Free Four Horses For Tishtry by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

breeding.”
    “It’s likely,” Barantosz said with no trace of satisfaction. “A girl like you is not the best for bearing. In a year, you will have enough of a chance to prove your claim, and that is as reasonable as a man can be.”
    Tishtry nodded. “I will show my worth,” she promised, at once pleasantly surprised and terrified. “A year in Troas and other arenae, you will see, I will make my way.”
    “I will tell your father of this when I reach home.” He paused. “You need have no concern for your sister.”
    “Macon?” The thought of being without her older sister dashed Tishtry’s sense of triumph at once. “Are you taking her home?”
    “No. She’s one less for you to buy now. TheMaster of the Bestiarii has bought her from me. He says he needs a good saddler here, and that you will need more tack when you go on. He drives a hard bargain, that one.” Barantosz shrugged heavily. “This world is not for me. I cannot sort out all the currents that run here. At home, I know what is right and reasonable, but not here.”
    “Master?” Tishtry blinked. She had always thought Barantosz a dithering fool, but never, until that moment, had she felt sorry for him.
    “You seem to do well enough. I’m counting on that, and so is your family. Remember that.” He turned away from her, then looked back once. “I hope you do well, girl. I will lose good slaves if you prosper, but ...” His words trailed away as he started away from her once more. This time he did not look back.
    Tishtry stared after him, filled with confusion. Her life, which had seemed so bleak before, now had the promise she had longed for. Yet mixed with this elation was worry; she had said she would prove herself in the year she had been given, but now she had to admit to doubts, and they weighed her down, along with the realization that there was no longer any turning back except in total defeat.
    Dozei whickered and nuzzled her neck, as if reminding her that they had work to do. The other three horses caught something of his restlessness.
    “Very well,” she said aloud, trying to put her turmoil aside in the familiar routine of practice.
    * * *
    Macon was flustered by Tishtry’s question, and she did not answer it at once. “He said he needed a saddler. That’s what he told Barantosz.”
    “But that isn’t all there is to it, is there?” Tishtry asked. They had finished their evening meal and weresitting by the small brick stove in the corner of the room; unlike the residents of the great villae, they did not have their heat from a central furnace that circulated warm air just under the floor, and so there were few parts of their quarters that were not cold.
    “Not all,” Macon admitted. “He is fond of me.”
    “And?” Tishtry pursued. “What more?”
    Macon picked up a length of leather and began automatically to work it through her fingers, softening and shining it. “He has said that he will ... make me his wife.”
    Tishtry stared. “Wife? But why?”
    “For protection. As a freedwoman, I am still part of our family, but as his wife, I am part of his.” She shrugged. “And he may simply want to have a wife, like a freeman has.”
    “But your children would be freemen in any case,” Tishtry pointed out. “Never mind. Don’t try to explain it to me. If you want to be his wife, that’s fine with me. But who would have thought that any of us would be married?” She laughed and stretched out her muscular legs to the warmth. “When will this happen?”
    “Sometime in the spring, after we have left for Troas,” Macon answered, some of her habitual calm returning. “We will go to the magistrates and record the marriage contract and then have a celebration.” She blushed deeply. “A marriage contract. Imagine that.”
    “And what then? Do you return here or what?” Tishtry felt a pang of loneliness as she said this, because she could sense that although Macon had not gone homewith Chimbue Barantosz, she was