yes. I have a cousin who can read and write Saroese, and he got work as a clerk at the Grain Market. But the Patrons never hire women.”

“But all the vendors in the market are women. If I wanted to work here surely it would be important to know simple words like you and I and we. For example, how would I say, I trade. You trade. We trade. I talk. You talk. We talk?”

The woman nodded. “Saroese is a simple language, to be honest. We Efeans have no trouble learning it but the Saroese never can manage to learn our language.” She led Kiya through a series of easy examples: I trade, you buy, she sells, he eats, we drink, they go, I come.

She had just started in on greetings and simple everyday phrases when her gaze shifted to a sight behind Kiya. Her eyes narrowed. She lifted a hand to her mouth and coughed pointedly as one does to alert people to a tactless blunder.

“Kiya.”

Hearing her name spoken in that low, controlled voice struck Kiya mute. For an instant she could not feel her hands or feet. She exhaled to slow her racing heart, then tilted her head sideways for a glance just as if she had no idea whom she would see standing an arm’s length from her.

Because he was there.

Like her, he had come back at the same time to the same place.

He looked different today. His dazzling features and well-built form were the same, of course, but he stood straighter, seemed more confident, like a man who has leaped off a cliff and against all expectation landed on his feet.

“Esladas,” she said, pleased at how well the word came out of her mouth. Emboldened, she tried one of the phrases she’d just learned. “Greetings of the night.”

The grave expression carved into his serious face wavered. When the smile lit his eyes it changed his face like a closed flower suddenly blooming.

“Greetings of the night,” he replied.

He then said something else, which she of course could not understand at all, so she instead offered a smile in reply. Probably their silence should have been awkward, but Kiya was too ecstatic to care, and he seemed too pleased to notice. He set a copper coin in the vendor’s bowl, indicated the persimmons, and spoke a word.

“Persimmon,” Kiya said promptly in Efean, before the vendor could.

He nodded, repeated it back to her three times until he got the sound to work, then repeated the word she guessed was the Saroese name for the fruit. She tried it, the sound clumsy on her tongue, but the swift smile he gave her told her she’d managed it well enough. That smile made her heart race.

He pointed to five more objects: a tray, a basket, a knife, a water flask, and the canvas awning sighing in the wind. She named them for him, and as he obligingly named them for her she studied him.

His gaze dropped when he was thinking hard, as if his thoughts walked through a door and then returned. When he glanced at her face a blush formed in his cheeks, making him seem shy when she knew from his catching her how decisively he could act. She wanted to fall again, so he would catch her, so she could feel his arms around her even for a brief embrace.

Instead she looked around for other objects to name, anything to prolong the encounter, and realized that nearby shoppers had paused to look. An Efean woman caught her eye and gave a subtle shake of the head, warning her off. A Saroese woman sniffed disparagingly and whispered to her companions as they moved away. A pair of Saroese men wearing scuffed and dirty laborers’ clothing stared outright, smirking as they looked her up and down in the rudest way imaginable.

The persimmon vendor coughed too loudly.

Esladas also took in the way everyone was looking at them in obvious disapproval, and he tensed, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that he was Saroese and she Efean.

*   *   *

Esladas realized he should have been paying attention to his surroundings. A sting in the air let him know how much the nearby eavesdroppers—Saroese and Efeans alike—disapproved of their innocent conversation.

In his hometown he would never have spoken so freely to a girl, but never would a girl have spoken to him as carelessly as this one did, as if it never occurred to her that such behavior might be unacceptable.

“Domon, a word, if it pleases you.” The persimmon vendor’s Saroese was heavily accented but otherwise very clear. “The girl is not for sale.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You think the girl is for sale, for sex.” She indicated the coin he had placed in her vendor’s bowl.

Anger tipped him forward onto his toes, like at the start of a footrace, only this was anger fueled by embarrassment. It was outrageous to accuse him of such base intentions, and Kiya of such improper behavior, but to shout was his father’s way. He took in and let out a breath before replying as calmly as he could manage. “The coin is for the persimmon. I was only talking to her, but perhaps for a man and woman to speak in public is not allowed. I intended no disrespect to your customs. I am a newcomer to Efea.”

“My thanks, Domon, for your gracious reply,” she repeated in a patient voice, with an undercurrent that tasted to him like his own feelings of annoyance when he could not respond to one of his father’s manifest injustices. She was sweating, visibly nervous, as she continued. “We do not sell our girls here in Efea. Do you understand me?”

“I have no such thoughts, not of her and not of me!”

She flinched back from his sharp tone, and he quickly raised both hands palms out to show he meant no harm.

After a hesitation she went on. “I speak only because I do not wish for you to have in your mind the wrong idea about this girl. She speaks to you freely because among our people women and men may speak to each other. I know it is different among you Saroese. She is new to the city and has not yet learned the manners of your people.”

Kiya was listening intently, trying to pick out understanding from an exchange she clearly could not comprehend except that it had taken a fractious tone. When she caught his eye she smiled in an encouraging way as if to let him know the frowning passersby meant nothing to her.

If they meant nothing to her, then they meant nothing to him either. If it was not forbidden, then why should he not speak to her?

“You are a newcomer too?” he asked. “So am I. I only arrived in Saryenia yesterday.”

She turned to the vendor for translation. The woman’s frown deepened. Only after a magnificent show of reluctance did she repeat his words to Kiya in Efean. He studied Kiya’s face as she listened, the way her mouth parted slightly, clipped up to the right, and then stretched into a sweet smile as she heard the whole.

At once she turned back to him, alight with eagerness. She tapped her chest, reached out so close that he held his breath waiting for her fingers to brush his arm, but she carefully did not touch him. Words spilled from her mouth in a lilting burst.

The vendor’s expression grew heavier, her eyes half closing. “The girl wishes to tell you that she too is a newcomer to the city.”

“As if the gods willed it that we should meet!”

The girl opened her palms like a basket toward him. “I am Kiya. You are Esladas. Persimmon. Tray. Basket. Knife. We trade Saroese and Efean. Yes?”

“Yes!” How could he possibly say anything else?

“I see nothing but ill fortune from this meeting, Domon,” said the vendor in a voice that yanked him back to earth.

“Why would it be ill fortune?”

The vendor grasped a persimmon and thrust it toward him, distress so palpable in her shaking hand that he took a startled step back, for he had never in his life witnessed a woman speak with open disrespect to a man in public.

“Here, take this, Domon. Take all you want. Just go and leave her alone.”

Shaken, he retreated without taking the fruit. He knew better than this. He needed to gather more information before he blithely charged in because of a beautiful smile. Women weren’t to be accosted; they were meant to be protected from predatory males. He walked away rather than subject Kiya to further public indignity.

“Esladas. You buy persimmon!”

He glanced back to see her striding after him, holding out a persimmon of a staggeringly rich orange color. It took all his courage to take the fruit out of her hand. The touch of skin came as a shock, but he wasn’t sure she felt it as anything at all. Probably interacting with men was unexceptional to her, bringing home to him how he truly knew nothing of Efea except that it was a kingdom where a lowborn man might hope to make his fortune. That was all he had ever focused on: that he would leave the barren future offered in his hometown and travel to a place where opportunity beckoned.

