Tinder Stricken

by Heidi C. Vlach

  It was safe, but Esha still shook as she straightened and looked at her surroundings. The algae pond was the same masterpiece as she remembered: a round pool edged with intricately carved blue slate, dark as night next to the light dazzling off the pool's surface. A dark streak marked the white tiles — where the servants had dragged a heating stone out of the water, to bring back to wherever it was they warmed stones to algae-nurturing temperature. Esha didn't know which coal stoves were large enough for that; her family had never thought it important for her to know the servants' ways.

  The platform Esha laid on was made of rough-hewn pine wood, a utility space no one but mansion staff would ever use. Its railing was supported by nailed boards no wider than Esha's arm. One sideways glance from the servants and Esha would have been discovered. This was a blessing: she had to keep moving.

  As she placed her shaking legs on one descending stair, then another, Clamshell swooped back to alight on the wall's edge.

  “The house-enemies, they search for you. Too stupid to catch me, though.”

  “People are coming back here, to this open space,” Esha murmured. “Stay out of sight. Rooftop, too.”

  With a muttered agreement, Clamshell winged out of sight.

  No time for quivering nerves. Time only for calling her allies. Esha hurried to the algae pong and sank to her knees — still marvelling at their new vigor — to thrust her faithful broken khukuri blade into the water. Strike it against anything, Nimble had told her, but best to choose something that vibrated.

  The heating rock installations looked right. Esha hit her blade's flat against the steel bars and felt trembling dissipate into the earth. She waited and struck again. Impatience grew no grain, but they didn't have long to waste.

  Esha kept striking, clang clang clang to call downward. Vibrations faded again — and then, from a trembling in the earth, came back to answer Esha.

  She was shaking her arm dry and getting to her feet when Nimble came. Stone shifted at the bottom of the algae pool and his frilled head emerged — while the water level of the pool slid steadily downward. He squirmed, and soon spires of rock rose to break the water, spires that spread into rough-hewn walls of a kind of deepearth chimney. The remaining water was preserved. Nimble emerged from the top, grinning even while he flinched at the daybright.

  “Astonishment! This one didn't expect such architecture! Query: Is this construction solely for housing valuable lungta plants?”

  “You might say that. Stay out of sight, Nimble — there are guards are searching for us, the kind of humans who use weapons. We'll come back with the orchids — just be ready to earthshift that hole closed behind me.”

  “Query: may this one take a ( )-floating algae?”

  “Yaah, if you want to? As long as you're not caught.”

  Nimble was chittering a reply, and Esha was resettling her footwraps around her furred ankles. Then a trembling came — familiar for a few heartbeats.

  “Nimble? Is that your—“

  The earth roared then, and lurched under her with a screaming of stone and structures.

  “Not now,” she hissed, “not now!”

  But the Abyssal couldn't be stopped and the earthquake jerked Esha's balance away, so she tottered on the goat's sure little feet. The Abyssal's energies shot through the slate floor, ripping through it like wrenched paper while the walls broke apart. Esha dropped, gripped the ground with spread hands, and prayed she wouldn't die while thieving.

  When it was over, the dust hung and slowly settled, with glints of lungta among it. The Kanakisipt home still stood but it was cracked across every expensive wall. Smoke rose from the home; shouting rang from the far side.

  Esha gasped oaths, gasped them like lifelines. She hadn't imagined this of her former home and wasn't sure if she should have, if her mind would ever draw such a sight.

  “Precious One,” Clamshell snapped, wheeling back down from the sky, “house-enemies are white-running again. We must go — north by stone, the purple-song-flower is this way.”

  “One moment — Nimble? Nimble, are you alright?”

  His underground shaft still stood, a spire in the middle of the pool. But Nimble wasn't inside: Esha couldn't find him until she looked closer at the algaes. Nimble drifted in a tight-wound ball, nose and tendrils barely breaking the water's surface.

  “Statement:“ he chattered meek, “This one is unharmed.”

  “Stay there,” Esha said. No one will come here: this isn't the most important place to protect.”

