Lanna hated mornings. With a groan she rolled off her sleeping mat and glowered at the beams of the hut. She could still smell the green wood's sap. They would need to rebuild with seasoned timber once they could afford it. The hard-packed earth below her felt dry and level. Almost like her yurt back in the south, except there was less ice on the inside in the morning.

'Lanna, get up.' Her mother bashed a spoon against the cooking pot that sat astride the firepit. 'You're last to rise yet again.'

Lanna shrugged her thin woollen blanket from her shoulders and wriggled to her knees, rubbing her face to alleviate the numb sensation. The hot nights were too warm to sleep covered, but the biting insects seemed to love her exposed skin. The locals burnt a resin to keep the bugs out their homes. Perhaps next dry season they could barter for some.

'Sorry, Ma,' she muttered and glanced around. As the males were absent, she didn't use the bamboo screen in the corner, stripping off where she knelt instead. She glanced down at herself. Her ribs no longer protruded and her belly had rounded, the hollow of her stomach gone. Weeks of good food had also padded out her hips and arms. Village Eight-Nine-Two ensured they ate well.

Lanna had a day of threshing ahead. Her Southern body allowed her to work beyond the endurance of the local women who had been separating rice grain from stalk all their lives. What she lacked in technique, Lanna made up for in brute strength.

Mika joked that Lanna was part ox – or at least that's what Lanna thought she'd said. Mika sometimes forgot to slow her speech.

Lanna pulled her cotton tunic over her head, another donation from the headman, Mika's father.

Her mother thrust a bowl of rice and some sort of mashed vegetable at her, scooped from a pot that lay in the bed of sand that surrounded the central firepit. Having an open fire in the hut was familiar, though it made the temperature unbearable when they cooked the evening meal. There was a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, though it also let the insects in, it was better than trying to keep a fire going outside, especially when the wet season arrived.

Lanna scooped the meal into her mouth. Food was food. No one from the clans wasted it, even if it was tasteless mush. None of them had yet mastered the stick-like eating implements the villagers used. Lanna couldn't see the point. The sticks slowed down eating and food risked getting dropped. What was wrong with her hands?

A month in the village and Freya still couldn't cook with the new ingredients. Lanna would have to learn if she hoped to get a chosen one here. Her stomach churned at the thought. That would be a consideration later, after she mastered the language. She didn't need the additional task of finding a partner as well as learning how to be a good Imperial, making herself useful and trying to communicate.

Bouncing up, Lanna kissed her mother on her weatherworn cheek.

Freya chuckled with a warm smile. 'I'll join you for stook gathering. The chemist wants to see me first.'

'Not sure he can help, Ma – your feet smelt before you got rot.' Lanna ducked away from her mother's attempt to spank her and skipped out the hut, giggling.

The bright morning light stabbed her eyes; she hissed and narrowed her gaze as she searched for her sandals. The wooden shoes had taken some getting used to. Nowhere near as comfortable as hide boots. She tapped the sandals on the ground, smiling at the hollow sound.

A familiar sensation shivered her spine, like she was being watched, and Lanna turned, her movements deliberate and slow, memories of a fangcat racing to the front of her mind. Her smile died as she shifted her weight, legs braced. The scars across her back stung with remembered pain.

Beyond the rickety fence surrounding the hut stood a man. She blinked against the rising sun, trying to see more than a shadow. A boy – too short for a man – perhaps? She couldn't decide. In the clans, it was easy to tell a man from a boy. Men grew tall, broad and robust. But it was tricky in the Empire where full-grown men could be shorter than her. She couldn't make out his features. To avoid offence, she added no honorifics to her speech, sure she would make an error. There were so many modes of address, it made her head dizzy. Best to keep things simple. She offered an uncertain smile.

'Good morn.' Could he understand her? Even when her words came out correct, her speech was difficult for the villagers to understand as her tongue would slur and mangle the words. 'Another... um – warm – um...' Her mind failed. It was always warm and dry. It would be the same for weeks, until the storms arrived.

