by R. T. Kaelin
Lek shook his head. “But there are a lot of farms and estates and enclaves tucked back in the passes and down in the foothills. They don’t always send the same people to town, or the same carrier.”
Pimchan bowed her thanks.
“Did they take anything?” Lek’s voice sounded concerned, but Pimchan knew he was eager for details. Even the priests’ quarters were more open than Warriors’ compounds, and any crumb of information would be worth a free drink or even a bowl of rice.
“A purple orchid blossom. They tried to take a white one, as well, but they were stung and gave it up.”
“A precious blossom?”
Pimchan shook her head. “One of many. They just wanted a trophy, I think, to prove they won a dare. I hope it was worth it to them.”
Even if this had been the harmless prank she had invented, the taboo against entering a Warrior’s domain without permission could not be broken without punishment. The outrage that had actually been committed demanded worse than death, and only a Warrior’s domestic impenetrability would keep the revenge from being as public as possible. Instead, it would be an open secret, communicated by whispers and facial expressions and nodded understandings, unspoken horrors that would enforce the taboo on impressionable young minds so it would be less likely to happen again.
This was not a prank. It was not even a crime. It was a gambit—a move in a game that had yet to be announced.
* *** *
Tyana, the Overseer, stood at the back door of the small house that extruded like an afterthought on the workout arena. Pimchan could have lived happily in the arena, cooking for herself and sleeping in the open. But two years ago she had saved the All-Father from an ambush when her mercenary wandering crossed one of his not-as-clandestine-as-he-thought travels. The cost of that service—meant to be a reward—was this small town nestled in the Circling Sisters mountains.
But Warriors made townspeople nervous, even Warriors bound to the town by the All-Father’s decree. Town Warriors were given walled enclaves with workout arenas built to their specifications in the hope they would be content to practice there and not on innocent townsfolk. Town Warriors were given a male and a female slave—unwanted and unnamed orphans, trained from birth for a life of service. Someone had to oversee and train the children to care for a Warrior and a Warrior’s equipment—an Overseer, usually a former Male or Female who had been freed and named by his or her Warrior.
Three dependents, so now a Town Warrior needed a house and a garden and a chicken run and a goat or two to supplement the townspeople’s grudging tribute which was not always sufficient for four appetites, two of them young and bottomless.
“You didn’t find him?” Tyana’s sun-browned face was stained with tears.
Pimchan shook her head. “He was taken for a purpose. They wanted both the children, but one will serve their design. I’ll be hearing from whoever sent them. Is my Female safe?”
“Safe and waiting.”
“Bring the Discipline.”
Pimchan removed the carved bar that held a screen of woven rattan across the keeping room doorway and folded the screen to one side. Her Female kowtowed, body trembling in fear. Pimchan knew of rumors that told of slaves killed for what this Female had done. Judging from some of her fellow Warriors, she believed the rumors. Her own chest pounded and she rubbed the white scar just below her right collarbone.
Tyana entered the room and Pimchan accepted the Discipline from her: a small leather whip, half a meter from butt to lash.
“Stand,” Tyana said.
Pimchan’s Female scrambled to her feet.
“Turn.”
The Female presented her cringing shoulders.
The Warrior laid one blow, calculated to sting but not cut, across the small back. With the butt of the whip, she lightly bumped the girl’s skull—well-padded with unruly black hair.
“Honor is satisfied,” Pimchan stated, and handed the Discipline back to the Overseer. “You did well today.”
The girl flashed a smile of surprised gratification and dropped into another kow-tow.
“I’m going back to my meditation,” the Warrior said. “I will not be interrupted.”
* *** *
After meditation, Pimchan worked out physically, barehanded and barefoot, then in boots and with weapons.
When she crossed into her living quarters and called for water and fresh clothes, Tyana said, “You have a visitor.”
“Where?”
