The Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller Read Free Book Online

too many words, against Abajai’s want. She shook her head again, lips pinched shut. The woman Bisla sighed, and held up the mirror again.
    “Look,” she said, her voice coaxing now, like the man’s sons to the shy goats. “It will not harm you. How can it? The face in the mirror is yours.”
    She had never seen her face before, never dreamed there was a way anyone could see their own face or imagined why they would want to. She looked.
    Two blue eyes, big and frightened. Thick black lashes, long enough to brush her skin. High cheekbones. Hollow cheeks. A wide mouth with plump pink lips. A softly pointed chin. All these face-parts the woman had shown her, touching her own and saying the words over and over until she remembered. She could see the woman’s face in the mirror and the man’s too, muddled together to make Hekat.
    Framing Hekat’s face were her godbraids. Fascinated, she watched her fingers touch the bright red and green beads the women had woven into her thick black hair. Her godbraids weren’t like Abajai’s, they were fatter and looser and they didn’t hold as many charms. When they reached Et-Raklion she would ask him to give her godbraids like his. He would do that for her, she was precious.
    The woman Bisla’s finger stroked her cheek. “You are very beautiful, child. Do you understand?”
    No, but the woman was smiling. Did that make beautiful a good thing? She wanted to know. Abajai had said no speaking, but these words were in service of him, so . . . “Beautiful please Abajai?”
    “Yes,” said the woman Bisla. “Of course. Beautiful pleases every man.”
    She let herself smile. Pleasing Abajai was all that mattered. In the mirror she saw her teeth, pure white in her clean and beautiful face.
    “Now you must dress, child,” said the woman Bisla. “Abajai will be waiting.”
    The tunic and pantaloons they put on her weren’t soft and silken slippery like Abajai’s yellow robe but they felt good all the same. They were colored dark green, with gold and crimson threads sewn around the neck and the wrist and the ankles. They sat upon her scented skin lightly, and rustled when she moved.
    “Look at her feet,” said the older sister, frowning. “The soles are like leather! Does she even need shoes?”
    “Shoes are Abajai’s word,” said the woman Bisla. “In shoes her soles will soften over time. She has pretty, slender feet. They must be protected.”
    In the village only men had clothed their feet. Hekat wriggled as her toes were imprisoned.
    “Tchut tchut,” said the woman Bisla, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Would you disobey Abajai?”
    Never. Abajai had saved her from the man. He was more real to her than the god itself.
    The women led her out of the white house with the blue and yellow lizard roof, back to the open place where the caravan waited. The villagers had gone away, now it was just Obid and his guards keeping close watch on the merchandise. A group of Todorok slaves waited in the village space, naked and chained. Hekat stared hard at them as she waited for Abajai to return, but none of these slaves looked precious or beautiful.
    Not like me.
    She counted two men slaves, three women and four boys. No she-brats. They were taller than the people of her own village. Their faces were wider. All were darker colored, save one man whose skin was dark and pale, faded patches like an ancient goatskin. Strange . One boy slave was fat. She had never seen a fat boy before. The man beat his sons with the goat-stick if he thought their flesh was gaining. Fat boys ran too slowly after goats and couldn’t do the snake-dance properly. That angered the god.
    The fat boy’s hair was tightly godbraided and all black, no single scarlet slave braid. Not like the others standing with him. There was water on his cheeks. He was crying . Hekat shook her head, amazed. Here there was so much water, he must be used to wasting it. Here there was so much water, maybe it couldn’t be