Read Online Forged by Fire by Janine Cross - Free Book Online Page A

Savga had despised me for her mother’s disappearance.
At Savga’s insistence, I rubbed her smooth little back till she drifted off to sleep.
Tansan’s infant wailed with hunger and suckled only briefly from another woman’s breast, and his pitiful cries kept me awake long into the cool night. When I did start to drift off, I dreamt I was falling down a gaping pit, and I jerked awake, heart pounding. Come dawn, I found myself agitated and exhausted, and in that enervated state, I sifted through the memories of my childhood, trying to recall if trolling had been a practice common on Clutch Re.
Xxamer Zu was but a pocket compared to Re; given the expanse and population of my birth Clutch, it was conceivable that trolling had existed there, but hadn’t often occurred where I could witness it, for the compound of my birth clan had been located a half day’s march from the bayen center of the Clutch. I certainly had no memory of trolling occuring on Re. It was a practice I’d have to tell Ghepp to put a stop to on Xxamer Zu. Immediately.
Come morning, Savga and I worked hulling the rem nants of last season’s wizened coranuts, so the nuts could be pounded into paste. Save for several old women spin ning string from beaten jute fibers, and two old men strop ping the blades of several overturned churners, Savga and I were alone in the compound; after a dismal morning meal of the cold remains of last night’s soup, the arbiyesku had trudged with hoe and hand plow into the patchwork of arid fields surrounding us.
One of the old women beside us was Tiwana-auntie, a fearsome hunchback with a voice like scree sliding down a mountainside. She was Fwipi’s elder sister, and as wizened as an old fig.
Beside me, Savga’s entire little body went suddenly as tense as a cur’s scenting a weasel. She sprang to her feet, coranuts flying everywhere, and streaked across the dusty earth. Tansan was entering the compound, along the same grassy path the rickshaw had traveled the night before. Behind her, in the hazy near distance, the central dome of Temple Xxamer Zu shimmered like a gigantic dragon’s egg.
Tansan held a hand up, as if to ward Savga back. Savga stopped, stood uncertainly. Tansan spoke to her and placed a hand on her head. Wordless, the two approached.
To enter the women’s barracks, Tansan had to walk past where I sat in the dust in the barracks’ shade. She walked slowly, pain clenched tight within her, but still carried her self with the feral grace of a creature impossible to capture. She didn’t deign to look at me, and after a quick glance I couldn’t look at her, either. She was as bruised and cut as I. The fishy taste of the congealed soup I’d swallowed for breakfast burned in the back of my throat.
Once again, she looked like my sister, Waivia.
I heard her mount the rickety stairs, heard the rasp of the barracks door swing open on its coarse twine hinges. A pause; Tansan was looking down at me, I could feel her eyes burning through my skin.
I met her smoldering gaze.
“This place”—Tansan gestured, taking in the compound, the cocoon warehouse, the rolling miles of sun-seared sa vanna beyond—“this place will be run by us one day soon. It will be ours, belong to Djimbi, belong to rishi. It will be my daughter’s.” Her eyes turned hard. “I think you’re well enough to work the fields tomorrow, Secondgirl.”
With that, Tansan entered the barracks, Savga at her heels, and the door creaked shut. After a pause, the door reopened and Savga clumped down the stairs and rejoined me, her face a thundercloud.
“Mama wants to sleep.” She sounded on the brink of ei ther tears or fury.
She chose fury and stared at me defiantly. “Mama’s my azedo. She’ll do what she says, oh, yes. She’ll get rid of the fa-pim muck in this Clutch, and then no one will hurt her ever again.”
“Close your fast lips, child,” old Tiwana-auntie rasped. “Spoken nonsense kills.”
Savga’s puffed-out chest deflated.