Why not take a risk tonight? The most she could do was say no.

“Do you want to share?” he said, with a gesture he hoped would convey his meaning.

“Thank you,” she said in Saroese, although he was quickly coming to realize she knew only a few paltry words and could not really understand the same phrases spoken back at her yet.

She pulled a tiny knife from its sheath at her belt, drawing his gaze down the front of her gauzy dress. Embarrassed, he quickly looked up to her face so he wouldn’t seem to be staring at the generous shape of her curves, the mystery of a woman’s body that he had been told over and over again was to be enjoyed only with a marriage contract between families, something he could never afford.

She took the persimmon from him and neatly cut it into slices, and they stood side by side in the shade, leaning against a wall, and savored its delicate sweetness together. He took a bite and glanced at her, and she lifted an eyebrow with a question, to which he replied with a noise of gratification. Beyond the simple pleasure he took in the honeyed taste of the fruit—far beyond that—her presence made each moment shatteringly intense.

Her beauty astounded him because it was more than the shape of her eyes, her ravishing mouth, the cloud of hair like a goddess’s halo of power. A statue could look so, carved in an image of perfection, but a statue was stone, and she was so utterly, brilliantly, energetically alive.

For once in his life he was content just to be somewhere, not to be striving and thinking and planning for what he hoped would come to pass, but to revel in the place where he was right now.

When they finished, she pointed back toward the persimmon stall amid the lamps and awnings. “We trade words? Yes?”

“Yes,” he said.

Yes.

In a daze he walked back to the boardinghouse, getting lost twice, and when he arrived it was to find his friends already finished with supper and getting ready for bed.

“Where’d you go?” Cahas demanded. “We have to get up before dawn to make our first day of drill.”

“Where did I go?” Esladas repeated, as if he had forgotten how to understand his own language.

“Did you get lost?”

He pulled a hand over the stubble of his recently shorn hair. “No. I didn’t get lost. I’m home now. I’m home.”

*   *   *

Wenru would be frantic if she wasn’t at Dame Marayam’s household when he got back from work. She hurried to the persimmon stall.

“I wasn’t trying to cheat him, you know,” said the old woman as Kiya strode up. “It’s just those Saroese men think they can take anything they want. You’re new here so I think it best to warn you.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Honored Lady.” She was in too fine a mood to be irritated by yet another display of people telling her what she ought to be doing and not doing. That moment when their hands had brushed still warmed her skin. The way he had said, “Mmmm” as he’d savored the persimmon flesh had flowed right down into her bones. “I did not want the foreigner to think you had cheated him, that’s all. If the Saroese are so likely to judge us Efeans harshly, we mustn’t give them any excuse.”

“Well, my thanks then,” said the old woman, eyeing her with a skeptical grimace. “Even I could not help but notice that he was a fine-looking lad, for a Saroese man. Girls can get stars in their eyes when a handsome young man pays attention to them, and some lads take advantage of that.”

“I know how to handle young men,” Kiya snapped. Why did everyone feel obliged to give her advice over and over and over again? “I’ve handled enough in my time.”

The vendor chuckled. “Yes, you are old and experienced indeed. Listen. In Saroese eyes, he is a Patron and you are a Commoner. To such a man you can never be anything more than a treat, something to be gobbled up and then forgotten. Tread carefully.”

Kiya saw that the brilliant plan she had just come up with was running off the road, so she steered it back. “How late do you sit out here into the night, Honored Lady? Probably you have been working all day already. It would be better for you to not work so hard.”

By the deep lines around her eyes and the set of her jaw Kiya could tell that sitting pained her and that she was tired. “Kind of you to say so, but here I am.”

“Just so! That’s why I have a proposition for you.”

The vendor laughed. “What might that be?”

“Hire me. Then you can rest, and I will sell all your produce. Watch!”

She stepped behind the table and scanned the people scurrying through the market. Catching the eyes of a pair of Efean men—one young and one old—she beamed so brightly that they actually halted in their tracks and then, embarrassed, strolled over trying to pretend they had meant to walk this way all the time.

“Surely you do not have all the fruit you need for your family,” she said to them in the most incredulous voice she could muster. “Honored Sir! Imagine the joy of your loved ones—the children especially—as they savor these ripe and delicious persimmons!”

Laughing, they allowed Kiya to persuade them.

As they walked away looking pleased and a little shamefaced, with ten of the persimmons, the old woman said, “You are an impressive flirt.”

“I have lots of practice. There’s nothing else to do in my village. Your persimmons are so very delicious that it is a shame to see them go uneaten. What do you say to my proposal?”

“Dear child, I cannot afford to pay you.”

“I already have a place to sleep and food to eat. What I need is to learn how people act in the city, and how to speak Saroese. You teach me these things, and I will help you sell your fruit as payment.”

The woman wavered.

“You would be helping me, Honored Lady. In truth, I would be obliged to you if you would help me in this small way, just until I learn enough to find a paying job.”

“You mustn’t smile at Saroese men as you just did at our Efean brothers, though, for it will get us both into trouble,” she said, acquiescing abruptly. “I will do all the bargaining with Saroese men. You may deal with everyone else. But do you need permission from your people? You aren’t alone here in the city. I saw you with a man yesterday.”

“Yes, my uncle. But I’m sixteen now, old enough to make my own decisions. My thanks, Honored Lady! How may I call you? I am Kiya, as you have already heard me say.”

“If our arrangement is to prosper, you may as well call me Aunt Amayat. Ah! Here comes my son at last. I’ll introduce you.”

Her son was weary and suspicious and he grilled Kiya thoroughly to content himself that she did not harbor a malign intent to defraud his mother. In the end, of course, she convinced him, but by the time she arrived at the butterfly fountain it was very late. When she entered through the gate she found Dame Marayam trying to calm down Uncle Wenru as he paced around the courtyard.

“Kiya! Where were you?” He shook her. “I did not give you permission to run off without telling anyone where you were going. Anything could have happened to you! I was so worried!”

She pulled out of his grasp and addressed Dame Marayam. “My apologies, Honored Dame. I should have left word that I decided to go out to look for work. Which I’ve found.”

“You got work? By yourself? Your mother made me promise to arrange it for you.” Wenru shook his head, then laughed. “Which I suppose is why you took matters into your own hands.”

“Thank you for understanding, Uncle. I’m sorry my absence worried you. I meant to be back sooner.”

“I thought we had settled matters between us, that you would assist me in my walking tours and sit beside me as people bring their complaints to me,” objected the dame with a frail look of disappointment. It stabbed Kiya in the heart, until she thought of how her mother’s rules and advice commanded her life, how Kiya was expected to come back from her adventurous year in Saryenia ready to manage the family’s large household under her mother’s supervision.

She thought, distractingly, of Esladas.

“I begged for a chance to come to Saryenia partly to see the city and mostly to get out from under my mother’s rule, as Wenru can tell you,” she said, remembering the dame’s words about truth-telling. “For a chance to guide my own life even if only for a year. I will help you as often as I am able, Honored Dame. But I need to walk my own path for now. I mean no disrespect.”

Wenru patted her on the shoulder. “Well said, Kiya.”