The figure stepped forward. Once out of the sun she could focus on his features. He was young, smooth cheeked, though his face had lost the roundness of youth; he couldn't be far from adulthood. Dark, flyaway hair hung over his eyes. His lips bore a smirk and when he flicked his head to get the hair off his face, she saw he had a straight nose and dark, quick eyes. He strolled forward with brash confidence, even though he stood a shade shorter than her.

'I am Hemil,' he said with a bow. His voice sounded smooth and lacked her brother's cracking.

'Lanna.' She brought a hand to her chest in indication, bowing in return, but the gesture still felt awkward.

'I know.' He straightened and his smile brightened. 'Mika has spoken of little else since...' The rest of his speech blended into nonsense. She managed to pick out that he'd been away, in another village. Lanna kept a fixed smile on her face and nodded, pretending to understand.

The rapid clip-clop of sandals interrupted the one-sided conversation.

'Mika,' Lanna muttered. Hemil frowned and looked about him. She pointed in the direction of the sound as the girl flew around the bend in the path at a rapid sprint.

Hemil's gaze flicked to Lanna and then back to the running girl. He said something under his breath. Lanna looked on, confused, as Mika grabbed the front of Hemil's tunic. She waved a finger at him and spat several sentences in rapid Imperial before grabbing Lanna's hand and dragging her away. Hemil's smirk remained.

'Pay him no mind,' Mika grumbled. For such a small girl her grip held power and she had no difficulty dragging Lanna. 'My brother is a—'

'Your brother?' Lanna interrupted. 'He... kin?'

More Imperial followed, and she picked up on a few curses.

'Eldest. He knows better.'

'I don't understand.' At least she had perfected that sentence – she used it daily. 'He greeted me and...'

'Not time for that yet,' Mika responded in a rush. 'You haven't made the vow.'

Lanna sighed. That was another decision she must make soon. Mika had become Lanna's mentor in the 'way of the Emperor'. If the family pledged to become Imperial citizens, they would be required to perform a ritual every morning. Not having full command of Imperial hampered her understanding, but Lanna had gathered enough to know that this ritual was half prayer, half pledge of obedience to the God Emperor.

Mika marched Lanna to a grove of peach trees. This was their morning habit and Lanna had grown to enjoy it. The trees grew on the brow of a steep rise. Some long-gone founder of the village had thought to make the little hill productive and planted ten peach trees, which were achingly near to harvesting. Lanna had sampled a few hard windfalls and devoured the tough, tart fruit. Mika had assured her that ripe peaches were soft, sweet and juicy.

Lanna seated herself on a mass of twisted roots in the dappled shade of the largest of the trees. The morning air held little heat, and the moisture of the dawn remained, scented with the ripening fruit in the branches. Sitting in the grove made her hungry, but she wasn't there to eat.

Mika stepped into a shaft of morning light and pressed her palms together, turning north-west, the direction of the Imperial city. She bowed her head, hands on opposite shoulders, so her arms crossed over her chest. Her hair slipped over her shoulders and hid her face. Then the chant began.

'I am a tool of the Emperor. May my hands, acts and words serve him.'

Mika's hands moved out in controlled, graceful arcs and she inhaled and then brought them back to her shoulders as she exhaled the chant again.

'I am a tool of the Emperor. May my hands, acts and words serve him.'

Ten times – it had to be ten. Why? Well, it had always been ten.

With the final movement, Mika offered Lanna a smile. 'Now you try.'

Lanna paled. This was new. Mika had only ever asked her to watch.

'Um, I'm not sure I can.' Mika gave her no room to protest. Instead, the girl pulled her to her feet and poked and prodded Lanna's ungainly body into the correct forms.

Mika chuckled. 'Think water. It flows, does not jerk.'

'You've never seen a Southern storm over the sea, little girl,' Lanna muttered under her breath in Southern then instantly regretted it.

There it was, in the forefront of her mind. Crisp air, so cold exposed hair would freeze and snap. White flakes, white ground, white sky. Her body wrapped in fur and feathers. A tiny splash of contrast to the blank nothing. The clan lands: beautiful, clean, cruel.

It was too much. Lanna doubled over and cried out, the pain as real as if she'd been struck. Her eyes swam with tears, and she pressed her hands to her chest, gasping as her heart throbbed with loss.

