family just outside hunger’s door.
She would have liked to pick up more money by cutting men’s hair in the
marketplace, but both law and ancient custom forbade that.
Shortly after she had burned the umbilical cord of the new-born to ensure that
demons didn’t steal it and had ritualistically washed her hands, she left
Shoozh’s house. His guards, knowing her, let her through the gate without
challenge, and the guards of the gate to the eastern quarters also allowed her
to pass. Not however without offers from a few to share their beds with her that
night.
‘I can do much better than that sot of a husband of yours!’ one said.
Masha was glad that her hood and the daricness prevented the guards from seeing
her burning face by the torchlight. However, if they could have seen that she
was blushing with shame, they might have been embarrassed. They would know then
that they weren’t dealing with a brazen slut of the Maze but with a woman who
had known better days and a higher position in society than she now held. The
blush alone would have told them that.
What they didn’t know and what she couldn’t forget was that she had once lived
in this walled area and her father had been an affluent, if not wealthy,
merchant.
She passed on silently. It would have made her feel good to have told them her
past and then ripped them with the invective she’d learned in the Maze. But to
do that would lower her estimate • of herself.
Though she had her own torch and the means for lighting it in the cylindrical
leather case on her back, she did not use them. It was better to walk unlit and