"No! Thank you, Mother, but no."

"You haven't even met the boy. How do you know-"

"I happen to like working for Kyros. Brasidas is the son of a carpet weaver. I'm sure a carpet weaver would not be happy to have a wife who goes off for months at a time carrying messages..."

"He's Greek-"

"He is three years younger than I am. He used to pick his nose and try to wipe his hands off on the other kids."

"That was years ago! He's grown up into a perfectly nice young man-"

"Mother-"

"-and you had some nasty enough habits as a child!"

"I'm leaving in four days," I said.

"For how long?"

"I don't know, exactly. A long time."

Something in my tone of voice made her sink back down in her chair. "Where is Kyros sending you now?" Her voice was shaking.

I sat down quietly beside her. "I'm going to infiltrate the bandits," I said. "Kyros is going to have me pose as a slave of one of his friends and pretend to escape."

"But-you're half Greek!"

"So are a good quarter of the slaves in the cities. Apparently the Alashi don't care."

"Lauria, this sounds dangerous!"

"My job is always dangerous," I said, exasperated.

"This was all Kyros's idea?"

"No," I said. "I think the idea might have been suggested by a sorceress." At my mother's look of alarm, I hastily added, "Kyros wouldn't send me off to certain doom! The Alashi are going to have no idea that I'm anything but an escaped slave."

"But to pose as a slave..." My mother looked oddly distant for a moment, then examined me with a critical eye. "You carry yourself as a free woman, not someone who fears being beaten. You don't have the reserve, the shyness, the slyness. Anyone looking at you would know you weren't a slave."

I laughed. "Mother, the guards at the Elpisia gate stop me every time I leave the city! Clearly not everyone knows I'm a free woman. They look at me and see my Danibeki mother, not my Greek father."

"The Greeks see that. A slave would know. Any slave would know."

"It's not really Sophos's slaves I have to fool, is it? It's the Alashi. Staying with Sophos is just to give me a cover story, somewhere to escape from."

My mother shook her head, still horrified. "You're really set on doing this?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, I'm really 'set' on doing this."

"Well, a slave wouldn't stand like you're standing."

"How am I standing?"

My mother stood up, then sighed as she looked me over. "Imagine a point at the center of your body, and try to disappear into it." She nudged my back, my shoulders, my hips. Then she demonstrated: "Like this." Her arms were pressed to her sides, her head slightly bent. "You don't want to be noticed. Being noticed means that you'll probably just get into trouble."

"Did getting noticed get you in trouble? I thought you were freed because your master's wife 'noticed'

you."

My mother's eyes narrowed. "Fine," she said. "If you don't want my advice, you don't have to listen to it."

She sat back down and picked up some mending from a basket by her chair.

I bit my lip, wishing I'd just kept my mouth shut. My mother's advice would almost certainly be useful, but I hated to ask her for it. Finally I bit down on my pride and asked, "Is this better?"

My mother looked up from her mending. "Oh perfect," she said. "I'm sure whatever you do is just right.

Why don't you ask Kyros anyway? He's the one who thought this would be a good idea."

I clenched my teeth, trying not to spit out any of the dozen bitter rejoinders that had occurred to me. My mother bit off the thread and tucked her needle into a leather case. "Would you like a cup of tea, darling?"

"No. Thank you."

"Oh well. I'll have one myself, I think." She had a little brazier in the corner of her room, and poked at it to perk the fire up a bit, setting on her kettle. "So. Other than rides to Daphnia and impersonating a slave, what have you been up to?"

"Not much," I muttered.

"Kyros keeps you so busy? You never have time to have fun?"

"I ride Zhade."

"Ah." My mother poked at the fire again. "Now, Cybela's daughter Daphnis, she's taken up the three-stringed lute. Cybela has invited me over to hear her play sometimes."

"How lovely." I had meant to sound sincere, but I knew as soon as the words were out that I sounded anything but.

"Well." She slammed the poker down. "Maybe spending some time pretending to be a slave will teach you some manners. Will your 'master' beat you if he thinks you're being insolent?"

"He'd better not."

"And that is precisely the att.i.tude that will tell the slaves that you are not really one of them."

I had a bad feeling that she was right, but I didn't want to admit it. "I'd better go."

"So soon?" In an instant, my mother had gone from cold outrage to placating clinginess. "But you aren't leaving for four days!"

"I have preparations to make." I stooped to kiss her cheek.

My mother returned my kiss and then grabbed the collar of my shirt, holding me close to her for a moment. "Come back tomorrow. I'll show you how to move and speak like a slave. This is not the sort of thing that you can learn from Kyros. And I-" Her voice faltered. "I am afraid of the consequences if you fail."

"Don't worry," I said, and she released me. "Good-bye."

I first met Kyros when I was eleven. I had gone out furious after a fight with my mother; as I grew into a woman, her frantic desire to shape me into the beautiful, graceful daughter she wanted had become an ongoing feud between us. I had decided to go for a walk outside the city and had jumped the wall. I'd done this hundreds, maybe thousands of times by then, but that day a guard was pa.s.sing by and grabbed me, mistaking me for an escaping slave.

