On Fire’s Wings by Christie Golden Read Free Book Online

sunlight.
    Down toward the miracle of greenness and water the horse plunged, taking the path at a confident gallop. The path twisted and turned, revealing the valley’s secrets in greater detail. All at once they were on a flat path, galloping past workers in the fields, who made haste to prostrate themselves as their master passed. Then up again, a gradual incline, past many of the beautifully painted buildings, past the stone corrals that housed the magnificent horses and the unbelievable sa’abahs, in through a huge gate that closed behind them—
    â€”and suddenly, there in the courtyard of the main house of the khashim’s estate, exultation and excitement slowed in Kevla’s heart as Swift-Over-Sand’s pace slowed and clattered to a halt.
    Tahmu slipped off the beast. He made no move to help her down. Instead, a servant stepped forward and reached hands up to Kevla.
    She ignored the friendly hands and smile of the servant, instead finding her own way off the stamping, snorting animal. She landed hard, but gave no sign of pain, rising from her hands and knees to stand straight and silent.
    Tahmu nodded approvingly. “Come with me.”
    Â 
    â€œSahlik, I have a new servant for you to train.”
    Sahlik did not drop to her knees. Tahmu would not expect it, not with her inflamed joints. She turned slowly around from the cookfire she was tending.
    â€œYou,” she said, gesturing to a girl who huddled on the floor, “get the khashim and his new servant some water.”
    The girl scurried to obey, presenting a dripping, hollowed-out gourd to her master with a deep bow. He drank, and then handed it to the child who stood beside him.
    Sahlik looked at the girl as she drained the dipper. Her heart rose. She glanced from child to khashim, and though her lips didn’t move, Sahlik had a smile of approval in her eyes for Tahmu.
    He had gone, as she had urged.
    Two days ago, Sahlik, on a rare visit to the market with some of the kitchen servants, had heard a long forgotten name and spotted Kevla on the corner. Few servants now remained at the House of Four Waters who had seen the young Tahmu through that heartbreaking time eleven years past. It had been Sahlik who had given the cold, but ultimately wise, advice that he had to leave Keishla. And it had been Sahlik who had held her young lord in her arms as he wept after the deed had been done.
    There had been no mistaking the youthful energy of the young Tahmu in the child’s vigorous dance, nor the sloe eyes of Keishla in her face. Sahlik had known the girl for what she was, and had urged her master to take pity upon her.
    A good boy, Tahmu. He listened well.
    But no one else must know, not even the girl herself. Sahlik turned her attention to Kevla, her eyes narrowing. Far too thin. Walking slowly over to the child, she examined the new servant the way Tahmu might examine a horse he was planning to purchase. Sahlik opened the girl’s mouth and felt around her teeth and gums. Good. No teeth were loose yet, and Dragon willing, they would not come loose later. Her eyes were clear, her thin arms surprisingly strong with muscle.
    â€œShe looks well enough,” Sahlik said, stepping back. “Where did you want her, my lord?”
    â€œPut her in as one of Yeshi’s attendants.”
    By the Great Dragon, he was courting trouble. “Are you certain, my lord? Such positions are usually given as rewards for years of service.”
    She was speaking, of course, what they both knew. She hoped Tahmu would sense the other, unsaid words.
    â€œKevla’s mother was a dancer, before her untimely death,” said Tahmu in a conversational tone. Only Sahlik, who knew the man better than nearly anyone, could have caught the undercurrent of tension in the everyday words. This, then, was the story Tahmu and Sahlik would spread.
    â€œKevla knows many useful skills—hair decorating, henna, massage—things that a woman