“He knows plenty of tricks,” she commented.
“He's been my partner for eight years. He's figured his way around humans in such—“
She stopped, her face wary. Esha felt a matching portent in the ground her rump rested on.
“Did you feel that?” Atarangi asked.
“I did. An aftershock ...?”
The phoenix cackled urgent at Atarangi.
“The lines are moving, he says. Maybe lines of phoenix territory, maybe something else — I can't say, but moving lines sometimes means an earthquake is nearing.”
“He can predict earth movement? How often is he right?”
“I've never counted. Perhaps two in three times? If I knew the bricks and beams of his talents, I might understand them better. It's a sense in his head, I know that.” Atarangi waved a spread hand over her face, encompassing eyes, ears and all else. “Every phoenix I've ever met hates lodestones, so I think they wield a similar type of earth magic. Similar enough to clash.”
That was a far broader answer than Esha had expected. “You ... You give your bird a lot of thought.”
“You're going to find that there's much to think about.”
That put a speck of terror into Esha, drifting through her blood while Atarangi smiled and gave her bird more kudzu. Atarangi spoke like she knew Esha's reasons for guilt — but she couldn't know everything Esha had salted away in her head. Maybe Esha was showing a reaction on her human face when she looked at the companion phoenix and thought of others past, phoenixes vanishing through trees and over cliffsides. Maybe those things just curdled when they met the memory of Atarangi's bird offering Esha a sliver of friendship.
“You,” Esha tried, “said there might be an earthquake. How long do we have?”
“That, I can't say. We should keep on.”
They stepped back onto the spire pass and kept climbing, kept throwing their selfropes upward. There was more wind and more of the phoenix's staring as evening fell golden on the cliff face. An hour later, they heaved themselves up over the plateau's edge, grasping the spires that rounded the travel-worn curve like wheel spokes. Together — gripping the pulley cable with clumsy, overlapping hands not used to each other — Esha and Atarangi drew their supplies up and hauled the wheeled pack up onto Maize Plateau.
They sat, Atarangi catching their breath, Esha merely waiting for the fatigue to drain from her limbs. The phoenix watched them but with divided attention: the pulley drew his attention and he paced closer to peer at the gearworks.
Her breath returned, Atarangi lifted her gaze to the sky. “I don't think we have enough daylight to climb another spire pass.”
“No, no,” Esha said. “It'd be a bad idea, regardless — you're not from Tselaya. You'll fall ill if you climb too quickly.”
“Truly?”
“It's been proven by hundreds of newcomers.”
A pause hung while Atarangi thought on that. “Is that why the carts travel so slowly?”
“I don't know. Likely.” That, and Tselaya nobles getting queasy when they moved quicker than a stroll.
“It's a trouble for humans,” Atarangi supposed, “not for birds.”
“We are fortunate to have your bird checking ahead. About that — there'll be a rest site around half a kilometre from here, if my memory is to be trusted. Can your bird look for it? That's something he can understand ...?”
It was indeed something the bird understood. Once Atarangi distracted the phoenix from his gear-prodding and asked him to search the pine forest, he circled high over the campsite like a beckoning flag. Dogs and yaks couldn't do that. Esha was beginning to understand why some went to the trouble of keeping a phoenix.
She didn't like the sensation, but she was beginning to understand much broader facets than that.
This campsite was well used, with bamboo staggered like staircases from all the fuel cuttings. Together, Esha and Atarangi cut bamboo into fuel sticks, discussing in loose maybes how much they would keep or sell. If they worked enough, their trip could pay its own wages.
In the fading daylight, under leaves' shadows, Esha grilled bamboo shoots on smoky coals. Atarangi sat with some of the fuel sticks in her lap, scraping something from it with the tip of her dagger; Esha couldn't discern what the crumbs were but the phoenix nibbled some from Atarangi's offering fingertips.
“So,” Esha asked, halting, “you said the bamboo sliver was actually offered friendship. What does friendship mean to a phoenix?”
Atarangi eyed her. “What do you suppose it means?”
