If they cannot bear to immediately surrender the child, be patient. Offer them lodgings for the night, let them walk in the gardens and see the libraries. Allow them to see that no matter how long the child’s infancy or childhood, she will be cherished here, educated, and, yes, loved by those Servants who tend her. Do not forget that every White child is a gift given by the family to the world. Be grateful.
Above all, be patient. Remember that it is the child’s destiny to come to us, and that destiny is never denied. It may happen in a way none of us has foreseen, but happen it will. To interfere too much may set the child’s life on a path unforeseen and unfortunate. Once the child is with us, it is important to let the shaysim’s life unfold as it will. The future cannot be rushed. Allow time to work its will upon us all.
—Buffeni, Servant of the 3rd Line
I do not know how long I was ill. It was like a terrible vertigo from which no one could rescue me. I was sick upon myself, and soiled myself, more than once. Shun tended me fiercely, without gentleness and certainly not because she wished to do so. She battled relentlessly for privacy in which she washed me with cold snowmelt water. She gave my dirtied garments over to the pale people for them to wash and attempt to dry. She was uncompromising in insisting that only she could tend me. It was not devotion to me, although she claimed that. It was fear, plain and simple. She thought that if they discovered I was a girl, they would have no further use for me. Or her.
And so she took care of me, as best she could. They gave her no help. There was no willowbark tea brewed for my fever, no rest from our relentless traveling. They simply allowed me to be ill while they continued their journey. Every evening, Shun carried me from the tent to the sleigh. We traveled all night. As dawn approached, they made camp and she moved me from the sleigh to the tent. They prepared no special food for me, no broth or gruel. Shun increased my misery by insisting that I eat and drink, sometimes forcing the spoon into my mouth. My lips were chapped and sore from the fever. Her ministrations made them bleed.
But I didn’t die, and one night I felt slightly better. I kept my eyes open and watched the stars as they appeared and then vanished again behind the wind-driven clouds. Dwalia no longer held me on her lap. None of the luriks seemed to want to touch me. So Shun held me, and I heard her little gasp when we crested a hill and saw the lights of a small town below us. We followed the road down the hill, directly toward the town. The fog boy sat beside the driver and I could feel how hard he strove to keep anyone from seeing us. Commander Ellik and the handsome rapist led the way. The other soldiers rode close beside the sleighs, and the luriks on their white horses were bunched close behind us. A dog barked and barked at us, hackles raised, until his owner came out and shouted at him to be quiet.
I felt Shun tighten her grip on me. “Could you run?” she breathed by my ear, and I knew what she was thinking.
So did Dwalia. She did not whisper but spoke in a normal voice. “If you leapt from the sleigh and ran to any of those houses, the soldiers with us would kill everyone you spoke to. The rest we would bind to forgetfulness. Then we would burn the house down around the bodies, and on you would go with us. Much simpler for all if you simply stay where you are and enjoy this picturesque little town.” She gave a sideways glance, and Reppin and Soula both shifted to sit between us and the edge of the sleigh.
Shun did not loosen her grip on me, but I felt the spirit go out of her. We drove right past a team and waiting wagon outside an inn. The horses whickered a greeting to us, but on we went. We passed through the town as if we were the wind, and we continued past the outlying farmsteads and up another hill and back into woodlands again. We left the road and followed a dimpled cart-trail into the forest. And on until dawn.
That morning, I could eat a little food on my own, and follow Shun when she went aside from the others to piss. I remembered what she had told me, and mimed standing to piss as if I were a boy before crouching to relieve myself. When we went back in the tent, the luriks whispered to one another behind their hands. “I told you he would live, if he was meant to live. And we knew he was. That was why we did not interfere.” Dwalia spoke those words to her underlings, and once more she held a kindly smile on her face whenever she looked at me. She was pleased that I hadn’t died, but even more pleased, I thought, that she hadn’t helped me to stay alive.