“Don't you try and pin this on me,” Sasha said warningly. “Your actions and your choices are your own, that's the first thing your uman told you.”
“No, I…I didn't mean it like that.” Yulia shook her head. “I just meant that…gods, Sasha, look around.” Sasha did, reluctantly. Downstairs, she could hear the continuing argument through the floorboards. “Do you see why I wanted to be Nasi-Keth? I wanted more, Sasha. More than this. And no one ever rises to great prominence within the Nasi-Keth without some talent in the svaalverd. I wanted to work on it more, but the boys always teased me, and some of the girls too, but then you came along. A human girl, and Kessligh's uma, and you're good! Staggeringly good. Men here couldn't believe it-trust me, I heard what they said when you weren't around. They were shocked. But about half came to accept it, and that gave me hope. Half is enough, for some respect at least.
“So I went to training more regularly. I practised a lot even before, but always on my own…and it's not the same. I can look good in training, sometimes. Better than I actually am, I think. Maybe that's why I was picked to go on the mission to Riverside. Kessligh was short of fighters and people thought I was better than I am.”
“What does your uman say?”
“She…” Yulia sighed, hanging her head. “She didn't approve. I didn't see her as much after I started attending training more. It's not for girls, she said. I pointed to you and she just snorted. She'd rather I studied and learned to teach children. It's good work, but…”
“I know,” Sasha said sombrely. “I'll tell you this, Yulia-in all my life, nearly all of my greatest supporters, and greatest friends, have been men. Women don't wish to see other women doing something different because it makes them feel less of themselves. Women have too little pride because they are taught from the cradle to be weak.”
Yulia nearly smiled. “Maybe,” she said, reluctantly. “But then, look at Aunt Rena. She's very proud of what she is, that's why she's yelling at you.”
Sasha shook her head. “That's not pride. That's fear. Pride is being so certain in yourself that you're not intimidated by the strangeness of others. Pride is being so certain that you can look after yourself that you don't need to threaten or complain or make malicious whispers behind others’ backs. I see too little pride here in Petrodor, from men or women. Only fear and anxiety.”
“Pride has many meanings to many people.”
Sasha sighed. She'd been hearing that kind of thing a lot lately. “Yulia, I need you to help me with a job.”
“A Nasi-Keth job?” Sasha nodded. “You'd trust me? After…?”
“There shouldn't be any fighting.” Yulia looked a little panicked. “There won't be any fighting,” Sasha corrected. “I'm going to see my sister Marya. I need someone to help keep watch, and there's no one else available. Kessligh can't spare a more seasoned fighter when there are so many other threats to cover, and neither Alaine nor Gerrold's followers will be likely to help me.”
“Surely there's someone?” There was fear in Yulia's eyes. “I'm…I mean…I'm just not sure if I can…”
“It's your choice,” Sasha told her. “I'll go alone if I have to. I just need someone to watch my back, you can do that, right?” Yulia looked at her lap, fidgeting furiously. “You're not a bad fighter Yulia. I've sparred against you, you're not that far behind Liam. You just froze up in battle. That's understandable, you've not the experience the others do. But you'll not need to fight anyway. Will you come?”
Sasha sat on the bow of Mari's boat and blinked wearily into the light of the rising sun. A breeze came from the south, filling the little boat's sails, pushing them northward across the harbour. Ahead loomed Besendi Promontory, its cliffs gleaming gold in the low light from across the sea.
“You look tired,” Mari observed from his seat beside the mast. Valenti was at the tiller, and handling the mainsail rope-no great affair in the light breeze. Opposite Mari sat Yulia, her slim arms bare, her back to the sun.
“I was never the earliest riser,” Sasha admitted, stifling a yawn. “Baerlyn farmers tease me about it, but they don't have to run up a mountain and back before breakfast. And now I'm rarely getting to bed before midnight.”
“Bah,” said Mari, waving a dismissive hand. “Try working for a living.”
“How many thoroughbred horses have you hand-reared and sold to Torovan and Lenay nobility?” Sasha retorted. “All you do is fish; I run a stable and train as a Nasi-Keth warrior.”
“You want I should hold her close off the shore for a while?” he asked her.
“It'll look suspicious. Just let us off at the steps, then go your own way. You've pots out beyond the bluff, by the time you fetch them we'll be finished.”
“Right confident are you,” said Mari dubiously as he gazed ahead at the Cliff of the Dead. Its terraces rose most of the way from the sea to the sky. “What if you strike trouble?”
“Look, there's no hiding places.” Sasha pointed across the terraces. “If we get attacked we can descend, there's shelter from archers and there's the rocky shoreline along here…”
“That's damn slippery,” said Mari, shaking his head. “You can't move far along that.”
“We won't need to, just long enough to find shelter. Let them come at us along those rocks-I could hold off thirty men on my own.” Mari looked at Yulia, presumably to judge if she was boasting. Yulia shrugged, to say she didn't think so. “Sure, if you see us in trouble, hold off and we'll swim to you. Or head back and get help. But for the men it'd take to catch us here, it'd be a silly waste of effort. Even Steiner don't have that many men. They're all guarding their properties, expecting violence.”
“Can you swim?” Mari asked Yulia.
“A little,” said Yulia, uncertainly. “Can you?” she asked Sasha.
Sasha nodded. “There was a nice big pond near the ranch in Baerlyn,” she said. “A waterfall fell into it. Ten strokes from side to side, and river trout at the bottom. The most crystal water you've ever seen.”
“I live right next to the ocean,” Yulia muttered, “but you even swim better than me.”
There was no movement along the gravestone terraces in the early morning, save for the gulls. Out further toward Porsada Temple, recent stonework marked where terraces were being extended along the cliff face. This was where the wealthiest families buried their dead. The temple priesthood owned the land, and a plot was said to be exorbitant. But there was so little free land in Petrodor, save for that on rises far too steep for dwellings. For Petrodor families, paying respects to the ancestors was a matter of importance, and it would not do for them to be buried too far away. Sasha wondered what they'd do when, in several more generations, the stoneworkers ran out of cliff.
Steps rose from the water, carved in stone and encrusted with barnacles. Mari let out the sail as Valenti steered them alongside, allowing Sasha and Yulia to jump easily to a step, then the boat regathered speed, steering out, away from the rocks.
Sasha and Yulia ascended the terraces, past rows and rows of little stone blocks.
It was a long climb up many flights to reach the undertaker's shed where she had met Marya previously. The cliff face curved here, hiding all view of the temple. On the terrace below the shed, Sasha sent Yulia past the end of the terrace, onto the narrow trail she remembered from the last time she'd been here. Yulia edged her way along with ease, and soon disappeared as the cliff face turned again.
After a while of watching and listening, Sasha edged her way up the narrow stairs to the next terrace, keeping close to the inner wall. Peering over the lip, she saw nothing but headstones, and the little wooden shed, just as it had been last time. Then the door opened and she ducked down a little. A young woman in a dress emerged, but not Marya. She appeared to be looking and waiting for an arrival, wringing her hands nervously. A maid, Sasha decided. Openly displayed, no threat intended.