“In the shelter outside the gate, of course. Do you think I’m so stupid I would invite someone in past your wards? I passed him rice cakes and tea through the window. He hasn’t touched them. He didn’t say what he wants, but we can guess.”
“Does my Female recognize anything about him?”
Tyana shook her head. “He isn’t the one.”
Pimchan took her time over washing and had her Female dress her in blue steelcloth woven with protective runes.
“Tell Tyana to bring more tea and rice cakes to the Chaos garden. I’ll unbar the screen to our visitor.”
The screen to the outside world was solid mahogany hung with a hundred tiny brass bells. The bar was hinged so even the children could swung it up out of the way and the screen balanced on bearings that made it slide easily—if noisily—aside.
The man who stood to face her shone even in the shelter’s gloom. His trousers and tunic of red-brown silk were trimmed in gold, and his red leather boots shone with polish. He dipped the shallow bow of the highest caste, then seemed to force himself a little lower in honor of her.
“Come in,” Pimchan said, leaving out the inflection that would have added, “and welcome.”
He stood half a head taller than she did, black braids slithering against his silk tunic like twin snakes. Pimchan felt a thrill of terror at the sight of those braids, and knew it was a terror her Male had been made to feel.
She moved back so the man could pass, then closed and barred the screen without taking her eyes off him.
“Take the red path,” she told him, and followed him as red tile curved away from the blue tile that led to the living quarters’ door.
The low table in the center of the Chaos garden’s gazebo was already set. Pimchan knew the tea was cold and the cakes were stale—Tyana wasn’t one to waste good food and tea on a meeting where nothing would be consumed—but the form was acceptably observed.
They knelt on either side of the table and listened to bees buzzing in the garden’s wildflowers while each waited for the other to speak first.
Pimchan was certain he was the wealthy man fallen on hard times whose peeling wagon and threadbare slaves had carried off her Male. He would be accustomed to speaking first, so the pressure of the silence would weigh more heavily on him.
It wasn’t long before he shifted his weight and said, “I have a problem. I think you can help me.”
She nodded, her gaze never leaving his face but her wide range of vision missing nothing of his body language.
The man fingered his empty teacup and said, “Something was stolen from you. Something important. You want it back. Your heart is set on it.”
His gaze seemed to harden and sharpen as he said the last sentence.
Pimchan remained still, but knew that her visitor knew the shaft had struck home.
The man smiled. “There’s only one sorcerer around here capable of making a heartsafe charm. He admitted to making two, of a power suitable for use with children. For you.” He shook a finger at the Warrior, which would have earned him a broken hand under other circumstances. “It’s selfish enough to hide your heart in the body of one child, but to divide it and make two children suffer your adult emotions—your Warrior’s rage and remorse…”
Not her whole heart, obviously—everyone knew the heart was the seat of thought as well as emotion, and was also a muscle that pumped blood through a body’s veins. But there was one part of the heart—a part no one could see—that held the life force. That part could
be removed by sorcery and hidden in a person or a thing. Warriors sometimes did it, as did royalty and merchants—even courtesans—anyone wealthy enough to pay the price.
“We wanted both pieces, but half is enough,” the man assured her. “Better, in fact.”
“You must be very persuasive, to make that sorcerer betray a client.”
“We are persuasive. We are.”
Pimchan imagined her Male at the mercy of this man and his associates and understood the terror the sight of him had inspired. She felt an ache in the purple scar below her left collarbone, but gave no sign of it.
“You want something from me,” she said. “What is it?”
“Very little. Tomorrow morning, go for a walk. A long walk. Leave your door unguarded by might or magic. Take your Female, if you like, and your Overseer. Go through the Karashi pass and spend the day.” He shrugged. “Spend the night, if you like, or a week, but at any rate don’t come back here before dusk tomorrow.” He shrugged again. “That’s all. When you come back, you’ll find your Male here, safe and sound, as well as a chest of gold coins—a fortune.”
“Why do you want this?”
