Brocade Woman

  — Brocade Woman —

  She wove sorrow into every piece. She pulled on knotted strings to lift some warp threads above others, passed a shuttle and its weft through the tent, and beat the thread home. Her calloused fingers chose a new set of strings from among the scores before her. Pull, shuttle, beat, check. She started work as soon as the day was bright enough to see by and ended with the dark. It was hard to say if winters were worse or better than summers. The days were shorter, and so were her labors. But the nights were colder, and her dreams were longer.

  She had been free once. She couldn't remember it well, but she remembered the feeling of it. Every tomorrow was an adventure. Wind and rain held wonders. She remembered running under blue skies, climbing trees, and splashing in water. She had known the salty tang of ocean air and the hands of someone who loved her. By Olyon, she had been young then! Sometimes, she dreamed of running. Just running. Light and fast, she could go anywhere. Then she would wake up and remember: she hadn't run in years.

  Master Hewdem put her on the biggest loom with the best light because her pieces sold for the most money. Not that she ever saw a copper bit of it. Men had come and taken her away as a debt slave. She had never touched money in her life, yet somehow, she owed them. Her parents were nowhere to be found, and she was taken into hand by rough and dirty men. As she got older and met other "indebted" girls like her, she slowly accepted the truth. Her parents either sold her or died trying to save her. Even if she could remember where home was, she had no family worth going home to. She cleaned in a big house. She worked and worked to pay her debts, but never did a coin pass through her hands. The debt was a lie, but the shackle around her ankle was real.

  Master Hewdem always said, "Put some joy into it!". But how could she? Where was the joy she was supposed to weave? She had said that to him once. It earned her a beating and too many nights in his bed where he "gave her something to be joyful about." Now her belly was growing, sapping her strength and dulling her mind. For now, it kept the men away from her. But, the baby could also be the end of her.

  The Hyskos debt-slavers sold her to wild desert savages called Satomen. She endured their "engagement" ritual. One man hurt her while a succession of others offered to protect her. All she had to do was agree to marry one. Eventually, she chose the biggest man with the most scars. However awful he was, he might keep the others at bay. She had seen what happened to girls who got passed around too much. The more their value decreased, the more brutally they were treated. All things considered, her "husband" wasn't terrible. He demanded she do everything: cook, clean, harvest from the garden, service him at night, and learn to weave. As long as she pretended to be his willing wife, he spoke gently to her. Some nights, she could almost believe the lie.

  In spite of her nightly duties, she was never pregnant in Satoma. Among the garden's crops were herbs to quash a woman's fertility, harvested in great quantity and used by most of them. Satomen kept women, but they didn't want families. She drank the herbs, served her husband, and learned her new craft. Sometimes, on nights when he was away, she stood on the roof of her husband's house and thought of leaving. Distance and desert served as well as any shackles could.

  Once a year, the men formed a trading party. They took all the woven works from the past year to Hyskos and traded them for dyes, goods, and new women. On the years her husband went, she hoped and dreaded he would come home with a new wife. If he did, she might be sent to live together with the other discarded wives who spent the remainder of their lives tending the garden, turning fiber into thread and thread into woven cloth, all with minimal interference from the men. But first, she would have to train the new, younger wife to bear the life she was leaving behind. You are the new me. I am what you will become.

  Flowers bloomed in the cloth before her, larger than life, in a grand sweep of asymmetric shapes and subtle shades that almost lived. Even here, sorrow crept into her work, marring perfect stems and leaves with the first faint signs of age. How could it not? A bloom was the beginning of the end. Flowers always died.

  Kashmar attacked Satoma while their men were away for their yearly trade with Hyskos. The remaining men, so brave in their boasts and sworn to protect their wives, fled the garden and didn't bring a single woman with them. The few who didn't run were old or lame, and they died quickly. Suddenly, she was in shackles again, as was every woman of Satoma, waiting for the soldiers to decide their fate. She lingered there for weeks, weaving on the smallest loom and waiting. One day, all the women were sold in an auction. The youngest went to Hyskos, while the weavers went to Kashmar. She never learned what became of the rest, because she was loaded onto a train car the moment coins changed hands. Weavers were valuable as slaves, and Master Hewdem wanted them working as soon as possible. He bought their looms and other equipment for that purpose, even the greatest brocade loom.

  A bell sounded. She was allowed a break. Two minutes. Like all the other weavers in the room, she stood and stretched her back. Her window offered a different view than her prison in Satoma. The distances were nearly as vast, but there were more plants here. Maybe the rumors were true, and Master Hewdem built his workshop in a remote village because holding slaves was illegal in Kashmar. Laws didn't matter any more than debt. What mattered was the ring of bronze around her ankle, the men who escorted her between loom and dormitory, and the uncharted distances around her.

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  Curiosity rippled through the room at sounds from outside. Men and appalons. A gurantor train. Master Hewdem's voice, spoken in a tone of respect she hadn't heard before.

  "What's happening?" called one of the women.

  "There are men outside," said a weaver whose loom was near a window with a good view of the road. She strained at her chain to get the best angle. "Satomen!" Then she shouted with excitement. "No, they're Calique! Lots of Calique, here in Kashmar!"

  She had heard of Calique. They were like Satomen in their dress but different in every other way. Some weavers used to be Calique before they were captured by Satomen and forced to marry. Those few women were insufferable, always going on about how much better their gardens were, how much they'd had to eat, how free they'd been as if that could make their new situation any better.

