by Tricia Reeks
“She wasn’t like that,” I said.
“Then you obviously didn’t know her.”
“And you did?” I asked, scathing. “One night of—” I paused, deliberately “—love with her makes you an expert?”
He said nothing.
“You leave for eight years,” I said, pressing my point. I knew it was sheer foolishness to provoke him, but I couldn’t stop—I couldn’t let him take Pamati away. “You come back, not even taking the trouble to inform yourself. You want a child you’ve never known, born to a mother you never knew either.”
“All you say may be right,” Tyreas said. “But it does not change the one fact you have been avoiding: that the child—Pamati—belongs to me. By bargain and by blood.”
He was so sure of himself I felt disarmed—for a moment only, but a moment might be all he needed.
“Auntie, Auntie! They’re starting the dance. Why aren’t we going?” Pamati said. She ran into the house, and then paused when she saw Tyreas.
He in turn was watching her, his face expressionless. “Triad’s greeting, Pamati.”
Pamati was looking from me to Tyreas, and back again. Her gaze froze on the copper bracelets on Tyreas’s wrists—even children knew about blood empaths. “Auntie? Are you in trouble?”
She thought Tyreas had come for me, to arrest me. I gave a short, bitter laugh. “No. I’m not in trouble.”
Pamati turned to Tyreas, puzzled, but did not speak—at least I’d managed to teach her respect of the blood empaths, though she did not appear to fear him in the least.
Tyreas must have sensed something was expected of him. “I have come to visit your aunt,” he said. “I knew your mother, once.”
Pamati’s face lit up. “You did? Did Mommy send you?”
Tyreas said, “You could say she brought me here.”
“Oh? And does she have a message for me?”
I was about to tell Tyreas to stop spinning his stories, but he must have sensed he was going too far. “No,” he said. “I have not seen her in many years.”
Pamati looked disappointed, but she soon rallied. “Where do you come from?”
“Near a great city,” Tyreas said. “A city with white cobbled streets, and great markets where you can find many things from sea-shells to beautiful stones. I brought you one. Your mother would have been pleased to see you wear it.” And there, on the palm of his hand, was a green, translucent stone that seemed to have a light of its own.
An emerald? Was that what he had offered Aname? I imagined fistfuls of stones, diamonds, emeralds, topazes—no wonder poor Aname’s head had been turned.
Pamati reached out, hesitantly, and took the stone. It was set within metal, so that it could be worn as a pendant; the silver chain that held it shone in the gloom. Her face was carefully set in a frown. I knew she feared he’d take his gift back, as the children of the jati had once done, putting a wooden crown on her brow and proclaiming her queen, only to jeer at her afterwards.
Only when it rested on her chest did Pamati’s frown disappear. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thank your mother,” Tyreas said—and he said it with a sideways glance at me, so I couldn’t be mistaken as to whom he was speaking to.
“It must be expensive,” Pamati said, fearfully—used to a lifetime of measuring rice at each meal.
Tyreas shook his head. “No. In the city people trade them for little, and every woman wears one on her chest. It stands for protection.”
“Are people nice, in the city?”
Tyreas smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes—there was no feeling whatsoever behind it. “People are people.”
“Yes,” Pamati said, impatiently. “But are they nice to you? Do they say mean things about you?”
“No one would dare say mean things about me,” Tyreas said. “Or anyone with me.”
I disliked the way Pamati had taken to Tyreas so quickly—and, again, he had been quick to see his advantage and seize it. “We’re going to miss the festival,” I said, clearing my throat conspicuously.
Tyreas looked at me, sharply.
“We can all go together,” Pamati said, and I knew I’d already lost that battle.
***
I made Pamati leave the stone under her sleeping mat, suspecting the other children would only be too quick to tear it from her.
As we left the house, she ran into the courtyard to put a last touch to her design, and I found myself alone with Tyreas, for a brief moment.
“Why not tell her?” I asked.