Another answer that wasn't an answer: Esha stifled most of her sigh. “I'd ... guess that it's the same thing friendship means to any animal. Food, and safety from hunting beasts, and wearing away their fear of human presence. But there's more to it than that, isn't there, good diplomat?”
The smile Atarangi wore was full of secrets, and spreading like satisfaction. Esha was beginning to grasp the face underneath, the shape of the bones under the mask.
“You know a handful about diplomacy, Esha. Think of Tselaya's history. Many human tribes lived here and bore arms against each other, until they realized that their needs weren't so different. They used their breath-of-life to translate each other's tongues, and through that they learned to truly speak to each other. Like plant roots crumbling a stubborn rock, people are learning to understand. That fact has allowed Tselaya Mountain to lay down its weapons — for most of the castes, that is.”
Esha held her tongue. She hackled at the sight of soldier caste but she had to admit that a guard's polearms, bows and fine-tooled khukuris were mostly for show; for better or worse, everyone worked under the Empire since the Accords were struck. Esha and other Grewians worked in unity with Sherbu, Gwung and plenty more of Tselaya's children. Humans were able to do that, to look at a stranger's face and learn that they were a new ally.
“I'm sure I see where you're going,” Esha said. “Speaking lungta works on animals as well as humans, it's the same breath-of-life. But Atarangi, I hope you're not going to tell me phoenixes are thinking beings. They're not people, they're—“ Esha finally spat out the truth lodged in her throat: “They don't have souls. How could they?”
The phoenix watched her, intent. Maybe wondering the same — how could I? — because he swivelled his curious gaze to Atarangi while she gathered her thoughts.
“How can a mere seed grow into a tree? There can't be enough wood and sap inside such a tiny hull.”
Esha opened her mouth, and closed it again. More truths were sticking in her throat.
Atarangi lifted her pale-palmed hands. “I haven't discussed this with many Tselayan folk. You've seen too many crops set ablaze by phoenixes, I suppose. Or imagined phoenixes coveting every garden sprout, until you would swear such greed to be true. But you've been company to my birds.”
Esha stared at her bowl heaped full of grilled bamboo. “More company than a turd, I suppose,” she muttered.
After a stunned instant, Atarangi stumbled into a laugh. “Most people are, I'd say. Just keep trying, good fieldwoman.”
Phoenixes stole seeds, and burned swaths of fields to the ground. Phoenixes cursed Esha's every effort. But Atarangi's bird had opened a door latch solely because Esha Of The Fields wanted inside. Maybe she had taught him the trick, and maybe she hadn't.
Esha set her rusty body down in her makeshift bed: a mound of dry bamboo leaves, some blankets and a tarpaulin for a tent. Her joints complained in new voices after the day's travel — but her head full of thoughts was louder by far.
Chapter 8
Wind chattered all night through the pine needles. Esha didn’t usually sleep on such a shoddy excuse for a bed, or keep her headwraps on all night like armour.
She hefted herself up at first light and rubbed the sore clumps from her neck muscles. When her wish for buttered tea grew strong enough, she crept out into the dim-lit world and relit the fire with her well-worn flint and steel — under the phoenix's watchful eye.
; He sat quietly enough to overlook. Perched like a pile of scrubbing rags on the ridgepole of Atarangi's tent, watching Esha with candle-flame eyes. Between strikes of the flint, Esha glanced to the bird: he flexed his crests, and chirped a melody.
“Hail to you,” she mumbled.
She hadn't intended to speak but there it was, Esha's own voice in the still air. Turning back to her firestarters, she put new strength into the striking.
The bird hopped to the ground. Step by bobbing step, he came to the fireside and shook his feathers out. At least, Esha supposed, he didn't seem offended at the claim that he lacked a soul.
Fire devoured the bamboo and the tea water sat unboiling. Esha scratched her itchy leg, watched Atarangi's tent for movement, watched the phoenix for a token instant and took the chance of rolling up her pant leg. In the thickening hair on her ankle sat her itch — a fat, greasy tick. As much of a blood thief as the tax collector, but at least this one was quick to deal with. Esha crushed the tick's head between her nails and cocked her arm to throw it into the fire.
