THE WORTH OF A SHELL
Excerpt
M.C.A. Hogarth



                When I was sent from House Mated for the second to last time in my life, it was to attend the Transactions Fair. I had not been tasked to find any specific addition for our Household, but the Fair transpired rarely and mingled entertainment with duty so pleasantly that I considered it more of a holiday. I hadn't had a holiday in longer than I could remember... as the kaña-befidzu reminded me.
                "But there is work to be done here," I said.
                "No work that cannot wait," Kerdil replied from her comfortable slump on a nest of pillows. I had only just helped arrange her there, tail and mane brushed and a lotion worked into her distended belly. "It has been long since we've had a fair. Perhaps you'll find us a new anadi, or a sturdy eperu to supplement the House."
                "We don't need more workers," I said. "And you are close to your time. I want to be here when you have your baby."
                "To try your new technique on me," she said.
                "Only if you seem to need it," I said, bringing her a bowl of cool water. "Your child's delivery to House Lized will feed us all for a season... and several more Houses are waiting for this evidence of your quality. Can you blame me for worrying?"
                "You would worry even if the Trinity came down to House Mated and said, 'All will be well,'" she said with a laugh.
                I folded my arms.
                "You know you would," she said, and beamed at me until I reluctantly chuffed a laugh. She continued, "I will be fine and you need the holiday. Go, ke Thenet."
                That House Mated still had an anadi kaña capable of calling me "honored Thenet" was part of the reason I wore a gold ring in my tufted ear. No anadi guardian had ever been as deft with the females as I was. Some said our gods were cruel for taking the minds of our breeders under duress, but to me it was simply the way of things. We did what we could to prevent the inevitable, but we accepted the inevitable with grace: that was the lot of the Jokka.
                Kerdil was my greatest accomplishment: all Houses had a kaña, an anadi they considered the most valuable when bred, an anadi whose breeding contract won them more shell than any other. But only a rare House had a kaña-befidzu, an anadi of such stamina and grace that she retained her mental acuity even after several pregnancies. Often the only way to ensure such an anadi's survival was to have a jarana, an anadi-guardian of ability, blessed by the Trinity.
                In House Mated, that was me. This was Kerdil's second pregnancy and it was of paramount importance that she remained supple in mind and body... particularly since as a House, Mated made much of its shell on breeding contracts. House Mated hadn't even bought her until I'd demonstrated my competence with anadi of lesser quality. Kerdil had proved her worth by having her first child without event—that child had been sent to the House that had sold her as compensation for her permanent contract. This new child would be the first we'd sell. I didn't want to leave her. But it was also mine to obey.
                "Go," she said... and as usual, I could deny her little. I packed my pouch and left for the fair.


                What could I say about a Transactions Fair to one who has never seen one? The whole of the town square had been commandeered for the platforms each employee of the House of Transactions would use to auction off the contracts—every kind of contract, even. Contracts for breeding for the most biddable of anadi. Contracts for employment for the most deft of emodo, the males with their clever hands and more clever talents. Contracts for lifetime employment for the most powerful of eperu, the neuters like me who do most of the work of the House. In their wisdom, the three gods of the Trinity separated us thus: the fragile anadi who gave their minds to bear children; the dexterous emodo whose minds retained enough elasticity to live lives of indefinite intelligence so long as they marshaled their strength; and the near-indestructible eperu, the neuters who plow and plant and build and hunt. We live outside the breeder's cycle, and so avoid the mind-death.
                Which is not to say we never touch that cycle... for also in their wisdom, the Trinity gave us two chances to experience the lives of the other sexes. At our first puberty and at our second we had a chance to Turn. Not all of us do, of course. I didn't. It was not a matter of choice; even if it had been, I'm not sure I would have taken it. I was merely eperu, and had been all my life: marishet-eperu, we called that. "Three times the same." Three times the same, for three gods, made me one of the most resilient members of our species. I had never touched the breeder's cycle, and gods willing I was as far from the possibility of mind-death as any Jokkad could hope to be.
                Spring's delicate shadows and cooling breeze made a perfect setting for the fair. I walked past the Houses of our town, het Serean, at a more leisurely pace than those rushing to man booths or help with the set-up of platforms. By the time I arrived, several auctions were already in progress. I spotted many of the het's most important members mingling in the crowds as well as many strangers: Jokka rarely traveled, but fairs of this size compelled some to brave the unfriendly terrain between towns in search of new blood.