  “Statement: this one should stay here, regardless. If a serpent attempts to earthshift a path and is overwhelmed by an after-quake, that serpent is crushed.”

  “Oh, gods.” It was a valid point but an awful fate to imagine. “No, don't get crushed. I'll come back with the orchids. Be ready to escape.”

  He flicked affirmative fins, and kept floating like a mere decoration.

  “Clamshell? Now I really don't know what I'm doing.”

  “No one knows,” she croaked. “Just go. Search. Rooftop is orange-distracting the house-enemies; I am his kin.”

  Esha nearly followed her remembered paths through the house. But those were nobles' paths, she remembered with a jolt. She might encounter guards — or someone she knew. Death would be sweeter.

  That was a sharp spur pushing her to movement, to run along the outside wall of the home, to raise a sleeve to her mouth against the still-thick dust and stumble over the broken decorative bricks now in shambles.

  She knew loosely where the orchid hothouse was. Leftward from the algae pond, through a pattern of halls but that pattern was useless from the house's outside. She kept stumbling, through rubble and through passageway cracks in walls.

  The hothouse was the most important part of the home, people had told her, people with family's titles and warm-seeming hands. The hothouse was their greatest treasure, the source of their wealth and the reason they could afford so many negotiation efforts. Here on Tselaya's wintery crown peak, with lungta winging around them like glittering birds, the Kanakisipts were noble and true.

  Esha didn't remember the precise words of it: she had been small at the time, held high against someone's chest so she could see. She remembered a haze of warmth and moisture, billowing like a curtain against her face as they entered. She remembered serving caste hurrying around doing important-looking things, and scuttling out of the way when the Kanakisipts entered. At some point, Esha Kanakisipt had touched an orchid, touched the delicate blossom with the most careful of touches, held a sheening green leaf between her small hands and watched how light danced on it.

  It was the most important part of Kanakisipt. Even in this confusion, Esha's gut relished the thought of touching those orchids again — and getting her farm-dirt fingerprints all over them.

  She clambered over a ruined wall, placing her hands careful on jagged faces of stone, snagging her pants and jolting against it until she found the restraint and yanked it loose. She coughed against the dust — and saw guards' helmets moving beyond the ruins so she dropped low and breathed into her sleeve, heart pounding.

  “Over here,” one guard was shouting, “he's over here! Hurry!”

  Footsteps receded again. Esha was an insect amid all this panic: she only needed to stay unnoticed. She peeked over the wall, saw no imperial red, and hurried her pulse-pounding limbs to movement again. The ruins included broken glass now, denser and denser blankets of it.

  Above her, Clamshell wheeled, a bright orange pinpoint against the smoke-streaked sky. She was circling over a spot that felt familiar — the hothouse, Esha felt the glowing remnants of her memory map and knew it to be true. She hurried, around an intact wall, to a place of tilted wooden beams.

  This alone was a stunning tragedy. A wooden beam older than Esha, more precious than salt and gold because it was made of lungta-steeped applewood, laid splintered apart like a common maize stalk. Destroyed in the blink of an eye. Esha was stunned for a few heartbeats — but she was
n't the one who would have to pay for it. And she couldn't carry it. And applewood was lungta-rich but impossible to chew. She ducked under it and kept on.

  Around the corner was the hothouse — or it should have been there, but there was only a field of shattered glass spread like cobblestone. Pots stood against the larger pieces of jagged glass. Orchids bent under the weight, and the steam-warm air was pierced by every gust of wind.

  One servant was there already, lifting a wooden beam. He looked sharp to Esha. Their eyes locked and the moment was set in stone.

  “Oh,” Esha said, grasping for the words buried deep inside her. Nobles' attendants never did swear; nobles' attendants were not permissed to curse the gods aloud. She raised hands to her mouth. “Oh, my! The orchids!”

  “Help me,” the servant called. He was a groundskeeper, judging by his dun-coloured clothing and clay caste sigil. Esha hesitated for only one heartbeat, before she was hurrying across the field of broken glass to put her hands under the broken beam.