Marayam gave her a thoughtful look. “Yes, I can see there is more to you than your pleasing smile and outwardly compliant manners may reveal to a less observant person. Very well. I am here if you need advice and when you change your mind.”

I won’t change my mind. “My thanks, Honored Dame.”

*   *   *

“Where do you run off to after training every day?” Cahas asked as he and the rest of the Firebirds washed in the refreshingly cold water of the bathhouse. “You never stay and roll the dice with us, or go drinking at the tavern around the corner after supper.”

“I like to see a bit of the city,” Esladas said as he toweled himself dry.

“Why bother?” asked Beros. “If we pass these two months of drill, we’ll be shipped out to the desert for a tour of duty. Six months of thirst and poisonous snakes and nothing to see but sand and sky. I don’t know why I listened to you.…”

His twin piped up. “Beros saw a scorpion the other day and he screamed and jumped onto a chair even though the foul creature was halfway across the room.”

“I did not! That was you!” They scuffled, play-fighting.

Esladas wasn’t really listening. He had one spare calf-length vest—his festival tunic with a ribbon-trimmed hem and fancy embroidered buttonholes—which he kept scrupulously clean and neatly folded. After he dressed he stepped into the light to check his face in his cheap bronze mirror.

Cahas laughed. “You look like you’re going courting, the way you primp and preen. Good Goat! Are you blushing?”

“Must be a woman involved,” said Beros, and Geros said, “Can’t be. The innkeeper keeps her daughters well guarded. Respectable Saroese women won’t look at lowly foot soldiers like us. But there are other kinds of women.”

Esladas broke in before the conversation descended into a crudity he did not want to hear. “I plan to succeed in the army, not just be a lowly foot soldier all my life. Officers do not slouch about in laborers’ clothes. They dress and behave as highborn men. So I’m practicing.”

“For when you become Captain Esladas someday?” Cahas snorted. “That’s a bit rich even for me to believe. Men of our low birth do not become captains, not even in Efea.”

“Maybe not, but I will become a sergeant in time, mark my words.”

As he left the boardinghouse it was difficult not to break into a run. Six days of basic drill had left him sore but energized. The sergeants in charge of their training were hard but fair, and he was good at the exercises and weapons handling. The first week had gone well: he’d finished it at the head of the cohort of forty new recruits that included his friends, and he intended to keep that position as training continued.

Tomorrow was the mandated Rest Day, observed across the city, and the innkeeper had told him that the night market opened earlier than usual. He threaded his way through the late-afternoon shoppers and all thought of the army fled as he paused and, from a distance, studied Kiya at the persimmon stall where she was enjoying an animated conversation with several Efean shoppers.

She was as tall as he was—that had startled him at first—and she certainly hadn’t the delicacy of stature for which poets commonly praised women: delicate eyebrows, delicate fingers, delicate flowers. There was nothing delicate or modest about her at all. She did not act as a Saroese woman would have, lowering her gaze, stepping back to defer to men, expecting a tongue-lashing or worse if she was impertinent enough to raise a challenge. When she gesticulated with her arms she wasn’t afraid to take up space. Never would he grow tired of watching the constant fluttering shifts of expression across her face, her grave listening nod, her eye rolls, her sideways glances that hid a moment’s annoyance, the way she smiled at him as if the sun had just come out after a month of cloudy days.

She looked up as if his gaze, even across the distance, was a touch. By the time he reached the stall her customers had gathered up their purchases and left.

“Greetings of the afternoon, Esladas,” Kiya said.

“Greetings of the afternoon, Kiya.”

With a wink meant only for him she indicated the empty baskets. “All gone,” she said in her delightfully fragmented Saroese, the bits and bobs of words and phrases she was picking up and stitching together. Then she flipped over a scrap of cloth to reveal one last persimmon, kept especially for him.

He laughed, flooded with a sense of lightness and joy. But before he blurted out the words he had come to say he prudently glanced past her. Amayat—Esladas had learned that he should address her as “Honored Lady”—did not look pleased when, each early evening, Esladas showed up to “trade words” and, always, to buy a persimmon. One a day was more than he could afford because he already paid for two meals a day at the boardinghouse. Yet it gave him the excuse he needed to linger. Right now, however, Amayat dozed at the back of the stall in a hammock slung up between two posts.

Kiya glanced that way as well before tapping her own chest and indicating his clothing. “It is new. Yes? What is it called?”

“Festival clothes. Tomorrow is Rest Day.”

“Yes, Rest Day. No work?”

He scraped through the words of Efean he was so laboriously learning, for everywhere except with her he spoke Saroese, and it was hard to keep this new language in his head. “No work. You also, no work?”

“I also, no work.” She paused, and corrected herself. “I also do not work tomorrow.”

He hesitated, gathering courage. For all her evident pleasure in seeing him when he came to the market every day after drill, venturing this request made him more nervous than on the day he had slung a pack over his back and left his home behind. He’d always known his fortune would take him away from the hometown where he had no future. But this specific moment seemed portentous, laden with possibility he could not fully believe would ever come to pass.

The commonplace noises of the surrounding market faded until all he heard was the scuff of his feet shifting on the pavement and the creak of the hammock rope as Amayat rocked back and forth.

Kiya waited, her gaze patient and welcoming, and a little puzzled.

He swallowed, and spoke. “Maybe, for Rest Day, you and me, we walk the city?”

Her brows drew down as she considered his words, then snapped up as she grasped them. “Oh! We walk, we see. We walk and see the city. You and me?”

“Yes.” He felt dizzied.

“Yes. I like. We…” She bit her lip, struggling for words. “We come here and we go.”

“We meet here,” he said in Saroese.

She leaned toward him and her voice dropped so low they might have been sharing a secret forbidden to all others, and maybe they were.

“We meet here,” she repeated in a tone of such satisfaction that it felt like the world breaking apart in an instant’s cataclysm and reforming into a place where all hopes came true.

Of course he barely slept that night. He woke before dawn to the roosters crowing and the throaty cry of the dawn heron.

Cahas rolled over on his cot. “Why on earth are you getting up already? This is the one day we can sleep in. I thought we’d all agreed to go for a walk together around the city. Aren’t you coming with us?”

“No.”

Beros snickered. “He’s sneaking off to see some whore he’s been primping for.”

Esladas whipped around and grabbed Beros by the arm. “Never use that word.”

“Ow! Ouch!”

Geros jumped up and gave Esladas a shove. “Let off him!”

The others stirred, woken by the commotion.

Cahas sat up. “What’s wrong with you?”

The rising sun gilded the eastern rooftops, rays of light shining in through the open door like a promise. A prudent person would bide his time, be patient, complete his recruit training, gather his enlistment bonus, and then survive his first six months’ posting before casting caution to the winds.

But not this time.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” he said as he thought of her.

“Good Goat!” exclaimed Cahas. “This is about a woman, isn’t it?”

“I thought on the voyage here you said you didn’t know how to talk to women,” said Beros. “That your mother died when you were a baby and you had no sisters and you weren’t allowed to talk to your older brothers’ wives because it was considered unseemly.”

Geros grinned. “More likely because his ugly brothers were afraid their wives would fall in love with his handsome face.”