                "Hail the Mated jarana!" a voice called. I turned and found an emodo strolling my way, showing off coarse fangs in a grin.
                "Ke Therun," I said with a laugh. "I should have known you would be about."
                "Of course," he said. "You know I need more people. Speaking of which, you wouldn't happen to be shaking loose from Mated any time soon, would you?"
                "No," I said. "I'm happy where I am, and well you know it." He sighed. "Well, if you will not put your formidable skills to work for me in my House, at least come with me to oversee the anadi they're selling today. Tell me which I should buy and I'll buy her."
                I canted a brow at him, but he was in earnest. No surprise, perhaps. Therun was the Head-in-Training of House Sikkul and for a while Sikkul had courted my contract. Mated refused to release me; they knew quality when they saw it. For Therun to ask after me was hopeless but it gave me a touch of a white blush, to know I was still sought.
                "I'll be glad to give you my best," I said.
                "—excellent!"
                "Unless I see someone I want for Mated instead," I finished. "Then you'll have to out-bid me."
                He laughed. "Fair words. They have a separate stage for permanent contracts. This way."
                I followed Therun toward the other side of the fair, passing the crowds accumulated around the emodo and eperu stages. As an anadi-guardian I could bid for eperu and emodo employment contracts on behalf of Mated but I rarely did. My expertise was in females, and the fair had brought them in force. While breeding contracts were negotiated continuously between Houses, full sales of anadi happened rarely, and the fair was a good time to buy. There was already a female on the stage when Therun and I joined the crowd.
                "Here we have Salida Metzi-eperu," the Transactions employee was saying. "She began as eperu, remained eperu in her first Turning and only just became female. As you can see, she has the strong body of a neuter, and having been born with a neuter's intelligence she will surely pass it on to any of her children." On the stool in the center of the stage, the anadi looked bored—still smart enough for that, then. She'd perk up once the bidding started. Who could be bored listening to people fight for the privilege of buying you?
                "Should I?" Therun asked.
                I eyed the anadi. "No."
                "Just like that," he said. "No reasons, no explanation, nothing? Surely a female from a twice-neuter would last longer..."
                "She will give you trouble," I said. "Few Jokka who are neuter for so much of their lives like being displaced to the life of a female. I would only suggest it if you were willing to let her assist the jarana, or if you were to give her some other duty that would help her feel useful."
                "Useful beyond bearing children," Therun said.
                "Not all Jokka understand the value of the anadi role," I said. "Save your shell for someone who looks anxious and curious."
                He harrumphed but I could tell he was pleased. Well and again, so was I—this was my work.
                We watched a succession of anadi cross the stage. Over some I shook my head—others, I nodded and Therun bid, though he did not win.
                "You're not even trying," I said after he lost the fourth.
                "No," he admitted. "We need people but it would be cheaper just to make the purchase at Transactions after the fair. There's too much competition here."
                "You might not find some of these anadi after the fair," I said.
                "And if you tell me there's one I absolutely must have, I will buy her," he said. "But you have only made the mildest of approving noises so far. I won't spend shell on anything less than your fascination."
                I laughed. "Good enough. But I need sustenance to continue my evaluations."
                "Then I shall buy you a roll. Come! The anadi will keep."
                So he bought me a roll stuffed with the tender flesh of forest nibblers, the steam carrying the green, piquant scent of herbs to my nostrils, and we ate and we laughed and we watched the crowd, pointing out the best-dressed or the most impressive tails or the most intriguing personalities. As the wind tugged my forelock over my sloped nose and cooled the sweat from my softly-scaled skin, I realized the kaña-befidzu had been right: I'd needed this time away from the House.
                "Back to the stage," Therun said when we'd finished off our third pastry.
                "Back to the stage," I agreed.
                We chatted companionably as the Transactions emodo auctioned off several more contracts. I enjoyed Therun's company; truth be told, I enjoyed any emodo's company. I spent so much time among anadi that the contrast was refreshing.
                But I was not so deep into that enjoyment that I could not be distracted by a flash of gold.
