Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"She brought me here to keep me safe!" Shirin's fists clenched hard, the knuckles whitening. "I am mewed up here for my safety? For my children's safety? Everything is for safety's sake!"

Shirin bit her knuckle, her fine white teeth digging into the flesh.

"I traded one prison for another, one with harder beds and worse food…" Her voice was a harsh whisper.

Mikele stood, unfolding gracefully from sitting to standing like a crane dipping toward the water. "You are not here to be safe," she said. Her hands gathered her hair and pulled it behind her head. "There is no safety in this place, or any other. Remember that, Shirin. Thyatis brought you here to be trained, so that you could go about in the world with open eyes."

"That is not what she said," Shirin muttered in a petulant tone. "She said that I would be safe here."

Mikele nodded again, her quick hands braiding her hair and arranging it. "Thyatis loves you and wishes to keep you from harm. She is a sweet girl, but she is still naive in the ways of the world. Hiding you here will only delay the attentions of these Kings. This is a time for you-and it will prove little enough, even if you stay here the full term of years-to find some focus."

Shirin hung her head. She had not thought about the agents of the Eastern Emperor that were still, doubtless, watching and listening in the eastern ports and cities, waiting for news of her to come to their ears. Her body and blood were the prize for these Emperors, and if she were found, her children would be forfeit.

"While you and your children are apart," Mikele said, seeing Shirin's thought like a cloud in a clear sky, "each of you are anonymous. They could be any four youngsters, you any woman. But if you are found together, there will be greater danger. If you stay here, you will learn how to deal with that danger."

The Khazar woman looked up, meeting the older woman's eyes. Fury burned in them. "I am not a prize," she said in a flat voice. "I refuse to be a bauble passed from hand to hand. I will find my children and take them out of the Empire, beyond the reach of Theodore's agents."

"And Thyatis?" Mikele cocked her head to one side, her calm brown eyes fixed on Shirin. "What of her?"

Shirin shook her head and stood, her full lips compressed into a tight line. "Thyatis can take care of herself. If she wants to come with me, we will be together. Otherwise, I will find someone else-someone who treats me as an equal rather than as a pretty necklace to be put away in a lock-box until festival day."

Mikele turned up the sleeves of the long, roomy shirt that she wore. Her wrists were graceful and slim, though her grip was strong enough to match any man. A lacework of tiny white scars marked the insides of her wrists and arms.

"If you leave without the permission of the Matron," Mikele said softly, "the Sisters will turn their backs on you. You will not have their help or guidance. If you leave now, before you have completed the training, you will not be fully awake or aware. You will continue to move in a world of shadows."

Shirin shook her head. The loneliness in her heart and the longing to see her children again, to feel their arms wrapped around her neck in a hug, to see them laughing, was far stronger than the teacher's warning.

"My children are more important than this training. They are more important than your sisterhood."

Mikele arched an eyebrow at the spite in the words, but she said nothing as Shirin stalked out. When the Khazar woman was gone, Mikele leaned over and snuffed the lamp wick with her thumb and forefinger. She sat in the darkness, her breathing steady and even, eyes closed while she waited for the dawn.

– |Surf boomed against the cliff, sending foam rocketing into the air. It fell in a sparkling mist on the black rocks, making them shine and glisten. Shirin, her hair bundled up under a straw hat, clung to the cliff face, feeling it tremble with each blow of the waves. Her tunic was soaked with spray, clinging to her like a skin. In the stiff wind it was cold on her flesh. A hundred feet above her, the top of the cliff leaned out over the precipice, held together by a verge of fat-leafed shrubs and a scrawny tree. Below her, the sea thudded against the walls of Thira, surging with enormous power in its blue-green depths. Shirin grimaced, feeling her toehold slowly slipping as seawater flung up from the wave tops pooled around the toe of her boot.

She reached out and snared the lip of a jutting piece of stone. The cliffs were old lava, fused by the terrible heat in the core of the ancient mountain. They were pocked with air bubbles and cavities. Some of them were big enough for a man to stand up in. Shirin got a good grip, though the edge of the lip was sharp and it bit into her palm. Putting her weight on the handhold, she swung forward, letting her foot slip from the toehold. Her boot found another. Slowly, she inched down the face of the cliff.

Waves hammered at the shore, billowing white with foam. Ahead of her, though, there was a slick glassy section of water that lapped at the foot of the black cliffs. Pillars of twisted black flint rose up in the sea before it, breaking the force of the waves. A boat could go out from the shore there and make it to the open sea without being smashed into kindling on the reefs. Shirin was sure of it; she had seen it with her own eyes.

– |Following her midnight dispute with Mikele, Shirin had begun to pay attention to the other students and teachers. After two weeks of watching, she had determined that there were 437 women living in the confines of the island. The kitchens made fish stew everyday, too, and only rarely lamb or venison. Despite that, there did not seem to be any fishing boats or dorys in the harbor caves around the lagoon. There were two more of the light galleys and a sturdy hulled merchantman with a sail and mast that could be taken down, but nothing that passed for a ketch.

Someone had to catch all those fish. Shirin started looking for the fisher-women and their harborage.

– |Shirin reached a long, narrow slot in the rock. It thinned to nothingness a dozen feet above her head, but below her it widened out. Down at the base, where the cleft plunged into the water, it caught the spume of the waves and shot them upward like a millrace. Shirin snarled in effort and reached around the edge of the crevice, her fingers stretching for the far side. It was just narrow enough. Her fingertips brushed across the smooth black stone. Nodding to herself, she pulled her hand back and got a good grip on the edge of the cleft. Grunting, she hooked her right leg around the edge and felt about for a ledge or crevice. A foot down, she found one. Hoping against hope that it would hold her weight, she swung around the edge and into the crevice itself.

The little ledge held, and she braced her back against the wall of the slot, breathing heavily. Her arms burned from the effort of carrying herself and the bag of tools and rope down the face of the cliff. But now, supported by the leverage of her own weight, she could rest for a moment. She pulled the bag into her lap and let the top fall open. After flexing her fingers to get some sensation back in them, she dug around in the bag and pulled out a mallet and a flat-headed iron spike. There were dozens of spidery cracks in the black rock already; all she had to do was find one that would take the anchor and not come loose when she put her weight on it.

– |A trail ran along the height of the cliffs that girded the island. It was rocky and ill-defined, but the ephebes sometimes ran along it at midday. Mikele was fond of strenuous physical exercise. The trail made a course three miles in length as it wound around the crown of the island, rising and falling, climbing cliffs and plunging down into narrow ravines. When Shirin had taken to running the trail at dawn and at sunset, the teacher had seemed pleased.