Free The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper Page B

the tears coursing down my cheeks.
    “Great-tooth said something was stolen,” said Bluethumb. “We don’t know what. Something important, something secret.”
    “My house was all messed up,” I cried. “Did they find whatever was taken?”
    “Not that I know of, child. And that’s all anyone knows.”
    And that was the only answer I ever got. They looked for my half brother in the neighborhood where he lived, but he had fled, with his wife and child. After a few days, Bluethumb told me I’d been purchased as a slave,by the harim-masters, the eunuchs Soaz and Barfor.
    “Who sold me?” I asked. “I belonged to Mother and Father. They were dead, they couldn’t sell me!”
    Bluethumb didn’t know who’d sold me, though she’d seen the paper right enough, in the eunuch’s office. “Don’t worry over it, child. If you are the property of the sultan, no one will fool with you. It’ll keep you safe.”
    Which was more or less true. They put me to work in the kitchen at first, scrubbing vegetables—which were never clean enough for the armakfatidi. Furthermore, the armakfatidi bothered me, even after I got to the point I didn’t tremble and squeak every time one of them grummeled at me. Eventually, I even learned to understand them, which, though I didn’t know it, was a rare talent, indeed.
    Then, when Bluethumb found I could sew—Mother had also taught me how to sew—they put me with the chattery seamstresses, hemming veils and learning embroidery, then, when some of the concubines heard me telling stories to the stitchers, they brought me into the harim itself as a fetcher and carrier, mender of mantles and cooker of snacks. The concubines were plump and lazy (as the sultan preferred), while I was stringy and active. Also, I knew how to read Tavorian, which most Tavorians did not. Though there were few books in the harim, songs and love poems and such sappy stuff, Bluethumb had a brother working in the salamlek, on the other side of the great metal gate, and he brought books from the sultan’s library, books I wrapped in clean linen and read secretly and returned timely so no one even knew they were gone. I read everything! Even the great history of Tavor, the Almost Three Years of Bedtimes , where all our customs and costumes are set out, just as they have always been.
    Everything I read or heard was grist for the story mill, tales and facts to be reworked and twisted and made to fit into the kind of romances the harim enjoyed: deathless love between male and female, one of each, unlikelythough that was. And adventure stories, where the princess dressed up as a boy and traveled far away. And stories about lands where females ruled, and all the males were conquered and locked up in cages. Once after I told that kind of tale, the harim decided to act it out—theatricals being one of their chief amusements—and at Sultana Winetongue’s bidding even a few of the eunuchs helped, playing the parts of the terrible males who got locked up forever.
    I had just turned ten when I came. I was well past my fifteenth birthday when I was summoned by the sultan. Almost six years. There was little evidence of it when it came to pack. Anything I’d gained in the last six years was in my head, mystery and marvel and adventure from all those years of reading. My actual belongings made no larger a bundle than when I came.
    The morning of departure came, sooner than I had thought possible early in the night when I’d lain sleepless, wondering how it would all happen, too excited and fearful to believe I would ever sleep. Still, sleep I had, and the birds nestled in the fretwork were just beginning their drowsy comments on the day when my eyes popped open like squeezed pea pods and I staggered to my feet trying dazedly to remember why I was getting up at all. The memory came quickly enough when I tripped over the bundle I’d packed the night before—after the other slaves in the room were asleep, as they still