He shrugged—an uncharacteristically human gesture. “Too much for her to take in at once. Do not think her knowing or not knowing changes anything.”
I bit my lip. I’d exhausted my small supply of arguments. I wanted Aname to be here, so she’d realize what a foolish bargain she had struck, so she’d explain to me why she’d struck it, why she’d let her head be turned by the promise of riches, ignoring the consequences of having a child without a father. I kept hoping there had been a reason, not merely greed and fear.
Demons take her. Had she not thought ahead?
As we walked towards the banyan tree at the heart of the jati, Pamati said, “Tell me about Mommy.”
Tyreas stood straight. Night had fallen, and I could no longer make out his expression—though what was I thinking of? He would have no expression no matter what happened.
“She loved life,” he said. “I saw her dance once, at the Feast of the Moon, as if every gesture was infinitely precious.”
“Did she dance well?” Pamati asked.
“She was the best,” Tyreas said.
“But she’s not here any more.”
“No,” Tyreas said.
Pamati looked up at him. There was a disturbing shrewdness in her tone, as if some of Tyreas’s acumen had rubbed off on her. “Auntie says that the dead come back tonight.”
“They do,” Tyreas said. “Maybe she will, too. But the dead act as it pleases them.”
“Wouldn’t she be pleased to see me?” Pamati asked. There was such pain in her tone that I took a step forward with my arms extended—knowing that I could do nothing to comfort her.
Tyreas did not answer.
We reached the heart of the jati. Under the banyan tree that encompassed our temple to the Triad, the crowd had already assembled in the wavering light of the torches. The scent of incense wafted in the air. In the center, near the altar, a scene had been erected on bamboo trestles. Shanti, our priestess of the Destroyer, was singing the sacred hymns of the Triad and of the minor gods, beseeching their protection from the returned dead.
Children and adults did not sit together on the Night of Mourning, for it would have been inappropriate. Pamati, who had been running ahead of both of us, made for the small group of children standing to one side of the scene.
And, like every year, the people of the jati cast disparaging glances at her. Chandi the councillor nudged his wife Yani out of the way, while Arune the smith and Bodhi the weaver merely sneered at Pamati’s passing—in such a way that could not be ignored. Pamati ran on, no doubt hoping to lose herself among the children.
But the children also moved away from her. Even over Shanti’s hymns, I could hear the faint sniggers, the endless mockeries.
Fatherless . . .
Your mother was a whore . . .
Knowing what I now did of Aname’s bargain, this last struck far too close for comfort.
“Children can be among the cruelest of us,” a voice said behind me, and I realized it was Tyreas. I’d forgotten he had ever been there. “Every year the same . . .”
“How would you know?” I snapped.
“I was a child once,” Tyreas said.
“You?” I could not help it. The words were out of my mouth before I could think.
“Even I.” He ought to have sounded ironic, or amused at the least. But he didn’t.
We moved to the edge of the crowd—they made way for both of us, I guessed because some of them
had caught a glimpse of Tyreas’s bracelets. Someone I could not see pushed me in the darkness; Tyreas’s hand effortlessly held me.
I waited until we reached a quiet place to ask, “Why?”
“Why what?” he asked. “Why come back now?”
“No,” I said. “Why did you offer that to Aname?”
He was silent for a while. On the stage, Shanti had finished the entreaties to the gods, and was now moving to the slow rhythm of the Summoning, her hands slowly bending and turning to emphasize every one of her poses.
“Blood empaths do not marry,” Tyreas said. “They do not raise children.”
“I know that,” I said. And privately thought he’d be incapable of raising a small child. You had to feel love, which he didn’t.
“We take children,” Tyreas said. “Every year, we find the orphans and the abandoned, and share blood with them.”
“You make them into—” I asked, and stopped. Into monsters like you, I wanted to say, but knew better than to push my luck.
“Yes,” Tyreas said, as if nothing were amiss. “It is a simple process.”
