Tortall by Tamora Pierce Page B

power a woman has the next time she hands you a bowl of food. And taste it carefully.”
    My buckets were full. I shouldered my yoke, silently cursing as my veil twisted and caught under it, and walkedaway, careful not to spill any water. I was almost to my aunt’s house when I heard shouting. I looked back. Some of the village boys had come to pick a fight with Fadal; who knew over what. Boys were always fighting, particularly with strangers. I went into my aunt’s house and closed the door behind me.
    I had just finished topping off the water jars when the innkeeper’s wife came and pulled my aunt out into the courtyard. They whispered together urgently for a moment. Then my aunt ordered us girls to get into the kitchen and stay there. Swiftly she closed the kitchen doors and shutters before she went back to the courtyard and her friend. My cousins and I listened at the cracks in the shutters and doors, hearing distant male shouts. The noise faded, leaving us no wiser than before.
    I finally gave up. My father needed his breakfast. We would hear the news soon enough. “What is going on?” he asked as I brought his simple meal. He was dressed already. From the smell of medicinal herbs, the healer had visited him while I was away.
    “They did not tell us. We are only silly young girls,” I grumbled.
    “And how do they expect you to learn wisdom?” my father asked me as I guided his hand to his plate and cup. “Read to me, my treasure? From the Book of the Distaff, the third chapter, the fifth lesson.”
    I had reached the verse on balance in the land and water when my uncle and aunt interrupted us. “Quickly, quickly,” my uncle said. “Teky, girl, come with us. The girls must go into the hidden room. The temple priests have found awoman dressed as a man—that boy Fadal, who stayed at the inn last night. They are taking her to the temple for burning. They will come for the girls next, to see if they were contaminated by the nearness of this Fadal.”
    I stayed where I was. I knew my father. He turned his fading eyes on his brother-in-law. “Is the faith of your girls so weak, that your temple priest will break it?” he asked gently. “Or is your priest so stupid, that he will find failure where there is none?”
    My aunt folded her hands and unpinned her face veil. “That is what I told you,” she said to her husband. “We have raised our girls to follow the Oracle’s laws. They are no shame to us, that we may hide them.”
    “We could be accused of impurity!” whispered my uncle. His face was covered in greasy sweat. “We live next door to the inn; they may think we are tainted!”
    My father shook his head. “Purity of faith is yours alone, brother. Only you can speak for it, and the only one to whom you should ever speak of it is the god. Not to a priest who teaches you only from half of the Oracle’s books.”
    “And
that
is the kind of talk that will get my daughters burned if they repeat it!” my uncle cried. “We are sheltering heretics!”
    My father looked down. “If you are no longer happy to house my daughter and me, then we shall find another roof, or the god’s own stars,” he said. “We will not disturb the peace of this house, brother. But do you really wish to live in fear of those who claim to speak for the god who cooks our food, heats our homes, lights our lamps? The God in theFlame shines in the eyes of your wife and daughters, and in the sky by day and night. That god speaks with two voices, male and female, has two faces, the sun and the moon, and spoke through an Oracle who wrote two books, not one. Nothing changes that.”
    My uncle turned on his heel and walked out. My aunt followed him. Once they were gone, my cousins crept in, their eyes wide in fear. To soothe them, my father had me continue to read from the forbidden half of the Oracle’s texts, the Book of the Distaff. I stopped reading on my aunt’s return.
    “He went to the temple, to witness Fadal’s