Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson Page A

of a ship, made Diribani queasy. She leaned her elbows on a bolster and closed her eyes. When she opened them at the trumpets' brazen blare, the head of their long procession had already reached the parklike area just inside Gurath's easternmost gate. Cow Gate, dedicated to Mother Gaari, earth goddess, protector of the poor and helpless. The governor's escort would leave them here.
    Diribani felt a moment of shock when the trumpeters rode straight through the gate without stopping. Of course, the white-coats didn't worship the twelve. But it felt wrong, to pass a goddess's shrine without offering even a flower. She parted the gauze curtains. Ignoring the older ladies' cries of consternation, Diribani folded her hands. "Please bless our party, Gaari-ji," she said softly. Several sprays of wheat stalks, heavy with grain, fell from her lips.
    The she-elephant shivered at the kernels bouncing like hail off her gray hide. The mahout soothed her, and the enormous animal lumbered on.
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    "Safe travel, Mina Diribani!" A young man on a white mare waved at her. Diribani recognized Kalyan and Jasmine. She leaned out and waved in return.
    Alerted to her presence, other townsfolk, too, folded their hands, smiling and calling their farewells. "Eyo, Mina Diribani."
    "Remember us in Fanjandibad, Mina-ji!"
    "Come back soon, diamond girl."
    Most of the white-coats pretended they hadn't noticed her, but one girl stepped out from the shade of a rose arbor to blow kisses at Diribani's elephant.
    Diribani's lips shaped Tana's name. But before Diribani could be certain she had really seen her sister dressed in overseer white, one of her companions hauled her inside and twitched the curtains together.
    A ring of outraged faces confronted her. "Perhaps it escaped your notice that none of us are veiled?" one of the ladies said in an icy tone. "The curtains stay closed."
    "Please excuse me, Lady Yisha," Diribani said.
    "It mustn't happen again."
    As the women murmured among themselves about the lilies and rubies at Diribani's feet, she settled back against the bolster. Had Utsav the crow god tricked her eyes? She had wanted so badly to see her sister one last time before what could be a long separation. She might have imagined the familiar features, the smile brilliant with affection--and relief, too, now that she thought about it. No, that had definitely been Tana, wearing a white coat. She had been standing a little way beyond Kalyan and Jasmine. Maybe the trader was teaching her to ride? That was the most likely explanation.
    How did Tana feel, wearing the costume brought to Gurath
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    with the invaders? Diribani glanced down at her own borrowed dress wrap. Ruqayya must have sent one of her ladies to the marketplace, unless she traveled with a store of garments from each of the Hundred Kingdoms. The blouse was fine cotton, light as air against Diribani's skin. Embroidered irises in a maze of gold ribbon-work banded the dress wrap's length of butter-yellow silk. She felt a fraud in it, but her new maid's horrified expression when Diribani had suggested she return it to Princess Ruqayya and ask for a plainer one had convinced Diribani to wear it. The princess hadn't struck her as a frightening figure, but Diribani's circumstances were different from her maid's.
    It didn't matter, since only these severe ladies would see her in it. Diribani hadn't decided whether their disapproval stemmed from her being a non-Believer, a commoner daring to wear a queen's dress, or a conjurer spouting flowers and jewels. They tended to ignore her, so she returned her attention to the countryside. Which, in its own way, was less than satisfying.
    The howdah consisted of a platform with a tent built over it, the frame's four corners rising to a peak in the center. The thin fabric that covered it prevented people from seeing the unveiled ladies within, but also obscured the view out. The travelers passed through a misty landscape of shrouded fields and forest.
    While