And despite his rank, Ren's home was exactly as shabby as the last time Esha had seen it. A hole still showed in the bamboo shingle roof, crying out for repair. Gwara demons still piled beside the front door, featureless mounds of hair slurping at the street dirt. Damned things ate perfectly good dropped rupees and then hung around advertising the fact. Esha shooed them with a slow-swung kick and they rolled away, scattering into the alleys with a rustle of dry hair.
Before she knocked, Esha checked the houseflags. Someone in guard caste wouldn't know to look for it, but Ren's leftmost white flag still had a black resin smudge on its edge. Still marked an ignoble, under-table trader — marked by Ren himself. Esha doubted this man would ever change, but it was prudent to check before she spoke dishonourably.
He welcomed her inside. In the stinking light of a tallow candle, Ren looked rougher-hewn than the last time Esha had seen him: thinner in the arms, strained in the face, his headwrap sitting low enough to touch his eyebrows. But he freely returned Esha's namaste and welcomed her inside with a jabbering of Zhong, hurrying to shave a betel nut against his straight-bladed knife. That was a comforting truth, along with rain, taxes, and the fleeting nature of humanity. Betel nut could always begin a conversation.
“Good evening,” Ren finally bade her after a moment's chewing. His voice came out with the rattling echo of betel growing in a windy valley; his teeth were dark-stained from many such greetings. “What would you like this time, Esha?”
This time, as though Esha came every day. She was no such addict. But she held back her tart thoughts and asked for painkiller. For her bones.
“Bones?” He hissed, and turned toward his supply cabinet while slipping another shaving of betel between his front teeth. “Not much a small-time dealer like me can do about that. I've got a little tsupira that's yours if you have the coin, but for more of it, you'll need to ask my associate.”
“That Manyori woman?”
“That is her, yes.”
Esha had heard of the new Manyori family living on Yam Plateau. It was rare enough to see ocean-farers so far up Tselaya's peak, but rarer still that one of them had been granted diplomat caste. The diplomat's sister, however, was less honourable: she dealt gladtar right under the diplomat's nose. In Esha's life-seasoned opinion, knocking on that household's door would be a better way to get demerits than medicine.
She threw a hand. “Yaah, I don't want to seek out anyone else — and especially not some stranger. The most potent thing you have will do fine.”
Ren shook his head, a wagging of headwrap ties over his hunched shoulders. But he produced a folded slip of bamboo paper with neat-trimmed stems inside; Esha gave in return five rupees from her day's earnings, wooden coins she barely got to touch before they were gone.
“This is all I have,” Ren said. He slid the rupees apart, counting them again for good measure. “I hope heaven smiles on you.”
“Kind thanks to you. Stay honourable.”
“I surely won't!”
That stale joke gave Esha a smile, same as always. Walking back through the mountain's shade, beginning to shiver in the night's chill, she had to remind herself that honour was something to want.
One rupee remained in her pocket. It went immediately into Esha's savings chest — one more little coin that couldn't pay for discreet walls and a kind-tempered nurse. Virtuous hard work wasn't going to pay Esha's bills — but maybe Gita's plan could.
Chapter 2
That morning, over millet, pickles and buttered tea, Esha stared at her painkiller contraband in its slip of paper. Eventually she took a quarter of the herb into her mouth, one musk-fragrant twig, and chewed thoroughly. The full painkilling effect would take time and digestion, but she already felt the lungta energies releasing with each bite, the creeping breath-of-life tingling in her spit and soaking into her head. The pain in her ankles began to subside.
At least, Esha convinced herself, she could be strong hands and feet to aid Gita's keen mind.
“So,” Esha asked, bent over a new day's yam row, “What are my extra sacks for?”
“A phoenix,” Gita said. Her black eyes shone, lacquered over with impish ideas. “I saw it in the fallows. The two of us can surely outwit one bird. We'll share the bounty.”
Esha tightened her mouth. “If we don't share demerit points on our records. Or a jail cell. I'll be in a jail cell with you one day, Gita, I'm sure of it.”
