An ancient-looking Waray was hunched over one such nest, tinkering with the dung beetles that comprised it (apparently by being cajoled into a complex weave of rolling one another). A furnace blazed by the half-div, which darkened the many wrinkles in her scrunched face. She harrumphed and tossed the nest into the furnace, which belched a plume of dust with what Ashtadukht could have sworn was a moan. Waray sighed, adjusted her rump on her little stool, and retrieved a nest of thimbles from a nearby heap.
“What are you doing?” Ashtadukht asked after climbing in. Shelves lined the sculpture’s innards, clinging impossibly to every surface. Nests numbering the thousands were fitted into the shelves so that no space was wasted; the larger specimens were suspended like great overhead displays at a museum—an extirpated burrow fit for a legendary puffin hung nearest.
“’Lo,” said Waray, glancing up with the homely, honeyed smile of a grandmother, which drowned her eyes in wrinkles. “And who are you?”
“Ashtadukht.”
“Ah, of course. She has mentioned you once or twice.” Waray flung the thimble-nest into the furnace, enkindling another dusty moan.
“She?”
“Waray, me, her, we—it’s all so-complicated. Oh—” Waray stood with a groan and indicated her stool. “I’m afraid my manners don’t see much use. Have a seat.”
Ashtadukht gave the stool a wary frown. “I’d rather not.”
Waray shrugged and sat back down. “Suit yourself. So what brings you to my so-humble campfire?”
“What’re you doing?” Ashtadukht pressed, somewhat suspicious of the half-div’s evasive response to her first question.
Waray cocked her head. “Burning the leftovers? Maybe.”
“Huh?”
The ancient half-div heaved a sigh. “Made you out to be less of a dolt.” She swept her gaze over the mound and, with a twiddle of her fingers, extracted a rather normal-looking nest, only that it was bigger on the inside. “A keeper. Do you know why she steals these?”
Ashtadukht found her curiosity suddenly roused. While this manifestation obviously had some of the same hindering quirks as the Waray she was used to, it was more conversationally coherent and perhaps more willing to divulge information.
“I haven’t the slightest,” she responded with an expectant inflection. Then, belatedly deciding subtlety might very well be lost on this one, she added, “Do you?”
“Remorse. So-silly thing to be upset over, isn’t it? But it’s something. Those cultists of hers vouchsafe her greater remorse while these tiny misdeeds prevail, though something has compromised their piety of late.” Waray put the nest aside. “I keep her more active guilt in order, namely the so-indulgent egg thievery. She tries—something inane about family—but it’s hardly organization the way she bunches them.”
“And you just burn the nests?”
“Can’t rightly keep them all. She is doubly driven in this. Both in the more base desire to consume eggs, and in the need to replace her supplanted remorse.”
“Why?”
“Ask her. I’m only a so-withered librarian who doesn’t have security clearance. Maybe it makes it easier to forget the displaced grief. Maybe.”
“Hmm.” Ashtadukht narrowed her eyes. She had a feeling the half-div was merely humouring her: that she knew more than she let on. But she reckoned it was not without good reason. Forgetfulness is the mind’s way of making life bearable; it is a compassion for oneself.
“Can you tell me how to get out of here then?”
Waray waved at the exit. “Same way you entered.”
“Not entirely coherent,” Ashtadukht grumbled. “And after that?”
“Hitch a ride?”
A hoarse din of caws broke out like panicked crows scrambling into flight. Ashtadukht hurried to the opening and peered out, spotting Tirdad at the foot of the sculpture. “Up here!” she called.
He locked eyes with her, then promptly set to scaling the leg. When he reached the ingress he threw himself over the lip and onto the floor, gasping for air. “Waray,” he wheezed. “Hunting us.”
Ashtadukht scanned the grass below. Initially, all she could discern were the listlessly rolling hills, but after adjusting to their regular motion, she picked out movement counter to the natural current.
The cawing redoubled, now joined by a chorus of frightened chirps. It grew nearer, and the disturbed grass along with it, until the finch and the crow leapt onto the statue. They clambered up, but their panic and ill-suited claws resulted in little ground gained.
