The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

What was rest, if not death? Rest didn’t sound at all appealing, any more than did a tidy room overlooking the garden walls.

Footsteps sounded in the passage outside, brisk and demanding. The men had returned.

Elilas helped her stand and held on to her arm a bit too tightly, so she couldn’t go to the tea tray, as if he thought she didn’t understand how things had changed in the house. Instead, Danis poured with a skill Asvi admired, giving a rhythm to the pattern of warming the cups with hot water, emptying out, and pouring in the amber-colored tea in a perfectly curved stream. So graceful. So beautiful. Like Danis herself, a prize on the marriage market the year Elilas had convinced his father to pay her staggering bride price by explaining how such a bride would enhance the household’s status in the wool trade.

Asvi recalled the first time she had poured tea in the place of her husband’s father’s wife, after the old man’s death. Her hands had shaken so badly she’d spilled, and then spilled again at hearing the disapproving hiss made by Meklos’s mother. Ever after, she’d dreaded visitors for fear of disappointing his mother or him. Danis’s confidence felt not like a slap at her own incompetence but instead like a long-sought escape. Elilas’s proud smile toward his lovely wife was echoed by the priest-magistrate’s appreciative nod.

Danis served the men first and afterward brought a cup to Asvi and sat beside her. The magistrate sipped; Elilas sipped; the women sipped.

Once the magistrate had finished his first cup and allowed Danis to pour him a second, he began.

“I will send over the acolytes to take the body to the temple for preparation. Because it is high summer, the crossing ceremony must be held tomorrow instead of after the traditional five days of reflection. You have brothers, do you not, Headman Elilas?”

“Two still living. One is in the militia, stationed at Fellspire Pass.”

“Courage to him,” said the magistrate. “A brave sword who through his sacrifice secures peace for us all.”

Asvi squeezed her hands together, thinking of gentle Posyon and how he’d comforted her when she wept to see him sent off to the frontier from which there could be no return. But she said nothing. It was not her place to speak.

“The other supervises our warehouse in Farport.”

“So too far to return for the ceremonies in time. Very well. You can send him the proper offerings to make.” The man turned his cool gaze on Asvi, measuring her and, she was sure, finding her wanting. Her father had been a sheepherder who sought a better market for his wool. His child wasn’t worth much on the marriage market, but she’d been sixteen and a good cook even then. For ambitious Meklos, who revered his distinguished mother, the monopoly on her father’s excellent wool and connections into sheepherding clans farther up in the foothills was the bargain he’d been after. He’d doubled his family’s business on the strength of it.

“You’ll pay the walk tithe for your mother, I presume?” the magistrate added, lifting an eyebrow in query. “We discussed the amount upstairs.”

Elilas’s hesitation startled her. She looked up to find him staring meaningfully at Danis. “It’s higher than I expected,” he mumbled.

Danis gave Elilas a scalding, scolding look and expelled a huff of exasperated breath, enough to make him grimace.

He said, “But of course the family will pay it, Your Honor.”

“Let’s settle it now, then, rather than wait for tomorrow. I find it’s easier that way.”

“If you’ll accompany me to my father’s office.”

“Your office now, Headman.”

“Yes, of course. If you’ll accompany me to my office.”

The men went out. Danis set down her cup so hard the impact chipped its base. She glowered at the cup, painted with miniature scenes of women walking nobly into the dagger-toothed maws of massive dragons. “These are so dreadfully old-fashioned. I’ll replace them all.”

“But they’ve been in the family for generations,” said Asvi in surprise. “They were purchased from the temple.”

“Yes, I can tell. I can get a good price for them in the market, unless you want them, Dear Mother.”

“Why would I want them?” Asvi muttered.

“Why, indeed! You have good taste, not that the old man ever let you have your way in clothing or decoration. No wonder you like the kitchen. It’s the only place he never interfered with you.”

Asvi did not know what to say in answer to this plain speaking, so she said nothing. Saying nothing was always safest.

Danis rose. “I’d best go look in on the men or that thieving priest will squeeze another hundred out of our treasury. Eli is a canny trader, but he’s so unbelievably naive when it comes to the temple. My father says—”

She broke off and leveled a hard look at Asvi, then smiled as one might at a well-loved but rather simple child. “Never mind. It’s been a difficult time for all of us. I blow hot and cold and can’t hold my tongue. Dear Mother, forgive me.”

“You’ve always been kind to me, Danis.”

Danis bent to give her a kiss on each cheek. “You welcomed me when most humbly born mothers would have set themselves against a woman of my exalted background coming into their life. For your modesty and graciousness I will always be grateful.”