The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar Page A

Ashenlo, whirling up to the fence like crows, and my mother would tell Nenya to take them a handful of onions and a sack of rice. Seren wore the white cloak, not to mourn the dead, but to mourn the living: her elder brother had fled and was hiding in the mountains. “Yes, we lost him,” Fadhian told me one night. His jaw tightened in the smoke of his pipe.
    “Lost him how?” I said.
    We could hear the jingling of anklets and the laughter where the boys and girls were dancing. Seren passed in the firelight, stamping, thin-shanked like a bird. “Lost him to a feud,” Fadhian said.
    He glanced at me and gave his hard smile and told the story of how Seren’s father had died in Tevlas, fighting over a horse. And how Seren’s brother stood among the women of his ausk while they wept and each gave him a gold bangle or a ring.
    “It was a great misfortune,” Fadhian said. “He had no choice.” Later they had heard of his bloody revenge, how he had crept into the tent, the struggle, his wounds, and his triumph. And he was alive and had fled to the western hills.
    “But he can never come back,” Fadhian said. “We lose so many that way. Or worse, they are caught and we lose them to the prisons. My clipped hawk , our song says.” He raised the pipe to his lips again and we watched the dancers through the swirling dust.
    Dust, darkness, and fire. But soon a subdued air came over the camp, for we had begun to travel among farms. Fadhian forbade dancing and singing, and sometimes we all grew silent as a carriage rumbled past in the dark. It was strange to hear those wheels, or footsteps along the roads. One night the sound of hooves approached, and the boys all mounted quickly and rode out to the edge of our firelight and we heard them talking and soon they returned with a group of black-coated horsemen. Later I learned that there had been eight soldiers from a nearby town as well, but they had remained out there in the dark, beyond our circle. This was according to Fadhian’s law, Fadhian who now slowly put his bowl aside and wiped his hands on his trousers and stood.
    He greeted the strangers, courteous and tall in the firelight. The sovos was pale and wore a round straw cap. He did not dismount, nor did his seven horsemen who were armed with whips and long bildiri knives.
    The horses shifted nervously as the sovos cleared his throat and explained that we could not camp here, it was forbidden. Where could we camp then, Fadhian asked, and the sovos said he did not know, this was a settled area and a private road.
    He waved his hand southward. “Perhaps there,” he said. He did not know, he knew of nothing beyond his master’ s lands.
    “That is a shame,” Fadhian said, smiling.
    The sovos looked at him but could not decide if he had been insulted.
    “I must ask you to move at once,” he repeated.
    Listening to him I realized that I had not heard Olondrian spoken since the autumn, and also that I had never heard Fadhian speak it before. He spoke very well, with a soft accent, and his smallest children looked at him in dismay. And I, too, looked at him with a pang. He was so polite and deferential. Yet no one moved until the sovos had gone. Then we began to take down the tents and kick dirt over the fires and I heard women explaining to the children that they could sleep on the wagons.
    We rode all night, there was nowhere for us to camp. Lights appeared in the houses as we passed, lanterns in the dark fields. Through everything the scent of a spring night and the beauty of the stars and the sad clang of a pitcher against the side of a wagon. Mantia rode up beside me in the dark and told me about the soldiers and then I thought of them, of their well-fed horses, of how they had probably left a game of londo or even an entertainment in the town: Evmeni singers or dancing girls from the Valley. There would have been an argument and at last those who had been chosen to go had stood up grumbling, securing their belts and