Cahas crossed his arms, frowning. “You don’t know anything about women, Esladas. You’ve never even seen one naked, have you? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Never seen one naked, you innocent boy!” Beros whistled mockingly, and Geros slapped him on top of the head and said, “Neither have you!”

Their puzzled, suspicious, and amused expressions rolled right off him. He gave a preoccupied wave of farewell and hurried down the steps. The gate of the boardinghouse wasn’t yet open for the day although the women of the house were already working in the kitchen. A girl of about Kiya’s age smiled shyly at him as he passed. The older women of the household nodded approvingly; it was clear to him that these hardworking Saroese matrons considered him a good prospect for their daughters and nieces.

A week ago he would have been flattered and elated.

A week ago he had not met Kiya.

The market lay quiet, all its stalls closed up and awnings rolled away. An Efean man pushed a cart past, laden with freshly cut flowers, and Esladas signaled to him and said, “I buy, Honored Sir? I buy one?”

The man laughed at his atrocious accent and, with a theatrical flourish, handed him a beautiful red-and-gold bird of paradise, then hastened on without a word.

It was as if the gods had gifted him.

“Esladas!”

At the sound of her voice a flash of such incandescent happiness swept him that he wondered it did not incinerate him on the spot.

She strode up, and the day grew brighter. “Esladas. We meet!”

“For you,” he said, offering the flower.

She stopped dead and her expression went blank in a kind of shock.

He stammered, in Saroese, “I have offended somehow. My apologies.” Oh the gods! Frustration pummeled him. If only he could ask, learn better, figure out what he had done wrong.…

She shook herself and the smile returned, but it had a sober tint now. “My thanks.”

She plucked the flower from his hand, snapped the stem, and tucked the flower behind an ear. Struck dumb by the careless poetry of the gesture and the way the flower brilliantly adorned her, he could not even open his mouth. Words died on his lips.

“Come! Come!” she said, using her hands to elaborate her meaning. “We go and we see the city. Yes?”

“Yes.”

Fabled Saryenia, the great, the noble, the happy. Splendid and rich, the city that has no like in the world. All his life he had heard poetry that sang the city’s praises, and now he saw the truth of it because every view and every vista, the shining sea and the marble edifices, all shone with a magnificence heightened by her presence beside him.

She had never seen the city either, never walked the length of the Avenue of the Soldier all the way from the East Gate to the West Gate, never strolled through the Harbor District with its wharves and ships and gulls. They sat on a wall, feet dangling, overlooking the Fire Sea, and shared a steamed whitefish wrapped in fig leaves she had brought. The blue of the sea gleamed like a vast and precious stone, and the sky in its flawless firmament was their crown.

This was home now, the best home he could imagine, a glorious place where he could spend the day in the company of a young woman with no chaperone.

They loitered outside an imposing complex of marble buildings that they finally decided—after much stumbling over words and a great deal of laughter—must be the famous Archives, depository of all wisdom and books. The Lantern Market was the only market in the city open on Rest Day, an astonishment of wonders almost too extravagant to absorb. People crowded the theaters, but admission looked far too expensive, and he wasn’t sure what the plays were about and if there were special customs about who could sit where; in his hometown women could attend only certain performances and then only with a male guardian in attendance. It seemed prudent just to browse along the many lanes and alleys of carts selling lanterns, jewelry, cosmetics, amulets, and street food, none of which he could afford.

He finally convinced her to sit down at a table in a shady tavern, one where he noticed Saroese men were talking to Efean women. A single mug of beer to share used up half of his remaining coin, not that he let her know that.

She had an insatiable appetite for learning Saroese words, and she recounted the path of their day in her melodious voice. “We walk the avenue. The ship sails. The ships sail. One ship. Two ships. We eat fish. The Archives are big. This is the Lantern Market.”

“We walk next to where?” he asked, because he was so used to focusing on what came next.

“Later we walk. Now we sit.” Propping her elbows on the table, she rested her chin on clasped hands and regarded him with a gaze of such easy confidence that he felt strangely at peace. No obstacle was insurmountable as long as he could come home to the tranquil sense of assurance that surrounded her. “We sit. We drink beer. We trade words.”

Her gaze shifted past him, and the smile vanished, replaced by a flat expression. She made a slight gesture, fingers waving downward to warn him to stay seated, then herself rose as two young Efean women strolled up. They were attractive, although of course not anything like as beautiful as Kiya. Like her they wore the simple sleeveless sheath gowns common among all Efean women, only the linen fabric of their gowns was so thin as to be almost translucent and, in his opinion, bordering on obscene. They wore white belts, fringes dangling invitingly as they walked up, hips twitching in an exaggerated way that drew the eye.

They halted by the table Esladas had carefully chosen in the quietest corner of the courtyard and with a long look surveyed him top to toe in a way that made his cheeks heat. No woman would ever have measured a man so blatantly where he came from. An urge to shame them for their lack of modesty crawled up his throat. But Kiya spoke to them with a mild question, and he pressed his lips shut over the scolding and disparaging words his father would have said. Better to remain silent and show Kiya that he trusted her.

*   *   *

Kiya could see by their elaborate braids and expensive silk that these were sophisticated city girls, quite stunning and polished. Just by standing there they showed up how plain her own clothing was and how inelegant her effort to tidy up her hair and clean her face. She had wanted to look her best for him, but these women wore subtle cosmetics and shimmering ribbons as casually as breathing.

“Greetings of the afternoon, Honored Sisters,” she said, hoping a formal manner would hide her stab of envy.

The shorter one snickered, as if politeness was just another sign of her provincial gracelessness.

The taller drawled out a mocking reply. “Greetings of the day, Honored Sister. Where are you from?”

“From up north.”

“Ah, a village girl,” said the taller to the shorter.

“You’ve caught yourself a succulent fish to fry.” The shorter paused for a deliberate double take, running her eyes over his powerful shoulders and broad chest, his square chin and the blunt gaze that to Kiya felt like honesty and truth. Probably the other woman was just admiring the glamor of his deep-set and long-lashed eyes, as alluring as night’s sweet mysteries.

Back in the village she’d never in her life fought over a boy. Why bother? Boys weren’t that interesting, and she liked her friends better. Now it was all she could do not to punch the sly mockery off their pretty faces before their refinement and grace lured him away. Instead she rested a hand on Esladas’s forearm, and he actually twitched from surprise. With a lift of his brows, he looked from her to them and back to her again.

The taller tapped a manicured finger on the tabletop so close to Esladas’s arm that it was like a declaration of war. “Listen, we have ways we do things here that you may not know about. And the first one is—”

“Don’t talk to Saroese men,” she said in a disdainful tone that she hoped conveyed her weariness with this line of argument.

“Whoever says that? Look around, sister. You’re not alone.”

It was true. Although Esladas hadn’t explained why he’d chosen this place to stop in—it was too complex a thought to communicate—the tavern was the first establishment she had seen where Saroese and Efeans mingled socially, unlike the market where they interacted only on business. She’d even noticed flirtation going on, with smiles and laughter and knees touching under tables.

“I thought it was all right for us to sit here together,” she said, “and maybe not get stared at like what happens everywhere else.”

“You are new to town! If you don’t wear the white belt, you don’t fraternize with Patron men.”

