'Poison?' Manvah asked.

'It was bad enough she and her harlot mother walked the palace unveiled,' Inevera said, 'but now they have brought the notion that our women should fight alagai'sharak like the Northern savages. To please her, Ahmann has decreed that any woman to take an alagai in battle will be Sharum'ting, and accorded all a warrior's rights.'

Manvah shrugged. 'What of it?'

Inevera gaped. 'You cannot possibly approve.'

'Why not?' Manvah asked. She picked at her blacks. 'You think I like having to wear these? I look at the Northern women and dream of being so free. Of owning my own pavilion, instead of running Kasaad's. And why should I not? Because Kaji's clerics saw women as cattle, and worked oppression into the holy verses? It is easy for you to cast a dim eye. You get to strut about the palace in the nude.'

'I am hardly nude, Mother,' Inevera said. Manvah looked at her, and she cast her eyes down, knowing dissembling did not work with her mother. Inevera dressed as she did to tweak the noses of the Damaji and remind them of her power, but there was no point denying that she gloried in it, as well.

'You never approved of alagai'sharak when it was Soli at risk,' Inevera said. 'Should we add our daughters to the fight as well as our sons?'

'I hated alagai'sharak when it was a meaningless sacrifice of our men to the Andrah's pride,' Manvah said. 'But have not your precious dice told you Ahmann is the Deliverer, sent by Everam to lead us through Sharak Ka?'

'They said he might be,' Inevera reminded her.

Manvah levelled a look at her. 'You'd best pray he is, or you have wasted the last quarter century of your life. And did they not say Sharak Ka was coming in any event? Alagai kill women as well as men, daughter. Do not let the fact that allowing us to defend ourselves is a Northern notion blind you to its power. You remember Krisha and her ugly sister-wives beating your father. There are women built to fight. Let them. Nie, encourage them. Make the Northern custom your own and you will steal the fruit from this mistress of the Hollow's tree.'

'There will be uproar,' Inevera said.

Manvah nodded. 'There will be shouting in public, and cold anger in private. A handful of idiots with flaccid cocks will pick a few women at random to vent their rage upon. But none will dare oppose the Shar'Dama Ka publicly, and soon enough it will become accepted.' She smirked. 'As when you began baring your sex in public.'

Inevera feigned a shocked look, and Manvah winked at her. 'But the women of Krasia worship you for it, even if they dare not admit it aloud. Give them this, and you will own their hearts forever.'

Inevera moved quickly through the bazaar after her meeting with her mother. She hated leaving Manvah. Each time it hurt anew, knowing it might be months before she could visit again. But she had been gone too long already, and did not wish to raise suspicion that might lead back here. Manvah and Kasaad were secrets even Ahmann was not privy to. Qeva might remember, but the dice had said the Kaji Damaji'ting would never betray her.

But then, in a coincidence so great it was hard to believe it occurred without the aid of her dice, she saw him, strutting her way through the bazaar in his familiar sleeveless robe and black steel breastplate with its sunburst of hammered gold.

Cashiv.

He looked no different than he had all those years ago, which said much for his prowess in battle. His face had the immortal look of the Spears of the Deliverer, so charged with magic each night that they moved a few hours back towards their prime, though their eyes and expressions remained those of older men. In the older warriors like Kaval it took longer for the signs to tell, but the younger ones moved quickly and stayed there. Cashiv was close to fifty, but he had the look of a man in his thirties, still strong and full of fight.

A step behind, he was flanked by two other Sharum, both young and beautiful of body and old of eye. Inevera recognized them both, and for a moment almost expected to see Soli among them.

It had been years since she had thought of the warrior. Dama Baden was a strong voice in the Deliverer's court, but Inevera had not seen his favourite kai'Sharum since he had cursed her for sparing Kasaad's life. Had he ever forgiven her?

She froze. Inevera was a common name, and she did not know if Cashiv even knew his dead lover's sister was now the Damajah. But if he were to see her here ...

Dama Baden was not a man she wanted to know where the Deliverer's mother-in-law was hidden. He might not be foolish enough to threaten her openly, but it was a weakness Inevera could not afford.

I will have to kill him, she realized. Quickly, before he can tell the others ...

