Tinder Stricken

by Heidi C. Vlach

  “I used to hate phoenix-kin,” she murmured. “Now ... Well, I'm not sure. I don't think I do, now that I've met a phoenix. Doesn't seem like there's anything to hate about you.”

  His crests bounced high; that was how Esha knew she had answered true.

  “Do you like humans?” she asked.

  Rooftop bobbed agreement. “I do! Sometimes humans make dust-brown-stupid mistakes. But I golden-like humans. Some are bad? Purple. Orchid-purple-true. But turn this in your grasp, my kin: if I eat a rotten fruit, my gut is brown-rolling-sick — but I have no blue-green-hate for fruit. I cannot do that. I will starve. Yes?”

  However much it made Esha's mind throb, this was a thought any wordsmith would call elegant.

  “Yes,” she managed. “That's a fine thing to say: a lot of people aren't that forgiving. Ah, well, maybe Atarangi is.”

  Fidgeting, Rooftop ducked low, his crests disappearing and his voice rasping with Grewian again. “Let me say this so you will hold and understand, Precious One. Morning Sky is my closest kin, my heart-wood.” He clacked his beak. “Heart-fire? Krrek. My close-friend.”

  “Treasure those when you find them,” Esha said soft.

  “I do, I treasure-hold her. Same with all we phoenix-kin, we wearing Morning Sky's tail tags.”

  “She chose you to come on this trip? Fortunate for you.”

  “I have ... have the most lucky.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Morning Sky is a rare-special friend. But ... humans are maybe all good kin, I think. When they learn how to be.”

  Esha meant to answer, she truly did. But in the time she took grasping a thought, Rooftop trilled a good-night wish like a lullabye and shuffled away into the dark.

  As she wafted into sleep, like lungta through gathered clouds, it occurred to Esha that purple was the song-flower hue, the rare colour hoarded by noble-born humans. Purple, to a phoenix, meant greed.

  Chapter 11

  They packed up camp in the fog-hung morning, the sky's lungta falling as a mist of silver-green through the cedars. Atarangi looked well this morning, her topknot immaculately braided and her every movement brisk.

  “We should depart,” she said, “if we're going to go to market and still reach the spire pass. Rooftop, we haven't spoken with our dealmaker in these last days — please find her and advise her that we'll arrive in, hmm. Two days. We will be sure to bring trade goods the likes of which she's never seen.”

  Esha had to admit it sounded tempting, the idea of all the magic-rich delicacies Atarangi could possibly yield from her deep pocket. She could only assume that a wild bird, used to scratching for its own meals, would feel the same.

  “Am your kin,” Rooftop agreed. He snapped up a last dry kudzu shard from Atarangi's fingers, and flapped away, upward.

  As the fog lifted, Esha and Atarangi reloaded wheeled pack and piled some of Esha's split bamboo on top, to make one cart ready for market.

  “Whoever made this device of yours made it well,” Esha said, watching a spoked wheel's movement as they pulled. “It doesn't even groan under this much weight.”

  “It's been dependable as a dog for me. When I was first leaving Tselaya's foothills, I had so many lock-chests that ...”

  Atarangi's steps slowed and the cart drew past her: her gaze was trained on something in the lowgrowth.

  “What is it?”

  “That's ...?” Her pack strap tossed aside, Atarangi hurried away crunching into the whipgrass. “It is! What is the name— Bankakri flower!”

  Well, Esha thought, she wasn't about to pull the load alone. As she followed Atarangi and peered over her shoulder, she saw what the commotion was: a frail plant with leaves like lax-spread hands, topped with a pink bud.

  “This was the first lungta foods I bought with my diplomat's salary. A real taste of Tselaya, the herbalist said. These last few years, I can seldom buy it, though.”

  “Rangers cut too much, probably,” Esha said. “And nobles hid anything that remains in some hothouse.”

  Tracing the leaves with one finger, Atarangi hummed. “Esha, may I borrow your spade?”

  Old wariness returned to Esha, that feeling that broken laws hung in the air. “You're digging it up?”

  “For preservation,” Atarangi replied. “By me or by the dealmaker phoenix: I haven't decided yet.”