“I am not sure I understand you.” Kiya still hadn’t withdrawn her hand, and the feel of his warm skin and taut muscle against her palm made her want to stroke right up to the shoulder. He shifted in his seat as if he could read her thoughts through her touch.

“Oh, you are fresh and adorable,” said the shorter one, and they both laughed in a way that drew the attention of a group of young Efean men sitting at the next table over.

One of them muttered loudly enough that it was clear he meant for Kiya to hear, “I hate seeing beautiful girls like that waste themselves on these cursed Patrons.”

“Hush, Inarsis. What if he hears you and has you arrested for disrespect?”

“Like any of them can speak Efean.”

The taller woman flashed a look at the men. “We didn’t ask you lads to listen in, did we? Keep your business to yourselves!”

Kiya was satisfied to see the young men duck their heads apologetically, as they deserved for speaking out of turn. No village man would have been so impolite as to break into a conversation between women without invitation.

“My thanks,” she said to the women as she reluctantly lifted her hand away from Esladas’s arm. He gave an almost imperceptible sigh that melted right into her heart and made her want to touch him again. But she had to sort out this conversation first, because she was beginning to think she had misunderstood their intentions. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

“The white belt protects us.”

“From what?”

“From abuse, of course. If you don’t wear the white belt you’ll have no recourse if he cheats you the money he owes you, or beats you up. Talk to any of us if you’re interested in the work we do. It’s important to be careful of unscrupulous operators who will haul you off to garrison work. There’s no need to work for anyone except yourself. Don’t let any man take advantage of you.”

*   *   *

The exchange extended for longer than Esladas found comfortable, but he kept his mouth shut. Anyway, the memory of her hand resting on his arm still distracted him in mind and flesh.

With a final shake of their heads and practiced smiles shot at him like arrows meant to kill, the two women moved on.

“Kiya?” He wished he had more words. But words were like martial skills: you had to learn them one at a time, through the application of discipline and practice. There were no shortcuts. “Kiya? They speak?”

She drummed her fingers on the tabletop with a frown. The Efean men at the next table were flashing them dark looks of disapproval. “You drink. We go.”

He opened his hands in a question and gave a slight tilt of the head toward the women, now walking away, and the muttering men. He desperately wished he could find out what these Efeans had said to upset her.

She leaned closer, her gaze fixed on him like she was about to dare him to leap off a cliff. “People speak. I do not listen. Do you listen?”

He drank half the remaining beer, then offered the rest to her. “No. I do not listen.”

She took the mug and drained it. “Good. We go.”

But as they made their way through the tavern’s courtyard Esladas noticed how everyone was looking at them as they might at donkeys dressed in the gowns of fine ladies. It angered him. Kiya deserved no such looks; of course her behavior would not have been acceptable for a girl her age in the town where he had grown up, but he had left home far behind.

They got caught in a crush of people pushing through the gate into the tavern, all laughing and talking loudly. The tide shoved her against him, and he steadied her with a hand on her back, then stepped around her, meaning to open a path with his elbows.

“Esladas! What brings you here?”

There jostled his Firebirds, coming in just as he was trying to get out.

Cahas went on with the cheerful lilt of a man who is lightly drunk. “We were told it’s the best place in the Lantern Market to see beautiful women, not that we can afford that kind of thing. But a man can dream of future rewards, can’t he?”

They surged forward in a group as men behind them shouted for the line at the gate to get moving. Esladas caught Kiya’s arm before she was torn away from his side.

The Firebirds surrounded them, and saw her.

“What’s this, Esladas?” said Beros. Geros whistled in a lascivious way that made Esladas feel gratified one instant and the next annoyed him.

“This is my friend Kiya.” He drew her up beside him. “I pray you, show her the same respect you would hope to see given your own sister.”

They stared, so taken aback by his request or her beauty that they had no reply to offer, not even the common courtesy of a greeting.

But Kiya gave each man a cordial smile and said, “Greetings of the afternoon, Domon.”

They gaped at her as if her perfectly comprehensible and exquisitely polite Saroese greeting was gibberish.

Fuming at their rudeness, he introduced them pointedly to Kiya. “This is Cahas. Beros. Geros.” And the other four.

To his surprise it was cantankerous Beros who nudged his twin with a sharp elbow and gave a formal bow. “Well met, Doma.”

The bow and the title of “Doma” made the other men give Beros astonished looks, but he kicked Geros, who repeated the respectful gesture, and the others belatedly and awkwardly copied them in a way that made Esladas deeply uncomfortable, as if they were having a joke at his expense.

Beros added, with a look clearly meant to send a vital message, “Do you want to sit down and drink with us?”

“We were just going.” Esladas caught Kiya’s eye and glanced toward the gate, now cleared, as the crush had swept into the tavern.

Their good-byes felt even clumsier than the greetings. He was relieved to push back out into the lanes of the Lantern Market where people might sight-see without others gawking or acting so strangely. But Kiya did not loiter and examine the remarkable array of merchandise as she had before their encounters in the tavern. She strode along the crowded streets as if determined to get out of the Lantern District as quickly as possible.

Evidently the early performances of plays had just let out, for knots of men bellowed songs as they clustered around pushcarts selling fresh oysters and baked shrimp. Two men wearing the dusty tabards and worn trousers of low-ranking soldiers sauntered toward them. They made such an offensive show of ogling Kiya that Esladas stepped directly between them and her. That just made them laugh.

“Don’t bother, my friend,” said the bigger of the two. “The girl’s a pretty bit of flesh, that’s true enough, but their whores wear white belts. She’s not for sale, so no point in you begging for her favor.”

“I did not think she was for sale,” said Esladas, wanting nothing more than to punch the leers right off their ugly faces. “I was just talking to her.”

They chortled. “That’s what they all say. You’ve had too much sun, newcomer. Come have a drink with us. We’ll show you where the actual whores parade their belts for those willing to touch their Commoner kind.”

“I don’t like that word,” said Esladas softly.

“What word?” The air itself seemed to snap around the other man’s voice.

“Or your tone,” he added, feeling a swell of such unexpected belligerence that he knew his temper, like an incoming gale wind, was about to overset his best intentions to stay cool-headed and in control. Not only did their gross behavior make him look bad in front of Kiya, but he now realized why she had wanted to leave the tavern; how had he been so naïve as to take her there? What must his friends think of her?

“You looking for a fight? Over an Efean girl?” They shouldered forward, secure in two against one.

He did not back down. How could he? He would take any number of bruises rather than disgrace her.

Kiya stepped up beside him. She looked them right in the eyes, not one bit intimidated, and said something in Efean that sounded blunt and crude.

His anger dissolved in a rush of exhilaration: he had never seen a woman so bold. Her elbow touched his; their gazes met in a swift glance, and she nodded decisively to let him know she was ready to fight at his side.

“Mud lover,” spit the bigger soldier.

Esladas’s heart was pounding with the rush that always took him right before a fight. He raised both hands, fingers beckoning. “We’re waiting.”

Nearby Efeans began backing away as Saroese onlookers jeered. Someone whistled, and a distant voice shouted in Saroese, “Call for the wardens!”

Kiya did not budge.

“We see how it is,” sneered the smaller soldier. “Let a woman fight for you. That’s how we beat the Efeans in the first place. You mud grubbers disgust me.”