He dragged me before his commander, who demanded that I identify my master. I told him I was no one's slave, and bit the guard holding me. Attacking a guard was a terribly stupid thing to do; it could have gotten me killed. But Kyros stopped by the guard post just as the commander was deciding how to deal with me, and when I named my mother and told him where I lived, he told the guards that I was telling the truth and ordered them to let me go. Then he walked me back to my mother's house: "To keep you from getting into any more trouble," he said.

He asked me how old I was, and some other questions about myself. I told him about my mother, my friends, how I didn't want to grow up if it meant sitting inside all the time embroidering and trying to look pretty, like my mother. He listened sympathetically, and when we reached my mother's house, he made her a proposition. I was clearly unsuited to the demure future my mother wanted for me; I was the terror of the neighborhood, regularly jumped the city wall to explore the desert hills beyond, and bit guards. But I would be suited quite well, he said, for a job working for him.

"Doing what!" My mother's hands had clenched her gown, listening to him. "She's only eleven."

"She's only eleven now. But she could begin to learn the skills she'll need: riding, tracking, observing. In addition to the soldiers and officers in the garrison, I employ a number of people as a.s.sistants. They keep my books, or records of my meetings. They carry messages and return with observations. They find and return lost property."

"Why do you need a.s.sistants?" my mother asked. "How many officers report to you?"

"Well, I prefer not to send out soldiers or officers on personal errands, first of all," Kyros said. "And when I need to know what's going on at a distant garrison, it's nice to get this information from someone who works only for me."

"This sounds dangerous," my mother muttered.

It sounded exciting to me. I'm not sure if my mother would have refused Kyros anyway, but when she saw the look on my face, she gave in. I knocked on Kyros's door the next morning and began my training.

I didn't knock on the door anymore when I reached Kyros's compound; I strode in wearily, nodding absently at the elderly slave who watched the door. "Kyros was looking for you," he said.

"I was visiting my mother."

"He said he'd like you to come see him when you returned."

I nodded and headed to Kyros's office. One of his other a.s.sistants, the one who kept his books and his schedule, leapt to his feet to tell Kyros that I had arrived. When I reached his office, Kyros stood behind his desk, waiting for me.

"I heard you had another run-in with the gate guards," he said. My eyes widened, and he added, "Myron told me, of course." He shook his head. "I wish you'd bring problems like this to me; when the gate guards ha.s.sle one of my adjutants, it's a problem for me as well as you. Really, Lauria, you can trust me."

"I do trust you," I said.

"I wish you'd trust me to know that this is a problem, and not tale-bearing." There was another rustle from the secretary in the hall, and Alex and Thales, the two soldiers who'd ha.s.sled me on my way out to find Alibek, strode in, looking a little confused.

"Names?" Kyros demanded.

The two men mumbled their names. Kyros pointed at me and said, "Right. I want you to remember this woman's face from now on. Lauria works for me. She carries my ring, she carries my scroll, and she carries a sword I gave her. If I hear again that you delayed her on an errand, I'll have you rea.s.signed somewhere even colder." It was hard to imagine cold weather on a brilliant spring day like this one, but the winters were bitter, and by far the worst complaint among the soldiers who'd come up from Persia or Greece.

"Am I very, very clear?" Kyros said.

"Yes, sir." The men spoke together.

"Good. You can go." We waited until they'd gone back out, then Kyros gestured for me to sit and offered me a honey cake. "I hope they won't trouble you again."

I shook my head, my mouth full. When I could talk again, I said, "It'll be some other set of soldiers who can't tell me from a runaway slave."

"Well, if we have to haul the garrison in here two at a time, I'll do it. But tell me next time!"

"I will," I said, and left with a light heart.

I. didn't visit my mother again before I left. But I did take some time during my days of leisure to watch the slaves. I wanted to spend some time in the stables with Zhade anyway. I wouldn't be able to take her with me, and that rankled; she was a beautiful bay mare with a flowing black mane and tail. Kyros had given her to me to train, and while she was a gentle horse that would let almost anyone ride her, she made it clear that she liked me best. The stable hands would take good care of her in my absence, but I wanted her coat to shine like polished bra.s.s before I left.

I had concluded that it made the most sense to have me pose as a stable hand. I knew horses and had done all the skilled work at one time or another. The unskilled work, I thought, would be easy enough to do. But my mother's words ate at me, and so I hid behind the currycomb and brushes and watched the stable hands at their work.

Kyros kept a good-sized stable. He needed horses for himself and for his family; he had a white mare that his wife rode, and lovely little ponies for his younger children. Zhade was my horse; Myron also had a horse, as did Kyros's other retainers, and there were spare mounts for use in need.

There were ten stable hands altogether. The stables were overseen by an older male slave, a grizzled old man who was stooped and bad tempered. Of the remaining nine, most were boys or men, but there was one girl, about eleven years old, with short hair and a fleeting, nervous smile. The slaves moved quickly and very quietly; the girl, in particular, had a way of almost sliding right out of my sight. Most avoided my eyes, and after a while I thought I knew what my mother meant, about trying to disappear, though I wasn't sure I could actually imitate it. Besides, even if I knew how slaves acted around me, that didn't mean I knew how slaves acted around each other.