  Diplomats had wildflower harvesting rights, but only when the proper reams of permissions were filled out. Esha shifted on her feet. “If you think it's best.” She pulled her spade from her belt — where she was once again wearing it, for Rooftop's sake.

  Atarangi had collected wild plants before; it was clear from her technique with the spade, her careful teasing of root threads from the moist-crumbling soil. She grew kudzu and gods only knew what else in her esoteric house, so Esha supposed she shouldn't have been surprised.

  With the bankakri flower freed and cradled in Atarangi's hand, Esha began twisting where she stood, scanning the forest around them. Nerves pushed her to it: Atarangi was wrapping a pocket-cloth around the root ball, the theft nearly complete.

  Movement flickered past the bamboo leaves — a distant fleck of imperial red.

  “Stop,” Esha hissed. “Guards!”

  With a flick of her hand, Atarangi slid the plant into a cloak pocket. The shaggy edge of the cloak fell back against her arm just as a lead guard rounded the bamboo stalks.

  “Hail, subjects.”

  “Hail.” Esha gave namaste, her arms trembling with the motions. Atarangi had the gall to take up the spade and fill in her hole before she straightened to attention.

  These three guards only looked more intimidating as they drew close: they had Grewian features and singed-paper brown skin. These were experienced guards marked by years in the sun: they must have ground away their sense of mercy for poachers.

  “Hail as well,” Atarangi added, She nudged her laddered-bead necklace, the one bearing her caste sigil. “Is there some trouble here?”

  The guards expressions shifted like water soaking into earth. Grudging as pulled teeth, they drew their hands together in namaste, which Atarangi returned with a leaf-edge smile.

  “This is a routine patrol, good diplomat,” the lead guard said. “for the preservation of the Empire's order. Your name?”

  “Atarangi Te Waaka.”

  Ah, she's a Manyori ran silently across the guard's face. “Allow me to welcome you to Rice Plateau, madam. Couldn't keep from noticing, though, that you and your companion are digging. What is your business?”

  “I was admiring your trees,” Atarangi replied, “and wanted to see what their roots looked like. Nothing like this grows where I hail from.”

  It was better than any excuse Esha had ever slapped together — but still, the lead guard's eyes narrowed while he nodded.

  Fear clotted larger in Esha's gut — and as she felt trembling under her feet, she knew why. A quake was rising again, another one, yet again.

  “Get low!” she and the lead guard cried in broken unison. All of them spread their feet; they threw hands against the nearest trees; they snagged their gazes of fear together.

  The earthquake went on for a dozen pounding heartbeats, before it faded. The forest rang with its own stillness; birds yelped in flocks overhead.

  The guards returned to planted-foot soldier stance, but their faces still read plainly human.

  “Are you well, subjects?” the leader barked, bracing against a tree to rise.

  Esha nodded, her head a loose thing on her neck.

  “I believe so,” Atarangi said breathless.

  “We'll make note of your presence here on Rice, diplomat, and leave you to your work. We must ensure that all is well after that earthquake. Take note: Atarangi Te Waaka, a diplomat, is passing through Rice on personal business.”

  The documenting soldier hurried an inkstick from her pocket. “Additional notes?”

  “The diplomat is accompanied by— Your nameplate, citizen?”

  No prompt for a b
ribe, and no mere request for Esha's name. Esha was a changing woman but still a lowly fieldwoman and under the guard's flinty stare, she lifted a hand.

  “Is that necessary?” Atarangi asked, convincingly mild but she was too late: Esha was drawing her nameplate from under her shirt.

  Esha froze — and the leader furrowed brows at her.

  “Go on.”

  She pulled out her nameplate with the exquisite awareness of her mistake: she was showing the wrong nameplate, the bright metal marked Esha, not Gita.

  “Esha Of The Fields—“ the leader confirmed.

  “Sir.” The third guard turned from watching behind them, eyes round with fear, “Smoke is visible from Durbavra Tier.”

  “Noted,” the leader snapped. “The diplomat— Ah. She is accompanied by a fieldwoman guide. End note.” The lead soldier fixed an appraising gaze on Atarangi, and glanced it briefly to Esha. “A coin of advice: mind yourselves while in the Empire's forests. As you were.”