She readied herself, only to have Cashiv and the others pass by without taking the slightest notice of her. One of the warriors said something, and Cashiv brayed a laugh as they turned a corner.

Inevera blew out a breath. They had not seen her.

Of course not, idiot, she realized. You're all in black.

Inevera waited in Ahmann's bedchamber for his return. She wore her pillow dancing silks and jewellery, including a new circlet of white-gold coins, adding wards copied from Ahmann's crown to protect her from a mind demon's intrusion to those that gave her wardsight and enhanced senses. She could see the glow of magic as it drifted in whorls across the floor like sand devils, drawn by the many wardings around the room.

She had her own chambers, of course. Finest among all Ahmann's wives, though each had her own private receiving rooms and a richly appointed pillow chamber for sleeping and entertaining the Deliverer, should whim take him to her door. All were freshly shaved and oiled at all times, ready in an instant for his pleasure.

The magic men absorbed during alagai'sharak leached as they thrust their warded spears into demon flesh did more than keep them young, more than give them night strength and heal their wounds. It awakened animal passion to hunt, to kill, to breed. Even before he had tasted the magic, Ahmann had been a man of great lust. Now his desires were endless, and left many of his wives easing soreness in the bath under the massaging touch of the eunuchs.

But while each wife had fine rooms, none could match Ahmann's own, and it was there he most often took his ease. His Jiwah Sen took it in turns to await him there with bath and refreshment, clad in bright, diaphanous silk.

The schedule was managed by Inevera herself, one of her many duties as Jiwah Ka. Occasionally she used the dice to adjust the schedule to ensure women were kept with child, but even that was at her discretion. Much like Kenevah's Waxing Tea, Inevera used the schedule to show favour to those who most pleased her, and disfavour to those who did not.

Those selected would wait upon her as well, and have the Shar'Dama Ka's touch only when she allowed it, which was seldom. Inevera suffered other women to touch Ahmann for the good of her people that his ties to each tribe remain strong, and his lust be sated when there were other matters for her to attend but she took him to the pillows personally more than all his other wives combined. Her near-constant use of hora magic had kept her body young and strong, and her own passions were formidable. Ahmann could seldom relax without a woman to put him down, and she, too, felt her patience thinning when it had been too long since she had taken her pleasure. The other women had her leavings, and thanked Everam for them.

But none of his wives had serviced the Shar'Dama Ka since he took Leesha Paper to bed. Inevera had refused to see him in her ire, and his other wives had been turned away as a man with a new stallion will turn down a ride on camelback.

Despite her mother's words, Inevera still had to fight to hold her centre at the thought of the Northern whore. When she threw the dice for Ahmann's first trip to Deliverer's Hollow and the bones told her he would fall in love with a chin woman and get a child on her, she had scarcely believed them. It was the first time in years she had doubted a throw. Not since the coming of the Par'chin.

Inevera prayed nightly while he was gone that her husband's heart would hold true, for the dice told only what might be, and not necessarily what would.

But her mother spoke true. Ahmann had not forgotten the Andrah. Killing the man had brought him little peace. She hadn't touched another since, not even her Jiwah Sen, but it did not matter. She could sense the distrust in her husband like a gap in her wards.

Bedding Leesha Paper and shaming his Jiwah Ka would prove no better balm, but that was something Ahmann would have to learn for himself. Surely the man who allowed Hasik to live to wed his sister, even could learn to forgive his First Wife.

Everything has its price, the Evejah'ting taught. Ahmann needed her to win Sharak Ka, and she needed him to give her the powers to do it. As Damajah, she could seize advantages for him that would otherwise be beyond her reach. They must reconcile, and quickly, before the schism became insurmountable.

It was because of that she waited for him this night.

That, and not the ache in her heart.

There was a soft vibration in one of her many rings, and she knew the outer doors to her husband's chambers had opened. She'd left orders not to be disturbed, so it could be none other than Ahmann himself who approached.