But she didn't throw. Because the phoenix still watched her, the trained, helpful phoenix that wasn't acting like a vermin at all. He had even made the gestures of a potential friend.
“Are you hungry?” Esha asked. Phoenixes ate bugs, she felt two-thirds sure. She opened her hand to show the foul morsel.
The bird's crests flicked upward as he stood, and strutted two steps closer. Talking to the bird didn't feel nearly as foolish as Esha expected, not when he responded so honestly.
“Here,” she said, and tossed the tick onto the leafy earth.
Crests still working, the phoenix came closer, and inspected the tick, and picked it between the points of his beak. At least Esha's stolen blood would do some good.
With that taken care of and the tea water still heating, she opened her satchel for a pocket mirror. She needed to be sure her headwrap was tied tight and decent before Atarangi bothered to rise.
Her little hand mirror was old and worn, its tin too scratched to show more than Esha's own face — but that was all she wanted to see. She prodded the hair follicles welling within her forehead. She pinched the base of one goat ear and felt a sting; she counted white hairs; she adjusted the layers of the headwrap to hide it all.
Wings rushed beside her. When Esha turned, she found the phoenix an arm's length away. He tipped his head, nearly asking a question.
Esha froze, her throat bound. She was near enough to see the bristly feathers around his nostrils, and his beak like a pickaxe, and the black depth of his considering eyes.
Then the phoenix broke the gaze, grabbing one of his stringfeathers and plucking at a knot.
Esha dreaded to see the contents and she couldn't have said why, but the phoenix produced a fragment of familiar brownness, and laid it on the ground between them.
It was a piece of roofing shingle. A finger-sized sliver, steam-bent so it would fit tight around a ridgepole, varnished on one flat face.
“You took that off someone’s house, I suppose? Their roof is going to leak.”
Creaking in its throat, the phoenix bent toward the shingle fragment — and nudged it closer to Esha. He stretched tall and opened his wings, two cascading fans of feathers that Esha had to admit were beautiful in the dawn light, while he sang an iron-voiced song that was actually nearly pleasant. All of it was a nonsensical show to make over a scrap of bamboo.
Maybe, Esha guessed, the shingle fragment was supposed to be payment for the tick breakfast. But when she reached for the tile piece, the phoenix snatched it immediately back and wound his stringfeather around it. This was no human bargain, and Esha couldn't decode it: she hadn't taken speaking herbs or even her morning tea.
“I don't know,” Esha sighed. “Come on. Let’s just wake your master.”
She was halfway to Atarangi's tent when the phoenix darted ahead. It was just as well, Esha supposed, watching him slip his head under the tent flaps: she didn't know Atarangi well enough to risk seeing her unclothed.
Atarangi grumbled while she woke. She spoke a low current of Manyori; her phoenix chirped and trilled and croaked. Esha dearly wanted to know what the sounds all meant but when Atarangi emerged from her tent, she couldn't manage to say anything but good morning.
“We're visiting the market before we ascend, then?” Esha did ask over breakfast millet. “I'd rather sell this fuel than carry it.”
Stirring a handful of seeds, leaf bits and utter mysteries into her millet, Atarangi nodded. Her topknot was less immaculate today, with wavy hairs standing out of it, but her eyes were bright within the mask. “I'd like to have variety in my herb supply before I try convincing our dealmaker phoenix. I'm casual with this fellow here,” and she nodded toward her bird, “but I've found there's no such thing as too much care while negotiating with a desperate phoenix. Yours sounds desperate, indeed.”
Atarangi slipped green confections into her mouth more often than anyone Esha had ever met; small wonder that she understood beasts.
“You might like some herbs, too,” Atarangi added. “You haven't got any greens in your meal.”
“Bamboo shoots are green.”
The sound Atarangi made was almost a laugh. “That's no way to live, squinting at green edges. Please, Esha — have some.” She rose and circled the fire, reaching into one of her many pockets.
“There's no need to ...” Esha said, but she let the words whisk away into the wind; Atarangi was holding out a month's wages' worth of dried, stacked kudzu leaves.