Even if I go back to my mother, I thought, watching the stable girl carrying in buckets of water for the horses to drink, there's too much to learn, and too little time. And I'm not as strong as the slaves, physically, at least not in the same ways. I don't have the right muscles, I don't have calluses in the right places, I wouldn't be able to shovel horse s.h.i.t like I'd shoveled it all my life. I'm going to have to tell Kyros I really can't do this.

I should have felt relief at that decision, but instead I felt foreboding. Kyros, I thought, would not accept I can't do this as an answer. And neither would the sorceress.

On the morning of the fourth day, I went early to see Kyros, and found Sophos already there. The sorceress, I was relieved to see, had not returned. Sophos was laughing at some joke when I entered, his hands splayed out against his knees. He had rings on all of his fingers except for his thumbs, and a heavy gold chain around his neck. Though technically he and Kyros were equals, he had only one spell-chain.

His robes were crisp white cotton and he wore a small, colorful hat on the crown of his head. "Ah! This must be Lauria," he said, quite enthusiastically, and looked me up and down as if I really were a slave girl he was purchasing.

"Good morning, Kyros. Sophos." I hesitated, then added, "Kyros, I was hoping to speak with you alone for a moment."

"That's fine, Lauria," he said, gesturing for me to pull up a chair. "Let's just go over some logistics first."

"That's just it." I lowered my voice. "I really, really don't think I can do this."

"I see." Kyros shot Sophos a quick look, and Sophos nodded, stood up, and stepped out, his smile never wavering. "What's wrong?" he asked when Sophos was gone.

"I visited my mother, as you suggested. She... used to be a slave herself." I felt terribly uncomfortable talking about this, though of course Kyros did know; I'd mentioned it before. And any freeborn Danibeki was descended from someone who'd been a slave-a grandparent, if not a parent. "She didn't think I could pa.s.s; she said any slave looking at me would know that I wasn't one of them. And so I've spent the last few days observing slaves, and I think my mother is right. I don't think I can pull it off."

"Which slaves were you watching?" Kyros asked.

"The stable hands," I said. "I'd figured it would make the most sense to have me pose as a stable hand."

He broke into a smile and he leaned back in his chair, pouring a gla.s.s of tea and handing it to me. "Oh, Lauria. I truly don't deserve a servant like you. You are so-here, take a honey cake." He offered me a plate. "Take two. You, among all the people who offer me their service, never miss a thing. So many people would have spent the last four days sleeping, or drinking tea with their friends, or riding. You spent it observing, so that you could be the best, most believable slave you could possibly be. And now, of course, you're convinced that you won't measure up.

"Well, first of all, you need to remember that the slaves at Sophos's household will not be watching you in the way that you were watching my slaves these past few days. They will have other things to do, tasks and jobs, and while you will be a novelty, you won't be their focus. And none are the trained observer that you are. They may know that something's off about you, but it will never occur to them that you're a free Danibeki who's posing as a slave to run off and join the Alashi. And remember, it's the Alashi that we need to fool, ultimately. Really, part of the point of having you pose as a slave is just what your mother pointed out-you don't act like a slave, look like a slave. A few weeks pretending to be a slave in Sophos's house will give you the chance to practice precisely those skills on people who don't matter.

"But in any case-well, here we get to the logistics. Why don't I bring Sophos back in?" He got up to open the door; Sophos must have been standing about just outside, because he came right back, still wearing his ingratiating smile. Kyros poured more tea for Sophos and offered each of us another honey cake. "You're quite right, Lauria, that you know far more about horses than you'd know about working in, say, a kitchen. The story will be that you were my stable hand, but you caught Sophos's eye and he bought you for his harem."

"For his harem?"

"No one would believe that I'd buy such a lovely young woman to work in my stables." Sophos lifted his gla.s.s of tea in a brief toast; his eyes sparkled.

"This will explain many of the apparent inconsistencies about you," Kyros said. "You won't be expected to know how to act as a harem slave, because you used to work in a stable. If he actually put you to work in his stable, you would be spotted fast as a fake of some kind-you simply don't have the raw physical strength you'd get from hauling water and horse feed all day. But the harem slaves won't know that. They'll see that you're strong, callused, and sunburned; you won't be shoveling horse manure, so they won't see that it's not natural for you. Any strange behavior can probably be pa.s.sed off as the result of having come from another city and another position."

My stomach hurt. "Just how far would this pretense go? I won't have to sleep with Sophos or any of his guests, right?"

Sophos laughed, though I'd addressed Kyros. "No one will lay a hand on you," he said. "If anyone does, I'll cut it off myself." I found myself curiously unrea.s.sured. "It will be a little unusual for a harem slave to be totally off-limits. The story that will be circulated is that you're a virgin, and that I've reserved the privilege of your blood for an honored guest who's not expected for a few weeks."

I gripped my tea in one hand and knew that my cheeks were flaming. Sophos turned to Kyros. "I think she'll do fine."

Kyros caught my eye and gave me a sympathetic look; I almost thought he understood, really understood, how very uncomfortable I was with all of this.