“Help!” cried the finch.
“You must be helping!” begged the crow.
Ashtadukht grimaced. What did they expect her to do? An irregular movement caught her attention just in time to watch as Waray sprung from the grass and onto the back of the crow. Moored to the crow’s plumage by one hand, the other used a stone to pummel its head with abandon. Three swings were enough to send it and Waray back into the grass, where a horrified caw was cut brutally short. To the crow’s credit, and despite its misgivings, it took the secrets of The One Most Slithered to the grave.
The finch, which was not feeling very devout in light of recent events, parted its beak to defy the Book of the Nest. Whatever secrets it intended to betray were curtailed by the ferocity with which Waray set upon it. A grisly blow shattered its beak, knocked it off its perch, and it too was felled with only a half-chirp of a death knell.
Ashtadukht thought it had looked serene—grateful, even—when it dropped. She could chalk it up to nothing short of religion to leave someone so tranquil in death, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the finch being saved from itself: from committing sin.
When Waray emerged from her slaughter, it was with a very particular grin. That crooked grin was the most malicious, categorically evil curve she had ever seen. It dug deeper and higher into one cheek than the other, where, smeared with blood, it seemed to reach for the unhinged hatred in her eyes, which glinted like a still-hungry blade.
Ashtadukht took an instinctive step back, as if the realization came on a less evolved level before her brain could process it.
This was no battle rage. This was what the battle rage held at bay.
“Two šo-naughty birds with one stone,” Waray loudly boasted. She began to prowl up the sculpture with the steady, confident progress of a predator that knew it had won.
Ashtadukht blinked. That was it: that was the flaw. It should have been obvious all along. “Šo-naughty,” she mimicked with disapproval. The one burning memories hadn’t once used the sibilance innate to Waray’s idiosyncrasies. She yanked Tirdad’s sword from its scabbard, turned her back to the oncoming beast, and stalked toward the ancient Waray. “You blighted, goat-sodomizing bastard.”
“Whatever you are doing, do it quick,” Tirdad said. “She is almost here.”
The old half-div lifted her arms in a non-threatening manner. Her eyes darted around the room, and one could see a million conniving excuses run uselessly through her mind.
Ashtadukht summarily ran her through. She withdrew the sword and shoved the ancient Waray into the furnace. It moaned almost gleefully this time.
The aches of reality returned with a vengeance, and Ashtadukht found it strangely bracing. She sat up to the sound of agonized gurgling, and reluctantly sought the source of the noise.
A div much like Waray, only fully scaled and emaciated, lay in the light of their torch, choking on its own blood. Nearby, the others slumbered.
“You were destroying those memories,” Ashtadukht said without a shred of softness. “Why?”
It choked, racked by a spasm, and coughed up a glob of sooty bile. “Father bade me . . . doesn’t approve.”
And gone. Ashtadukht sighed. Death had a way of bringing out the innocence in even the most culpable souls. And this one resembled Waray so strongly.
“What in the seven climes?” groaned Tirdad. “My skull is screaming.”
“Šo-throbbing,” Waray whined. She cocked her
head. “Šo-exciting, too.”
Ashtadukht’s stare bore into Waray. The conduit, plain as day. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. All that backwards remorse and the imposter’s explanation of it did not sit well with her. And the hatred beneath it all. Was that really the same Waray, or had she been altered by the illusion?
“I just had the strangest dream,” said Tirdad. “I think.”
“Still sleepy,” Waray mumbled.
“It wasn’t a dream,” explained Ashtadukht. “We were caught in a trap meant for Waray. This one’s doing.”
“Is it dead?” asked Tirdad, reaching for his sword.
“Yes,” Ashtadukht gently replied. “And it’s a div, so there’s no purification ritual to worry about.” She faced Waray, meaning to address her, but stopped short of it.