                "Here's a true prize," the emodo on stage declared. "This is Dlane Ashoi-anadi, already a kaña in Ashoi. She's ready to be yours! Shall we start the bidding at one hundred shell?"
                If there was perfection among Jokka, it would be hard to quantify: we are so varied, between our three sexes and our Turning between them, and every Turning leaving its mark. But this anadi had never been anything but anadi, not with those broad hips and slim shoulders. She had a noble face and tufted ears longer than any I'd seen, a rich mane of flame-gold to match her arm and foot ruffs, and an exquisitely long tail. Across scales so fine I couldn't see them even with my hunter's eyes, brazen gold spirals cut through the clouds that comprised the hue we name shekul—a gray built out of a thousand gossamer pale colors, so that each was there for the eye to see, but each subordinate to a greater whole.
                Her beauty was astonishing, like cold water on a summer afternoon... but I could see instantly why she was being sold. Many of the marishet-anadi are tractable, the sweetest and most gentle of our species. But occasionally, the Brightness uses such a three-times-the-same female to reincarnate herself, and nothing is less tractable than a goddess.
                "Oh my," Therun said. "I should buy her."
                "Only if you have a strong hand," I said. "She'll make you beautiful and intelligent children but you should pray they all grow up emodo and eperu."
                "You're saying she's not happy?" he said. "I could make her happy."
                "No one could make her happy," I said.
                "All that from seeing her on a stage from over four people's heads?" Therun asked. "Are you sure?" His voice dropped. "I've never seen anything like her."
                "And you never will again, I wager," I said. "If you love adventure, Therun... buy her. But it will be adventure."
                "Worth it, though," he murmured.
                I looked on Dlane Ashoi-anadi and knew better. She would be nothing but trouble.
                "Two hundred shell!" Therun called over the crowd.
                Contract auctions were far more fun when someone you knew was bidding. My ears flipped this way and that to track the offers. The bid was up to six hundred shell when I chanced to look at the anadi.
                There are days when the sun seethes. On those killing days, even the sturdiest of eperu remain inside—when it chooses, the sun delivers the mind-death with the swiftness of a blink.
                The anadi on stage was seething like the Brightness in the sky.
                "One thousand shell!" Therun shouted from beside me, spreading a complete, awed silence until someone nearby said, "Gods in the firmament." Further from us, someone left the crowd completely—I caught only a glimpse of gray and black. I couldn't blame him for leaving. There would be many more anadi after this one, but none of such astonishing quality. I have seen many females in my life and yet the image of her remained on the inside of my eyes, like a sun-spot.
                "One thousand shell!" the emodo on stage exclaimed, pressing a hand to his chest as if to steady himself. "One thousand shell for the lifetime contract for this most amazing anadi kaña. Do I hear more?"
                You could hear the crowd breathing, but no one offered.
                "Sold to—" the emodo paused, and Therun thrust his House token into the air. "—House Sikkul, for one thousand shell! Congratulations, ke emodo."
                Therun bounced on his heels. "That's all I had. But worth it! After the Head of Household sees that anadi, he will settle for nothing less. No one, seeing her, would settle for less."
                "I have no doubt," I said.


                After seeing Therun off I wandered the fair until my rumpled shadow on the ground stretched long and filmy purple. I stopped at the eperu stage to see what price my fellow neuters were asking for their employment contracts, browsed the craft display the emodo used to entice Houses to buy their services... in truth, I had a wonderful time. When I set my feet on the path home I was sated with the sights and sounds of other Jokka.
                House Mated's clay walls served more as a boundary for the grazing midena than as a deterrent to other Jokka. I passed through the gate, stopping to pet a few of the milk-beasts, before heading around the edge of the main building toward the anadi caverns. The spear racks on the eastern side of the main building had been emptied—the other eperu were out hunting, then. I was sorry I'd missed them. I loved to care-take the anadi but my duties afforded me little excitement, and definitely nothing comparable to the exhilaration of the hunt, to working in concert with the other eperu to bring down enough game to feed us. I was Mated's sole jarana and I spent my days surrounded with females, keeping them as calm, cool and comfortable as possible in their sanctuary beneath the earth.