  “If this stays on the heat rocks,” the groundskeeper grunted, “it'll catch fire. The orchids need heat but not like that.”

  “We can lift it,” Esha said. It was a strange feeling to lend hands while searching for things to snatch — but not a bad feeling. It salved the panic well enough.

  “When I say,” the servant said. He watched her wide-eyed; his Grewier face was pale and streaked with soot. “Ready ... lift!”

  Esha was lifting, both of them were, and the twisted beam lifted off the heat rock with an acrid gust of smoke. They shoved and dragged, and found a direction the wreckage would move. The beam thumped to the ground, barely missing Esha's sandalled toes.

  “Whew,” she said. “We need to protect the orchids sprouts, though — won't they freeze?”

  More voices called out in the distant house; the groundskeeper drifted for a moment, hooked by the sound, then locked his skeweringly honest eyes with Esha again. “Yes — we need to cover them against the wind. Use anything, anything at all.”

  For the next few minutes, the two of them worked moving plants. Gathering the clay pots into their arms like the precious burdens they were, and hurrying to the heat rock corner. The singed ceiling beam made a partial wall against wind and cold. The groundskeeper left at one point, leaving Esha hefting pots alone and her mind screaming at her to just flee; a fire-bright phoenix passed overhead like a warning.

  “Kin,” Esha cried, a half-strangled shout. She waved Rooftop closer and he came to land on a crumbling wall edge.

  “Precious One, you should be running. Seize greens and fly!”

  “No, not yet — I'm lying that I belong here and it's working! Just take some herb while he's gone — hurry! There's small pots over there.”

  His crests lifting with surprise, Rooftop understood in that moment. He leaped to his wings and glided across the glass-glittering ruins, to a wooden table buckling under ceiling weight but still supporting meal-bowl-sized pots with seedlings inside.

  Esha didn't know how many of them were orchids. The Kanakisipt home had no shortage of herbs and spices and treats. But Rooftop didn't bother folding his wings, simply walked mincing over glass shards and picked a pot to sink his beak and claws into.

  Esha turned back to the orchid pot she was moving, just for a moment. The plant was already curling at its delicate edges, shrivelling at the air's cooling touch. She was setting that one pot down in the heat rock's radiant aura when someone shouted, “Phoenix!”

  The groundskeeper had returned, arms full of canvas — which he dropped as he charged at Rooftop. “Yaah! Yaah! Get away!”

  With a strangled squawk, beak full of stalks and feet locked awkward around the pot's edge, Rooftop flapped laborious. He lifted past the groundskeeper's clawing grasp, away and over the broken walls.

  They were caught. But they weren't yet, Esha knew as the groundskeeper looked at her; her lies had worked so far and Rooftop was surely huffing his fright but unhurt.

  “It— It was right behind me. Oh, Rama preserve us!”

  “There are thieves about,” the groundskeeper growled. He glowered at the sky but knew he could never overtake a fleeing bird, so he gathered his canvas findings: they looked like curtains from a shack like Esha's. “Stay alert. Here, we can cover the orchids with these.”

  Esha took the corner he thrust into her hands. It took some adjusting and experimenting, stretching the fabric and pinning it down with brick hunks, but they made a tent for the delicate flowers.

  “There,” Esha said, “that was a good idea. This'll keep them warm and ward off thieves.”

  With a sigh, and two fingers dug under his headwrap to scratch whatever traits hid there, the groundskeeper nodded. “The plants won't all fit, though.”

  “Let me move some,” Esha said. She nearly grinned at her own idea, meshed so well into the plan. “I work in the kitchens. We've got warm space beside the ovens.”

  “Ah, I was wondering why we'd never met.” The groundskeeper smiled wan. “That's another good plan, sister. Do you need help lifting them?”

  “No,” Esha lied, “I'll just make trips. Someone needs to stay here, in case that phoenix should come back.”

  He was nodding as Esha bolted across the room, lifting her knees high over broken beams. She had been working at this for more moments than she could say: the groundskeeper didn't deserve this but her friends depended on her return.