Gita spat a laugh, waving her hand. “Believe me, the edge guards never check our fallow fields more than twice a day. They always follow our east rail a little before sunset. We'll have time.”
That wasn't the kind of detail Esha noticed: she kept her eyes on her hands because careless work killed perfectly good plants.
“If you're sure,” she ventured.
“Entirely.”
“We'll claim to be defending the fields?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And then we'll say that we failed to catch the bird?” A claim made after the bird was safely in a blackflag's hands, and the reward safely split between their two pockets.
Gita turned back to planting. “If anyone thinks we've lied, how will they prove it?”
“Sky as my witness,” Esha murmured, “This is madness. All I want is a nurse to wash my hair.”
“Spit on that — I'll be washing your hair. Until I can't find a human hair left on you.”
Much as she felt guilty for it, Esha was glad. Gita was the only one who had laid eyes on Esha's goat horns — and Esha was largely sure that Gita hadn't shown her deer pelt to anyone else. As the elder of the two, Esha would succumb first and be released to the mountain slopes, like they planned.
Some farm women weren't so fortunate. They worked slower each day, bodies warping, their rags and wraps overgrowing them like blight but unable to hide the inevitable. Eventually, the moment came when they weren't a person any longer. Just a confused animal making a scene.
“Well?” Gita asked. “We're doing this?”
In her sweat-clammy clothing — humble, faded things with fur hidden underneath —Esha hesitated. They were just trapping a phoenix, a nuisance animal by anyone's standard. How, she asked her sullied self, was this plan any worse than buying unlicensed medicines? It wasn't, really.
“When?” she decided.
Gita showed her betel-stained teeth, delighted. “Later. So there won't be enough light to bother reporting back to the field.”
It was amazing how little a person could be grateful for. But Esha was still kindled at the thought of a bounty. They wouldn't even need to report it to Janjuman's overseers — overseers who would report the phoenix catch honourably, to a registered trapper, and take a fat cut of the payout.
“I'll do whatever you wish,“ Esha told Gita. “Just don't ask me to chase the pest on these legs.” Regardless of that thought, she was smiling.
The evening meal was still mostly pork, with watery gravy, a spoonful of millet and even some string-thin shreds of cabbage. It was enough green food to prevent a civil war.
While Esha ate her humble meal, she listened to the other women Of The Fields, their voices familiar as the wind.
“When I say a fatty salve helps the itch,” Menku said today, “I truly mean a fatty one. Mostly lard.”
“That's what I used,” the new girl insisted. “I prayed it would work, but it didn't!”
Menku hummed. “I've heard tell that horns are worse.”
That was true; Esha held her peace and watched Menku turn to a stoop-backed elder field worker — the only one with taller headwraps than Esha.
But she didn't get an answer before the conversations all died. The plough yaks' panicked grunting rose loud outside, and then the nowhere-and-everywhere humming of an earthquake was upon them.
Bowls fell to the floor, wobbling in circles. Everyone was wide-eyed and surging toward the walls, pressing as far from the ceiling's midpoint as possible. Dozens of arms clutched field-sisters close, shielding youngest and oldest
as the tremors worsened; Esha had Gita's hand laced tight in hers and she didn't remember when that happened.
This earthquake subsided quickly. Silence and stillness returned — with no one thrown down, nothing ruined except a few spilled meals. In the dusty air, Janjuman's overseers flowed in the door to count heads while field workers crept back to their food.
Gita tugged Esha's hand. “Auspicious, hmm?”
Esha had to untangle their hands to swat her.
Gita volunteered them for perimeter check. Earthquakes did little damage to bare fields and fallows, but volunteering to scout for damage still showed a prudence that overseers liked well enough. Esha and Gita walked as brisk as Esha could manage, around the south-eastern side of Janjuman's estate to the edge of the grass-buried fallow lands — a long way to uselessly walk, but necessary to act out their lie. Then they returned to the overseers' office.
To one stone-faced overseer, Gita reported that that they saw a phoenix — in the fallow south-east, moving like it was striking its pieces of iron and pyrite. The two of them wished permission to chase that phoenix for the preservation of Janjuman.
