“I’ll be quick,” Omari assured her, and turned into a street lined with single-story mud-brick workshops. “You don’t evenneed to come in. Actually, it might be better if you don’t.”
Rae glared at the back of Omari’s big head.Now I’m definitely going in.The nerve of that ox! Telling me what to do… Anyway, there was someone in there she wanted to see.
The two wove through the throng toward the artisans’ quarter. The buildings, whose windows and doors had once been lined with colored tile, were faded and crumbling at the edges. Rae cast her eyes over them and sighed. The days when Sakesh had been the jewel of Low Khetara were gone—artifacts of her youth and the end of the Great War. It had been nineteen years, but the city had never recovered from the wounds of its defeat. Low Khetara hadn’t simply lost their king to Sematawy and his army; they’d lost their way too.
A ragged man, his face lined with scars, hunched near the corner of a bakery, a walking stick gripped in his gnarled hand. The city was abundant with men like him—old soldiers who’d been left with no land and no purpose after the High Khetarans took away their weapons and station. Rae had only been a baby when King Rahotep fell to the northern scourge. But she’d grown up hearing stories of her father’s life in the king’s palace, where he’d worked as a royal scribe. When she was little, the stories had delighted her. They were so full of sound and color—of wonders that she could only dream about. But as she got older and came to understand what they’d lost, the stories only made her angry.
Eventually, her father stopped telling them.
But he never stopped trying to teach her what he knew, and over the years, he had given her the kind of education that had become so rare in Low Khetara that even most men never received it. By the time she turned ten, she already had a basic knowledge of Khetaran history and religion, and she could read and write the common script fairly well—more than well enough to keep the records for the farm. Thanks to the High Khetarans,her father couldn’t really write anymore himself, but through his painstaking descriptions of how to form the letters and words, they’d made it work.
The one thing her father never taught her was the gods’ words, the true language of the scribes. The gods’ words were the origin of all Khetaran writing, the sacred birds, snakes, cups, eyes, and hands from which the common script had been derived. Perhaps Father never taught her how to read or write them because he never had the time, or didn’t see a need, but Rae suspected it was more than that. Her father wasn’t broken like the ragged man on the street, but the fissures in his spirit were still there, hidden under the surface. Rae got the sense that he thought there was no point to writing in the sacred word, because the gods were no longer listening.
Rae passed close to the old soldier as she followed Omari into the weavers’ workshop. The beggar was nodding rhythmically, staring ahead with cloudy, unseeing eyes.
“The lamb,” he muttered, his face creased with agitation.
Taking pity on him, Rae reached into her pack and pulled out half a loaf of bread. She pressed the food into the soldier’s empty hand.
If he noticed her charity, he didn’t let on. He gripped the bread until the crust crackled under the pressure. “The lamb, the lamb,” he chanted under his breath.
Rae shook her head grimly and stepped into the workshop.
She immediately blundered into a woman carrying an armful of spindles loaded with fine white thread. The woman cursed and said, “Watch where you’re going!”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Rae snatched a fallen spindle from the floor and placed it on top of the teetering pile. The weaver tutted at her before flouncing back to her station.
The workshop was a frenzy of activity, filled with womenspinning flaxen thread or weaving fabric on long wooden looms. Everything was so white and pristine that Rae felt embarrassed by the state of her dress. Her tunic was spattered with abstract patterns of dirt and blood—and her sandals? She grimaced. They didn’t bear examination. Clearing her throat, she attempted to smooth the flyaway strands of her hair, but probably only made it worse.
Omari was already speaking with one of the weavers—an expansive older woman with wrinkled light-brown skin and hair that had gone gray at the temples. Mamet Mut. The two spoke as she passed the weft beam between the taut warp threads in a steady rhythm, while a smaller woman used another wooden beam to bang the threads tightly against one another. The movements filled the workshop with sound—Shh, clack! Shh, clack! Shh, clack!Rae tried to hear to what Omari and Mamet Mut were saying, but between the looms and many voices, she could only make out a few words at a time.
“... meet tonight…”
“No, the Medjay won’t find…”
“But Asim said…”
Rae’s brow furrowed.The Medjay?Omari was a carpenter’s son. What business did he have with the pharaoh’s lawmen?
She was about to march over and ask just what in Ra’s name he was up to when her gaze fell upon a young woman spinning thread on the other side of the room.
Omari and his secrets were instantly forgotten.
The girl was a cascade of soft curves, from her tightly curled hair down to the roundness of her figure. A small clay pot sat at her feet, filled with a mass of wet flax fibers. The girl coaxed a single rough fiber from the mass, holding it aloft in one hand, while in the other she held a wooden spindle that she rolled along her bare thigh, spinning the fiber into fine thread. The movement was like a slow, undulating dance, and Rae couldn’t help but stare.
The girl caught Rae watching her and smiled. “Hi, Rae.”
Rae’s cheeks grew hot. “Tam.”
“What brings you?”
“I… Omari needed…” She coughed. Her throat was suddenly dry. She’d only known Tamerit for a season—the girl’s family had moved from Per-Abu to live with their cousins, and Tam had joined the weavers shortly after. They’d met in the market when they’d both reached for the same basket of figs. Their fingers touched, their eyes met, and Rae felt her body become liquid. Since that day, Rae had taken every opportunity to drop in on the weavers to see her again.
“Oh,” Tam replied, sticking out her lower lip. “Omari needed something, eh? Are you sure you don’t need anything?”
“I do need something,” Rae replied, teasing.
“I agree,” Tam replied. “A bath.”
