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Night with her mantle, Maria and her golden crown of stars, over every land, over every people—and most important, lindeza, over every sea…
Make her amenable, my lad. Make her mine.
“Knock thrice.”
She chuckles. “You know that it’s me.”
The southwest side of the men’s barracks faces, at present, a heap of earth. It rises as a shoulder of darker shadow against the cold height of the night sky. She helped to cart that earth from the new-mawed cellar, piled it near the water barrels until her hands and ribs and neck all screamed with weariness. So it is with each day, each endless task. Tomorrow, they will (by some art) convert the soil to bricks.
All this on her mind, because she worked beside the new one. He said scarce ten words to her or anyone, the tall redhead whose scarred flesh peeks above his collar and beneath his sleeves.
Over every sea, but here is only parched land and fouled rainwater. Barrels guarded precious, in the long dry season. Men missing skin, driven by whips and not hope.
Gwindor, who sits beside her—both their backs to the southwest wall, all their ears to the guardhouse, which is near—hates the newcomer.
Gwindor does not trust easily, and though he plays close-lipped, she knows he has his reasons, this time.
Still—she is not so certain. She no longer feels pain in her mouth, no longer notices even the twisted stiffness, but she still touches her stitched features when she thinks.
She is thinking.
He breaks the silence that has fallen. They don’t have time for silence, during their nightly meetings.
“Your plan working, then?”
“I’ve scared them off, yes,” she answers. “Wonders that a daub of red paint can do.”
Gwindor snorts. “When it’s put on right.”
She scratches the brow above her empty eye-socket. “This new crop of overs is a bad one.”
“They’re all bad,” Gwindor snaps, then considers. “You’re right. These’ve laid hands on the younger ones, this time. We can’t—”
She wishes they would lay hands on no women. She wishes that it did not fall to her to ravage hair and smear mud and paint sores in the hopes of creating unassailable ugliness. She wishes—
Papai?
We are sailors, my love. We were meant to be free, and at the same time, know always where we go.
Maker of maps—
Your daughter makes maps, and does so as beautifully as her eyes shine in her face. A wonder, sir! A proper wonder.
(He does not speak, the man who was sent to subdue her. He does not speak, but his knife flashes in his hand, and he smiles, as he carves one forever into her—)
“Days like this, I can’t bear it,” Gwindor says. “What do we even have to say for each other? What have you to tell me?”
“I don’t know. The girls have been left alone, these last few days.”
“Sores can’t last endlessly. Men’ll get desperate.”
They need a plan. This is the solution that never comes: to him, the soldier-slave, and to her, the witch whom the women hide behind, whom the men turn from in disgust.
“We are desperate,” she answers softly, and at last.
Gwindor sighs down to his bones.
The night rises.