The Desert Spear
Page 7

The girl lifted a small stick wrapped many times in white cloth and placed it in Jardir’s mouth, gently pushing his jaw closed. Jardir understood, and bit down.
“Dal’Sharum embrace their pain,” the girl whispered as the dama’ting moved to a table to gather instruments.
There was a sharp sting as the dama’ting cleansed the wound, and a flare of agony as she wrenched his arm to set the bone. Jardir bit hard into the stick, and tried to do as the girl said, opening himself to the pain, though he did not fully understand. For a moment the pain seemed more than he could endure, but then, as if he were passing through a doorway, it became a distant thing, a suffering he was aware of but not part of. His jaw unclenched, and the stick fell away unneeded.
As Jardir relaxed into the pain, he turned to watch the dama’ting. She worked with calm efficiency, murmuring prayers to Everam as she stitched muscle and skin. She ground herbs into a paste she slathered on the wound, wrapping it in clean cloth soaked in a thick white mixture.
With surprising strength, she lifted him from the table and set him on a hard cot. She put a flask to his lips and Jardir drank, immediately feeling warm and woozy.
The dama’ting turned away, but the girl lingered a moment. “Bones become stronger after being broken,” she whispered, giving comfort as Jardir drifted off to sleep.
He woke to find the girl sitting beside his cot. She pressed a damp cloth to his forehead. It was the coolness that had woken him. His eyes danced over her uncovered face. He had once thought his mother beautiful, but it was nothing compared with this girl.
“The young warrior awakens,” she said, smiling at him.
“You speak,” Jardir said through parched lips. His arm seemed encased in white stone; the dama’ting’s wrappings had hardened while he slept.
“Am I a beast, that I should not?” the girl asked.
“To me, I mean,” Jardir said. “I am only nie’Sharum.” And not yet worthy of you by half, he added silently.
The girl nodded. “And I am nie’dama’ting. I will earn my veil soon, but I do not wear it yet, and thus may speak to whomever I wish.”
She set the cloth aside, lifting a steaming bowl of porridge to his lips. “I expect they are starving you in the Kaji’sharaj. Eat. It will help the dama’ting’s spells to heal you.”
Jardir swallowed the hot food quickly. “What is your name?” he asked when done.
The girl smiled as she wiped his mouth with a soft cloth. “Bold, for a boy barely old enough for his bido.”
“I’m sorry,” Jardir said.
She laughed. “Boldness is no cause for sorrow. Everam has no love for the timid. My name is Inevera.”
“As Everam wills,” Jardir translated. It was a common saying in Krasia. Inevera nodded.
“Ahmann,” Jardir introduced himself, “son of Hoshkamin.”
The girl nodded as if this were grave news, but there was amusement in her eyes.
“He is strong and may return to training,” the dama’ting told Qeran the next day, “but he must eat regularly, and if further harm comes to the arm before I remove the wrappings, I will hold you to account.”
The drillmaster bowed. “It will be as the dama’ting commands.” Jardir was given his bowl and allowed to go to the front of the line. None of the other boys, even Hasik, dared question this, but Jardir could feel their looks of resentment at his back. He would have preferred fighting for his meals, even with his arm in a cast, rather than weather those stares, but the dama’ting had given an order. If he did not eat willingly, the drillmasters would not hesitate to force the gruel down his throat.
“Will you be all right?” Abban asked as they ate in their customary spot.
Jardir nodded. “Bones heal stronger after being broken.”
“I’d rather not test that,” Abban said. Jardir shrugged. “At least the Waning begins tomorrow,” Abban added. “You can have a few days at home.”
Jardir looked at the cast and felt profound shame. There would be no hiding this from his mother and sisters. Barely in sharaj a cycle, and he was already a disgrace to them.
The Waning was the three-day cycle of the new moon, when Nie’s power was said to be strongest. Boys in Hannu Pash spent this period at home with their families, so that fathers could look upon their sons and remember what they fought for in the night.
But Jardir’s father was gone, and Jardir doubted he would fill the man’s heart with pride in any event. His mother, Kajivah, made no mention of his injury when he returned home, but Jardir’s younger sisters lacked her discretion.
Among the other nie’Sharum, Jardir had gotten used to living in only his bido and sandals. Among his sisters, all covered head-to-toe in tan robes revealing only their hands and faces, he felt naked, and there was no way to disguise his cast.
“What happened to your arm?” his youngest sister Hanya asked the moment he arrived.
“I broke it in my training,” Jardir said.
“How?” Imisandre, the eldest of his sisters and the one Jardir was closest to, asked. She put her hand on his other arm.
Her sympathetic touch, once a balm to Jardir, now multiplied his shame tenfold. He pulled his arm away. “It was broken in sharusahk practice. It is nothing.”
“How many boys did it take?” Hanya said, and Jardir remembered the time he had beaten two older boys in the bazaar after one of them had mocked her. “At least ten, I bet.”
Jardir scowled. “One,” he snapped.
Hoshvah, his middle sister, shook her head. “He must have been ten feet tall.” Jardir wanted to scream.
“Enough pestering your brother!” Kajivah said. “Prepare a place for him at the table and leave him in peace.”
Hanya took Jardir’s sandals while Imisandre pulled out the bench at the head of the table. There were no pillows, but she laid a clean cloth on the wood for him to sit upon. After a month sitting on the floor of the sharaj, even that seemed a luxury. Hoshvah hurried with the chipped clay bowls Kajivah filled from the steaming pot.
Most nights, Jardir’s family ate only plain couscous, but Kajivah saved her stipend, and on Waning there were always vegetables and seasoning mixed in. On this, his first Waning home from Hannu Pash, there were even a few hard bits of unidentifiable meat mixed into Jardir’s bowl. It was more food than Jardir had seen in quite some time and it smelled of a mother’s love, but Jardir found he had little appetite, especially when he noted that the bowls of his mother and sisters lacked the bits of meat. He forced the food down so as not to insult his mother, but the fact that he ate with his left hand only made his shame worse.
After the meal, they prayed as a family until the call came from the minarets of Sharik Hora, signaling dusk. Evejan law dictated that when the call sounded from the minarets of Sharik Hora, all women and children were to go below.
Even Kajivah’s mean adobe hovel had a barred and warded basement with a connection to the Undercity, a vast network of caverns that connected all of the Desert Spear in the event of a breach.
“Go below,” Kajivah told his sisters. “I will speak privately with your brother.” The girls followed her command, and Kajivah beckoned Jardir to the corner where his father’s spear and shield hung.