Inevera felt the wind of fear. Would he turn her away as he had the others? Even Qasha and Belina, his previous favourite Jiwah Sen in the pillows, had been cast aside in favour of the greenland woman. Was he bewitched by white flesh as Melan and Asavi had warned? What would become of their people's unity if it were so? The Damaji and Damaji'ting might suffer his taking a chin woman as a well prize and pillow wife, but to put her on his dais would enrage them beyond reason. Her Jiwah Sen would look to her for a solution, and if Inevera had none, their respect and her power would dissolve like smoke.

But fear had no place in the decisions of an ordered mind. She bent and let it pass over her, falling into her breath and finding her centre. She would confront the problem and repair the damage now, before it was too late.

The doors opened, and Ahmann entered. His breathing was even, but there was the scent of sweat and blood on him, as well as the stink of demon ichor. It was the scent of a man returning from alagai'sharak, and she knew her husband had been at the front of the line, leading men where other leaders commanded from safely behind.

The smell intoxicated her. Countless times he had taken her like that, his lust roaring with the magic that flowed in his veins. She would dance for him, and he would forget bath or sweat room until he had bent her over the nearest bit of furniture and had his way. The memory sent a shiver through her.

All about the room items of hora magic glowed dimly, their power contained by the metal shells that protected their demon bone cores from light. There were wards as well, glowing to heat the water in the bath, to cool the summer air, and to protect the chamber from intrusion and spying.

None of it glowed as brightly as Ahmann himself. The ward scars she had cut into his skin shone with the power he had absorbed in the night's battle, his crown flared even brighter, and the Spear of Kaji shone like the sun itself.

But for all that he was brimming with power, Ahmann's shoulders slumped as if weary of a burden.

Inevera waved her hand, activating a ruby ring on her littlest finger that contained a tiny bit of flame demon bone. Candles flared to life around the room, and his favourite incense began to burn.

It was then Ahmann noticed her. He sighed, setting his shoulders and straightening his back, eyeing her warily. 'I did not expect to see you tonight, wife.'

'I am your Jiwah Ka, Ahmann,' Inevera said. 'This is my place.'

Ahmann nodded, not relaxing at all. 'It is also your place to facilitate my acquisition of new brides. Yet you made no effort to come to a term with Leesha Paper, despite her obvious value.'

'I serve Everam and Sharak Ka before you, husband,' Inevera replied. 'As should you before me. Whether you choose to see it or not, half your Damaji would have been enraged had you named Leesha Paper your Jiwah Ka of the North.'

'Let them rage,' Ahmann said. 'I am Shar'Dama Ka. I do not need their love, only their loyalty.'

'You might be Shar'Dama Ka.' Inevera made the word a lash. 'Or you might be only what I have made of you. And yet you would halve my power as casually as you tear a loaf of bread, all for a woman you know nothing of. The dice told me to seize you every advantage, but I cannot do that for a fool who pisses on those who would die for him and showers his enemies with gold.'

'It would never have come to that, had you not refused to take her as Jiwah Sen,' Ahmann said. 'Where was the wisdom in that? I came home with a woman to honourably marry, one who could bring thousands of warriors to Sharak Ka and wards spells even you cannot. Abban had already negotiated the dower with her mother, and it was a pittance. Some lands, some gold, a meaningless Northern title, and recognition of her tribe. Yet you dismissed it out of hand. Why? Do you fear her?'

'I fear what the witch has done to your mind,' Inevera said. 'You value her far beyond her worth. She should have been carried off like a well prize, arriving slung over your saddle, not brought to court and given a palace.'

'The Damajah of old feared no woman,' Ahmann said. 'The true Damajah would have dominated her. So tell me, did the dice tell you that you were the Damajah, or that you might be?'

Inevera felt as if he had slapped her. She breathed to remain calm.

'You did not see her people, or spend weeks with her on the road,' Ahmann said. 'The Northerners are strong, Inevera. If the cost of securing their alliance is that there be a single woman in all the world who need not bow to you, is that too high a price?'

'Is it for you?' Inevera asked. 'The Painted Man, the one the Northerners call Deliverer, is the key to Sharak Sun, Ahmann. Even a blind fool can see it! And your precious Leesha Paper is protecting him, keeping him safe to put a spear in your back.'