He shook his head. “If you refuse, or agree but don’t leave, or leave and come back, your Male will die, and half your heart with him. Half your courage, half your strength, half your wit, half your will, half your connection to life.”
It was a living death. It would leave the sufferer with insufficient resolve even to end an insupportable existence. Yes, taking half her life was an infinitely more frightening threat than taking it all.
Looking into this man’s eyes, Pimchan could see his willingness to murder a child, to leave a Warrior helpless, with full remembrance of the might that had been lost.
“Do we have a bargain?” he asked.
“There is no question. I have no choice.”
* *** *
She gave orders for the next day’s expedition and ate what meat, bread, and fruit her Female put before her. Instead of finishing her day in the arena, where she ordinarily followed a final battle meditation by wrapping herself in a cloak and sleeping on the sand, she had her Female bring the cloak to her in the Chaos garden. She would spend this night between the outside world and her sanctuary. She would sleep little. She sat at the tea table and studied her memory of the day’s visitor.
A wealthy man in rich clothes, newly made, but the man had the air of one accustomed to fine things. The invaders wore his color, but they were shabby, as was his oxcart. Fallen on hard times, with a fresh infusion of money, possibly a first payment for his usefulness? And he had said “we”, yet he delivered the threat and the demand himself, so he was the servant in this enterprise—whatever it was. Again, she saw a man restoring his resources by selling his honor.
Very well, then—selling it to whom? Obviously, to someone with great wealth. Someone of power and position, or a man of her visitor’s caste would take the money and report the bribe to the All-Father’s Warrior, Pimchan.
The All-Father sat at the edge of her thoughts like a Primus figure on the corner of a carto board. Pimchan left him there and continued her musings.
They wanted her out of town for the day. No, not out of town: they could have demanded she stay within her walls and not respond to any calls for help. They didn’t want her out of town; they wanted her out of her enclave. They wanted to use it for something. They wanted to use her—use her absence—for something.
In her mind, the All-Father slid along the edge of the carto board and she remembered the ambush she’d saved him from during one of his unattended meanderings. Had he learned nothing? The Primus figure clicked into place at the board’s near corner and, in her mind’s eye, the All-Father sat in the center of her arena.
No. He had learned nothing.
The All-Father was coming to visit his Warrior here in this remote village. Someone in his confidence knew it—someone who knew his most secret plans and knew enough about Pimchan to tell the man with the braids where he might look for Pimchan’s weakness. They were setting a trap for the All-Father, and they were using Pimchan for bait.
The rest of the night alternated between rehearsing possible courses of action and resting in a deep meditation that was more refreshing than sleep.
* *** *
They left before dawn, Tyana and Pimchan’s Female swathed in lengths of woolen cloth and Pimchan dressed in black leather armor reinforced with blue steel, rectangular arm shields of red leather strapped to her forearms, twin swords crossed on her back.
No one was visible, but Pimchan had no doubt their movements were observed. Tyana led the way with Pimchan’s Female behind her, both laden with sacks of necessities and luxuries for the Warrior’s jaunt. Pimchan followed, instincts tuned to their highest pitch.
Yes, they were being followed, but it didn’t take a Warrior to know it. The follower seemed unused to the rough trail leading to and through the pass. The occasional suppressed curse floated to them across the rocks and, when they reached the meadow pass, green and yellow with the wild mustard that bloomed there, the occasional smothered sneeze.
Before the day was half gone, they had reached a tidy stone hut overlooking the south side of the gap. It had one narrow doorway and no windows. Snuggled under an overhang, its entrance could only be seen from one angle. Pimchan entered first, to make certain no unpleasant surprises waited inside.
She came out and let her Female and her Overseer light the candles they had brought with them and to sweep grit and pollen from the floor and benches. Pimchan stood, facing the valley below but concentrating on her peripheral awareness, looking at what was not before her, listening beyond the sounds closest to her. When the hibachi was burning, the tea was brewing, and the rice with dried vegetables and smoked meat was cooking, she entered.
