The Fire Seer

by Amy Raby

  Two lines appeared in the middle of her forehead, and he knew he’d managed to plant some doubt. If they’d both been drugged, and he suspected they had, she would have suffered the same memory loss that he had. That meant she didn’t remember much of last night either.

  “I don’t think we slept together,” he said, “We never took our clothes off.”

  “How do you know what did or didn’t happen?”

  “I don’t!” he said. “Do you remember?”

  “Get out,” she snapped. “You’ve had your fun at my expense. Now leave.”

  “None of this has been fun—”

  “Get out!”

  Mandir turned and left the guesthouse.

  Chapter 28: Hrappa

  Taya gave a shaky sigh. He was gone—finally. She had no memory of what had happened last night, beyond drinking gold dust and then meeting someone. But it was clear that she’d ended up in Mandir’s bed somehow. Had they slept together? She assumed they had. That was what usually happened when people shared a bed. But it was true that they’d awakened with their clothes on.

  Her only point of pride about her history with Mandir at Mohenjo Temple was that she’d never slept with him. She’d always stood her ground and refused. Had he won at last, by drugging her and sleeping with her when she was senseless? Maybe he’d put her clothes back on afterward, and his own, to conceal his crime. But that didn’t make a lot of sense. If he’d gone so far as to put her dress back on, wouldn’t he have also returned her to her own bed and eliminated suspicion entirely?

  Now she was just confused.

  Earlier, she’d pored over her body and smallclothes, checking for blood. Shouldn’t there be blood? She had no experience with sex. Shouldn’t she also be sore this morning, if they’d coupled last night? She wasn’t. The only part of her that was sore was her head.

  She poured herself another goblet of water. Her tongue was swollen, and her mouth felt like cotton. Was that a side effect of gold dust? She wished there was someone she could ask. Someone she trusted.

  There was not a single person in Hrappa she trusted.

  “Taya.”

  She jumped at the sudden voice and turned to see Mandir framed in her courtyard window. Anger boiled up through her pores. “I told you to leave.”

  “Please,” he said. “I think this is important. Last night, do you remember any strange feelings?”

  “I remember almost nothing, thanks to the gold dust you encouraged me to drink.”

  “I didn’t encourage you,” he said. “You don’t remember, perhaps, sounds echoing in your head?”

  She had opened her mouth to order him away again, but now she closed it. In fact, she did remember something like that. Of course, if Mandir knew about it, that was simply more evidence that he knew the true effects of gold dust.

  His eyes lit with interest. “You do remember, don’t you?”

  “There was an echoing effect.”

  “I experienced it too.”

  “Of course you did. You drank the gold dust as well.” She had to wonder, though, why so many people at the party had willingly drunk gold dust, knowing it would produce that echoing effect and cause them to lose all memory of the rest of the evening. She couldn’t imagine doing that voluntarily. But then, these were ruling-caste people. Maybe they liked it.

  “It wasn’t gold dust we were drugged with,” said Mandir, “but Echo.”

  “Echo?” She’d heard of Echo, a distillation of leaves that some people in the cities liked to drink. It was said to be unhealthy, and it wasn’t used in the rural village where she’d grown up. “How do you know?”

  “The symptoms match,” he said. “Loss of self-control, echoing of sounds in the head, memory loss. Someone drugged you with Echo, and that person drugged me too.”

  He could be making this up, for all she knew, but Echo seemed a more plausible explanation than gold dust. Still, how did she know Mandir hadn’t been the one to slip her the drug? It made no sense that a third party would have done it. Why would a third party want her to go to bed with her partner? Mandir’s theory was ridiculous. “It may have been Echo. But you were the one who dosed me with it.”

  Mandir shook his head. “For most of the evening, I wasn’t even near you. I realize I can’t prove it to you, but I swear I didn’t do it. And that means somebody else did. The obvious suspect is the jackal or someone working with her.”

  “The jackal has nothing to gain from drugging me.”

  “We don’t know that. Help me, Taya. Reconstruct the evening with me—maybe we can figure something out. Do you remember leaving the high table?”

  Taya hesitated. She didn’t like cooperating with him, but there was just enough about the incident that didn’t make sense to make her curious. “Yes.”

  “And did you still feel normal then?”

  “More or less. I was tipsy.”

  “Did you eat or drink anything after leaving the high table?”

  Taya shrugged. “A little more wine. Food from the trays.”

  “Did anyone give you anything to eat or drink?”

  “No,” said Taya.

  “I’ll tell you what little I know,” said Mandir. “After I left the high table, I went and sat by myself. I drank some wine and ate some food, and a woman came and sat beside me.”

  “What woman?” asked Taya.

  “I don’t know her name,” said Mandir. “We talked for a while. She flirted, but I wasn’t interested, and it didn’t go anywhere. Then...”

  “Then what?”

  Mandir shook his head. “I don’t remember. You?”