Ahmann's face darkened and Inevera feared she had pushed him too far, but he did not lash at her. 'I am not such a fool. We have agents in the Hollow now. If this Painted Man appears I will hear of it, and kill him if he does not bow to me.'

'And I will bring you the daughter of Erny, or proof of her disloyalty to Everam,' Inevera promised. She rose from the pillows, rolling her hips and turning so the candles behind her made the vaporous silks she wore seem to disappear, revealing her every curve. The incense was heavy in the air as she came to him, and Ahmann held his breath as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

'I believe that you are the Deliverer, beloved,' she said. 'I believe with all my heart that Ahmann Jardir is the man to lead our people to victory in Sharak Ka.' She lifted her veil boldly and kissed him. 'But you must have every advantage if you are to defeat Nie on Ala. We must stay unified.'

'Unity is worth any price in blood,' Ahmann said, a quote from the Evejah. He kissed her in return, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. She felt his tension, and knew where it was building. In an instant she had him out of his robes, leading him to the bath. As he stepped down to soak in the hot water, Inevera slipped her fingers into the cymbals hanging from her belt and began to dance in the smoke and candlelight, twirling in her diaphanous silk.

'I mean to attack Lakton in less than three months,' Ahmann said quietly, as they lay together. He held her close, his muscular body nude save for his crown, which he seldom removed now, and never at night. Inevera wore only her jewellery. 'Thirty days after equinox, the day the greenlanders call first snow.'

'Why that date?' she asked. 'Have the Damaji ascribed some significance to it in their star charts?' She did little to hide the derision in her tone. The dama's art of reading omens in the Heavens was primitive nonsense compared with the alagai hora.

Ahmann shook his head. 'Abban's spies report that is the day the greenlanders bring their harvest tithe to the capital. A precise strike will leave them unsupplied through the winter while we wait out the snows in plenty.'

'You take your military advice from a khaffit now?' Inevera asked.

'You know Abban's value as well as I,' Ahmann said. 'His prophecies of profit are nearly as accurate as your hora.'

'Perhaps,' Inevera said, 'but I would not gamble the fate of all men on them.'

Ahmann nodded. 'And so I come to you, to confirm his information. Cast the bones.'

Inevera felt her jaw tighten. Ahmann had been fighting the demon prince's bodyguard, and had not seen the mind demon drain the magic from her bones, collapsing them into dust. Thus far, she had kept the loss a secret to all, even him.

'The alagai hora tell what they will, beloved,' she said. 'I cannot simply demand they verify information.'

Ahmann looked at her. 'I've seen you do it a thousand times.'

'The conditions are not-' Inevera began, but a flare of magic from one of the gems on Ahmann's crown cut her off.

'You're lying,' Ahmann said, his voice hard and sure. 'You're hiding something from me. What is it?' The crown continued to brighten as his eyes bored into her, and Inevera felt powerless before them.

'The demon prince destroyed my dice,' she blurted, hating the admission, but afraid to dissemble further until she understood what was happening. He was using one of the hidden powers of the crown.

According to the Evejah'ting, the sacred metal was etched with wards on both sides around the demon bone core. Inevera hungered for the secrets of those wards, but she could not unravel them without taking the precious artefact apart, and even she would not dare such sacrilege.

Ahmann's look was sour. 'You could have simply told me.'

Inevera ignored the comment. 'I have begun carving a new set. I will be able to cast the bones again soon.'

'Perhaps one of your Jiwah Sen should cast in the meantime,' Ahmann said. 'This cannot wait.'

'It can,' Inevera said. 'First snow is three months away, and you have more immediate concerns.'

Ahmann nodded. 'Waning.'

Inevera woke with Ahmann's arms clutching at her possessively, even as he slept.

Careful not to wake him, she put her thumb into a pressure point on Ahmann's arm, numbing it long enough for her to slip free of the bed. Her bare feet sank into the rich carpet, and she padded so softly across the floor that the belled anklets she still wore did not make a sound.

Ahmann grew more powerful every day, sleeping less and less, but even the Deliverer needed to close his eyes for an hour or three, and she had seen to it that he was relaxed. His seed ran slowly down her leg as she strode to the terrace. She wondered if a child would come of their union. Without the dice she could not know for sure, but their loving had been powerful, and it was too long since she had borne him a son.