Mika bleated, the foreign words emphasising the wrongness of where Lanna found herself. How could those people ever understand her? Would she ever feel settled and at peace? Her life had always been a battle. Warm body against the white. Face into the winds of the prejudice of her clan.

Her illness and home had defined her. What was left? An incurable disease and a heart that longed for empty skies and biting cold.

A warning of a headache settled over her forehead; if she didn't get herself stitched up mentally, she would be dribbling on the ground. No one from this place of plenty should see her like that. They would fear her.

Lanna forced her back to straighten and slowed her breathing while dashing away her tears with shaking fingers. Once her watery vision cleared, she looked at her friend's concerned face. Mika's eyes were large, rounded and almost on the verge of tears.

'Sorry,' Lanna whispered. 'Didn't mean to frighten you. I have the...' She frowned. There was no word in Imperial to describe it. The ache of being away from home and clan didn't translate.

'I miss my people.' These words were as insipid as rice porridge compared to the song of loss that hissed through her blood. 'Clanspeople feel much.'

Mika made some soothing noises, and Lanna found herself seated with Mika patting her hand. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the gentle breezes breathing through the leaves above and the sweet scent of the ripening fruit.

'Did I say something wrong?' Mika sounded so dejected Lanna cursed herself.

'No,' she insisted. 'Not at all. My people, we're a little...' She struggled for an appropriate word. 'Strange?'

That raised a smile from Mika, but it soon slipped from her lips. 'I heard if your husband dies, you die?' Mika's patting on the back of Lanna's hand increased in tempo.

Lanna couldn't stop a chuckle bubbling past the lump in her throat. She opened her eyes and made to ruffle her friend's annoyingly neat hair, and Mika pulled back with a cry of protest.

'Who told you that?'

'Gatherers,' Mika grumbled as she smoothed strands Lanna hadn't even touched. 'They come to the village three times a year. Tell us about other places and people. Last freeze the visiting gatherer told us he had spent his youth in the Clanlands.'

Lanna rolled her eyes and said some less than complimentary things about the Order of Observists and their prying. 'If that were true there would be few women in the clans,' she corrected, trying to make her tone gentle. Mika probably thought the story romantic. There lay a small morsel of truth in the story, but it had been much distorted.

'Men in the clans die: they hunt, fish, and accidents happen. If the women died at the same time...' She let her sentence hang and saw the idealism drain from Mika's shining eyes.

'Oh, so it's not true?'

'It is true.' Lanna gave a grin; she couldn't resist teasing, homesickness tempered as she talked.

Confusion fluttered over Mika's expressive face. 'But you just said...'

'I know.'

'Lanna, are you mocking me?' Mika folded her arms and pouted, her brows drawing together in an ugly frown. 'That's the last time I show you kindness.'

Lanna held her hands up in surrender, laughing. 'It is and is not true. It's hard to explain. I'll try.'

The fascinated light ignited once more in Mika's eyes.

'We don't marry in the clans. We choose a different man for each child. That way we don't bond. It's considered weak. Those who put lover before clan are weak.'

Mika's mouth dropped open. Lanna shrugged and continued.

'Most my age would want a man that stayed. It's a nice thing. Durrick has a different father, but my mother and father bonded after. The elders weren't happy, but Ma did her bit by them in taking another man.' Lanna gave a sigh. 'Weakness runs in my blood.' She looked down at her stubby fingers. 'We weren't poor in the Clanlands, but that didn't matter. The elders didn't like us, me especially.'

'That's why you all left?' Mika whispered. Lanna nodded in response. Mika went back to patting Lanna's hand where it draped over her lap.

'Take the vow and you can marry, have someone that stays.'

'That's a scary thing, Mika.' And it was, to bond to another, to want no other. The elders warned about such things at every opportunity. Hard men and women shaped by the harsh climate. They hated Freya and feared Lanna would make the same choices.

'I think it's beautiful,' the girl sighed. 'To love someone so much you can't live without them.'

Lanna snorted. 'It's annoying is what it is,' she muttered in Southern. 'Women should be strong, need no lover to make them whole.' Guilt twisted in her as she spoke. Freya would be hurt had she heard her daughter echo the elders' accusations.

Mika shook her head, not understanding. Lanna preferred not to enlighten her.