Tu Syed, as commanded by the Besur, had hired one Master Pirwura to guide them across the treacherous terrain between the rural town of Lestari and the beginning of the road into the Khir Mountains. The wretched handmaiden had been against it from the start.
“It can’t be that hard,” she’d said. “A few days, and we’ll see the mountains for ourselves! We don’t need a guide to get there.”
Tu Syed had given her his most condescending sneer, not a sneer to be taken lightly. She’d smiled back. How he’d come to hate that smile in the last two-and-a-half months! “The Besur wishes us to take no chances. This Master Pirwura is the most highly recommended guide in the territory. And he says that Chhayan bandits abound in the countryside around here, bandits who, unholy dogs that they are, wouldn’t think twice before setting upon a band of Kitar pilgrims. He will give us protection as well as leadership.”
Her smile had only grown. “I’ll protect you, Tu Syed. Don’t you trust me?”
But of course he didn’t. She couldn’t weigh more than six stone dripping wet! What good was she save for feeding and clothing Lady Hariawan and smiling at people in that unsettling manner?
So he’d hired Master Pirwura, and they’d set out across the wide plains country toward the Khir Mountains. Lestari was considered the last mark of civilization in this part of the nation, and Tu Syed didn’t wonder. No one but peasant shepherds and cattle-herders lived out here, and it was all too easy to imagine Chhayan nomads shrieking their heathen battle cries and falling with dreadful bloodlust upon a gentleman (a slave, yes, but a gentleman slave) such as Tu Syed. It was a good thing they had a hero-adventurer type on hand to keep them safe.
So Tu Syed thought with a certain smug satisfaction when, near the end of their journey, even as the Khir Mountains loomed large above them, and nothing but empty wild land stretched as far as the eye could see on all other sides, they heard the first yodeling shriek. The Chhayan bandits! They were come at last! And sure enough, they appeared the next moment, rising up out of the ground like undead spirits, their horses shaking free the debris of their camouflage, their weapons held high above their heads as they set upon their prey!
And did that tiny little nothing of a handmaiden do anything? She just sat there on her donkey, smiling away. Her mistress was no better. Lady Hariawan didn’t bother to look up from the pommel of her saddle. At least the dogs had the good grace to bark their heads off, useless creatures though they were.
But Master Pirwura, like a true hero, had shouted orders to the slaves, told them to circle their donkeys and form a wall around their mistress. Then he had set to with a will, his hewing blade flying, his voice bellowing. How those Chhayans fled at the very sight of him, knowing his reputation as they must! They hardly put up a fight at all! Cowardly, weak-livered dog men.
So Tu Syed had tried a smile of his own the handmaiden’s way. But it had clashed against hers, and he looked away again quickly, wondering why he suddenly felt so stupid. After all, hadn’t he just been proven right?
Master Pirwura returned from routing the bandits, wiping sweat from his brow and a drop of red blood from his lip. “They’ll not trouble innocents in these parts again!” he’d declared. And then he’d said, “I will, of course, require my ten percent extra for defense.”
“Naturally, naturally!” Tu Syed had said, bobbing and grinning his gratitude.
They’d continued on their way until, that evening, they’d reached the foothills of the Khir Mountains and the beginning of the long, winding, upward road.
“This is as far as I go,” Master Pirwura had said, and asked for his payment. But before Tu Syed could so much as reach for his purse, that sun-blighted handmaiden had urged her donkey forward between the hero and the slave. She dismounted and tilted her head prettily.
“We don’t pay cheats,” she said. “Certainly not extra.”
That’s when it began, the exchange that left Tu Syed and his brethren all but clinging to each other in terror as they watched the battle raging between mighty Pirwura and the girl.
A battle that was frighteningly one-sided.
“What a nice-looking son you have,” Sairu said in a voice of syrup. “A bit pimply, to be sure, but most boys will grow out of that in time. Not much of a horseman, but he did make a great noise. I’m sure he does you proud.”
“What do you mean?” Master Pirwura cried. “I have no son!”