The overseer brought her before the clerk. Under two sets of scrutiny, Gita repeated herself. A phoenix on Janjuman's land. Fire-starting behaviour. They wished to chase it.
The clerk eyed them like new-bought yaks, while inking and wax-sealing the permission form. He said, in accented Grewan, that the two of them had absence verification for this day only: if they brought the phoenix in, they would need to make report on their own time but they would be honoured in the records. And they might be subject to a monetary reward.
He didn't specify how much of a reward. Surely two or three rupees that could be earned easier by cutting bamboo.
“I will advise you,” the clerk added, “that based on measurement of this evening's earthquake, the earthreaders do not predict aftershocks until tomorrow at the earliest. However, there have been reports of a windsickle demon attacking an individual near the worldedge. Your safety is your own responsibility.”
Esha and Gita agreed, and ink-stroked their signatures onto the forms.
“Truthfully,” Gita said while they walked edgeward, “I've never heard of anyone making good on a pest animal capture. It's more trouble than it's worth.”
“I saw some clause about replacing personal property that gets damaged in Janjuman's service,” Esha said. “Maybe I'll try claiming that.”
“You'd need a diplomat to convince them, I'm sure.”
“If my khukuri blade finally meets the Makers today, I'll blame the phoenix. Who will defend some bird?”
“Yaah, I don't know. Just make sure there's phoenix blood on the blade, if you're really going to try it.”
“I thought we were just capturing it in a sack? Keh, it doesn't matter.” Knowing Esha's luck, her khukuri would wait to snap while cutting her morning yams.
Gita said nothing out loud, just kept up her smirking convoy of clever thoughts while she watched ahead. These fallows would be ready for replanting next year: bamboo stood taller than Esha did, its young leaves rattling in the wind. Carmine beetles crawled knee-high pine saplings, searching for magic-laden resin that wasn’t flowing yet. Movement snagged Esha's eye — but it was only a lone gwara, rolling through the grass in a mindless, seeking pattern.
“What about those aftershocks,” Gita said with a flat voice and a monkey's wry smile. “The clerk is good to warn us about those. Knowledgeable as he is about the mountain's soil.”
It was a little absurd. Carrying a permission form in her pocket, Esha was free in this moment; the tiers of human birthright were a smoky, distant thing. “And what does a clerk know about dealing with the earth?” she obliged Gita.
“Plenty! He must struggle mightily to keep his inkwell upright during an earthquake.”
“You think so?”
“Well, that's more lifting than a clerk usually does.” She peered sidelong at Esha. “Isn't it?”
Esha was the only one of the farming women who had seen the gloried heights of the mountain, and the lavish homes that looked more like temples, and the lungta showering down like petals from heavens' blooms. The taste of her smile changed. Only Gita was allowed to ask about these bitter memories.
“Gita Of The Fields,” Esha said firm, “mind your tongue and honour your betters. Clerks transport more tonnes of useless paper forms than you could ever know.”
“Yaah,” Gita cried, “I thought you were serious!”
“They're stronger than yaks, these clerks.”
“Esha!” One of Gita's flailing hands found Esha's, and she squeezed it brief and fond.
“Alright, I'll speak truth now,” Esha laughed. “Clerks are in the same caste as earthreaders, so they're informed of an earthquake an hour before anyone else. But that's all.”
“There aren't any earthreaders on Yam Plateau. Why would a scholar come this far down the mountain?”
Esha waved the question away. “They wouldn't: they'd send a messenger. Fah. Tell me something fresher, sister — where did you see the phoenix? You did actually see one, didn't you?”
“It was here, right here!”
They walked from bamboo thicket to gumgrass field, the knee-high stalks sticking to Esha and Gita's homespun clothes. Something delicate grew among the resinous undergrowth — one herb sprout with pale, bent leaves — and Esha took care not to step on something so potentially precious.
“But the bird didn't seem to like anything it found. I saw it moving edgeward, so I think we'll find it there.” Gita slowed her pace, placing her sandals careful and silent as they rounded a thicket of bamboo. Her hand slipped into her satchel for a throwing stone. “This is where I saw the bird before. Scratching for seeds, I think.”