The half-div trembled. You could tell her heart was beating in her throat just by looking at her. Waray emitted a low, buzzing moan that hardly went on for a second before clamming up. She got to her feet and mechanically ambled back the way they’d come.
Ashtadukht turned a worried frown on Tirdad.
“Do not look at me,” he said, coming over to inspect the div. “So this is responsible for all of that nonsense, huh. Looks like Waray. Is that common?”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
Ashtadukht shifted uneasily. “Yeah.”
“If we were caught in an illusion, how much of it was fabricated?”
“I don’t know,” said Ashtadukht. “Remind me to never again follow Waray into a forest.”
“Told you so,” quipped Tirdad, though his heart wasn’t really in it.
VII
Months of travel followed, most of it defined by the rigours of the road, though they welcomed every bed they came across.
Waray was extremely distant, almost vacant, for a long time. She rarely ate, didn’t speak a word, and spent most of those weeks dozing—on or off her mount. When their inquiries eventually drew a threatening hiss, the cousins decided to leave her to her depression.
It wasn’t until they’d stopped at a way station serving a sacred and tremendously ancient cypress that she showed signs of perking up. Waray had quietly buzzed from far afield while they tied ribbons to its branches, which were meant to symbolize wishes, and visited the nearby temple to pray before its sacred fire.
Still, she said nothing. And it wasn’t until the scorching temperatures of the Lut Desert that she finally began to come around.
“Who lives in a šo-wretched desert?” she moaned, draped over her camel like a miserable rug. “What kind of monster?”
Ashtadukht had to remind herself that she’d been seriously concerned for the half-div only days ago. She’d reminded herself of this many times now, and foresaw many more reminders in the near future.
Waray issued a drawn-out moan. “Who sees sand and heat and dry and thinks,” she added significant bass to her voice, “I shall plant a standard. I shall plant a home. I shall plant šo-stupid tiny versions of šo-stupid me.”
Tirdad laughed and took a draught of water. “We are both just as baffled and just as hot. I suppose you should be huddled under a rock with all the other reptiles.”
“Shaaaade,” moaned Waray.
“Don’t encourage her,” Ashtadukht censured.
“Oh, let her be. Could be that the complaining helps,” Tirdad replied. The grimace that accompanied his words told her he agreed wholeheartedly, but that he would rather suffer this than her depression.
“Have sand in all my places,” the half-div went on.
“You’re not the only one,” said Ashtadukht, shifting her weight uncomfortably. “I’d rather you didn’t remind me.”
“Everywhere.”
Ashtadukht sighed and leaned forward on her mount. She could make out the shapes of wind-carved rock formations in the distance. Some were long and thin like overturned dhows, their lateen-rigged masts interred underground, where only the earth’s millennia-slow currents filled their sails; others reached up as misshapen fingers; others were like broken teeth. The rest, of which there were hundreds, stirred the imagination.
“Yardangs,” she said, her voice swelling with relief. “We’re almost there.”
“Pretty,” said Waray, angling her head to see, which meant looking upside-down from her position. “A šo-stumpy up there.”
“I was beginning to wonder if we would ever arrive,” said Tirdad. “Let us hope this man’s retainer gave adequate directions, as cryptic as they were.”
“The secrecy does seem odd,” Ashtadukht remarked. “Only star-reckoners use the luminaries in such a way, and we don’t make a habit of it.”
“Do you think he could be one of your colleagues?” asked Tirdad.
Ashtadukht fiddled with her sleeve, which was dustier than it’d been in years. With Nowruz here, she secretly hoped that was the case. “Then what reason would there be in summoning me? It’s more likely he studies the stars, or that his retainer does.”
“That man seemed ex-military,” Tirdad doubtfully replied. “His bearing and delivery of the directions were dead giveaways.”
“Can a military man not appreciate the tapestry of the heavens between battles?”
“Of course he can. But I have served under men like that. They care about training and upkeep and the weather and what their orders are. The luminaries are little more than tactical considerations in the event of a night attack, or lamps by which to view the enemy at your gate.”
“You know a great deal about this topic,” said Ashtadukht.