  The smaller pots held seedlings and cuttings, new growth that usually got one gardener's entire amount of attention. But here was Kanakisipt's new generation, open for Esha's taking: she only had to choose what she could carry. Esha took a sprouting tube of peony seedlings under her arm, and four pots full of orchid blooms that she balanced against one another, and she hurried for the sagging door.

  “Be careful,” the groundskeeper called after her.

  The guilt returned, a stabbing sense of how dishonourable Esha was. But this fellow low-caste would be found standing over some of the house's orchids, guarding what he could. It would have to do.

  “You be careful, too,” she said, and ran before any more words could catch her.

  There were more soldiers in the ruined halls. A group came around a corner, matched all in their dust-caked armour: their gazes landed arrow-sharp on Esha and her armfuls of precious plants.

  “The hothouse!” she blurted. “The glass is all smashed and there's a phoenix trying to steal from it. We need help!”

  Their stares changed tone immediately. The lead soldier barked to the others and two soldiers broke away from the group, hurrying away on clunking boots. Esha kept on; no one stopped her.

  Rounding a hallway corner and leaving the building, coming out into the algae pond terrace she remembered the location of now, Esha was filled weak and glorious with disbelief. The lies had worked, and she was more shameful than ever but the serpents would have orchids.

  Nimble watched over the edge of his escape shaft. “Revelation: Precious One!”

  “Get these underground,” she called, pushing her fading legs for more and faster strides. “They need to be warm — it's too draughty here.”

  Slithering halfway over the edge, Nimble reached all his barbels out toward her, to loop around each and every pot.

  “Where is Rooftop?”

  “Statement: gone by wings.”

  “And Clamshell?”

  “Statement: same.”

  “Good,” Esha wheezed, “good.”

  Each breath ripped at her insides now; she folded to lean on her knees. As Nimble's nervous, staccato chattering came back up the shaft, she added, “I can't— I can't run any farther, Nimble.”

  “Oblivion, oblivion — no, only challenge! Statement: hold fast, Precious One.”

  She watched earthshifting spread rock in front of her, over the water to make a bridge, another path to follow. Esha stepped toward it and remembered nothing after that, except barbels winding around her to take her weight.

  Chapter 24

&n
bsp; Sureness carried her in a hammock of strong barbels, back through Fathomless's domain and down winding tunnels. Nimble followed, clay pots jostling like dull-toned bells. Time meant nothing; Esha wanted to sleep but fear still had hooks in her — unless something else was hurting her guts. Hunger, maybe. Grief.

  The hooks only dug deeper when they reached the Community common districts and Bravery was there, holding a metal leaf with her noted message.

  “Statement: when the earth shook, Water Light queried how extensive the damage was liable to be on the mountain's surface. This community sustained severe damage: surface constructs are flimsier and presumably fared worse. Water Light stated that she had business to attend to. That one gave a variety of desiccated, lungta-rich plants to the Community, and requested protection for the landholder phoenix's offspring. Update: the human Water Light has not been in contact since.”

  “That— That doesn't sound like her,” Esha said.

  The Atarangi she knew would stand among the shaken, and offer her hands, and her words. Maybe arrive just when Esha's thoughts summoned her, or when Rooftop voiced his panic. Something must have drawn Atarangi away; Esha knew what had that kind of power but she couldn't grasp the concept in this moment, through all the noise and motion and her guts' throbbing. She only knew Atarangi was gone.

  Sureness ground his teeth dismayed. “Assurance: this one would welcome Water Light's presence. Contradiction: we Deeplings cannot wait. Our Abyssal suffers.”

  “The Abyssal has never shook so badly before,” Nimble was chittering. “Statement: never before! They must be suffering.”

  “Nimble,” Esha mumbled, “get the orchids to— to someone.”

  “Admonishment:“ Sureness replied, his clicking vibrating through his barbels and his powerful chest, “this one must rest. Precious One may be honoured with a request for further strength.”