The winds blew stronger with every step, and the flag-strung fence crept into view — bamboo rails with white-and-orange striped flags too bold to ignore. Beyond there, the lee side of Tselaya Mountain fell away and there was only empty sky. A bird would surely feel safe here, so close to the sky, perched on the edge of a human-owned plateau. Esha combed her gaze over the surroundings, too — searching for red imperial guards as much as red feathers.
She followed Gita around a head-high stand of bamboo — and suddenly, Gita stopped, throwing an arm out to bar Esha’s way.
“Over there,” she whispered. She reached into her satchel and wrapped a fist around a second stone. “Scratching at the dirt.”
“You think you can strike it in one try?” Gita was the better shot of the two of them: she could have been an archer if she had been born to a better caste.
“Yes, just go around and flush it out. Toward me.”
After a heartbeat of hesitation, Esha bent, to grip some gumgrass and yank it up roots and all. “Don’t kill it,” she told Gita. Some fools thought phoenixes were more valuable alive.
“I won’t.”
Esha took a final glimpse around and saw no guards, no witnesses at all. Grass clump held tight, she crept away from her friend around the bamboo stalks.
The field slid into view, more dusty leaves and sun-bleached air — then a sliver of orange feathers, bright as fire. The phoenix faced away from Esha, bent and focused on the soil. Its long neck lifted.
Esha held still, avoiding its gaze.
The phoenix paused. Its feather crests lifted, then fell back into three sleek points. It shuffled its feet, and its wingtips. Then, warily, it bent again toward the earth.
That would be the last mistake this bird made. Esha lunged and threw, and her root clod sailed wide but the phoenix startled all the same, hurrying onto its wings. It flew past Gita and there was a hard whip of movement as a rock struck the bird’s wing. It screeched and faltered, its knotted stringfeathers grazing the grass tops — but it still flew, limping airborne toward the worldedge fence.
“No!” Gita cried. She ran and was gone past the bamboo.
Esha hurried the opposite way around the bamboo stand and caught a glimpse of Gita
running so her blue sari edges flew, toward the phoenix that whisked over the worldedge fence like a torn-free flag.
“Ah, gods’ spit,” Gita sighed, her voice like dust on the wind. She slowed, rubbing at the edge of her headwrap. She had always sweated a lot under her head coverings; Esha felt a prickling at her own hairline in this fallen moment.
“Come on, sister,” Esha called. “It can't be helped.” She walked the chasmic distance between them, gumgrass crackling under her sandals. “Did you loose any feathers from it?” They might at least get a few rupees for good wing quills, or for durable stringfeathers with the phoenix's fire-striking metals tied in.
“Don't believe so. Damnit! I struck it true and it still flew away.” She reached the fence and laid both hands on the bamboo rail’s curve. “Like the cursed thing had— Esha! Esha, look! It’s still here!”
Esha hurried to the fence, and with the wind moaning around her she looked down — where Gita pointed, at the vanishing, concave rock face. Down there was the phoenix, clinging to the craggy rock and staring up with eyes like hot embers. One of its wings fanned rough, like it could no longer close.
“We can still get it!”
Esha eyed her friend; the doubts surged back. “You think so?”
“If it could fly, it wouldn’t be simply sitting there — isn’t that true?”
“You didn't bring a net, did you?”
“I haven't owned a net in years. We've got our ropes — what if we snare it? At that angle, though ...” Her face as determined as ever, Gita unwound her selfrope from the loops strung diagonal around her body.
“Here.” With hope heavy in her gut, Esha bent for a small stone. “Weight the string. If anyone can catch this thing, it's you.”
They spent long moments bent over that fence, squinting into the wind. Yam Plateau was the second-largest plateau on all the tiers of Tselaya, built wide by the gods and expanded even wider by metalworkers; the plateau's underside receded so deeply toward the mountain's core that the phoenix was sheltered underneath. Gita threw and threw her makeshift snare, grumbling oaths to herself. Holding fistfuls of Gita's sari and bearing some of her friend's weight, Esha watched the clouds and craned sometimes to see the fallows behind them, once again fearing guards' colours.
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