A delicious aroma of vegetable stew and fresh baked bread rose from the cook tent, but Kyra hurried past it. She went straight to her own tent; mercifully, no one called out to her or asked her to join them for the midday meal. Perhaps Shurik had already started eating. She hoped so, anyway. He usually waited for her, but today her appetite was gone, for food or for company.
She ducked into the shade of her tent and drank some of the ice-cold water that she always kept in a covered pitcher beside the stove. The rest she splashed over her face and arms. She was dirty and tired and tense. There was sand in everything: hair, robes, boots, rugs. She began to comb her hair, yanking it with her fingers to get the tangles out. If by some miracle she got back to the Ferghana alive, she’d kiss the sweet grass and never leave again. Certainly she wouldn’t be fool enough to end up in the company of men. What was wrong with her? Sheetali had done little to quell the tumult in her heart.
Just as she finished tying her hair, a voice called from outside, “Kyra, are you there? Astinsai wants you.”
It was Jeev, one of the novices. Kyra almost growled in reply. She had avoided Astinsai since that first night—not a difficult task, since the Old One kept largely to her own tent. What did the crone want with her now?
“Jeev, please give Astinsai my deepest apologies,” she said. “But I am . . .” She paused to swallow the awful taste of lying to the last living katari mistress. “I am not feeling well.”
There was silence, and she could picture Jeev scratching his head. No one refused a summons from Astinsai, not even Barkav.
Finally a hesitant voice said, “Please, Kyra, I don’t understand. Astinsai said to hurry up and fetch you, or she’d make me drink her bitter spineroot brew. Do come.”
“In my opinion, you all need regular doses of bitter spineroot brew,” muttered Kyra.
“What? Did you say something?”
Kyra sighed. “I’m coming.”
She pushed aside the tent flap and stretched in the sun, trying to relax her limbs.
Jeev looked at her in relief. “Thanks, Kyra. I’d better get back to serving the food.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “Shurik is looking for you too.”
He grinned and scampered away in the direction of the communal tent.
Kyra grimaced with annoyance. All the novices and apprentices, and most of the Marksmen as well, knew about Shurik’s silly infatuation with her by now. She had put a stop to his visiting her tent, and she tried to include others in their conversation at mealtimes, but it was too late. The damage had been done. And the truth was, he reminded her of Nineth, with his sunny smile and perpetual cheer. So she did like him—but not in the way he seemed to like her. Why couldn’t he understand that and stop before he got into serious trouble with the elders?
Shaking her head, she made her way to Astinsai’s tent at the southern edge of the settlement, keeping a wary eye out for Shurik. When she arrived at the Old One’s abode, she paused. Should she ask permission to enter?
But she had no need to. “Come in,” commanded a voice from within, and Kyra obeyed.
The interior was dark and smoky. The Old One was brewing something on her stove: something lethal, judging by the smell. Kyra knelt opposite her and schooled herself to stay expressionless.
“I grow blind,” said Astinsai, not looking up. “But not so blind that I cannot see what is happening. What will happen.”
Kyra said nothing, having resolved to stay silent unless asked a direct question.
Astinsai damped down the stove and lifted the large black iron pot with surprising ease. She poured a measure of steaming liquid into a cup, and looked up at Kyra, her eyes speculative.
“Rasaynam,” she said, and proffered the cup. Kyra gaped at her in astonishment. Did the Old One mean for her to drink that awful-smelling potion? She had heard enough from the Marksmen to know what Rasaynam was, or at least what it was rumored to be: a potion to show you reality, but not a happy version of it, and never the whole of it.
“Why do you offer this to me?” she asked.
Astinsai placed the cup between them. “You are a girl with many questions, big and small. Rasaynam can show you the answers to some of them.”
Kyra regarded the cup with a mixture of longing and revulsion. Yes, she had many questions. How had Tamsyn managed to kill Shirin Mam? What was the meaning of what she had seen in the secret Hub? What would be the outcome of the duel? Would she live to take revenge on the Taus for the slaughter of her clan? And—above all—what had happened between her mother and Kai Tau?
But was she ready for the answers that she might get?
Kyra wanted to reach out and quaff the contents of the cup in a single gulp. She wanted to run away from this tent and never set eyes on Astinsai again.
A long minute passed, with both impulses warring inside her. Finally she drew a deep breath and said, “I thank you for the honor you have shown me. But I am not ready for this potion of yours. Not yet.”
“I thought as much,” said Astinsai. She took the cup and poured its contents back into the pot. “Come to me when you are ready,” she said. “When you think you have seen everything, when you think you have no more tears left inside. Come to me then. I’ll still be around.”
Kyra suppressed a shiver. She got up and bowed before leaving the tent, but Astinsai’s attention had already returned to her herbs and potions.
*
“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why did you miss the midday meal?”
Kyra gave a start as Shurik materialized by her side. She had been preoccupied after leaving Astinsai’s tent and hadn’t noticed where she was going. Her steps had taken her back toward the shaded grove. Shurik must have followed her in.
“I’ve been with Astinsai.” Kyra told him what had happened, omitting the part about her being “a girl with many questions.”
Shurik’s face twisted in comic horror as he listened. “Don’t ever drink that stuff,” he warned. “Look what it did to Rustan.”
Kyra stopped walking and sat down cross-legged in the shade of a jessora bush. “Rustan has drunk Rasaynam?” she said, surprised. “I thought none of the Marksmen had touched that potion in years.” But even as she said it, she remembered the haunted look on his face. Perhaps if you had done what I did, you would feel differently.
“None but my good friend Rustan,” said Shurik, sitting down next to her. “Astinsai made an exception for him, like she seems to have made for you. She must dislike you both very much.”
Kyra laughed. “Don’t be silly, Shurik.” The katari mistress was surely above liking or disliking anyone.
“Don’t drink it, okay?” said Shurik, suddenly anxious. “I couldn’t bear for you to change, the way he changed.”
“How did he change?” asked Kyra, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. It wasn’t necessary; no one was around. The Marksmen rested in their tents after the midday meal, resuming classes and chores in the evening.