Manvah lifted her veil just enough to spit on the ground. ‘Krisha won nothing. She has no baskets to sell.’

‘How can you know that?’ Soli asked.

Manvah chuckled. ‘I set vermin in her storage tent a week ago.’

After helping restore the kiosk, Soli escorted them back to the small adobe building where they kept their rooms just as the dama sang the gloaming from the minarets of Sharik Hora. They had salvaged most of the baskets, but several needed repair. Manvah had a large bundle of palm fronds on her back.

‘I’ll need to hurry to make muster,’ Soli said. Inevera and Manvah threw their arms around him, kissing him before he turned and ran into the darkening city.

Inside, they unsealed the warded trapdoor in their apartment and headed down into the Undercity for the night.

Each building in Krasia had at least one level deep below the ground, these linking to passageways leading to the Undercity proper, a vast honeycomb of tunnels and caverns that ran for miles. It was there the women, children, and khaffit took refuge each night while the men fought alagai’sharak. Great blocks of cut stone denied demons a clear path from Nie’s abyss, and they were carved with powerful wards to keep those that had risen elsewhere at bay.

The Undercity was an impregnable refuge, designed not only to shelter the city’s masses, but to be a city in and of itself should the unthinkable happen and the Desert Spear fall to the alagai. There were sleeping quarters for every family, schools, palaces, houses of worship, and more.

Inevera and her mother had only a small basement in the Undercity, with sleeping pallets, a cold room for food, and a tiny chamber with a deep pit for necessaries.

Manvah lit a lamp, and they sat at the table, eating a cold dinner. When the dishes were clear, she set out the palm fronds. Inevera moved to help.

Manvah shook her head. ‘To bed with you. You have a big day tomorrow. I won’t have you red-eyed and sluggish when the dama’ting question you.’

Inevera looked at the long line of girls and their mothers before her, each awaiting their turn in the dama’ting pavilion. The Brides of Everam had decreed that when the dama sang the dawn on spring equinox, all girls in their ninth year were to be presented for Hannu Pash, to learn the life’s path Everam had laid out for them. Hannu Pash could take years for a boy, but for girls it was accomplished in a single foretelling by the dama’ting.

Most were simply deemed fertile and given their first headscarf, but a few would walk away from the pavilion betrothed, or given a new vocation. Others, mostly the poor and illiterate, were purchased from their fathers and trained in pillow dancing, then sent to the great harem to service Krasia’s warriors as jiwah’Sharum. It was their honour to bear new warriors to replace those who died battling demons in alagai’sharak each night.

Inevera had woken filled with excitement, donning her tan dress and brushing out her thick black hair. It fell in natural waves and shone like silk, but today was the last day the world would ever see it. She would enter the dama’ting pavilion a girl, but leave a young woman whose hair would be for her future husband alone. She would be stripped of her tan dress and emerge in proper blacks.

‘It may be equinox, but the moon is in full,’ Manvah said. ‘That is a good omen, at least.’

‘Perhaps a Damaji will take me into his harem,’ Inevera said. ‘I could live in a palace, with a dower so great you would never need to weave again.’

‘Never able to go out in the sun again,’ Manvah said, too low to be heard by those around them, ‘or speak to anyone but your sister-wives, waiting on the pleasure of a man old enough to be your great-grandfather.’ She shook her head. ‘At least our tax is paid and you have two men to speak for you, so there’s little chance you’ll be sold into the great harem. And even that would be a better fate than to be found barren and cast out as nie’ting.’

Nie’ting. Inevera shuddered at the thought. Those found infertile would never be allowed to don the black, left in tans their entire life like khaffit, faces uncovered in shame.

‘Perhaps I’ll be chosen to be dama’ting,’ Inevera said.

Manvah shook her head. ‘You won’t be. They never choose anyone.’

‘Grandmother says a girl was chosen the year she was tested,’ Inevera said.

‘That was fifty years ago, if it was a day,’ Manvah said, ‘and Everam bless her, your father’s honoured mother is prone to … exaggeration.’

‘Then where do all the nie’dama’ting come from?’ Inevera wondered, referring to the dama’ting apprentices, their faces bare, but in the white of betrothal to Everam.

‘Some say Everam Himself gets his Brides with child, and the nie’dama’ting are their daughters,’ Manvah said. Inevera looked at her, raising an eyebrow as she wondered if her mother was joking.

Manvah shrugged. ‘It’s as good an explanation as any. I can tell you none of the other mothers in the market has ever seen a girl chosen, or recognized one by her face.’

‘Mother! Sister!’ A wide smile broke out on Inevera’s face as she saw Soli approaching, Cashiv at his back. Her brother’s blacks were still dusty from the Maze, and his shield, slung over one shoulder, had fresh dents. Cashiv was as pristine as ever.

Inevera ran and embraced Soli. He laughed, picking her up with one arm and swinging her through the air. Inevera shrieked in delight, not afraid for a moment. Nothing could frighten her when Soli was near. He set her down gentle as a feather and went to embrace their mother.

‘What are you doing here?’ Manvah asked. ‘I thought you would already be on your way to Dama Baden’s palace.’

‘I am,’ Soli said, ‘but I couldn’t let my sister go to her Hannu Pash without wishing her all the blessings in Ala.’ He reached out, tousling Inevera’s hair. She swatted at his hand, but as ever, he was too quick and snatched it back in time.

‘Do you think Father will come to bless me as well?’ Inevera asked.

‘Ah …’ Soli hesitated. ‘So far as I know, Father is still sleeping in the back of the kiosk. He never made it to muster last night, and I told the drillmaster he had a belly fever … again.’ Soli shrugged helplessly, and Inevera lowered her eyes, not wanting him to see her disappointment.

Soli stooped low, lifting her chin with a gentle finger so their eyes met. ‘I know Father wants every blessing for you that I do, even if he has difficulty showing it.’

Inevera nodded. ‘I know.’ She threw her arms around Soli’s neck one last time before he left. ‘Thank you.’

Cashiv looked at Inevera as if noticing her for the first time. He smiled his handsome smile and bowed. ‘Blessings to you, Inevera vah Kasaad, as you become a woman. I wish you a good husband and many sons, all as handsome as your brother.’

Inevera smiled and felt her cheeks flush as the warriors sauntered off.

At last, the line began to move. The day wore on slowly as they stood in the hot sun, the girls and their mothers admitted one at a time. Some were inside for mere minutes – others, nearly an hour. All left wearing black, most looking both chastened and relieved. Some of the girls stared hard at nothing, rubbing their arms absently as their mothers steered them home.