The big one darted in with a swing, and Esladas dodged back. The man was lumbering, easy to sidestep. But even as he did, the man chopped at him again, and Esladas barely jumped out of the way and slammed up against a cart. Hot water splashed out of a wide-necked jar and slopped onto the ground with a hiss.

Kiya kicked the big soldier in the back of one knee so hard his leg gave way, then shoved his shoulder in the opposite direction while he buckled. He collapsed on the ground with a shout of surprise.

Cursing, the second man dashed forward and grabbed Kiya like he meant to rip her arm off. He punched her in the face, though she ducked out of it fast enough that the fist only clipped her. The sight of her reeling back jolted Esladas into a state where the whole world seemed to slow down while his mind raced at triple speed.

The second man cocked an arm back to swing another punch at Kiya.

Esladas stepped inside and slammed his elbow into the man’s gut, doubling him over. The big man was starting to crawl up, yelling names, calling over comrades to come help. Out of the corner of his eye, Esladas saw five or six burly soldiers pushing through the crowd. The spears of wardens bobbed above the heads of onlookers as they tried to clear a way through to the altercation.

He kicked the big man in the side to keep him down for another few breaths, then grabbed Kiya’s hand. They pelted through the market, wardens shouting after them, and darted down an alley. Kiya asked breathless directions from each startled Efean they passed, and soon they cleared the decorated gate of the Lantern District and cut down several side streets until all that was left was empty streets baking under the afternoon sun.

Eventually they staggered to a halt on a deserted lane and sank down, laughing uncontrollably, on the rim of a neighborhood fountain. He was still holding her hand, which he noticed with a fierce flush of embarrassment, her fingers intertwined with his as if they had always been that way. It was impossible to let go, with her leaning against him and her elation a blaze that consumed him.

She drifted closer, and closer still, and he froze in a kind of shocked incomprehension as she pressed a light kiss on his lips and afterward sat back with an expression of satisfaction.

He had left home the day he’d turned twenty, the age at which he could travel without legally needing his father’s permission, as was the law in Old Saro. She was certainly younger than he was, if not by much. But by the easy pressure of the kiss, and the lack of any shame or furtiveness in her posture or expression, she had an entirely different view of what a kiss meant. Maybe to her it was a gesture of uncomplicated flirtatiousness, or an expression of camaraderie. Maybe it was a way of saying she found him interesting. Maybe it was a thank-you for a day she had enjoyed as much as he had.

He desperately wished she would kiss him again, or that he had the nerve to lean forward and kiss her as if it were nothing to him, as if he kissed girls all the time when in truth it had been only two women before this day and had never gone one proscribed step beyond the touch of lips.

She lifted an eyebrow, waiting for him to speak or react somehow, then winced slightly.

Her eye was starting to swell.

“Kiya, you’re hurt.”

He untangled his hand from hers and lightly traced the edge of the swelling. The eye wasn’t affected, but there would be a bruise. However attractive he found her, the kiss was the least of it. The injury reminded him all over again of how she had stepped up beside him without hesitation, a partner willing to face down the world, whatever struggles and wounds it brought.

She wasn’t afraid.

“Kiya,” he said, more softly, and after all he leaned close, and closer still. Fleetingly it occurred to him that he might be clumsy, that he might go about it wrong, but surely it was no different from words, from drill: things you improved on with practice.

He shut his eyes as he brushed his mouth against hers: her lips soft, her fingers strong as she caught his wrist and held him as if to make sure he did not draw back. Slipping an arm around her back he pulled her into him, not really sure what came next but knowing whatever it was would be worth the whole of his life so far in waiting for it.

“Good Goat!” cried a woman’s voice, speaking Saroese. “Get that business off our street!”

He released Kiya and jumped to his feet. A pair of Saroese matrons in respectable clothing and with several small children in tow had come around a corner. Kiya rose and took a step up beside him.

The littlest child broke away and tottered toward them, so unsteady on its feet that Kiya leaped forward and swept the toddler up before it could pitch forward onto its face. Her gesture brought a chortling laugh from the child as she set it down beside its mother.

“Greetings of the afternoon, Doma,” she said in her warmest tone, her pronunciation of the Saroese really quite excellent.

“Come along,” said the elder matron repressively, sweeping her companion and the children ahead of her. Over her shoulder she loosed her parting shot. “You’ll grow out of it and find a proper woman to court, young man. The sooner the better.”

The woman’s rudeness stunned him in a way the soldiers’ crudeness had not. She might as well have slapped him.

“Esladas?”

Kiya’s voice interrupted him as he stared after their retreating figures. “You go?” she said sadly, and gestured in the direction the matrons were walking, as if to say she understood that it was time for her to leave him with his own people.

He grabbed her hand. “We go, Kiya. You and I walk together.”

Just because he could, to show her he meant it, he kissed her again.

*   *   *

Dusk fell swiftly over them as they walked back to the Warrens, but they took their time, in no hurry to break the glamour that wrapped them away from the rest of the world. They did not touch as they walked but they did not need to. She was so alive to his presence that she felt his breathing as her own. His heart seemed to pulse in her flesh. Each sidelong glance he threw her, each spark that lit the air when their gazes met: an intangible connection vibrated in the air between them, as undeniable and as fierce as the sun.

It wasn’t just the intensity of the feelings, surprising in how hard they had hit. It was the certainty she felt, as if her five souls had been waiting for his appearance, as if a part of her had known he was out there, traveling toward her.

We meet.

So she thought nothing of guiding him into the twisting alleyways of the Warrens where he was the only Saroese among Efeans in those narrow lanes. If strange and often hostile glances were cast their way, what difference did they make to her? Nothing could touch her, not as long as he walked beside her.

Nothing until they reached the butterfly fountain to discover Uncle Wenru standing in the open gate with a company of men holding staffs and lanterns. They looked ready to go out as a night hunting party into the marshes.

“Kiya! Thank the gods you’re safe.” He strode forward, then stopped dead as he took in her companion and, an instant later, her hair. With an expression of barely restrained rage he plucked the flower from behind her ear.

“What is this?” he demanded.

“He doesn’t know about our custom. It was just meant as a friendly gift.”

Wenru’s scowl was as bad as her mother’s. “And you wear it anyway?”

The light fell more fully on her face, and he recoiled, seeing the swelling.

“Has he hit you?” he roared.

“Of course he didn’t hit me! Two Saroese soldiers jumped us—” By the lightning-quick shift of Wenru’s expression from sympathy to scalding contempt, she knew she had given away too much.

“Us? Us! Are you saying you have been gone all day today because you have been walking about the city with this man? After you promised not to talk to Saroese men?”

Fury whipped and sawed through her, such a rare emotion that she had no idea how to tame it. “I never promised! I just said I heard you. I came to Saryenia to get away from Mother ordering me around all the time. Do this, Kiya! Do that, Kiya! No, no, your suggestion isn’t any good, Kiya; we’ll do it like we have always done! But I guess I didn’t escape her after all, did I? You were never like this at home, Uncle!”

“Kiya!” He spoke her name with harsh correction, not with the delighted surprise she heard in Esladas’s tone. “Go into the compound.”

Her mouth pinched, but before she could refuse, he barked, “Now!”

