The Fire Seer

by Amy Raby

  She was pleasantly tipsy as she mounted Pepper and rode with Mandir to the farmer district of Hrappa. There they hoped to speak with some of the peasant families from the court cases they’d read about, but at the first house they visited, only the elders were at home. That was no good; Taya needed to visit with the whole family. The second and third houses they visited were no different: the young and able-bodied were out working in the fields.

  Mandir suggested that while they waited for the farmers to return, they could speak to the tax collector. He was the man in town most proficient with numbers. As such, he might be able to explain the terms of Bodhan’s loans in language they could understand.

  They found him in the ruling district, in a modest brick house that served as both home and office. He greeted them with neither warmth nor rancor and invited them into his home.

  The tax collector’s name was Wasan isu Damodar, and he was a big man, taller even than Mandir, and several inches wider. “I fear I can offer little to your investigation,” he said, taking a seat at a table so covered with tablets that one couldn’t see the wood underneath. He gestured at the pile. “Just move them out of the way.” When Taya hesitated to touch the tax collector’s tablets, he grabbed some of them himself and dumped them into a precarious-looking pile, freeing a token amount of space on the table.

  “We seek your expertise with numbers. Here are some loan documents from the magistrate’s archive.” She placed her tablets in the space he’d cleared. “They’re from recent court cases. Neither Mandir nor I have had much schooling in mathematics. Can you explain the terms of these loans to us?”

  Wasan took the documents and studied them. His forehead wrinkled. “Do these have something to do with the jackal you seek?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Mandir.

  “Well, I’ve seen these before,” said Wasan.

  “These documents?” asked Taya.

  “These loan terms,” said Wasan. “Bodhan offers them to anyone who comes to him looking for money, but if they understood what they were signing...”

  Taya sat up straighter in her chair. “What are they signing?”

  “Well, first of all, they’re agreeing to pay a fifth in interest.”

  “A fifth?” Taya asked awkwardly. She turned to Mandir, who shrugged his shoulders.

  Wasan frowned. “It means that if you borrowed five silver sticks, at the end of the year you have to pay back those five plus one more. Six in total.”

  “Oh,” said Taya. That made sense. Except... “No farmer would borrow five silver sticks. Would they?”

  Wasan shook his head. “That was just an example. It’s proportional, see? The actual amounts borrowed are lower. But here’s the real problem. If they fail to pay back the original amount, plus interest, by the agreed-upon date, they are charged a fine. And the amount of the fine is the entire amount of the loan. So if your peasant borrowed five silver sticks—bear with my example, however unlikely—and then failed to pay it back by the end of the year, he would then owe ten silver sticks plus one more, so eleven total. And another fifth will be charged on that, so it gets even worse—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Taya. “If a peasant can’t pay back six silver sticks after a year, how could he possibly pay back eleven sticks the second year?”

  “You’ve got the idea,” said Wasan. “If he fails to pay back his loan the first year, he’ll never pay it back. This document also states that if Bodhan has not been paid back the full amount of the loan within five years, the borrower must cede him all of his land holdings.”

  Taya blinked. “But that’s not legal. Bodhan can’t own farmland; he’s artisan caste.”

  “Correct,” said Wasan. “He’s not claiming ownership of the land, just control over it.”

  “What does that mean?” said Mandir. “He controls the farmer’s land but doesn’t own it. So what does he do with it?”

  “It says in the contract he’s permitted to specify what is grown on the land.”

  “That’s all?” Mandir frowned. “Is he owed a share of what the farmer produces off that land? A fifth, maybe?”

  “No, that would be illegal for his caste,” said the tax collector.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mandir. “Why would he care what’s grown on the land if he has no ownership either of the land or what it produces?”

  “He wants cotton for his business,” said Taya.

  ∞

  “Where to?” asked Mandir, after they’d left the tax collector. From the ground, he gathered up the reins of his blood bay. He grabbed a hank of mane and vaulted onto the creature’s back. “The farmers won’t be home yet.”

  “While we’re waiting, we can go back to the river. I need to scry again.”

  “Back to the river, are you crazy?” Fool woman, throwing herself as bait to the jackal again. He was not going to allow it.

  She didn’t answer and instead attempted to vault up onto her black mare. Somehow she didn’t get her right leg high enough. She slid back off, and the sensitive mare, distressed by this turn of events, danced away to the end of the reins.

  He frowned. It was odd for her to have difficulty getting on her horse. She didn’t seem drunk from the banana wine; it looked more like she was exhausted or in pain. “You need a boost?”

  “Flood and fire, no.” She coaxed the mare back to her and made a second attempt at mounting. It was clumsy but successful. She scrambled messily onto the mare’s back. “Let’s go.”

  “Not to the river.”

  “We have to. I never got my vision—”

  “You didn’t get your vision because someone tried to kill you. I’m not letting the jackal have a second go at you.” He studied her and noted the sag in her shoulders. Her rosy cheeks had faded, leaving her looking pale and strained.

  “It’s my job,” she said. “I’m not scared of the jackal.”