Eunuch guards opened the great glass doors. Inevera paid them no mind as she strode past, relishing the warm breeze and the feel of sunlight on her skin. The guards who shadowed Ahmann's wives had neither stones nor spears, and would not dare so much as glance at her bottom.

Inevera leaned on the marble railing looking out over Everam's Bounty, the green land once known as Rizon. There was a rush of power as she surveyed the land, tingling like the sun on her skin and the seed on her thigh.

Ahmann's greenland palace was a paltry thing. Its previous owner, Duke Edon of Fort Rizon, had been a weak ruler, coming from a long line of such. Surrounded by vast riches, they had been unable to squeeze forth more than a trickle of gold from their subjects. With such abundance, Edon could have had a palace to make an Andrah sigh with envy. Instead his seat stood a mere four storeys and had but two wings, its walls thin and low. Inevera knew a dozen dama who held better back in Krasia. It was hardly fit for Shar'Dama Ka, though still preferable to the pavilions they had used on their journey through the desert.

Already her finest artisans were drawing plans to tear this 'manse' down and build in its place a palace so grand its spires would touch the bottom of Heaven itself, and an underpalace reaching so deep into the Ala that the mother of demons would tremble in the abyss.

But while the line of Edon was weak, they had not been utter fools. The hill they had chosen for their seat had an incomparable view. Everam's Bounty spread out before her, blooming as far as the eye could see, full of rich soil and an abundance of rivers and streams. Neat rows of crops and trees, cut into straight edges by wide dirt roads, fanned out from the inner city like the spokes in a wheel, here a cornfield, there an orchard. A hundred tributary villages, easily divided among the tribes to sate their lust for plunder after the difficult passage through the desert and hard winter's march.

The greenlanders outnumbered her people greatly, but they were not warriors. Between Inevera's foretellings and Ahmann's Sharum, they had taken the duchy as easily as a cat takes a mouse. Their wealth had made the chin soft.

It was fitting that Ahmann build a seat of power here, but it would not do for their people to grow too comfortable in this land of plenty. She had cast the dice while red blood was still wet on the warriors' spears, and seen the same fate awaiting her own people if they did not press on to further conquest in the green lands. The desert had made them hard, and that hardness was sorely needed in the war to come.

Much as she hated to admit it, there was merit in the khaffit's plan to strike Lakton before winter.

Inevera went back inside, signalling her servants for hot water and scented oil. They clad her in translucent red silk. Another woman might have felt vulnerable leaving her pillow chamber in so little, but Inevera was the Damajah, and none would dare molest her.

Silently, she descended the stair her slaves had cut deep into the rock of the hill, leading down into a great natural cavern. Eunuch guards drifted in her van and wake, though Inevera felt no threat as she approached her place of power. She was blind without her dice, unable to foretell danger, but even if a mad assailant or rogue alagai got past her guards, she was not without defences of her own.

At last she reached a great stone door, and the guards took places to the sides as she produced the only key from a pouch at her waist. The key itself was a fake, turning with a meaningless click, but as her hand drew near the locks, the gold-plated hora on her bracelet warmed, specially warded to matching bones within the locks, sliding the heavy bolts free. Even if a thief skilled at warding guessed the trick, the bracelet would be impossible to duplicate, and Inevera kept it on her person at all times. Though it weighed tons, the door swung inward silently at a touch, and closed just as smoothly behind her.

Within, she drifted through passages never touched by Everam's light. She carried no lamp in the blackness, but the chain of thin warded gold coins around her head warmed slightly, opening her senses to the magic all around her. The power of the abyss hummed in the walls and drifted in the air like smoke, lighting her way as if she strode in clear day.

Inevera did not fear the power around her. Rather, she gloried in it. Everam had created the Ala, and the power at its centre was His as well. The servants of Nie might exploit the magic at its source, but it was not theirs. Warding was the art of stealing that power back and turning it to Everam's purposes.

She glided along until she reached a special spot in the rock wall, then knelt, shifting a stone aside to reveal her warding tools, hora pouch, and the rendered bones of the demon prince Ahmann had killed, glowing more fiercely with magic than any hora she had ever known.