“It’s—”
“The way of things,” Tyreas said. “To have children, we would need spouses. Spouses need care. Spouses need love. So do children. Do you believe we could give them that?” For the first time, there was a hint of emotion in his voice, barely audible. Bitterness?
“No,” I said. “But that still doesn’t explain—”
“You are a slow thinker, Daya,” Tyreas said. His voice was flat again. “I wanted a child of my blood. I wanted an heir.”
“Why?” An unfair question, yet I had to ask it.
Tyreas was looking away from me, toward the stage, and did not immediately answer. “To leave something behind me. Something I had shaped, and not taken apart. I wanted an heir to what I had not destroyed.”
“You’ll destroy her when you share blood,” I said. “You’ll destroy her when she is trained. Isn’t that how it works?”
“She will want for nothing,” Tyreas said. And fell silent, for Shanti’s voice was rising again, summoning those of the dead who had returned to the earth.
A shudder passed through Shanti; her features went slack in the light of the torches. “Ranya?” she asked, in a small, bewildered voice. “It is I, Manu.”
Manu, keeper of the lore, dead for five years. Ranya detached herself from the crowd, and ascended the steps, to commune with her dead husband.
After Manu it was Rakhte, and after Rakhte Aayani, and after Aayani Meshnu—and so on until the night wore itself out, and the torches burned low, and the gray light of dawn slowly reminded us that we were still among the living.
Pamati ran back to us as the members of the jati dispersed. “She didn’t come,” she said. She sounded crestfallen.
I opened my arms to her and she ran into them, snuggling against me. Each of her sobs echoed in my chest as if they’d been my own. My eyes would not stop stinging.
***
As the sun rose, we walked back to my house in silence. The streets of the jati were deserted, save for a few haggard people, but those few still gave us a wide berth.
Tyreas was by my side, and he said nothing. I was beginning to understand that he did not speak unless he had to; that he did not venture any information unless compelled to it.
In my house, I brewed some cardamom tea for Tyreas and myself. Pamati had curled before the hearth and gone to sleep. I hoped that she’d forget her disappointment when she woke again.
No. I knew she wouldn’t. Some wounds ran too deep.
Tyreas sipped his tea in silence, and said, finally, “When she wakes—”
“No,” I said. “I won’t let you.”
“You’d stand against me?” he sounded amused.
“I gave up everything for her,” I said, all the words I had not spoken in years suddenly pouring from me. “My future. The life I could have had as a priestess of the Protector, and not merely an outcast peasant bound to the monsoon and the harvest. You have nothing that I want.”
“Think,” Tyreas said. He straightened, his dark eyes focusing on me. “Think twice, Daya.” He rose, unfolding himself until he seemed some dark thing, hovering over me. “I will go walking. That should give you time.”
He slipped through the open door and was gone.
I stared at Pamati. She’d gone to sleep curled around her emerald as if it was something of infinite worth—and why shouldn’t it be, seeming to come from her mother? Her mother, who was dead.
Child of my heart, I thought, trying to hold onto something, onto anything.
There were bruises under her eyes, where the tears had run.
Tyreas’s words rose in my mind: She will want for nothing.
I rose, and stood on the threshold, staring at the splayed pattern on the ground: our hibiscus flower design, to bring good luck into our home. Someone, perhaps one of the neighbors’ children, had already defaced it.
Think twice, Daya.
I stared at the intricate design, realizing at last that Aname was dead and that nothing would bring her back. That, whatever Tyreas might say, Pamati was my child, as surely as if she’d slept in my womb.
I had exhausted my arguments; all I had left was the deep anger in my heart—a mother’s anger at the thought her child might be, not only torn from her, but made utterly alien.
Tyreas was coming back, walking slowly on the dusty street. His gaze rested on me, and I held it, praying to the gods for the courage I could not find anywhere within myself.
“You have been thinking,” he said, when he passed the threshold.
