At bedtime, she examined the sandals they had sent. Thick-soled, to keep the feet from the heat of the sand. Lettered all around the soles with unintelligible phrases, and with a rather rank smell, as though the leather were badly tanned. Aufors walked with her up and down the balcony as she tried them out. The smell was off-putting, but wearing them was bearable.
The baby did not wake her in the night, but he wakened very early in the morning, before it was light. Genevieve carried him down to the kitchen and found Awhero standing in the door to the lower stairs.
“Is it true?” Awhero asked. “You go to walk with Shah’s wives?”
“So they tell me,” Genevieve answered.
Awhero croaked. “Oh, lady, I do not like it.”
Genevieve didn’t like it either. She made a face. “What could go wrong with it, Awhero? If I keep my tongue on leash.”
“They will not speak so you can understand. Women of Mahahmbi speak woman’s language, so as not to soil men’s language on their dirty tongues. We Malghaste, we seldom speak where Mahahmbi can hear us, so what words we say are not relevant. High-caste women, they do speak before men, so they have their own tongue. Now, it is true that they hear men speaking, and they pick up language, so they may understand you. You can try, but oh, keep to simple things. How hot is sun. How green are trees of garden. How bright flowers. How grateful you are to join them there.”
“Perhaps I can explain to them why we are here, so they can tell the Shah . . .”
Awhero cackled with laughter, echoed by the dozen or so of the cousins and aunts who straggled down the stairs behind her, listening. “Oh, lady, lady. Women of Mahahmbi do not speak to men at all. They are allowed to say two words in men’s language:abn, which meansyes, orasfa, which meansat once. It would be disrespectful to say anything else. Most you can hope for is that they might talk of what you say where men might overhear them, and even then men would pretend not to understand.” She shook her head, making a grinding sound with her teeth. “Wait here. I have gift for you.”
She went off down the stairs, returning in moments with a soft white robe, holding it up to show that it would cover Genevieve from head to toe.
“Under your outer robe,” Awhero said. “Wear this. And do not let any of your skin show on street.”
“Why, Awhero? I have clothes.”
“Not like this. I tell you, wear it. Remember that she who shows skin on street may be executed for being whore, so do not give them excuse. This is like robe Tenopia wore, when her Shah planned evil, woven from seed bolls of same plant, trimmed around hem with her words to wizards of winds. I think there is evil coming, so wear it.”
When Aufors heard what Awhero had to say about the invitation, he scowled. Though she had said nothing about the old woman to anyone else, Genevieve had told Aufors about her conversations in the cellars, and he, after a spasm of concern over the impropriety of it all, had promised he would keep it a secret. Since then he had eagerly sought the malghaste point of view to enlighten his own understanding of the Mahahmbi.
“This mission of ours seems to be to make one miscalculation after another,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t you think the Prince would have been better informed than to expect the Shah’s women to speak for us?”
“I think that was Father’s idea,” she replied. “1 think he came up with that one all by himself, and I haven’t a clue as to what the Prince knows or doesn’t know.”
In the morning, a harpta was led to the door by half a dozen handlers. Aufors stalked on one side of her as the lizard lurched on the other, its stout body bending from side to side as it walked on splayed feet, its fin sometimes shading her and sometimes not. It had an evil, rotten smell. The edges of its scales were like knives. If one were bumped by a harpta, one could be badly cut or scraped. Genevieve was bumped, but Awhero’s soft robe saved her from any serious discomfort.