“I did have a life before joining you, you know.”
Ashtadukht looked away and tugged uneasily at her cuff. “Sorry.” She watched the yardangs for a while, pondering the objects they resembled, before speaking up. “Why do you never talk about it?”
“You have never asked.”
“I’m asking now.”
“I was a Savaran,” said Tirdad.
“Elite cavalry?”
“The very same. I would have been royal guard before long. The perks of nobility and all that.”
“And you threw all your hard work away just like that.”
Tirdad wiped the sweat from his face. “I would hardly say I threw it away. I put it to use elsewhere. Good use.”
Ashtadukht let out a dry laugh. “Not quite as valourous.”
Tirdad went pensive for a time before pressing on. “Do you remember when we were children? How I would sometimes join you and Gushnasp on your misadventures?”
“Yes,” she tersely replied.
“It was the highlight of my youth. I felt something when accompanying the two of you—something I could not place at the time. But I now know I felt privileged. The way he made it seem as if you were always so troublesome, and the way he would brighten all the same. The way you acted as if you did not care, yet would always anxiously wait for him to catch up. You grew into one another. In my glimpses of that, I saw . . . I was privileged. I am now privileged to watch over you in his stead.”
Ashtadukht might have said something deflective; she might have argued that she didn’t need anyone to watch over her; she might have shown her appreciation with a smile; she might have responded in a number of ways. She was too busy trying to conceal her tears to do any of that.
The way he had described them together caused so many of the memories she had forgotten to resurface. She recalled plodding along the shore of the Mazandaran, the breeze brisk on her cheeks and briny in her nose, Gushnasp taking her irritably but gently by the arm and remonstrating how far she’d wandered. She recalled when they’d first set out together, her having just been granted her official title, and him positively glowing as if the accomplishment were his own.
She recalled many things that needed to be recalled at all because they’d been mercifully buried by the same forgetfulness that she’d witnessed in Waray. They were bittersweet, but mostly bitter—caustic, even. It hurt terribly to remember.
Sometime during her rec
ollection, Tirdad had maneuvered his camel closer to hers, and was now rubbing her back. He hadn’t said a thing as far as she could tell, but he must have felt responsible for bringing it up. Normally, she would have rebuffed his attempt at comforting her—she was a star-reckoner after all! But the memories would not relent. And it was comforting to have someone who didn’t claim to understand, tell her to toughen up, or look at her as if she were somehow less of a person because of her grief.
Ashtadukht sucked in a breath so heavy it topped off her lungs, and let it slowly pour through her lips. She would have liked for it to take her stress with it, but that would have been expecting too much of a single breath. She asked it to brace her, even oppressively hot as it was, and it did that much.
“Thank you,” she muttered, having regained her composure but furious with herself over losing it to begin with. Tirdad nodded and gave her back a pat before steering his camel to allow her some space.
She spent the remainder of the day unsuccessfully hiding from the intense desert sun beneath the brim of her hat, and otherwise preoccupied with her past. Even Waray’s kvetching fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t until dusk, and the imminent arrival of their pathfinders, that her downcast gaze was drawn skyward.
“Put Jupiter at your fore, the Moon at your rear,” she said. “When Vega rises, adjust your heading accordingly. And once the whole of the Grand Triangle appears, Saturn will show the way.”
“Would have made more sense to have his retainer guide us,” Tirdad remarked. He was extracting some heavy woollen cloaks from one of the sacks loaded onto his camel, and having a hard time of it.
“No argument here,” said Ashtadukht, whose skepticism had only increased with the mention of the Lut. She’d outright refused to go until the retainer had started droning on about duty and the prestige of his benefactor. “It’s like something out of a tale.”
They camped long enough to pray before sunset, which gave Waray the opportunity to seize the clutch of a ground jay and lift its nest into her personal pack (a rucksack shrouded in mystery that the cousins thought better left undisturbed). When the jay returned soon thereafter, trotting on its branchlike legs and calling a warning, Waray practically bullied them back onto their camels.
A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1) Page 11