  Even after the guards vanished from sight, walking brisk and then running toward town, Esha couldn't let her tightness of breath go. “Gods' balls, I thought I was going to die.”

  “From the guards, or from the earthquake?” Atarangi's face was too stark to carry the joke well; she took up her wheeled pack strap and passed Esha hers.

  “It hardly matters which.”

  “Another earthquake ...” Atarangi shook her head. “I've heard of aftershocks, but not three such commanding quakes within a month. This can't be normal, can it?”

  “No,” Esha said. “Something must be displeased with us. All humans, I mean.”

  Pressing her broad lips, Atarangi worked at that thought.

  “We should burn juniper when we can,” Esha suggested. “It's a small gesture but well, everything is, to a holy being.”

  Atarangi looked away through the bamboo, to the glimpses of smoke blackening the sky. “That can be part of our next supply trip. But I don't think we'll have good fortune at the market right now.”

  “I'm not showing a nameplate on this plateau again. Those guards know me as Esha now, it's too great a risk.”

  “Then ... There's nothing else for it: we'll keep ascending. From here, it's around twelve kilometres to the mountain's face?”

  “Closer to fifteen,” Esha guessed. Rice was an immense plateau in all ways. “But Rice sends a lot of its goods upward, we shouldn't have trouble finding a spire pass once we do get there.”

  “Work under clouds and rewards will rain upon us,” Atarangi said. “There's our itinerary for the days ahead, then.”

  Past the cedars and over gumgrass, they found the mountain-bound dirt road and followed its guide.

  They weren't walking long before an orange wisp appeared in the high distance, sailing over Millworks Plateau's iron-girded edge. Rooftop came to them, arrow-straight and faster than mere travel.

  “Kin,” he cried urgent, “kin!” He landed stumbling on the wheeled pack, crests flared stiff and chest heaving. “( ) felt ( ) earth-shaking, are you ( )?”

  “We're fine,” Atarangi said in a leafy voice — while Esha hurried to get thistle stem from the wheeled pack and chew the green from it. “Completely unhurt. It wasn't a severe earthquake in the place we were standing.”

  “That gives me relief. But I have The deal has changed! My phoenix-acquaintance—“

  Rooftop gestured along with the word acquaintance, a fluid circling of his neck; the meaning was enormous but gone before Esha could push lungta toward it.

  “—will break the song-flower kuh-kree before you arrive.”

  “What?! No!” Without resin encasing it, the lungta-rich orchid flower would disintegrate with the first cold breeze — if the backstabbing wretch bird didn't eat it first. “She can't, she hasn't let us speak!”

  “No offer seemed to tempt her?” Atarangi asked.

  Crests folding, Rooftop turned his eyes to the ground. “I wanted to greater-try. Then came the earth-shaking, and I was black-fearful for you ...”

  Atarangi scratched his ruff feathers. “I'll take your love over your duty, my friend.”

  “You are un-hurt, too, Precious One?”

  Esha spat a sigh as they dragged the wheeled pack back into motion. “I'm fine, but it won't matter if I can't get the khukuri back. Yaah, Rooftop, I'm sorry — I didn't mean it that way.” His fallen crests made him look like a rain-drenched yak and it dug at Esha's heart. “But ... there must be something she wants more than my khukuri!”

  A keen slipped from Rooftop, one that meant nothing more concrete than unease. Esha and Atarangi turned, startled, to him — and Atarangi looked distant as ice, chilled by the thought of Rooftop withholding from her.

  “Did she kin-forbid you?” Atarangi asked.

  “Yes, yes, she did! I blue-soak with regret, Morning Sky — she wants no one but phoenix-kin in her territory, and no one to know her affairs.”

  Her jaw setting, Atarangi faced forward. “We'll stand at the edge of her territory, then, and do what we can. I've convinced such mute stones to speak to me before.”

  By the first stretching shadows of sunset, they were hooking their cargo into a pulley rig and hauling it halfway to Millworks. Esha breathed hard and she could still feel the shape of her own cartilage past Atarangi's tsupira, but she would claw her way up onto Millworks before she slept again. That was a promise, to herself and to her allies.

