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The light of the candle, though dim, hurt Abarōz’s eyes. She rose from her bed of rock, tossing back straw which served as a mattress.
“Abarōz, you overslept!”
Her mother Adrina slammed down stone bowls filled with their morning meal. Her father, Rastag, dragged himself to a seat at their rough stone table.
“Daughter,” he said, accepting his portion of oats, “you must help your mother today and not go running off.”
“Yes, father,” said Abarōz, digging a spoon into her pebbled bowl.
She sighed. Every morning, it seemed like she got the same lecture: “Abarōz do this—don’t do that—and be sure not to do this.
Her father, an Ōšmurdan or Tallyman who worked just outside the mines, smiled into his breakfast.
“We are doing well,” he announced, and though the news was good, he spoke in a soft whisper.
“I am glad,” said Adrina, clapping her hands. “With luck, the S̆āh will reward us.”
“It can only be hoped,” Rastag said, his voice even lower. “If Al-razi takes notice, it will mean more dēnārs.”
Abarōz tried to stop herself from snorting.
Dēnārs, dēnārs . . . didn’t anyone in Dardan think about anything else?
Her father rose abruptly, the scrape of rock upon rock unsettling her nerves.
“Time to go,” he said, straightening his cloak as he headed out their archway. “I mean it, Abarōz,” he frowned. “Try to stay out of trouble.”
She nodded, suppressing a feeling of anger which swelled and threatened to burst. In Tengri’s name! She was so tired of being told what to do: help Mother cook and clean, stitch up holes in wool, and lower her eyes if she happened to meet a boy. She felt her life was stifling . . . not to mention boring. But what could you expect in a city carved underground?
She helped her mother wash up, then crept from their cave, hoping to find something new. Not a chance: there were the same rock walls; long, bending tunnels; and narrow stone stairs leading to other Hamwars. She already knew almost each one by heart: livestock on the first, the new god’s temple below; and the mines, or zarrs, buried so deep that few would dare to visit—if they were allowed.
As she walked down the torch-lit hallway, she saw the back of a dahigān, rock hoe gripped in one hand. He was one of the few allowed to leave Dardan and set foot in the Bērūn. Fortunate, or not? Having your tongue cut out so you couldn’t tell what you saw was a too-steep price for freedom. The same was true of the zarran who toiled below in the mines. No, Abarōz thought, better to live like a mole than undergo such torment.
She smoothed down her dress of wool (stifling in the constant heat) and frowned as she noticed Kavad coming around a bend. She knew him only vaguely as a friend of her father’s who’d earned many dēnārs and from her received a stiff bow. There were whispers on every Hamwar that he was in the pay of the S̆āh, and, as one of the inner circle, held the power of life or death.
Abarōz was relieved she hadn’t seen any boys. She’d just turned seventeen and was now of marriageable age, though the thought of a husband filled her with creeping nausea. She wouldn’t even know him and he would marry her for her dowry: three pigs, a goat, and twenty-five dēnārs. She wasn’t ready for this, unable look at a boy without blushing. She didn’t know how to flirt, though Mother had lectured her on how to lower her eyes. Well, she could talk herself into the next Hamwar. Abarōz would not be bullied into following mindless custom.
As she walked deeper into the tunnel, Abarōz wondered if anyone else felt the same. Did they chafe under constraints left over from Tengri knows when? Did they hate being trapped in Dardan, a place so far underground that even the fish were eyeless?
If they shared her sentiments, she knew, they couldn’t say a word. The S̆āh cut out dissent as surely as zarran tongues. “Detention” meant prolonged torture, followed by a slow death.
No, Abarōz thought, as bad as life here could be, it wasn’t worth speaking out.
