Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [152]
I knelt waiting. With great ceremony, one of the women brought out a tray of fine-combed sand, shaking it carefully until it was smooth, setting it down before me. Kaneka knelt opposite, her face as impassive as a warrior's, drawing a small circle in the sand with one finger.
"Days," she said, and drew another, larger, to enclose it. "Weeks." Glancing at me to make certain I understood, she drew the outermost concentric circle. "Months." Taking my wrist, she turned my hand over and placed the dice in it. "Hold them until they take on your heat."
The dice were amber, six-pointed, with eight facing sides, each one etched with a number of dots. I closed my hand on them. The Jebeans and Nubians had drawn around, watching intently; even a few other women had gathered.
"You see!" Kaneka raised her voice, addressing them. "In Daršanga, Death is a man, and Lord Death is always waiting here in the zenana. How long will he wait to summon you to his bedchamber? How eager is he to plant his iron rod inside you? If it be three days, will it be five weeks until he summons you again? If it be five weeks, will it be two months? It is," she said, looking at me once more, "the only question that matters."
Clutched in my palm, the octohedronal dice had grown warm. I gave them to her. Kaneka shook them in cupped hands over the tray,muttering a lengthy prayer in Jeb'ez. Opening both hands with a flourish, she cast the dice onto the sand.
Flawed amber glinted dully in the lamplight as they fell, one by one, within the concentric rings, forming a line as straight as an arrow— each face showing a single dot.
The taste of fear flooded my mouth.
Someone gasped; a number of women drew back. Kaneka stared at me, the whites of her eyes showing yellow around her dark irises. "You are marked for Death, little one. And soon."
I gazed at the unwinking line of dice, three single eyes on the sand. "Does it mean that is when I will die?"
"I'ye, no." Kaneka's voice was rough with fear. "It says that is when Lord Death will send for you." She pointed. "Day, after day; week after week; month upon month. No respite. When will you die?" She shrugged. "Like the rest. When he kills you, or when you can bear it no more."
"I see." I stood. "Thank you, Fedabin; amessaganun. If it please you to teach me Jeb'ez, I would learn it still, though I have nothing to trade."
Kaneka scooped up her dice and rose. "You are a fool, little one," she whispered harshly. "Believe, or not; the dice do not lie, and I have told you what any one of us would shudder to hear. Use the time left you wisely, and make peace with your gods while you may!"
"My gods." I looked past her at the watching zenana. "It is they who marked me, Fedabin Kaneka; not for death, but for pain. How shall I make peace with that?"
To that, she had no answer.
FORTY-FIVE
AFTER THAT, I was regarded with a certain fearful awe in the zenana.
It lasted all of a day until it changed.
It would have happened anyway, I daresay; the Mahrkagir would have sent for me when he did, Kaneka's prophecy or no, and there would have followed what followed. I am an anguissette. It could not have fallen out differently. The dice had merely ensured that I was already branded a target for fear and speculation. In a community ruled by dread, it is never far from thence to hatred.
Hiu-Mei, the Mahrkagir's favorite, had taken a turn for the worse. Drucilla tended her as best she might, but without medications, there was little she could do. It was not the blow to the face, I gathered, but a disease of long standing—a pox, one of the Illyrians swore, that men contract from congress with goats. The Tatar tribesmen whose aid the Mahrkagir courted were known to carry it.
Whether or not it is true, I cannot say; of a surety, the Ch'in woman was ill, a cause for bitter rejoicing in the zenana. Rejoicing, for any favorite was despised; bitter, for any favorite must be replaced . . . and the lot would fall upon one of us.
They looked at me and muttered about Kaneka's dice.
For my part, I felt numb and hollow