                It is a place of peace. Perhaps that was why stepping down the ladder and being assaulted by multiple shrieks loosened my grip and dumped me onto my tail on the ground.
                "Ke Thenet, ke Thenet!" Mila said, leaping on me. "It's Kerdil! The baby is dying! We sent someone to the House but all the eperu are gone, even the healer!"
                "Take me to her," I said.
                Kerdil writhed on the nest where I'd left her, issuing an unbroken series of whimpers that lifted the hair along my back. I set my hand on her belly but that did not still her cries or her twitching. The pain had taken quick-witted Kerdil far from us for her to lose her sense of time and place. For the first time in my life true fear gripped my innards and twisted, and I swallowed back the bile that flooded my mouth. Now was not the time.
                Beneath my palm, the skin rippled. "How do you know the baby is dead?" I asked.
                "Kerdil said so before she stopped speaking," the anadi at my side said. "She said to find the healer."
                The healer always goes on the hunt. We rarely need the healer on the hunt, but when we do we need the healer immediately. There is no replacement for a healer... and if there is a Jokkad who costs more to employ, I have not met it yet. Mated was not rich enough to have more than one. "We'll have to make do ourselves, then," I said. "Bring me water, a lot of water, warm. And cloths. We'll do as we did with Duli."
                Mila scurried away, leaving me to hold Kerdil down and pray to the Brightness not to take the baby and its dam. I counted my breaths. I counted Kerdil's. I braided my arm tufts. The water arrived too slowly, but I washed my hands, checked the braids and did as only healers did.
                "What do you feel?" Mila asked. I'd tasked her with keeping Kerdil from thrashing, more to make her feel useful than out of any hope she'd keep Kerdil down.
                Gods help us, but the birth scarf wasn't just tangled around the baby, it had wrapped around its slender face. I couldn't feel it kicking. By this stage in pregnancy, the scarf should be a gossamer fraction of its thicker, newer self; that it remained so heavy emptied my teeth with fear. Not just that, but the flesh near the mouth of the womb had a sickening, bubbled texture, as if part of it had already separated from Kerdil's body... something that was only supposed to happen after the baby had been delivered. I gritted my back teeth and reached further in, trying to locate the stretchy-soft connection between the birth scarf and Kerdil's womb. Our only chance to save the baby involved pulling it into this world where it could breathe before the womb collapsed. It was probably Kerdil's only chance as well.
                "She's not moving as much!" Mila reported.
                I grunted, hoping that meant Kerdil had decided to save her strength. Her womb had a powerful mouth and the birth channel's walls were slightly too small for my arm to comfortably pass—my fingers began to tingle, presaging a loss of sensation that would bode poorly for both baby and dam.
                "Ke Thenet? Something's wrong."
                "I know that!" I said, fighting fear and frustration. Was that it? If I tore the wrong membrane, I'd kill them both.
                "Quickly, ke Thenet!"
                "I'm trying—" I said and grimaced as Kerdil's body clamped on my arm and squeezed. Bright spots flashed before my eyes.
                This. This was the scarf's connection point. It had to be. I forced my claws from my fingertips and slashed, then groped until I found a tiny foot. When Kerdil let go of my arm, I tugged.
                An anadi giving birth attracts the attention of the mind-death, and I'd seen more than one gruesome depiction of a dark shadow waiting over the body of a pregnant female with long claws and dripping mouth. When Duli, another female, had begun the birthing, I'd slipped my hand inside and pulled the baby out instead of letting her labor for hours. Duli and the newborn had been fine and the House had been torn between scandal and high praise. It was not for the jarana to do the healer's duties, not just because of the employment contract violation, but because jarana never had the long, highly specialized training of a healer. But I had and in doing perhaps saved some of Duli's already reduced intelligence.
                But Duli was not Kerdil, kaña-befidzu and prize of House Mated.
                Kerdil fought me for the baby. I pulled, stopping when her contractions threatened to cut all feeling from my arm. It was taking too long.
                "Ke Thenet—"
                "Not now!" I growled.
                Ages later I had a baby in my arms, one that even divested of its choking birth scarf did not breathe, cry or open its eyes. I could not put it down, even so, as I edged around the nest to check on its dam.
                Kerdil's open eyes met mine and in them I saw no laughter, no exhaustion, no knowledge... no self.
