She did not like to see her staff, leaning against the wall between bed and nightstand. Its brass cap gleamed like gold, throwing back her distorted reflection. She was sick of it and of everything it represented.
Leaving it there, she went outside. The sun was below the walls that circled the temple community, leaving shadows to gather inside. She took her bearings. There was the tower the locals called the Hub, dead center in Winding Circle, pointing to a clear sky.
Daja set out, picking her way through the multitude of small gardens that were fitted between every building inside the walls. Though she was trying to think of other things, she couldn’t make herself forget that Winding Circle’s smithies were just a short walk away. For a moment, she thought she felt the heat of forge fires on her skin and smelled the tang of iron and brass.
It had always been an embarrassment to her family, her interest in metalwork. To be interested in it still, while they slept under the waves, seemed disloyal.
She was trying so hard not to think of the smithies that she didn’t know she had company until a hoarse voice growled, “Grab the stinking Trader!”
Daja spun, paying attention now, but too late. Rough arms grabbed her and dragged her between a gardener’s shed and one of the laundries. More hands tried to cover her mouth. She yanked her head away and kicked out with her feet. She hit something hard, and a voice—a boy’s, she thought—yelped.
“Kaq!” she snarled, furious as much with herself as with them. How could she have been so careless?! “Too afraid for a real fight—”
“Shut her up!” someone urged, a girl. She was another resident of the dormitory where Daja slept. “If they hear—”
“Nobody wants you here, Trader!” panted the one who had grabbed her from behind. Daja flailed, trying to yank herself free. “You stink up our air—”
She kicked something else, something soft. Somebody began to vomit.
Light flared, brighter than even sunlight in these shadows: Niko stood in the opening between the buildings and the road, his upraised hand glowing. He had a companion—the assured, worldly woman who was the Dedicate Superior in charge of Winding Circle, Moonstream.
Daja’s attackers—three girls and two boys—ran. Daja herself stumbled and fell when the boy who had been hanging on to her let go.
Hands as dark as her own helped her to her feet. Daja found herself looking into Moonstream’s wise brown eyes. “Are you hurt?” the older woman asked. Her voice was clear, low, and kind.
“Just my pride,” Daja muttered. “I was stupid, and kaqs got me.”
“I’d hoped our boarders were more open-minded about Traders. I’m disappointed that I was so wrong.” Now that she was certain Daja was uninjured, Moonstream’s voice was dry and emotionless. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and looked up at Niko. “Perhaps the girls’ dormitory isn’t the best place for Daja. I’d like her to feel she’s safe where she lives.”
“Discipline, then?” Niko suggested. “No, it’s not punishment,” he hastened to assure Daja. “It’s the name of a much smaller cottage, near the Earth temple.”
“You’ll move there first thing tomorrow,” Moonstream said. She laid a cool, dry palm against Daja’s cheek. The girl smelled a hint of cinnamon on the dedicate’s skin. “Do you think you’ll be bothered tonight?”
Daja shook her head. Trouble at night came only as talk. The dedicates who looked after the girls checked the beds too often for any blows to be struck.
“Discipline will suit you better, Daja.” Niko put an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll have your own room, for one. Privacy can be a blessing in itself.”
I’m condemned to spend the rest of my life among kaqs, the girl thought sadly, returning to the dormitory. There aren’t any blessings left for me.
As she opened the outer door, she heard Moonstream say, “Now—I want to find the ones who did this.”
The only problem with lairing under his bed, as Briar discovered on his third night in the boys’ dormitory, was that there were no really secure exits. Back home, no one could have sneaked up on him as the other boys did now, blocking him on two sides of the bed as they dragged him out through the third. In Sotat, he would have been down a tunnel and into the mazes of the sewers before they’d blocked his main entrance.
He’d been so busy examining the plants he’d stolen that day that he hadn’t heard them come up. I’m gonna deserve my ouches, he thought, gray-green eyes giving no sign of his feelings. Letting a bunch of dung-footed gawps nab me!
Two of them lifted him, gripping him by the arms. The fatty loudmouth from three beds down stood in front of him, hand on one hip. He shoved the first finger of the other hand into Briar’s face. “You stole my cloak-pin, gallows-bait!” he cried. “I want it back!”
Briar knew the pin that was meant; the boy had showed it to everyone the day before. “Me?” demanded the street rat, horrified. “Nick that piece of flash? There’s no pump worth his Bags as would pay more’n a few copper pennies for it!”
“Liar!” cried his accuser. “It cost me two silver crescents!”
Briar lifted his eyebrows. “Silver-gilt paint, tin, and a glass pearl? Then you was nicked, and nicked proper.”
Two of the other boys upended the small clothes chest at the foot of the bed, spilling its contents on the floor. Someone else dragged everything out of Briar’s den and scrabbled through the green bits that Briar had just been examining. “Look at this!” he said, laughing. “Did someone tell you dead plants are valuable, street scum?”