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had not brought food at regular intervals, if they had not interrupted to fetch women and boys for the lord’s amusement... who could say? There had been a garden, once, where the women of the Drujani prince might disport themselves-now it was barred, the rich soil tilled with salt, dead and barren, and strong timbers blocked the door, shutting out any glimpse of sky. The windows were shuttered. Day, night... it mattered naught. We lived here by lamplight, and the Mahrkagir’s whim.
    And I sang the songs of my captivity, the songs with which I had once bought passage across the deadly Strait, to a Skaldi lad, blood of my enemies, who was unmanned by the man to whom I’d prevailed upon Joscelin to sell me.
    Truly, ’twas strange.
    At the carpeted island of the Jebeans and Nubians, I paused. The tall woman who was chiefest among them stared up at me, hostile and demanding. A frayed cloth of intricate pattern sheathed her body, and she wore long pins of ivory thrust in her black woolen hair.
    “Selam,” I said respectfully, greeting her in Jeb’ez, bowing with my palms together.
    She stared a minute longer, then laughed long and hard, saying something I could not understand to the others. “You think to speak Jeb’ez?” she asked me, then, in rude argot.
    “Yequit’a,” I said; “excuse me,” adding in my best grasp of zenyan, “Only a little. I would learn more if you teach me.”
    All of them laughed at that, and not kindly. “You have opium?” asked the tall woman, reclining on her couch. “Gems? Kumis? Sweetmeats, maybe?”
    “No.” I shook my head. “Forgive me, Fedabin,” I said, according her the title the scroll granted to the Queen of Saba, ‘wise woman’. “I will not bother you.”
    “Wait.” Her voice stopped me as I turned to leave. I stood as she regarded me, a trace of curiosity emerging in her mask of indifference. “Why do you wish to know this, little one? You come here to die, gebanum? Understand? It is only when that matters, and how much you suffer in between.”
    “I understand, Fedabin.” I inclined my head to her. “I would still learn.”
    Another of the women leaned over, whispering to the tall one; Kaneka, she called her. Kaneka listened with half-lidded eyes, then nodded, swinging herself upright. “Safiya has a thought,” she announced. “For your courtesy, I make you a gift, a gift of knowledge.” With one hand, she opened a woven pouch strung on a thong about her neck, shaking three unusual dice into her other palm. “You kneel, there,” she said, pointing to the carpet. “And learn.”
    I knelt waiting. With great ceremony, one of the women brought out a tray of fine-combed sand, shaking it carefully until it was smooth, setting it down before me. Kaneka knelt opposite, her face as impassive as a warrior’s, drawing a small circle in the sand with one finger.
    “Days,” she said, and drew another, larger, to enclose it. “Weeks.” Glancing at me to make certain I understood, she drew the outermost concentric circle. “Months.” Taking my wrist, she turned my hand over and placed the dice in it. “Hold them until they take on your heat.”
    The dice were amber, six-pointed, with eight facing sides, each one etched with a number of dots. I closed my hand on them. The Jebeans and Nubians had drawn around, watching intently; even a few other women had gathered.
    “You see!” Kaneka raised her voice, addressing them. “In Daršanga, Death is a man, and Lord Death is always waiting here in the zenana . How long will he wait to summon you to his bedchamber? How eager is he to plant his iron rod inside you? If it be three days, will it be five weeks until he summons you again? If it be five weeks, will it be two months? It is,” she said, looking at me once more, “the only question that matters.”
    Clutched in my palm, the octohedral dice had grown warm. I gave them to her. Kaneka shook them in cupped hands over the tray, muttering a lengthy prayer in Jeb’ez. Opening both hands with a flourish, she cast the dice onto the sand.
    Flawed amber glinted dully in the lamplight as they fell, one by one, within the concentric rings, forming a line as straight as an arrow-each face showing a single dot.
    The taste of fear flooded my mouth.
    Someone gasped; a number of women drew back. Kaneka stared at me, the whites of her eyes showing yellow around her dark irises. “You are marked for Death, little one. And soon.”
    I gazed at the unwinking line