  “You should be.” Gods, if any woman needed a full-time quradum, it was Taya. She was brave and determined to succeed, but not always sensible. She had no business going near that river until the jackal was found, especially in the condition she was in. She hadn’t recovered yet from yesterday’s attack.

  “I’m going,” she said, sending Pepper into a canter.

  He touched heels to the blood bay. His bigger horse leapt into a gallop and easily caught the black mare. He seized the mare’s reins, pulled her to a stop, and turned her around. “You’re going home. You’re going to have lunch and rest through the heat of the day.”

  “Mandir, you’ve no right—”

  “As your quradum, I have the final word on matters of safety.”

  She yielded then, perhaps a testament to how exhausted she really was. She gave the mare a pat of apology and turned her in a gentle trot toward home.

  Mandir rode behind her, admiring the fineness of her form and the quality of her riding. The black mare Pepper was a sensitive animal of the type that so many riders ruined. Taya guided the mare with a light hand, never punishing her for over-exuberance or yanking around that delicate mouth. She’d had the horse for only a short time, he knew—it was customary for initiates to receive their first mount when they became fully qualified—yet an affectionate bond had already formed between them.

  It shamed him to see a relationship in which everything had been done right. He, on the other hand, had done nothing right. If at Mohenjo Temple he had treated her with gentleness, the way she did that pretty black mare, she could be his right now.

  Instead he’d tried to break her.

  His father, Tufan, used to break horses the way he broke people. It amused the old man. First he would try spurs and a whip and a bit so sharp it cut the tongue. If that didn’t subdue the beast, he’d try other methods: isolation, starvation. Most beasts succumbed and became docile, but they also became dull, spiritless animals.

  A few animals did not succumb. They grew wild and turned outlaw. They bit and reared and kicked. If Tufan could not tame them, he would cut
their throats.

  The man had been equally brutal with his children. Kindness had no place in Tufan’s household. Any show of weakness and Tufan would shame Mandir before his brothers. Then his brothers would steal him away and hold his head in a bucket of horse piss, or tie a feral cat to his head and laugh uproariously as it shat on him and scratched him in its desperation to escape.

  His family had schooled him in cruelty, and he’d learned the lesson well. So when Taya isu Ikkarum, frightened and friendless, had looked on him with admiration, he hadn’t seen then what was so obvious to him in hindsight: that he was attracted to her, and she to him. They could have been friends and allies. Later they could have been lovers.

  But at the time, he’d seen only weakness to exploit.

  Flood and fire, how it stung him now, thinking of the possibilities, the doors once opened to him that were now shut. The adoration in her eyes had turned first to fear, then to revulsion, and finally to hatred. He wanted to change what he saw in those eyes, but for all the gifts his magic gave him, he could not undo the wrongs of the past.

  He had but one consolation: he hadn’t broken her. She was like one of those outlaw horses that would not be dominated. She’d emerged from his cruelty intact. At the time, it had driven him wild that he could not break her. He’d escalated his attacks, figuring that eventually he had to win, until that fateful day with the fire maze when he’d nearly killed her and the Coalition authorities had intervened. In hindsight, he was glad they’d done it. Their intervention had saved him from a sad fate. What would he be today had he not departed Mohenjo for his Year of Penance?

  It was during his Year of Penance that he’d begun to understand that there was another way to relate to people, one that was more satisfying, and also more difficult, at least for him. The unfortunate truth was that the methods of domination and intimidation he’d used at Mohenjo worked. He had been at the top of the social ladder. And yet for all his success, he had not been happy. His heart had never been quiet, and he’d lived in constant fear of losing his status to a backstabbing rival.

  During his Year of Penance, he’d come to learn why he was so unhappy. It was not enough to be feared by those around him. He wanted to connect with someone on a deeper level. He wanted to be loved. And to win love, he had to treat people with kindness and respect. He understood that now.

  Still, these were new concepts which lay on him like ill-fitting clothes. His intentions might be good, but he lacked the skills. He was a schoolboy again with Taya, awkward and fumbling. During times of frustration, he lapsed into his old ways, but at least Taya challenged him on those occasions, so that he knew when he was being a zebu’s ass. In that sense, he desperately needed her.

  They’d arrived at the guesthouses.

  “I’ll take the horses,” said Mandir as Taya slid off her mount. “You go inside and rest.”

  She gave him a wary look as if he were setting a trap for her, but he only waited patiently for her to hand him the mare’s reins. Then she slipped inside the guesthouse, and he rode toward the stable to hand the animals off to the grooms. Someday, perhaps, she would realize that he’d changed since Mohenjo.

  Chapter 24: Hrappa

  Taya would never admit it, but Mandir had been right to make her rest through the heat of the afternoon. He’d escorted her to her guesthouse and then, instead of harassing her as she’d expected, left her entirely alone. She ate lunch and slept for three full hours, an appalling amount when they had so much work to do, and yet she felt much better when she awoke. Maybe that harrowing trip through the river had taken more out of her than she’d realized.

