Quiet Knives by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

 
     
    Veil of the
Dancer
     
    IN THE CITY OF Iravati on the world of
Skardu, there lived a scholar who had three daughters, and they
were the light and comfort of his elder years.
    Greatly did the scholar rejoice in his two
elder daughters--golden-haired Humaria; Shereen with her tresses of
flame--both of these born of the wives his father had picked out
for him when he was still a young man. Surely, they were beautiful
and possessed of every womanly grace, the elder daughters of
Scholar Reyman Bhar. Surely, he valued them, as a pious father
should.
    The third--ah, the third daughter. Small and
dark and wise as a mouse was the daughter of his third, and last,
wife. The girl was clever, and it had amused him to teach her to
read, and to do sums, and to speak the various tongues of the
unpious. Surely, these were not the natural studies of a daughter,
even the daughter of so renowned a scholar as Reyman Bhar.
    It began as duty; for a
father must demonstrate to his daughters that, however much they
are beloved, they are deficient in that acuity of thought by which
the gods mark out males as the natural leaders of household, and
world. But little Inas, bold mouse, did not fail to learn her
letters, as her sisters had. Problems mathematic she relished as
much as flame-haired Shereen did candied sventi leaves. Walks along the river
way brought forth the proper names of birds and their kin; in the
long neglected glade of Istat, with its ancient sundial and
moon-marks she proved herself astute in the motions of the
planets.
    Higher languages rose as readily to her lips
as the dialect of women; she read not only for knowledge, but for
joy, treasuring especially the myths of her mother's now empty
homeland.
    Seeing the joy of learning in her, the
teaching became experiment more than duty, as the scholar sought to
discover the limits of his little one's mind.
    On the eve of her fourteenth birthday, he
had not yet found them.
    * * *
     
    WELL THOUGH THE SCHOLAR
loved his daughters, yet it is a father's duty to see them
profitably married. The man he had decided upon for his golden
Humaria was one Safarez, eldest son of Merchant Gabir Majidi. It
was a balanced match, as both the scholar and the merchant agreed.
The Majidi son was a pious man of sober, studious nature, who bore
his thirty years with dignity. Over the course of several
interviews with the father and the son, Scholar Bhar had become
certain that Safarez would value nineteen year old Humaria, gay and
heedless as a flitterbee ; more, that he would
protect her and discipline her and be not behind in those duties
which are a husband's joy and especial burden.
    So, the price was set, and met; the priests
consulted regarding the proper day and hour; the marriage garden
rented; and, finally, Humaria informed of the upcoming blessed
alteration in her circumstances.
    Naturally enough, she wept, for she was a
good girl and valued her father as she ought. Naturally enough,
Shereen ran to cuddle her and murmur sweet, soothing nonsense into
her pretty ears. The scholar left them to it, and sought his study,
where he found his youngest, dark Inas, bent over a book in the
lamplight.
    She turned when he entered, and knelt, as
befit both a daughter and a student, and bowed 'til her forehead
touched the carpet. Scholar Bhar paused, admiring the graceful arc
of her slim body within the silken pool of her robes. His mouse was
growing, he thought. Soon, he would be about choosing a husband for
her.
    But not yet. Now, it was Humaria, and, at
the change of season he would situate Shereen, who would surely
pine for her sister's companionship. He had a likely match in mind,
there, and the husband's property not so far distant from the
Majidi. Then, next year, perhaps--or, more comfortably, the year
after that--he would look about for a suitable husband for his
precious, precocious mouse.
    "Arise, daughter," he said now, and marked
how she did so, swaying to her feet in a single, boneless move,