The Desert Spear

their customary spot.
    Jardir nodded. “Bones heal stronger after being broken.”
    “I’d rather not test that,” Abban said. Jardir shrugged. “At least the Waning begins tomorrow,” Abban added. “You can have a few days at home.”
    Jardir looked at the cast and felt profound shame. There would be no hiding this from his mother and sisters. Barely in
sharaj
a cycle, and he was already a disgrace to them.

    The Waning was the three-day cycle of the new moon, when Nie’s power was said to be strongest. Boys in
Hannu Pash
spent this period at home with their families, so that fathers could look upon their sons and remember what they fought for in the night.
    But Jardir’s father was gone, and Jardir doubted he would fill the man’s heart with pride in any event. His mother, Kajivah, made no mention of his injury when he returned home, but Jardir’s younger sisters lacked her discretion.
    Among the other
nie’Sharum,
Jardir had gotten used to living in only his bido and sandals. Among his sisters, all covered head-to-toe in tan robes revealing only their hands and faces, he felt naked, and there was no way to disguise his cast.
    “What happened to your arm?” his youngest sister Hanya asked the moment he arrived.
    “I broke it in my training,” Jardir said.
    “How?” Imisandre, the eldest of his sisters and the one Jardir was closest to, asked. She put her hand on his other arm.
    Her sympathetic touch, once a balm to Jardir, now multiplied his shame tenfold. He pulled his arm away. “It was broken in
sharusahk
practice. It is nothing.”
    “How many boys did it take?” Hanya said, and Jardir remembered the time he had beaten two older boys in the bazaar after one of them had mocked her. “At least ten, I bet.”
    Jardir scowled. “One,” he snapped.
    Hoshvah, his middle sister, shook her head. “He must have been ten feet tall.” Jardir wanted to scream.
    “Enough pestering your brother!” Kajivah said. “Prepare a place for him at the table and leave him in peace.”
    Hanya took Jardir’s sandals while Imisandre pulled out the bench at the head of the table. There were no pillows, but she laid a clean cloth on the wood for him to sit upon. After a month sitting on the floor of the
sharaj,
even that seemed a luxury. Hoshvah hurried with the chipped clay bowls Kajivah filled from the steaming pot.
    Most nights, Jardir’s family ate only plain couscous, but Kajivah saved her stipend, and on Waning there were always vegetables and seasoning mixed in. On this, his first Waning home from
Hannu Pash,
there were even a few hard bits of unidentifiable meat mixed into Jardir’s bowl. It was more food than Jardir had seen in quite some time and it smelled of a mother’s love, but Jardir found he had little appetite, especially when he noted that the bowls of his mother and sisters lacked the bits of meat. He forced the food down so as not to insult his mother, but the fact that he ate with his left hand only made his shame worse.
    After the meal, they prayed as a family until the call came from the minarets of Sharik Hora, signaling dusk. Evejan law dictated that when the call sounded from the minarets of Sharik Hora, all women and children were to go below.
    Even Kajivah’s mean adobe hovel had a barred and warded basement with a connection to the Undercity, a vast network of caverns that connected all of the Desert Spear in the event of a breach.
    “Go below,” Kajivah told his sisters. “I will speak privately with your brother.” The girls followed her command, and Kajivah beckoned Jardir to the corner where his father’s spear and shield hung.
    As always, the arms seemed to look down on him in judgment. Jardir felt the weight of his cast keenly, but there was something that had been weighing on him even more. He looked to his mother.
    “Dama Khevat said father took no honor with him when he died,” Jardir said.
    “Then Dama Khevat did not know your father as I did,” Kajivah said. “He spoke only truth, and never raised a hand to me in anger, though I bore him three daughters in succession. He kept me with child and put meat in our bellies.” She looked Jardir in the eyes. “There is honor in those things, as much as there is in killing
alagai.
Repeat that under the sun and remember it.”
    Jardir nodded. “I will.”
    “You wear the bido now,” Kajivah said. “That means you are no longer a boy, and cannot go below with us. You must wait at the door.”
    Jardir nodded.