  "I see Pashtuk. Bitter Spring. Emerald Pool. Saphir. And others. It's a war party!" She was hopping on one foot and straining against the machine that shackled her. "There's red and yellow. Quick, who is red and yellow?" No one recognized the colors, but the room was in a stir. The two-minute rest period was over, and not a single shuttle was thrown. The work had stopped. Their chatter swelled.

  Master Hewdem's voice got louder and more indignant. They heard another man very clearly. "It was legal to buy them in the South. It was illegal to bring them here." The workshop door broke open, and Hewdem's ungainly body crashed through it to land heavily on the floor.

  As one, the weavers sat and bowed their heads. That's what they always did when the Master entered the room. They stayed that way until he left or gave them some other instruction. This time, they watched him from the corners of their eyes as a tawny-maned older man, a Kashmari prince in a black cape trimmed with gold, stepped through the ruined door and over Hewdem's prone form, into the workshop.

  Men followed him. A few were soldiers. The rest wore desert robes, the thicker, layered kinds meant for winter, eyes and lips painted in their gardens' colors. There were women, too, strange ones. Most were dressed and armed like men. One wore church robes and a stole, yet she had bright ruby paint over her eyes and shimmering gold on her lips. Like the rest of them, the priestess was armed for war.

  "I am Prince Sejman, fifth in rank, Minister of the Treasury. By decree of Tyrant Gobert, you are free and given into the care of Iraj, Maul of Pashtuk. He will ensure your return home. For those of you without homes, he will find suitable places for you. Congratulations!"

  The room was stunned into silence. Free? Just like that? Surely not! The prince looked down at his feet, where Hewdem had assumed a position on both knees, head pressed to the floor. "My Lord … "

  "Be quiet, or you will lose your tongue."

  Calique spread out around the room and started removing shackles. The first weaver to leave picked up a stray shuttle in passing and heaved it at the Master. Sejman must have been a very wise prince indeed, because he took two steps back just before every weaver, wherever they sat in the workshop, seized all the shuttles within reach and threw them at Hewdem. A rain of wood flew at the workshop owner, trailing all colors of threads. Some weavers, once released from their looms, kicked him as they passed, then offered homage to the prince.

  Alamina could only watch. New violence meant the possibility of new owners. It would mean nothing to her. Things never got better.

  "Did you make this?"

  The Calique introduced as Iraj was kneeling next to her, offering something in his hand. It was a sash she'd woven in between the capture of Satoma and their sale to Hewdem. Fleeing hunters. Dead children. Women captured by men, weeping. "Yes, that's one of mine."

  "What's your name?"

  Nobody had called her by a name in months. She was a number, "hey you", "brocade woman", or when Master Hewdem was feeling good about his latest sale, "my best asset".

  "Alamina." It came out in a whisper, not daring to hope for anything from this conversation. "When I had a name, it was Alamina."

  Someone handed Iraj the key, and he bent to remove her shackle. She sat very still. Her skin was swollen under, puffy with infection, stuck to the metal. Iraj made a signal to the priestess.

  "Where is home, Alamina?"

  She didn't know. Even if she did, who would be there for her? A pair of corpses, or the parents who sold her? Freedom was a joke. Where was she supposed to go, with no money and no home? "I don't have one."

  "I see."

  Iraj stood aside while the warrior priestess looked her over. She said her name was Hypha.

  "May I heal you?"

  "You people can do whatever you want. You're the winners here."

  "That's true," she smiled. She was a beautiful priestess, and so very young. Her hands were uncommonly warm. Wherever she touched Alamina, her pain went away.

  She had forgotten how many places hurt. Her ankle. Her back. Her knees. Right shoulder. Left elbow. Every joint in her fingers. By the end, she was leaning on the healer, faint from relief, her face buried in the clean skin of her neck.

  "If you don't have a home, then we'll make one for you," Iraj told her. "You can weave as you like, or not at all. There will be plenty of food. No man can touch you without your permission. And the Calique love children. If you don't want this little one, they'll be happy to raise him. If you don't like it there, you can find another garden. Or go to another country."

  "Why would you do this? What are we to you?"

  "We're Calique. We hate to see anyone in chains. You're an amazing brocade weaver, and skill like that commands deep respect with my people. Also, I have this friend who hates slavery as much as any Calique but, for him, arranging a scene like this is barely any trouble. It's a righteous thing to do, so he does it."

  He handed her a leaf-wrapped packet slightly larger than her palm. "These are just trail rations, but it's food. You can have as many of these as you want. We'll have a proper meal later today."

  The billet was chewy, sweet, spicy, and more food than she had had at one time since the day Kashmar slashed its way into her lousy life. Alamina wolfed it down as she followed the other weavers outside, past the trembling Hewdem. She paused by where he still knelt, watched over by the scornful prince.

  The food and healing brought back a little of her fire. She kicked him with her bare foot, hard. "You smell like a pig. You rut like a pig." She kicked him again, even harder, causing him to yelp and whine. "You squeal like a pig." She ignored the prince and passed into the yard. The gurantor car was a proper passenger vehicle, not an open wagon. It was warm inside, and it rocked gently as the beast pulled them. She sat close among her fellow weavers, ate a second ration (savory and a little salty), and fell into a deep sleep.