Almost she defied him. Almost she snatched the flower from his uncaring hand. She would have shouted into his scowl and not cared if he yelled back at her—loud words did not scare her—but Esladas caught her eye and gave a shake of his head. It stunned her how easy it was to comprehend him, as if the gestures of this man she’d barely known for a week were a language she had learned before she was born and carried into the world to be held in readiness.

She exhaled her fury in a gust, then obeyed, stomping to the open gate of the compound. To her horror, Dame Marayam and a number of the household had gathered there, and in fact the intersection—empty when she and Esladas had strolled up to the butterfly fountain—was now filling up with interested spectators holding lamps the better to illuminate the exciting altercation.

“Come, Kiya,” said Dame Marayam in a tone no person would wisely refuse.

Kiya trudged inside and sat on a bench with a glowering heart. The dame waved for everyone to go away, and they vanished about their tasks as if they hadn’t all been staring with gleeful expressions a moment ago. Look at the village girl, so stupid she thinks she can walk out with a Saroese man!

The dame returned with a tiny ceramic pot. She painted a mint-scented salve where the bruising had begun. “It could have been worse. Looks like you weren’t hit straight on. Did he do it?”

“Of course he didn’t do it! Why does everyone think so?” The strong scent and cool salve relieved the pain, but it was not the relief she wanted.

“Ah, I see it now. You have the stars in your eyes, thinking you have stumbled across a treasure no other girl has ever had fall at her feet. But it isn’t like that. The Patron men who grow up here think of us as beneath them. Their disrespect is honest, and easy to avoid. It’s the Saroese men who come here from overseas who are dangerous. They see a girl like you as a toy to be played with and then discarded when they go back to their own people.”

“He’s not like that.”

Marayam affected a startled lift of the chin. “Of course not! You have spoken to him at length to ascertain his views and feelings?”

“No. We are still learning each other’s language so we haven’t had any long conversations.”

Marayam’s knowing chuckle made Kiya fume, but she knew better than to interrupt. “I know it seems strange to you, coming from the village, but this is their city, not ours, no matter how many of us live here. They keep to their lives and we keep to ours. That is how peace is kept. If it is the company of lads your age you miss, then I can introduce you to many suitable young men, and, of course, only the good-looking ones who have good manners.”

Kiya had to force herself not to roll her eyes. Coy teasing about good-looking lads only served to irritate her further.

“My thanks, Honored Dame, but there’s no need. I’m content as I am.”

Content to live my life without the endless advice of everyone around me! She wanted to run out into the plaza to see what was happening with Wenru and Esladas, but a childhood of obeying her elders kept her fixed to the bench.

“You were such a help to me that one morning going out on my rounds. You offer such a genuine smile to everyone. It’s a gift to see people in a compassionate manner, so they feel welcomed and not rejected.”

“Just like a young man newly come to Efea. Shouldn’t we welcome him too?”

“If he abuses you, nothing will happen to him.”

“He’s not the one who hit me!”

“If you give birth to children, they will be scorned their whole lives and have no legal standing as well. Is that what you want?”

Trembling, Kiya rose. “Children are a gift we give to the world. What ignorant, hateful, selfish people say about them can never tarnish that gift.”

“Ah! You believe he cares for you as he would care for a woman of his own people. I’m sorry, Kiya. Saroese men take their pleasure, grow bored, and move on to respectable women of their own kind.”

“Not him!”

“Come along!” The dame had the look of gates closing. “We will have this out now. As soon as he understands what the gift of a flower means, he will walk away.”

*   *   *

The contrast between Kiya’s uncle’s obvious fury and the way he carefully kept his distance and his gaze cast down like a menial reminded Esladas of his own life. So many times in his hometown he’d had to act the groveling servant in front of a chance-met highborn man. How he’d hated it!

There was no point in not attacking the situation head on, was there? He spoke in Saroese, sprinkling his speech with the few polite phrases he knew in Efean.

“My apologies, Honored Sir. It seems I have offended your customs. I am newly come to your shores. I did not intend to insult anyone.”

The man glanced up warily, struggling to disguise the hostility that was obvious in his pinched lips. His Saroese was perfect, even if Esladas imagined it was being spoken grudgingly. “Domon, your respect does me honor.”

“Please call me Esladas. I am no domon, no lord to stand above you.”

“You are Saroese, Domon, and I am Efean. Therefore, according to the law, you stand above me. If you truly wish to show honor to our customs then you will walk away and not come back.”

Esladas hadn’t been known as the stubborn one among his brothers for nothing. “Do you forbid our meeting?”

Wenru wavered, desire clearly fighting against truth. “I do not have that authority over her.”

“Then let Kiya tell me herself that she wishes me to walk away and I will do it and never return.”

The man closed his fingers over the flower to crush it.

“I ask you again with all respect, Domon, walk away. Forgive me for speaking so plainly. Nothing good can come of your interest in my niece.”

“If you are not her guardian, then is there some other man I may speak with regarding her?”

“She is old enough to make her own choices, not like you Saroese who keep your women locked away like animals harnessed at your bidding—” He broke off, and finished, “No offense intended, Domon.”

Esladas had been called too many taunting names in his time to care. Insults said more about the person speaking them than about the one against whom they were thrown. He grabbed for the important words Wenru had spoken.

“Are you saying that according to Efean custom a girl of Kiya’s age can make her own choices? Yet you stand here and tell me I should walk away because you say so, rather than waiting to hear what she has to say on the matter?”

The other man said nothing although evidently he burned to. After so many years as a boy required to defer to his elders and betters, Esladas found it difficult to adjust to the way Efeans deferred to him, as if he had power when he was nothing more than an impoverished immigrant with an enlistment contract and an ambition to make something of himself in a foreign army.

Kiya appeared at the gate. Her injured eye had a white salve painted over it, making her look as if she wore half a mask. She didn’t pretend at coyness; the moment she saw he was still there she walked to him, accompanied by a very old woman and a number of family members. He stood his ground for Kiya’s sake even though he felt incredibly outnumbered by Efeans. Yet the mounting disapproval of people on all sides made him more determined than ever not to back down.

The ancient woman spoke first. “Domon, you honor us by your visit to our humble home,” she said in the easy Saroese of a person who has grown up speaking it.

“My thanks, Honored Lady,” he answered in Efean.

She gave him a considering look, clearly surprised to hear Efean words emerge from Saroese lips. “Please excuse my blunt speaking, Domon. I honor you in my turn by offering the truth. Kiya is a village girl, unaccustomed to the city. She has grown up with village ways, rather old-fashioned, and knows nothing about city life. For example, in the village, for a man to offer flowers to a woman is a declaration of an intent to court her.”

Wenru opened his fingers and let the petals of the crushed flower fall to the ground.

Kiya made a noise, not quite a word, in protest.

Esladas bent to scoop up what he could of the remains, for more than any insult flung into his face it burned him to see a gift cast onto the earth like rubbish. And it meant so much more now, as he finally comprehended Kiya’s surprise when he had offered the flower to her.

“I did not know of this custom. The flower I gave her was not meant as a courting gift. I would not have presumed. A young woman like Kiya can have no reason to consider the interest of an impoverished young man like me, one with no connections and nothing to his name but a few belongings and the enlistment papers I signed this week that give me the hope of a career in the army.”