“Just the one,” she said.
“Where?” Tyana asked.
“Up by the spring, in the mouth of the cave. Shade—water—the most obvious place.”
Tyana snorted.
Pimchan’s Female served the three of them chrysanthemum tea, her hands trembling in spite of herself.
Pimchan patted the girl’s head. “Try not to fret. When I chose you and the boy, I promised you I would keep you safe and bring you through your bondage skilled and healthy—and certainly alive. I gave you a Warrior’s word. I suppose the word of a Warrior is good enough for you?”
Pimchan’s Female, a worried frown lingering on her brow, said, “I know you’ll do your best.”
Tyana laughed, slapping her knees for emphasis. “Spoken like a true companion! Two years ago, she was a mouse. Now, she’s a mongoose, dragging truth into the light whether you want her to or not. That’s my training of her.”
“Oh, yes,” said the Warrior, lips thinned but eyes crinkled in humor. “I’m very well served. What luck.” She tossed the dregs of her tea onto the hibachi’s coals and stood. “This won’t take long.”
She slipped out the door and darted across the meadow, directly toward the cave. The watcher, unable to leave without losing sight of the quarry, would be pinned in place until Pimchan reached the broad ledge where the shallow cave overlooked the pass.
The Warrior crossed the stream, drawing both swords as she did.
“Come out,” she said.
There was no answer.
“You will come out. The only question is: in how many pieces?”
The movement was so sudden, Pimchan nearly struck. A woman flopped into the sunlight, kowtowing so vigorously her head made little clonks against the stone.
“Forgive me, Mighty One! Forgive me! I didn’t mean to hurt your Male—it was an accident. He woke up later, and ate and drank. He’s a very brave boy—”
“Stand. Stand now.”
The woman stood. Small and big-bosomed, with a scratch on her chin, she fit the description Pimchan’s Female and Lek had given and wore a threadbare version of the red-brown clothing of yesterday’s visitor.
“Who do you work fo
r?” Pimchan demanded. “Why was I sent from my home?”
“I don’t know, Sun of Strength. I mean, I don’t know why. I work for Master Aroon Kama, whose land is in the valley to the north. He made us rob you, Mighty One, and he made me follow you. If we disobey, he swears he’ll give us to the monster.”
“What ‘monster’? All the monsters were driven out of our land by Kuhn Pane, long ago.”
The woman shook her head.
“Come, then,” Pimchan said. “We’re going to that hut you’ve been watching.”
The woman scrambled before her, clearly terrified even after Pimchan sheathed her swords. All the way across the meadow, she cringed as if expecting a kick and twice she whined, “Will you protect me from the monster, Sun of Splendor?”
Inside the hut, Tyana and Pimchan’s Female waited on either side of the door, each holding a teakwood club, in case Pimchan needed backup. The captive, utterly cowed, gave them no excuse to use their weapons.
“That’s her!” Pimchan’s Female said, and raised her club.
“Ah-ah!” Tyana blocked the blow. “Wait for the Warrior’s orders.”
“Tie her up,” Pimchan said. “She hurt my Male by accident, and he’s safe and well. I’m going back, now, to make sure he stays that way. My Female, I leave you in charge of her.”
And if she thought a Warrior was frightening, or a monster, Pimchan reflected as she headed back to her enclave at a kilometer-eating lope, wait until she spent some time as the prisoner of a twelve-year-old girl with a grudge.
* *** *
Pimchan crouched in the brush on the far side of the path that circled her wall. She watched as a man wearing scruffy red-brown trousers and tunic passed, then waited until he passed again. She wasn’t surprised to find such lackadaisical security: Aroon Kama was obviously running this operation on the cheap, keeping as much of his payment as possible for his own use.
The third time the man came around, she confronted him, both swords drawn.
“Not a move. Not a sound,” she said.