“Nephew then?” the girl suggested. But she shook her head. “No. No, he’s your son. The other one was your nephew, and the third and fourth are friends, I would imagine. What percentage do they get of your earnings for these little escapades? Or do they do it just for fun? It must be exciting to play Chhayan bandit and to see all our frightened faces!”
Master Pirwura protested. He blustered. He roared. He threatened.
And then the handmaiden’s weapons really came out.
“So your wife left you for another man, did she?”
The look upon the mighty Pirwura’s face could have turned the stomach of the most stoic Pen-Chan. He went a shade of green Tu Syed would not have believed humanly possible. His mouth opened, and he seemed to sway where he stood. Then he growled, but with a quaver in his voice: “Where did you hear that?”
“I didn’t,” Sairu replied. “I read it.”
“Read it?”
“In your face, Master Pirwura. Or is that even your name? It means ‘The Honored Warrior,’ which does seem rather presumptuous for a pig-keeper. Don’t try to protest! I figured out your true profession long ago. Pig-keeping has a way of staining the soul, though I mean no insult when I say it. I’ve met pigs I quite liked. But pig-keeping isn’t particularly heroic, and your wife was always ashamed, wasn’t she?”
“I—you—Who told you? Who knows?” Pirwura gasped.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re not from Lestari or this region, are you? No one here knows the truth, because you came from down south, by your accent, possibly as far as Tumbam, though I think I detect a trace of western influence as well, which implies possibly a little Chhayan in your heritage? Oh, those dastardly Chhayans! You know how they wriggle their way into things.”
“No!” Pirwura shouted. “I’m not! I’m not anything like that! I am Kitar, full-blooded!”
“I see.” Sairu blinked slowly. “It was your wife who was Chhayan. That makes sense, that does. A Chhayan woman wants her man to fight. She wants her man to be a hero. Not a pig-keeper. So you couldn’t keep her, not for long. Only long enough to give you that boy of yours.
“But you’ll show her. You’ll show them all! You’ll make a hero of yourself, one way or another, and earn some coin while you’re at it. Hahaha!” Here she laughed, but her laugh was far more pitying than her smile, and almost sounded sad. “Poor man! Even I know you can never purchase the respect of a Chhayan. You might as well try to catch the wind in a net.”
The big man’s nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath. His chest, already broad, expanded, and Tu Syed watched his hands clench into massive fists. Oh, Anwar’s light! Oh, Hulan’s mercy! He’d smash the girl flat as a rice cake!
But in that moment, her three stupid dogs set up their barking. And, though Tu Syed could have sworn they’d been secure in their carrier baskets, they leapt forth suddenly and swarmed Pirwura, biting at his ankles, tearing at his calves. The big man screamed and tried to kick, but the lion dogs were used to dodging kicks from irked Masayi slaves, and they avoided his feet with ease and dove in again with their vicious sharp teeth. At least one landed a solid bite and, though Pirwura was huge and the dog no bigger than a sack of sugar, the man doubled over with pain.
The girl caught him by the arm. She twisted, and he gasped and fell to his knees. “We don’t pay cheats,” she said again. “Not extra. You take your earned pay and be on your way, pig-keeper.”
With a final wrench, she flattened him. Then she let go and backed away carefully, avoiding his grabbing arms with the neatness of a dancer. And then she smiled a
t him.
That was the end. The final blow. Pale and shaking, Master Pirwura turned to Tu Syed and held out his hand. Afraid to go anywhere near him, Tu Syed tossed him three bright coins as originally agreed upon. No one spoke a word, not until their guide was mounted on his own shaggy pony and well on his way back down the narrow road they had followed.
“Give my best to your son!” Sairu called out to his back.
He made a rude gesture. Then he was gone.
Sairu turned to the servants. They cringed. Every one of them had secrets he did not wish read from his face, certainly not out loud! Though they knew they could gain no help from that quarter, they all lifted pleading eyes to Lady Hariawan, who sat upon her mule, unaware of all that went on around her. Her gaze was fixed upon the little dogs milling at Sairu’s feet.
