In this world, women held a position somewhere between horses and cows. Aristocratic women were slightly better off. They were still treated like property, but they were allowed to handle their own lands and servants. That suited Aliya just fine.

There were just four things a woman could be (five at most): daughter, wife, mother, widow, and slut. That was it. There were no other roles for them—no free and independent women, no feminism, no self-sufficiency. If you didn't like it, you could be branded a witch and executed. Witches existed, but they weren't respected. Aliya ran across a couple of stories about how people dealt with witches, who were thought to be servants of Maldonaya and were summarily drowned or burned at the stake.

She particularly enjoyed the story about how women were ruled to be humans. One prophet was having a trouble with his wife, so he complained to Aldonai about her stupidity and evil temper. He asked Aldonai if it would be possible to categorize women as animals. Rats, perhaps? Aldonai thought for a while and answered, "Have patience, my son. If we categorize women as animals, then you and all the other men will be guilty of bestiality. You would be born from animals and live in sin with animals, and there would be chaos and disorder in the world." The prophet shut his mouth, and women were allowed to remain human. Aliya rolled her eyes. What a mental asylum.

Aliya felt she had mastered the fundamentals of their religion. She now knew not to make the sign of the cross, but to trace a circle—the sign of the Sun—in front of her face and then touch her lips and forehead. She memorized the local prayers and read all the biographies of saints that she could find in the library.

Knowledge was the best weapon in any fight, Aliya knew, and she knew herself. There was no way she would sit at home and work on embroidery. She wanted to bring new inventions to this world, if only for her own convenience. Doing so would put her on the wrong side of accepted female behavior, so she had to be prepared.

If the priest said, "My child, women do not do these things. Are you perchance a witch?" she could reply, "Father, have you forgotten that Saint Marilda healed people with laying on of hands? Saint Yevgrastia traveled. Saint Ridalina preached in brothels. So, refrain from your rebukes, for I have been touched by the Holy Spirit. If you don't believe me, I can call down the heaviest of the spirits to fall on your head. Then you'll really see radiance!"

There was one other thing Aliya loved about the stories of the saints' lives—they were written on weighty parchment scrolls. She could easily use the reverse side to practice writing. She knew that it would be a while before she was ready to go out into the world, and she wanted to copy down what she already knew about medicine before she began forgetting things.

She didn't want to start writing yet—there was a lot of other more pressing work to do—but she made note of where the scrolls were. She would rather have a good text on pharmacology than the life of Saint Ridalina. Her new world had saintly fools on every corner, but it would be a long while before they discovered anticholinergics.

She would write out all the muscles and nerves and make a detailed drawing of the human skeleton. Anatomy alone will take up so much paper. Aliya sighed. We know so much, and yet so little.

She also knew—and could probably copy out from memory—all of the classic novels, from Gogol to Dostoyevsky, but there was no paper for her to do it on. She would have given anything for a piece of paper—even toilet paper or maybe some leaves. Aliya was grateful for her profession as never before. All those lawyers, economists, and sales managers do well for themselves in our world, but how would they like it here, where half the people can't even read? More than half! I bet ninety percent of them sign their name with an X. Fights are decided by who has the heavier fist or the sharper knife. They probably think that double-entry bookkeeping means that your estate Comptroller is a thief.

Something similar happened at the Vatican in the Middle Ages, when a papal conclave was asked to decide whether women were humans or animals

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