                I sat hard beside the nest.
                "It was inevitable, ke eperu," said Mila beside me, patting my clean arm. "We should be glad she survived it at all."
                The female did not understand, as females so rarely did. I had just overseen the death of the kaña-befidzu's first child-for-contract... and the delivery of that most valuable anadi's mind into the Void. In the barest fraction of a day I had destroyed House Mated's chiefest source of wealth, the source it had saved for, had bought only after assessing my abilities and judging me talented enough to maintain her. That the House had come to love her gentle nature, her way with words, her wisdom only made my crime worse. I had killed them both.
                I slumped against Kerdil. When she reached for her stillborn in an attempt to nurse it, I began to weep.


                The Head of Household and the pefna-eperu found me thus, my body folded over Kerdil's. The healer pulled me away from the anadi so it could examine her. I watched, listless, chafing flakes of dried birth fluids from my arm. My soul aged most of my life's remainder as I waited for the healer's inevitable pronouncement.
                "She was taken," the eperu said at last, straightening.
                "And the baby?" Polen, the Head of Household asked.
                "Needs the cleansing fire," the healer said, tucking it into a bundle. "I am sorry, ke Polen."
                "She's really gone," Makked said. As the pefna-eperu, it was charged with the management of the House's workforce... but even as busy as that kept it, Makked had always found time to stop into the caverns for a few bantered words with Kerdil.
                "Yes," the healer said.
                "Sometimes they come back," Makked said, hoping.
                "Not this time," the healer said, and took the baby up the ladder.
                The Head of Household and pefna turned to me.
                "What happened here?" Polen asked. It did not know enough yet to be angry, or perhaps the shock of the House's shift in fortunes had turned anger away at the door. No matter. I would fix that.
                "I killed her," I said.
                Polen stepped toward me, just one single step, and in it was all the menace I could have desired. "You did what thing? Say again, Thenet."
                "I killed her," I said, my voice raspy, as if I'd been screaming for hours without actually making noise. A considerate thing, that. "I was away at the fair. By the time I returned, it was already too late. And when I tried desperate measures, those measures killed the baby and took Kerdil from us. It was my doing. It was my fault. I let her send me away when I knew how close she was."
                "And if you had been here?" Makked asked.
                "We might have lost the child anyway," I said, "but we would still have Kerdil."
                "You know this," Polen said.
                I touched my hand to my forehead, my breastbone, my pelvis. "In all my soul, I know it. I killed her. Void take me, but I... I delivered her to the mind-death."
                Surprise traveled over Makked's face, made it hesitate a little too long. Hobbled thus it could not stop Polen from lunging toward me, bashing me against the wall of the cavern. The larger, heavier emodo ground me against the walls, so infuriated he didn't even think to simply open my throat with his claws. Instead he choked me, the point of his shoulder thrust into the base of my throat. The violent scrape and wheeze of the struggle brought squeals of fear from the anadi.
                "Not here," I hissed around my breaking voice. "Not where they might hear and be frightened. Kill me elsewhere."
                Polen released me so abruptly I fell the last few hands to the ground. As I gasped around my aching chest, he stepped back on legs that trembled and feet-hands that opened and closed against the ground, showing flashes of claw. Rage made him a better cloak than shock, and I deserved no better than rage and death. I, guardian of the anadi and care-keeper of the kaña, I, whose only duties involved maintaining the safety, the lives and the minds of the fragile anadi... I had failed.
                "No," Polen said. "I will not kill you."
                "Please, ke emodo," I whispered, closing my eyes. The bruises beneath my skin bled white, but they would not kill me as I so justly deserved. "I have earned it."
                He did not speak. In my mind I could only see Kerdil's vacant eyes, devoid of soul. "If you send me to the Void, perhaps He will spare any future anadi of Mated."
                A bag struck me on the side.
                "The future anadi of Mated are no longer your concern," he said. "Pack. I am sending you away."
                "Ke emodo?" I asked. What fate was this? Neither dead nor forgiven, but something other?
                "Leave the het and never return," he said. "If I ever see your face again, I will take a knife to it." To Makked, curtly, "Have three of the emodo see this creature off my grounds."
                "As you wish," Makked said.