“It would be best if you ate more speaking lungta,” she said, “since my kin has introduced himself to you.”
“I-I can't—“
“Be at ease: I grow most of my kudzu. This cost me nothing at all.”
Odd reassurance to give a farming woman, but Esha was in no mood to talk about yam cultivation. She cupped both hands and thanked Atarangi, accepting the small tower of riches into her palms. “So your phoenix ... introduced himself? He knows his own name?” The leaf she slipped into her mouth was crisp and dry but still tasted of luxurious green.
Atarangi returned to her fireside seat, to her phoenix's side. The look she gave Esha was a freshwater lake, deep and with unsure things creeping in it. “You think he'd recognise a name as his own?”
“I didn't mean to ...”
“You can believe what you'd like,” Atarangi said, light. “I'm simply asking.”
Believing used to be simple; Esha knew Tselaya's weft and weave and she followed those lines. She wondered if the goat was taking her mind now, while she picked up a clump of millet and stared at it.
“Your bird seems ... like he was raised well. I suppose he could have a name for himself. Even if he doesn't think of heaven while he speaks it.”
Esha had time to fear whether her answer was the right one, and whether she even believed it herself. Then, a smile broke over Atarangi's face.
“You’re a hypocrite, Esha of the Fields. But the good kind. Rooftop doesn’t introduce himself to just anyone.”
“Rooftop ...?” A strange name, off-kilter and that made it seem nearly right. “After the piece of shingle he showed me?”
Scratching the phoenix's head, so he leaned in grateful, Atarangi said, “I wouldn't say he's named after a piece of roofing bamboo. His name is that piece of shingle — and the sky it touched, and the fact that it's broken away from where it used to be. He showed you the entirety of his name. Rooftop is just the truest way I can think to say it with our human tongues. ”
Names were a distinction of the heavens, a gift to human people. But this phoenix carried an object around to represent himself and that was very nearly a name. It wasn't even much different from Esha's nameplate; she was aware again of the two plates and two property tokens that had dug into her breastbone all night.
She thought of the sharp-snapping phoenix that accepted her half-wrought contract and left her gasping on the ground: it was something a cowardly person might do.
“If
I'm going to negotiate for your khukuri,” Atarangi went on, “it would be best if you understood the proceedings. Not every nuance of what we say — I wouldn't expect such from a new raindrop in the ocean. But I think humankind can be more than enemies to phoenixes and for that to happen, humans need to understand. It would honour me if you'd be Rooftop's friend, Esha. Please, extend your lungta to him the same way you would extend it to me, or any other human being.”
In the edge of Esha's vision, the phoenix flicked his centre crest. Meaning rose and fell before Esha could grasp it — moved by the idea-shifting properties of lungta. The phoenix was speaking and gesturing and he had a name.
Esha put another kudzu leaf in her mouth, numb to all sensation but the lungta gathering in her tongue. She was an even smaller entity than she thought, not just a low-ranked human of no regard but a woman of few languages, surrounded by an intricate world.
Atarangi gestured. Her phoenix hopped around the fire, bouncing back to stand before Esha. He chirped two notes — as a greeting, said the lungta's first stirrings.
It was ludicrous to greet someone after days spent in their company. Nearly as ludicrous as Esha's idea to go on this journey after stringing herself up like a hog.
The phoenix fidgeted on his feet, still staring.
“It's alright,” Atarangi said, soft as wisdom.
Esha sighed. In this loose-bodied moment, everything she knew was a crumbling relic; she might as well build something new.
“Good morning, Rooftop.”
He let out another pleasant sound, a trilling melody Esha never would have expected from a phoenix. Another friendly statement and that was all Esha could say.
“He doesn't steal from humans,” Esha asked small, “does he?”
“He's never had a reason to.”
“Not even the shingle scrap?”
“Found it on the ground after a storm. I wouldn't say that's Rooftop's doing.”
Esha curled her fingers around the crackling kudzu and feared to eat any more: the phoenix's crests were shifting and she was reminded of a wavering, nervous smile. Habit itched in her arms.”Is ... Do phoenixes have divinity in them? Enough to greet them?”
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