  In the evening, Mandir came by with the horses, and they rode out to the farmers’ district a second time. This time the farmers were home. Mandir hung back and allowed her to do the talking, since she knew farmers and he didn’t. She cast her eye at him a number of times during these meetings, curious what he was thinking. From some of the comments he’d made at Mohenjo, she knew he thought of peasant farmers as nasty, unwashed creatures who wallowed in dirt. But the reality was that most farmers’ homes, though small, were clean and sweet-smelling, and the farmers themselves always visited the baths after coming in from the fields. Peasant farmers might not be wealthy, but they were as civilized as anyone else in the valley.

  The first two families dodged their questions about Bodhan. Though Mandir’s eyes darkened at their evasions, Taya was inclined to leave them be rather than threaten them or otherwise try to force the information out of them. Eventually, she hoped, she would find someone willing to talk.

  Now, in the third house on their list, she spoke to the matriarch, who sullenly presented her four children to Taya and Mandir. None were over the age of ten. “Is this your entire family?” asked Taya.

  “And Daradi,” she said. “He’s at the market.”

  “Daradi is your husband?”

  The woman nodded.

  The jackal wasn’t here, then, and neither was the witness. Not that Taya expected to simply stumble upon either of them, but she’d hoped. “I understand you lost control of your land in a court case to Bodhan isu Kasirum. Is that correct?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  Taya swallowed. She hadn’t expected resistance to her questions. “We think the facts of those cases might be related to the recent murders.”

  “We have nothing to do with any jackal,” said the farmer woman. “Go back to your temple, Coalition dog.”

  Mandir leapt forward and grabbed the woman by the arm. “Apologize,” he demanded.

  “Mandir—” began Taya.

  He raised a hand to silence her and spoke again to the farmer woman. “Apologize to my partner.”

  “I am sorry,” choked out the frightened woman.

  Mandir released her. “Tell us about Bodhan and the loans.”

  “It was a bad year, when the Lioness did not flood. We had no crop. We had to borrow money.”

  “Did you not have food in storage?” asked Taya.

  “Not enough,” said the farmer woman. “And our bananas no longer produce well.”

  Probably because they were blighted. She’d look at them later. “So you borrowed money from Bodhan.”

  The farmer woman aimed a frightened glance at Mandir and nodded. “We tried to pay him back but we couldn’t manage it. Now he controls our land and makes us grow cotton every year.”

  It was as she’d guessed—Bodhan wanted farmers to grow the raw materials for his cloth business. “Do you get a good price for it?”

  The farmer woman snorted.

  Taya took that to mean no. “May I see your banana plants?”

  She led them out back to the garden, a small square patch sporting a few melon vines, a date tree, and two banana plants. The banana plants were indeed blighted. Taya didn’t have to look closely; even from a distance she could see the black spots under the leaves and the plants’ thin, undernourished appearance. No fruit grew on either of them. “How long have they been blighted?”

  “Five years,” said the farmer woman. “We would have replaced them, but all our neighbors’ trees are blighted too. Only Zashkalim isu Ikkarum has healthy trees left, and he has so few he cannot spare them. When someone does replace a tree, it blights within the year. You could fix it with your magic. But you won’t.” She spat on the ground.

  In the pregnant pause that followed, Taya waited anxiously for Mandir’s aggressive response. But it did not come. Instead, he said, “She would heal them if she could. But she must obey the law, as must we all.”

  “Yes, we know well this law,” said the farmer woman. “It is the law that says the Coalition gets rich while farmers starve.” She eyed their green and silver clothes. “You help the rich merchants like Bodhan take food from the mouths of the hungry. And when the knives sprout from your backs, nobody will weep for you.”

  “We’re not helping Bodhan,” began Taya angrily.

  “Wait,” said Mandir. “What do you mean? How are we he
lping him?”

  “You know what you were hired to do,” said the farmer woman.

  As they rode away from the farmers’ district back toward the guesthouses, Taya said, “You shouldn’t have frightened her. We won’t make friends that way.”

  Mandir shrugged. “She wouldn’t have been a friend to us no matter what I did. But there’s something going on here and it has to do with Bodhan. Those farmers looked thin. Too thin.”

  “I noticed,” said Taya.

  “The Valley of the Lioness produces more than enough food for everyone,” he said. “The Mothers never intended that their children should go hungry in a land of plenty.”

  “It’s because of those nasty loans. Farmers don’t like growing cotton.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t eat it.”

  Mandir rolled his eyes. “But you can sell it. Farmers aren’t stupid. They understand the concept of trade.”

  “Of course,” said Taya. “But food prices oscillate wildly depending on the river’s antics. Many of these families have a tradition of self-sufficiency going back generations, and they’re loath to give it up. I suspect that Bodhan is the only cotton buyer in town. By forcing so many farmers to grow cotton, he’s flooding the market and acquiring his raw materials at an artificially low price while simultaneously making food scarce. So of course the farmers are going hungry.”

  Mandir frowned. “What did she mean when she said we were helping Bodhan to starve them?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Taya. “She hates the Coalition, so I guess she thinks we’re conspiring against her.”

  “Did you see the jackal anywhere? Or the witness?”

  “No. We’ll have to try again tomorrow evening. We can visit some more families.” She wasn’t wild about the idea, given the hostility she’d already seen toward the Coalition, but she would do it.