                "What is he doing?" I cried, wheezing as the pefna helped me to my feet. "Why doesn't he just kill me?"
                "He's done worse," the pefna said without emotion. It did not meet my eyes. "He's set you loose."
                "But where will I go?" I asked.
                "I don't think there will be much left of you to go anywhere," Makked said.
                I fervently hoped it was right. What was exile into the wilds where no Jokka lived? What good was it to live with this guilt on my soul? Better to die and try again. Better to die and serve the World than to stagger on in search of meaning.


                So it was that my soul had already lain meekly down to die when the three males dragged me from Mated and down the grass-tangled path toward the perimeter of the het. The force of their grips would compound the bruises beneath my softly scaled skin, but that was only a prelude. They knew the deed that had seen me down this path—they knew it, and the anger that rode them would not let them see me off het Serean's lands alive.
                I yearned for a quick death.
                When the dark brown brick of the furthest House had been obscured by the undergrowth of the nearby slopes, one of them tossed my belongings aside and the other two slammed me to the ground. I curled there, eyes closed and ears pressed hard to my skull.
                "It is for the healers to heal, not the jarana," one of the males said. "Perhaps some other eperu will pretend at being a healer when they come upon you and you will get what you deserve." And then he lifted his clawed foot and the beating began.
                I endured, patient, stoic. I waited for the Void to render His ultimate judgment on my heinous crime. Milky blood gushed from my nostrils.
                "Stop!"
                I allowed a crack of light into my eyes. Lifting my head proved more difficult than I'd anticipated. It felt heavy, hard to stabilize. I tried to see the owner of the voice—either female or an extremely effeminate neuter's, perhaps one only just Turned... but the sun shone in my eyes. I squinted.
                Two of the Mated males turned their attention to this intruder.
                "Who are you?"
                "Stop beating it!"
                One of the males pointed back at me. "It has earned this. What we do is the way of things."
                "Maybe the way is wrong."
                I could barely believe the voice: wrong? The way of things wrong? How could the stranger say so with such conviction, who didn't even know what I'd done?
                "Leave it alone."
                "No."
                All three males turned from me, blocking my view of my would-be savior. I assessed my condition: bruised and gashed in too many places.
                "Leave it alone," the voice said again, and this time I was certain it was an anadi's... and gods save me, the moment I decided so a directive stronger than pain rolled me onto my hip. I reached for the bag the male had hurled from me and slipped my hand inside. "Pack," Polen had said and mechanically I'd done so, everything I owned fitting into one bag. Everything, including my weapons.
                "What are you doing out in the day?" one of the emodo said, leaning forward. "You should be home, resting."
                "We should escort her home once we're done with this offal," the second said.
                "Don't touch me!"
                The hafts of the throwing claws slid against my palm, familiar, reassuring. With weak jerks of my wrist, I coaxed three of them from their sheaths and twisted to face the males. I waited, ignoring the runnel of blood from my nose. I waited for the Moment. When the three males charged the owner of the voice, it was trivial to slip sideways into the Moment, slip between it and send the claws whistling, one-two-three. Two into two necks, killing instantly, one into the lower back, a slower death, but still certain.
                The owner of the voice stood in a mandorla of light. As she walked closer I could see her shape, a figure that defied description save only that even the Brightness would have been proud to have such a shell. I could not see her face or her colors. She crouched down and leaned toward me, touched my face, and then the Void came for me, soft-footed, wrapped in black spots. He hovered there, reached for my hand.
                "No, no! You can't faint," the voice said, brushing away the Void. A more tangible hand curled into the ruffs at my cheeks. "Up with you, brave eperu! Up! We have to flee!"
                "Flee," I whispered, tasting my blood in my mouth.
                "Yes, flee," she said. "For you're an exile and I'm a fugitive and neither of us will see another day if we linger here. Up, up!"
                I laughed, and my breath whistled between my lower fangs. "Funny."
                "No, no, very serious," she said. "I need your help, ke eperu."
                The directive rose again. Protect the anadi, my soul whispered. But I had killed with my imperfect hands; she deserved better.
                "Please," she said, her voice fraying at the edges. "There isn't much time. I need you."
                With a groan I gave in and blinked several times, clearing my eyes of sweat and blood. Peering up at my newest charge from beneath my matted forelock, my jaws dropped apart.