Sairu, sensing some distress in her mistress’s placid face, picked up Sticky Bun and hastened to the side of the tall mule. “Here, my mistress,” she said, holding up the dog.
Lady Hariawan received him into her arms, and he settled down, panting and licking his chops with pleasure at a rending well done. Lady Hariawan remained silent, but she stroked the dog’s head with one long finger.
Sairu took hold of the mule’s reins and rubbed its broad brown cheek. “Shall we continue?”
The road up into the Khir Mountains was clear this time of year and would be for a few more months. The winter snows were melted, and rushing spring torrents had passed on their way, dragging chunks of the road along with them. It was not a safe way to travel without a guide. The Besur had done everything in his power to impress this truth upon Sairu. “I will send messages to Daramuti,” he had promised. “A guide will come for you. You must await him.”
But though they made camp and waited that night and well into the next day, no guide appeared.
“We must continue to wait,” Tu Syed insisted, nervously watching how the handmaiden’s gaze kept turning to the road and following it into the thick trees, then on up to the lofty mountain heights. He half expected her to go plunging in at any moment, and he dreaded what he would have to do then. Because he couldn’t, as a gentleman, let a maiden like her go traipsing off into the wild on her own. Or could he?
He twisted his fingers together. “Please, my dear young woman,” he said, which was condescending to the extreme, and earned him another of Sairu’s smiles. But he soldiered on bravely. “The Besur assures me that slavers use this road to transport their wares across the mountains into Nua-Pratut. Is this not true, Tu Domchu?” He turned to his second for support.
Tu Domchu spat a thin stream from between two teeth. Then he twisted his lips as though limbering them up for better expulsion. Feeling Tu Syed’s gaze upon him, he lifted one grey eyebrow and glanced his way. “Yup,” he said, and no one could say whether or not he’d heard the question.
With a sigh, Tu Syed addressed himself to Sairu. “You see? The Besur does not want us to risk Lady Hariawan’s safety among slavers.”
“Just as he did not want us to risk her safety among the Chhayan bandits who abound in the plains behind us?” Sairu said. “How thrilling.”
“We daren’t make that climb without assistance,” Tu Syed insisted, though his voice dropped to a hesitant whisper now. After all, he didn’t want to risk the girl suddenly proclaiming all his closest secrets to the company present. Perish the thought! “It would—it would be hazardous to the wellbeing of Lady Hariawan.”
This, Tu Syed knew, was his only weapon. But it was a sharp one. In the last months, he had seen how Sairu cared for her mistress with a consideration and concern far beyond that of a normal handmaiden. Which was quite nonsensical, really! Who took that much care for a temple girl?
The argument worked, however. Sairu’s smile faded, and she turned her attention to Lady Hariawan, who sat by the campfire, staring into it without seeing. Sticky Bun lay belly-up beside her, snoring as he slept, his little paws twitching now and then as he chased invisible prey. Dumpling and Rice Cake piled atop each other nearby, their tawny coats indistinguishable from one another so that they looked like one lumpy, two-headed dog.
Sairu drew a long breath, making certain she inhaled silently so that Tu Syed would not hear and guess at her frustration. After all, they did not know if the messages had gotten through. How many carrier doves could the Besur have from Daramuti, a remote mountain temple? Two, maybe three at most? And what was the likelihood that any had survived the return journey?
She did a quick calculation and frowned at the conclusion she reached. But at the same time, while the “Chhayan bandits” had proved fanciful enough, she knew for certain that slavers did, in fact, use this mountain trail and use it often. She had already spotted signs which the others had not even thought to look for. Not least of which was a pair of manacles lying in the brush where they had been tossed from the road. Manacles still wrapped around boney wrists from a pair of severed hands. The flesh on those hands had long since rotted away, leaving only bare bone that stood out to Sairu like a beacon.
Only slavers could be so cruel to their property. She wondered momentarily what had happened to the poor mutilated slave. Had they bound up his wounds and sold him to the mills, where he could pull a chain attached to his waist and shoulders and still earn back whatever the price paid for him? Or did the rest of his remains lie somewhere along the road through the Khir Mountains?