“Yes,” I said. And, once again, “I will not let you take her.”
Something crossed his eyes then: a cold, frightening emotion that was not human. “You are determined to stand against me? That is not wise, Daya.”
“It’s not about wisdom,” I said, slowly, keeping my distance from him. “Or reason.”
“Call it fear, then,” Tyreas said. One of his hands had moved towards his belt; before I knew it, his fingers held a small dagger. The back of his hand was bleeding, too: in bringing the dagger up he had succeeded in wounding himself.
For Tyreas’s kind, blood is the supreme weapon. I knew that if he could shed my blood and mingle it with his, I too would be lost—no, worse than lost, utterly destroyed.
There was a hollow in my stomach, but I paid it no heed. Slowly, carefully, I spoke the only words that would come, “You said you wanted to leave something behind. Something you had not destroyed.”
He stood, silent, watching me, the blood from his wound slowly dripping onto his hand. I could still feel the coiled, cold anger in his stance.
“If you take her,” I said, ignoring the fear that choked me, “if you turn her, she will be like you. She will destroy. She will not love, or leave anything of hers behind.”
“She will find a child of her own,” Tyreas said.
“And is this how you want the future to be?” I asked. The words were coming fast on the heels of one another now, eager to be spoken—I had to be fast, to forget who I was speaking to, and the consequences if I failed. “A chain of children without a heart, who’ll take others’ happiness and find none of their own?”
He said, “I came to give her a future.”
“But it’s not a life you offer her.”
Tyreas said, “But you offer her nothing either, Daya. Nothing beyond your vaunted mother’s love. Love cannot compensate everything. Will love silence the jeers of children, or put an end to the jati’s contempt? Tell me, what future will she have here?”
“What I can give,” I said, quickly, before I could dwell on his words.
“No,” Tyreas said, shaking his head. “It does not suffice.”
I knew that he was right. “I raised her,” I said, raising a futile shield against him.
“And I,” he said, “am her father.” It was the first time I heard him speak the word “father”.
I shook m
y head. “I’m not Aname. I won’t sell my daughter away.” Only after he had spoken did I realize Pamati was not my daughter, but my niece.
But Tyreas did not appear to notice my lapse. He was shaking his head as if to frighten away a persistent mosquito. I watched shadows move back and forth across his face, in the utter silence. At length he spoke. “And if I take her, and leave her as she is?”
“Leave her—”
“Do not share blood.”
Taken aback, I said, “You wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t be of any use to you.”
“Do not presume to tell me what I will and will not do,” Tyreas said, calmly, softly. “Did you think blood empathy was the only thing I could pass on?” The cold rage was back in his eyes, and in every feature of his face. “She is heir to my holdings and to my knowledge, and I will see neither go to waste.”
I stood, silently. No words would come to me. I had not thought he was capable of bending.
He was still watching me. “Well?” he asked. “It is not an offer I will make twice.”
“You would keep your word?” I asked, and saw the subtle way his eyes hardened. “I’m sorry,” I said, more frightened now than I had been while he held the dagger in his hand. “Blood empaths don’t lie.”
Tyreas moved a fraction, and the sense of menace slowly abated. “Some do,” he said. “I do not. Nor do I make promises I do not intend to keep.”
It was a subtle way to remind me why he was here, but it did not affect me.
“I misjudged you,” I said, at last, all I could bring myself to put forward in the way of an apology.
He was himself again, cold, aloof. “Some do.”
I stared at him, weighing in my mind all the paths of Pamati’s future, and came to a decision. “I’ll let you take her,” I said, feeling as if I were stepping off the edge of a cliff. “On one condition. Let me come with her.”
Tyreas did not move for a while, staring at me. I was afraid he would read this as lack of trust, but at length he shrugged. “I care little about your presence. If you wish, as long as you promise not to run away with her, or to betray me in any other way. Do we have a bargain, then?”