                "Yes? Get up," she said, pulling at me.
                "Dlane?" I said. "Dlane Ashoi-anadi?"
                "Not anymore, technically," she said, ears flattening against her forehead. "I'm Dlane Sikkul-anadi now, but Ashoi doesn't know I've escaped and Sikkul isn't supposed to come for me until tomorrow afternoon. Can you stand? I know a place we can hide for an hour or two. I can bind your wounds." She grinned, all fine fangs. "Then you can faint."
                I stumbled to my feet. "You—you are worth a House's ransom!"
                "Yes, yes, I know," she said with irritation. "One thousand shell, lucky me. Let's walk that way." She leaned down and grabbed my pack, shouldering it along with her own, then settled my arm around her shoulders to brace me. "Steady, ke eperu."
                "This is crazy," I said around my bruised throat. "I should take you straight back to Ashoi—"
                "—just keep walking this way," she said.
                "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't take you back," I said.
                "Because if you do they'll kill you," she said.
                "And the death is deserved," I said, panting. "A better reason."
                "Because I don't want you to die."
                "Ke anadi—"
                "Oh! Just hush, crazy creature! We're going this way and you're coming and you know why?"
                "Why?" I asked obediently. It was very hard to put one foot in front of the other.
                "Because you can't stand without my help and you certainly can't walk and I am going that way. So you are going that way with me."
                Leaking as I was from so many places, I could not argue with this particular reason. Indeed, I remembered very little of the journey to her safe haven... only that it required us to cross a field and past a clump of trees into a shadowed place. She tugged me into a hole beneath the ground and there my knee crumpled and delivered me, cheek to soil, to the Void.
                This time I ignored her entreaties to stay awake. Bad enough that I was alive. I would take this insanity one task at a time.


                The first sound that convinced me that the Void had not rendered permanent judgment was the faint drip of water striking dirt. Then cool, moist air registered on the pad of my nose.
                And then all the aches flooded my limbs. I groaned aloud.
                "Good, you're awake! We can't stay here much longer."
                I hadn't really noticed how lovely a voice she had, Dlane Ashoi-anadi. I experimented with my right eye and discovered it wasn't swollen shut. The walls of the burrow explained the soft drip of water and the grinding pressure against my hip. Our packs had been set against one side of our nook beside a tiny brazier. A curl of smoke rose from the coals inside, a fragment of summer broken off from the year's middle.
                And there she sat, across from me, the anadi I'd warned Therun would be more than he could handle. He'd barely bought the creature and she'd already escaped. This close to her, her beauty was not just astonishing, but painful... for such loveliness did not come to an anadi without fragility faithfully attending. The need to see her safely ensconced in a cavern where the sun couldn't reach her gripped me so fiercely I could barely breathe—no, that was the injury. I sat up, grimacing, and pressed a hand to my chest.
                "Oh!" she said, reaching toward me. "Don't move too much."
                I explored the edges of the bandage she'd wrapped a little too tightly around my ribs for comfort, still wincing. Around us were stacked crates and clay shelves lined with items. "We're in a storage burrow?"
                "No one will look for us here," she said. "At least, not immediately."
                She sounded so sure. I glanced at her again; this time my eye caught on the thin gold ring piercing her navel slit, the only thing she wore. House Ashoi had been so certain of her worth it had put a ring on her even though it intended to sell her—for that, they would have had to be sure of her intelligence, her stamina, that she'd Turned both times and both Times only become more anadi. I could count on one hand the Jokka I'd known whose Houses had shown such confidence. And this anadi, this splendidly valuable, expensive anadi, was holding my gaze in great earnest, here in a hole on the edge of town.
                "Are you well?" the female asked, leaning forward and stretching out a hand. "I tried to patch you, but I don't know much about wounds."
                "I've felt healthier," I said at last. "But not more confused."
                "What are you confused about?" she asked.
                So many questions. Which to ask? "Why did you interfere with my exile?"
                She leaned over her knees, her stubby toes drumming against the cave floor. "Exile. Is that what they call it now when they drag them out of town to be killed?"
                "But I have done a terrible thing. I deserved what was coming."
                Her golden brow lifted. "If you didn't die then perhaps the gods have other plans for you."