“You are understandably confused, Domon. You yourself admit that you barely know Efea, much less this girl.”

“My intention in inviting her to walk the city with me today was for us to become better acquainted. She and I trade words. I need to learn Efean and Kiya wishes to learn Saroese. As we learn, we get to know each other better.”

He and Kiya exchanged a look. Even though she could not understand the words he and the dame exchanged, Kiya still stood beside him as if she and he were fighting a common foe.

The dame struck her cane against the ground three times. “It isn’t done. It can’t be done.”

“That is what my father told me all my childhood when I told him I would become a soldier,” he said softly. “I will prove him wrong just as I will prove you wrong, Honored Dame.”

“No Saroese man can marry an Efean woman. It is against the law of your own people, proclaimed by your king and queen.”

“I left my home to escape what the law proclaimed as my destiny.”

“You will make her life a hardship. Is that what you want?”

“Of course that is not what I want.”

“Yet it is what you would achieve.”

“How we choose to live our lives is for us to decide, surely?” He turned to Kiya, because in the end hers was the only opinion that mattered. “Kiya. We meet? Or I go?”

He gestured to the narrow, gloomy lane down which he would walk if she told him to leave.

She lifted her chin, not looking at those around her, for in this moment they were the only two people in the world who mattered.

“We meet,” she said.

How could you not be astonished by how the gods scattered precious gifts where you least expected to find them?

“Kiya has spoken,” he said to her uncle and the dame, and it was impossible to hide his glow of triumph. To Kiya he said, “Tomorrow.”

She repeated the word back to him. “Tomorrow.”

He walked as if drunk, floating, all the way back to the boardinghouse and the dormitory. He’d thought to find the place dark, his friends asleep, but instead they all sat on their cots with the lamp lit, and when every face turned his way as he leaped up the steps with an excess of joyful energy, his sunny mood clouded over. He halted in the door.

“What a lovely flower, Esladas!” said Cahas in a voice too hearty and with a smile too wide. “Fortunate man! Ha ha!”

Esladas said nothing as his whole body tensed. These were his friends!

Cahas drummed his fingers on his cot. Several of the others looked everywhere except at him.

“Listen, Esladas.” Cahas spoke with obvious reluctance. “I don’t say this to mock you. But is it true what you told me that time, that you’ve never been with a woman?”

Geros opened his mouth as if to make a joke, and Beros said, “Shut up. This is serious.”

“We just don’t want you to get into trouble with some scheming wench,” Cahas added.

“I’m not in trouble.”

They all looked so mournful that Esladas wondered if they were about to tell him off as those soldiers in the market had.

Cahas went on, “We’ve been to the taverns while you’ve been out… doing whatever it is… and the local Patron men have been telling us how things go here.”

“I know how things go here.”

“We made a pledge to stick together. Firebirds, remember? We are your friends, Esladas.”

“You’ll ruin everything for yourself,” said Beros, and Geros said, “Ambitious men have to marry wisely.”

“She’s not what you think,” said Esladas, hands clenching into fists.

“We don’t think she is,” said Beros, and Geros added, “That’s what worries us.”

Cahas sighed, rubbed his eyes, then rose to look Esladas in the face, man to man. “Do you know what the locals call children who have a Saroese father and an Efean mother? They call them mules.”

For the first time he faltered. “Mules?”

“You’ll be a laughingstock, and so will your children,” said Beros, and Geros said, “You won’t get promotions. Those only go to men with Saroese wives.”

“We don’t know that is the case,” he protested, but the words sounded thin and weak in his ears.

“You came here to succeed in the army, Esladas.” Cahas clapped him on the shoulder, as a brother would. “Isn’t that right?”

Esladas nodded slowly as he looked around the circle. His friends weren’t mocking or scolding him; they cared about him. “It’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was a boy.”

“We know that for men like us it’s already a tough road to walk. It will be immeasurably harder and maybe impossible if you go down that path. Is that what you really want?”

*   *   *

We meet, she had said. But after a fretful evening at the persimmon stall, too anxious to concentrate, she found herself watching the shadows. He should have come already, but he wasn’t here.

He’d changed his mind. He’d realized all the objections were prudent and wise, which they were. They hardly knew each other. It was a passing infatuation born from the lure of the strange and unknown. It would wither, and he would go on his way with his Saroese friends and, in time, a Saroese wife.

Amayat clucked her tongue.

“Ah, lass, I can see your sad face, but young men are fickle and it’s better this way. There’s no future for an Efean woman with a Saroese man.”

Abruptly Amayat glanced past Kiya, face brightening.

Kiya spun around.

But it was only Amayat’s son, coated in dust and dragging his feet with weariness. “Long day, Honored Mother.” And to Kiya, “Greetings of the night, Kiya. Say, I have a cousin who has seen you in the market and wishes me to introduce him to you, with your permission. He’s a clerk in a Patron lord’s household and looks to go far. An educated city-born Efean man is a good catch for a village girl!”

“My thanks, but I’m not interested right now. If you don’t mind, Aunt Amayat, I’ll go home early.”

She made her way through the market, searching for him amid the bustling people, but he wasn’t there. After Esladas had walked away with the remains of the flower clutched in his hand, her uncle and the dame had hammered into her head how difficult, how inappropriate, how rash, and how impossible it would be to build a life together for two like them.

They were right. Of course they were right.

Did he feel irresistible only because he was such a stranger to everything she knew? All she asked was a chance to get to know him better. But maybe in this city, in this world, even that was too much to ask.

She walked to the butterfly fountain with her gaze fixed on her feet, one plodding step after the next, as she thought about going home to the village, stuck forever, never to change. After she’d seen Saryenia, the village would never content her.

Yet the memory of the heady scents of the village flower gardens drifted so strongly in her mind that she smelled jasmine and tuberose and orange blossom, their fragrance like comfort, like hope, like love.

“Kiya.”

She looked up.

He stood by the gate with his arms full of flowers.

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Will Kiya and Esladas overcome those who wish to keep them apart? Find out in Court of Fives, an imaginative escape into enthralling new lands where a girl named Jessamy struggles to do what she loves in a society suffocated by rules of class and privilege.

And look for Poisoned Blade, the second book in the Court of Fives series, available August 2016!

About the Author

Kate Elliott is the author of more than twenty novels, including her young adult debut, Court of Fives; the Spiritwalker trilogy; the Novels of the Jaran; and the Crossroads trilogy. King’s Dragon, the first novel in the Crown of Stars series, was a Nebula Award finalist, and The Golden Key (with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson) was a World Fantasy Award finalist. Kate was born in Iowa, raised in Oregon, and now lives in Hawaii. She invites you to visit her website at kateelliott.com or follow her on Twitter @KateElliottSFF.

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Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Welcome
4. Begin Reading
5. About the Author
6. Copyright

Navigation

1. Begin Reading

2. Table of Contents

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Katrina Elliott

Background © Verbena/Shutterstock.com

Flower © mhlam/Shutterstock.com

Ornaments © ERSP/Shutterstock.com

Cover design by Becca Dunn

Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

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Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First ebook edition: December 2015

ISBN 978-0-316-34445-6

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