  “I left the high table,” said Taya. “I wandered through the crowd, searching for the witness or the jackal. I started to feel...”

  Mandir looked up. “Feel what?”

  Taya’s brow furrowed. “The noise from the party irritated me. Words were echoing in my head. Then I ran into someone I knew—someone unexpected. I was happy to see him. Needleflies, I can’t remember who it was.”

  “Zash.”

  “Yes! That’s who it was. I sat with him and...talked or something.”

  “You kissed him,” said Mandir.

  “I did?”

  “I think I yanked him off you. I remember that now.” He swallowed. “I think we might have kissed at the party—I’m not sure. And you must have come home with me. But given that we kept our clothes on, I don’t think anything else happened. The Echo probably just put us to sleep.”

  Taya felt moderately certain now, based on the clothes and her lack of soreness, that they hadn’t coupled. But they’d certainly slept in the same bed, and if they’d kissed...well, that wasn’t as bad, but it still bothered her. She might have been willing at the time, owing to a certain amount of animal attraction, but only because of the drug she’d been given, which had robbed her of the ability to think clearly. Her body, foolish as it was, had always responded to Mandir. It was her mind that overrode those desires, when it was working properly.

  Mandir was the only person in Hrappa with a reason to drug her. “It was you,” she said coldly. “You drugged me with Echo. And I’ll see you burn for it.”

  “I’m sorry that it happened,” said Mandir. “But I was drugged too. And I wasn’t the one who gave you the drug.”

  “Get out of my window. You’re spoiling the view.”

  “I’ll go,” he said. “But think on what I’ve said.”

  Taya would rather go for another swim with vicious river dolphins than think any longer about Mandir. To her relief, he disappeared from her window.

  Now what should she do? What was done was done; she couldn’t undo it. And she had a jackal to find. The party had yielded nothing, so what should she do next? Speak with more of the farmer families involved in the court cases, perhaps. But those families wouldn’t be available until evening. In the meantime, she could visit the public baths. That thought appealed. She could wash away the smells of the party and of Mandir. As for breakfast, she’d skip it.
After last night and this disastrous morning, her stomach was a rumbling, churning disaster.

  She went to the shelves to fetch clean clothes from the saddlebag. But as she reached for the bag, her hand paused in the air. Her saddlebags weren’t sitting exactly where they had been before. Had someone gone through her things? Mandir, perhaps?

  She pulled the first saddlebag nearer and rifled through it. Right away, she saw what was missing: her mission tablets. All of them. There was not a single clay tablet left in the bags. Who could have taken them? Mandir had no reason to do that.

  Maybe she’d taken the tablets out herself and left them somewhere. Mothers knew she was not always organized. She made a frantic tour of her guesthouse, searching the likely places, including the table where she normally did her work, and then the unlikely places. No tablets.

  Had Mandir moved them to his own guesthouse for safekeeping? That was possible, but it didn’t seem likely.

  She tore open the nearest saddlebag again. Nothing else seemed to be missing. Her clothes were there, her powders, her medicines. She had not been indiscriminately robbed. But that in itself was frightening. Whoever had taken her tablets had come for them specifically.

  She opened the second saddlebag. Nothing obvious missing—everything seemed to be in order. She unbuttoned the center-left pocket, where she kept her ceramic bottle of kimat. That pocket was empty.

  “Mandir!” she cried. She’d chased him away, but he would not have gone far. Surely he was just at his own guesthouse. She ran for the door, only to jump back as the door slammed open.

  Mandir rushed wild-eyed into the room.

  “Someone stole my kimat and all the mission tablets.”

  Mandir’s jaw tightened. “Show me.”

  Taya led him to the shelves with the saddlebags, and demonstrated the telltale evidence.

  “Were the tablets and kimat here last night?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Before we left for the party,” he amended.

  “The tablets were here yesterday afternoon,” said Taya. “I don’t know about the kimat. I haven’t checked on it in a while.”

  “Let’s see if I still have mine,” said Mandir.

  She trailed after him across the courtyard and stepped into his guesthouse. She could not help but glance at the bed where she’d spent the night. Her stomach lurched. But he didn’t pause there; he went directly to his shelves and opened up a saddlebag much like hers, except black in color. He unlaced a pocket and drew out a ceramic bottle.

  “Here,” he said, showing it to her.

  “So.” Taya blew out her breath in a sigh. “My place was robbed, but not yours.”

  “Because mine was occupied and yours wasn’t. Do you believe me now that we were both drugged?”

  “I’m not sure what to believe,” said Taya. But the loss of the tablets badly jeopardized their murder investigation, and surely Mandir cared as much about the success of his first-ever Coalition mission as she did. She could hardly believe he’d sabotage his own prospects just to torment her. Mandir never did anything that didn’t in some way serve his personal interest.