                I opened my mouth to protest but it occurred to me that she could be correct. If the Void had wanted me dead, why hadn't He intervened? Why had I had the strength to kill the males?
                "Anyway, you already know my name," she said. "What's yours?"
                "I am Thenet... was Thenet Mated-eperu. Now... I don't know." My lips pulled back in a frown that bordered on desolation. "You saved me but I have no place to go. My House is barred to me and no other will take me for what I have done."
                "What did you do?" Dlane asked, her ears canting forward in unseemly interest.
                I stared at her. "I killed a baby and delivered her mother to the mind-death."
                She tapped her knee. "Quite a crime."
                "Yes."
                "How?"
                "H-how?" My tongue tripped over my own words.
                "Yes, how did you do it?" Dlane asked. "I suppose the baby's the one that's upsetting you most... so tell me about that. Did you thrust a spear through its heart? Drop it accidentally? Toss it out a window?"
                My eyes had dried, reminding me to blink. "What does it matter?" I exclaimed.
                "What it does matter!" For the first time, Dlane showed signs of exasperation, brow furrowing over her flame-bright eyes. "Thenet Mated-eperu, there are degrees of wrongness. I want to judge which one you are guilty of."
                "You? Judge me?" I wondered just what variant of polytheism allowed her to adjudicate over other Jokka's souls.
                "Humor me in this, ke eperu. How did you kill the baby?"
                My ears flattened despite my best efforts. I looked at the striations in the burrow wall, counting the thin brown stripes amid the black. "The healer had gone out to attend the hunters and I had left for the fair. While I was away, the kaña-befidzu's time came upon her and the baby stopped in her womb. I arrived too late. When I tried to draw the child out, it had drowned and the kaña-befidzu lost her mind from the strain." Saying it that way made it sound so distant, so bearable... until I clenched my fist and dried birth fluids pulled at the skin between my fingers.
                Dlane flexed her shoulders forward in acknowledgment. "So the baby died because the healer wasn't present."
                "No! The baby died because I couldn't save it."
                "If the healer had been present, would the baby have lived?"
                My teeth burned but I refused to weep. Weeping was an activity reserved for the living. "I'm sure."
                "But the healer wasn't present, was it?"
                The tingling in my ears was surely loss of circulation. I continued to hold them taut to my head anyway. "No, the healer was with the hunters that day."
                "Then the healer was negligent."
                "But I was there—"
                "It was a tragedy, Thenet, but you didn't kill that baby. No one did. It was an accident."
                I stared at her. "What—what are you saying? Why are you saying this?"
                Dlane heaved a long sigh and stood. She paced to the wall and then to the brazier, back and forth. "Because the distinction has to be made. I saved you because our people don't make distinctions, ke eperu. I saved you because the chances were good that it had happened that way with you. That you were going to die for no reason."
                I closed my gaping mouth. The words I'd barely heard through the haze of my pain before, crying out that the males were doing wrong to me ... I had thought such words an anomaly, but obviously they were a sign of far deeper beliefs. I found my tongue somehow. "That does not change the fact that I now have no home to return to."
                "No, it doesn't. Which means that I'm now responsible for you."
                "You? Responsible for me? But it is for the neuters to protect the anadi, not the other way around."
                She nodded. "Exactly," she said. "And I am in your debt for your protection earlier. But I have freed you and now I have to take care of you. That's all." She wrinkled her nose and cast her golden eyes to the dirt ceiling. "Which is all well, since I'll need someone to keep me safe."
                A faint foreboding rose in me at those words. "Let me guess, ke anadi... you are going to be doing something the Jokka do not do."
                "That depends on which Jokkad you're talking about," Dlane replied cheerily. Her tail waved to and fro. "I am planning to make a pilgrimage—"
                That already sounded very, very indecent.
                "—to the Birthwell."
                I rolled onto my back and concentrated on breathing.
                Dlane chuffed a quiet laugh and crouched beside me. She touched my flat chest with delicate fingers. "I see that I have neither surprised nor heartened you."
                I turned my face to hers, studied the youth of her face contrasted with the age of her amber eyes. "Why?" I asked when her face gave only a piece of the puzzle.
                "Because," she said softly, "I do not want to bear young."