She shuddered. So much life, beautiful life, teemed beyond Manusbau’s walls. But where there was life, there was death as well.
“We will wait,” she said, “We will wait until dawn the day after tomorrow. Then, if no one comes, we will continue.”
Tu Syed frowned at her tone of command. After all, who had put her in charge of the decision-making? Nevertheless he bowed, murmured thanks, and backed away, temporarily relieved.
Sairu remained where she stood, hands folded demurely, head tilted, gazing up the road into the forest, into the mountains. Somewhere in those heights nestled Daramuti, the site of Lady Hariawan’s rest. If Lady Hariawan could ever truly rest.
Suddenly she saw movement in the brush. Another might have mistaken the flash of red for the coat of a fox gone a-hunting, but Sairu knew better. She had seen that same flash, caught glimpses of that same shadow far too many times in the last few months to doubt what she saw now.
“Dumpling!” she cried.
Instantly her pack alpha was on his feet, disentangling himself from Rice Cake, and running with all the speed of his stubby legs to her side. Rice Cake and Sticky Bun righted themselves with snorts and growls and followed their intrepid leader. All three caught the scent, and Sairu did not need to issue a command. The lion dogs threw themselves into the brush in swift pursuit, following the trail of the cat. Sairu hastened after.
“Where are you going?” Tu Syed called desperately behind her, but she ignored him, disappearing into the thick green of the foothills, climbing and stumbling and hastening as fast as she could, following the barks of her dogs, who followed their enemy.
This time, she told herself, this time they would succeed! Many times in the last few months they had repeated this same chase, but always the demon somehow, even when cornered beyond all hope of escape, disappeared. Once, right before her very eyes. One moment she had looked into that wicked face and those bright golden eyes . . . the next, it was gone.
Devil’s work, she knew. Devil’s work and devil’s luck! But not this time. This time she would catch him.
She was gaining on the dogs now and knew they must have their quarry cornered, possibly treed. With renewed vigor she pushed forward, tripping over low brambles, ignoring how branches cut at her face and arms. One hand plunged into the thick folds of her sleeve and withdrew grasping a bright knife. She was close now. The barks were an uproar of viciousness.
Then suddenly a man’s deep voice barked in answer: “Away, you craven, hasty-witted hedge-pigs! Ger-off me, you pribbling, motley-minded wag-tails!”
The lion dogs’ barks changed
to squeals of dismay.
Sairu felt her heart stop. For a moment she froze where she was. But the next, all three furry bodies barreled past her, tuck-tailed and terrified, but apparently unscathed. Relieved, Sairu’s heart thudded back into motion. Then she ground her teeth and hurried on, determined not to lose her prey. For half a second she thought she saw the form and shadow of a man through a curtain of green boughs.
Then she pushed through, stumbled, and found herself looking down into the smug face of an orange cat.
“You!” she cried.
“Hullo,” said the cat. “Took you long enough.”
The demon sat beneath a wild Katuru tree, its heart-shaped leaves casting delicate shadows across his face and body. Little one-winged seed pods fell in twirls from the high branches, and for a moment he looked quite magical and solemn and beautiful.
He purred like the cat who had not only got the cream but also knocked the creamer over, destroying a silk tablecloth in the process.
Sairu took a threatening step but paused even as she adjusted her grip on her dagger. She knew how quickly he could move, how in an instant he could disappear as though he stepped from this world into another in the blink of an eye. But she was done being stalked, and she was determined not to lose him this time. So while longing to lunge at him and stick that fluffy tail on the end of her blade, she kept herself in check.
And she smiled. “Have I kept you waiting?”
“Absolutely,” the demon replied. “I’ve been skulking about, trying to catch your attention for hours now, but you were so caught up in your mortal business, you didn’t notice.” He stood, his tail lashing the air irritably, and took a pace toward her. “But really, setting your dogs on me? Again? After all we’ve been through?”
“What exactly have we been through?”
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