  As Esha stepped onto the first steel spire, she noted that she hadn't seen one familiar brick wall, or rice paddy, or leatherworker frowning downward, dismayed. Her second time on Rice had gone as well as could be expected.

  Chapter 12

  Climbing spire passes did not get easier with practice. Atarangi had a little more tsupira to give but the herb couldn't stifle everything.

  Night had thoroughly fallen by the time Atarangi rounded Millwork Plateau. With Atarangi's hands locked around hers, Esha pushed up the final step and staggered onto Millwork Plateau, each pace a barbed hook through her knees. She cried out, then bit back her voice as she sank down and sat.

  “Esha?”

  “I just need air.”

  She hunched there, gasping, as the world whirled before her. With each breath she tore inward, the movement slowed. Soon, the only thing whirling was sky's lungta floating in silvery flakes past her nose.

  “Rooftop, check for guards, if you would.”

  “At this hour, won't find any at the worldedge. They'll keep to the towns. Worst we'll run into is a ranger.”

  Atarangi hummed light. “I won't dig up any more fineable offenses, then.”

  Breathing was trouble enough; Esha didn't need to be snickering.

  This high up Tselaya, the wind nipped cold. Pines and cedars stood only as tall as a low-caste's shack roof but their needles looked verdant even in the moonlight, nearly luminous with high-altitude lungta. Esha would have to consider a cup of pine bud tea while she was near the opportunity.

  She and Atarangi trudged eastward, away from the edge's whistling air and into dappled forest shadow. Rooftop flitted ahead, his bobbing head searching out whichever unseen lines they had to avoid crossing.

  “Ah,” Atarangi said. “There's phoenix sign.”

  Esha cast her gaze around at the brown-needled ground, searching for phoenix shit.

  “No, above us. That bundle — see it, in the top of that yunan pine?”

  Where Atarangi pointed, one forked branch of the pine tree did hold a tube shape — like sticks or stems bundled together.

  “That's phoenix sign? How can you tell?”

  “There's something looped around it — yankvine, most likely.”

  Esha squinted: the tail end of something swayed in the wind. Atarangi must have had eagle's eyes to match her beak.

  “When an item is hidden up high and marked with a knot,” Atarangi explained, “it belongs to a phoenix. Something too large to carry around in their stringfeathers, or simply something they've gathered for later.

  “Yaah, that's
something I've never seen. I'm more often looking toward my feet, though, I suppose.”

  “It's not a custom known to many humans. Just the ones who try to listen.” Atarangi's voice was worn but soft. “We should keep on: our dealmaker won't like us appraising her things.”

  After too much more walking through the dark, under the glaring moon, they reached a place Rooftop's approved of: a stand of cold-withered cedar saplings with the ground picked clean beneath them.

  “This place is beside phoenix-acquaintance's territory,” Rooftop said. “She will allow this, I think.”

  “At this moment, I don't care,” Esha grumbled, digging under fuel sticks for her blankets. “Today's been too long.”

  They made token discussion of whether to cook dinner. As if with one mind, Esha and Atarangi produced their remaining scraps of popped maize and leftover onion chapatti: that would hold them until morning. They shared between each other's hands and Rooftop's plucking beak. Then they strung their tents from the stunted cedars and went to bed, separated by one arm's length of rustling tarpaulin.

  “Feels strange,” Rooftop whined from inside Atarangi's tent.

  “What does, my kin?”

  He croaked a blurring range of colour words. “Feels strange, that is all. I think I am brown-wilting tired.”

  “Be surprised if you weren't,” Esha said into the crook of her arm.”It's been a blessed experience spending time with you both but don't take offence: I'll be glad when we finish dealing with the damned thief.”

  “Esha ...” Atarangi hesitated, labouring to collect a thought. “You've taken great strides in this journey. I thank you for all that you've tried to understand, but still — please, please don't call her a thief when we meet.”

  “That's what she is,” Esha sighed, “but I know. I'll hold my tongue. They're your negotiations — and heaven knows speaking is a mathematical art. I still say that she stole from me, though, whatever her reasons are.”

  “Our wild-acquaintance has many reasons,” Rooftop offered.