“That's a big fire,” he noticed, after a moment.
Hezhi regarded the enormous bonfire from the corner of her eye, unwilling even to risk seeing the Fire Goddess. For some time, the Mang had been carrying in fuel from all directions, and flames and black smoke rose in a thick column skyward.
“I wonder where they found all of the wood,” Tsem went on when she did not answer.
Hezhi shrugged to let him know she had no idea. “I think it's for the Horse God Homesending. A ceremony they perform tonight.”
“What sort of ceremony? Have you written of it in your letter to Ghan?”
Good old Tsem, trying to distract her. “I think Ghan will never get any letter from me. Whatever we thought, these people are not our friends.”
“They needn't be our enemies, either,” Tsem pointed out. “They are like everyone, concerned for themselves and their kin before all else. You and I don't threaten them; Perkar does.”
“Does he? Perhaps his people do. I don't know. We are lost here, Tsem.”
“I know, Princess,” he replied softly. “Tell me about this ceremony.”
She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. The village did not vanish as she hoped it might; it was still there in the vivid scent of burning wood, in the shouts of children and the wild cries of adults, the yapping of dogs. It would not go away merely because she willed it thus.
“They believe that they and their mounts are kin,” she began. Who had told her that, so long ago? Yen, of course, when he gave her the statuette. He had told her something like that anyway, and it had not been—like everything else he told her—a lie. Yen, who at least had taught her the folly of trusting anyone.
Tsem's silence suggested that he was waiting for her to finish. “You know that by now,” she murmured apologetically. “They believe that they and their mounts are descended from a single goddess, the Horse Mother. Now and then the Horse Mother herself is born into one of these horses. More often one of her immediate children is, a sort of minor god or goddess. When this happens, the Mang shamans can tell, and the horse is treated with added respect.”
“That would be hard to imagine,” Tsem noted. “They already treat their mounts with more kindness than any servant in the palace is shown.”
“The horse is never ridden. It is fed only the best grains. And then they kill it.”
“Kill it?” Tsem muttered. “That doesn't sound like a very good thing to do to a god.”
“They kill it to send it home, to be with its mother. They treat it well, and when it goes home it tells the other gods that the Mang still treat their brothers and sisters—the other horses—well.”
“That is very strange,” Tsem said.
“No stranger than putting the children of nobility beneath the Darkness Stair,” she countered.
“I suppose not.” Tsem sighed. “It's just that everything these people do seems to involve blood and killing. Even worshipping their gods.”
“Perhaps they recognize that life is about blood and killing.”
Tsem touched her shoulder lightly with his thick fingers. “Qey used to say that life was about birth and eating. And sex.”
“Qey said something about sex?” Hezhi could simply not associate the concept with the servant woman who had raised her.
Tsem chuckled. “She is, after all, a Human Being,” he reminded her.
“But sex! When? With whom?”
Tsem squeezed her shoulder. “Not often, I suppose, and with an old friend of hers in the palace. She would have been married to him, I suppose, if it had been allowed.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I shouldn't tell you that,” Tsem said, mischief creeping into his voice.
“I think you should,” she rejoined.
“Well, perhaps if you were a princess and I your slave, I would obey that command. However, since you insist that such is no longer the case …”
“Tsem.” She sighed, opening her eyes and arching her brows dangerously.
Tsem rolled his eyes and put on an exaggerated air of secrecy. He leaned very near, as if confiding a bit of court gossip. “You remember old J'ehl?”
Hezhi's mouth dropped open. “J'ehl? Qey and J'ehl? Why, he was a wrinkled little old man! He looked just like one of those turtles with soft shells and thin long noses! How could she—”
“Perhaps he had more use for such a nose than you might imagine,” Tsem remarked.
“Oh!” Hezhi cried. “No! Darken your mouth! I won't hear any more of this. You're inventing this because no one can call you a liar out here. Except me! Qey and J'ehl indeed. Qey and anyone. She was too old, too dignified—”
“Oh, yes,” Tsem said. “Do you remember that time when J'ehl came to deliver flour, and I took you into your room and sang very loudly to you, the same song, over and over?”
“The only song you knew!” Hezhi exploded. “I kept telling you to sing a different song, but you wouldn't. After a while it got to be ftin, though, me trying to put a pillow over your face, and you just singing and singing …” She stopped. “What are you saying?”
“Qey made me do that. So you wouldn't hear.”
“No!” Hezhi almost shrieked, but she was laughing. Laughing. It was shocking, horrible even to think of Qey and that little man making love as Tsem roared and she squealed, but somehow it was funny. And she realized that Tsem had tricked her, tricked her into an instant of happiness, despite everything.
“Those were good days,” she told him as her laughter trailed off. “How old was I?”
“Six years old, I think.”
“Before D'en vanished.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“And how did that song go?”
“You don't really want me to sing it!”
“I think perhaps I do!” she commanded.
Tsem sighed hugely and squared his shoulders.
“Look at me.
A giant monkey
Live in a tree