  “Look, I didn’t drug you last night,” said Mandir. “But I realize I played a part in what happened. I must have taken you back to my room, and for that I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  Taya considered. If they had both been drugged, he wasn’t culpable. If that was the situation, then they had both lost their heads under the influence of the drug. The fault lay with whoever had drugged them. She nodded. “For this incident, I forgive you. But don’t ever touch me again.”

  ∞

  When Taya expressed a desire to visit the public baths, Mandir agreed to accompany her. He couldn’t argue with the need for a visit, since the party smells lingered on both of them—incense, wine, smoke from the torches. But he had a feeling that wasn’t why she was going. She wanted to wash away the smell of him.

  He was certain nothing of consequence had happened between them last night, aside from a little foreplay that seemed to have gone nowhere. But it was hard to watch her virulent reaction to even the thought of kissing him, when he had dreamed about kissing her—and sleeping with her—for years. In his fantasies, he’d imagined her wildly enthusiastic as he brought her to the heights of pleasure again and again. She would fall asleep in his arms, sated and content. He knew they were only fantasies, and that the reality of sex could be more pedestrian. But it was not part of his fantasy that she should be horrified at having touched him.

  Rasik brought their horses around to the front of the guesthouse and gave them a smirk. “Surprised you two are up already, after last night.”

  Mandir gave Rasik a hard, humorless stare, and the man left without another word.

  Mandir swung up onto his blood bay, and Taya vaulted onto Pepper. He pulled his horse in behind her, letting her lead the way to the baths.

  He was familiar with Echo because during the first season of his Year of Penance, he’d cared for several Echo addicts. They were withered and emaciated, like walking skeletons. His mentor explained that they looked that way because Echo made them feel as if they were never hungry. They were starving to death, and they didn’t know it. “You are like them,” his mentor had said. “You believe yourself to be satisfied with your position, your wealth, and your reputation. But in truth you are starving.”

  “I am not starving,” Mandir had replied. After all, his body was healthy and well-fed. It had taken him over a season to understand that the man was not talking about food.

  Mandir kicked his blood bay into a jog and pulled up even with Taya. “Someone’s got our kimat, and we have to assume their intent is sinister.”

  “You needn’t take me for a fool,” she said. “Of course their intention is sinister. Kimat is used to disable the magical. It has no other purpose.”

  “From now on, we’ll have to be careful what we eat or drink. You’re aware that it’s tasteless?”

  Taya nodded. “Unlike you, I’ve been drugged with it before.”

  Mandir frowned. She’d had kimat before because he’d drugged her with it at Mohenjo before putting her in the fire maze. “I’ve had it too, actually. I was forced to drink it every day during my Year of Penance.”

  She turned. “Really?”

  “That’s part of how the penance is enforced. A small amount every day, to make sure I didn’t use magic.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I don’t think we should eat any more of the food the magistrate sends,” said Mandir. “As far as I’m concerned, he and his son are suspects.”

  Taya nodded. “We can summon our own water from the air. But what will we eat?”

  “We haven’t the means to produce our own food, so we must buy or accept it from someone in Hrappa.”

  “Is there anyone we can trust?” asked Taya.

  They rode in silence for a while, brows furrowed.

  “I’m taking that as a no,” she said. “Perhaps the best we can do is to be unpredictable. Accept food from no one, unless we choose it ourselves. Buy food from farmers and shops in the market, but from someone different each time. And only buy food that’s displayed openly, not something that must be fetched from a back room.”

  “Agreed,” said Mandir. He was already working on a new list of suspects, the people who could have drugged them and stolen their kimat. It might have been the jackal, but there was no certainty of that. Other possibilities were someone in the magistrate’s family, or Bodhan, or Zash. They’d all been at the party. Later, he and Taya needed to sit down and make a list of everyone they’d seen there, if they could recall their names. Possibly the magistrate, since he was the host, could help them assemble a list of guests, but given that the magistrate and his son were suspects, Mandir would rather not involve him.

  As they passed beneath the twin archways that led to the public baths, a horse galloped up behind them. Mandir spun the blood bay and positioned himself to meet the threat.


  But it was only Rasik, panting from the exertion.

  “Catch your breath, man,” said Mandir. “Has something happened?”

  Rasik said, “There’s been another murder.”

  Chapter 29: Hrappa

  Taya’s breath caught in her throat. “It’s her. The witness.”

  The woman lay on the ground in the middle of a cotton field, partially covered by the growing plants. Her limbs protruded at odd angles, as if she’d died instantly and fallen just as she was. Her name was Jaina, according to her brother, who’d been the one to discover her body. She looked no more human, now, than a child’s tattered doll.

  On one side of Taya stood Mandir, and on the other stood the victim’s brother. A ring of peasant farmers, some of them family and some just onlookers, crowded close, looking soberly on the scene. A short distance away, the victim’s mother was doubled over and wailing. Two other women were with her, holding her hands.

  “What do you mean?” asked the brother. “Witness to what?”

  Taya supposed the information could hurt no one now. “This woman witnessed the murder of the magistrate’s son. I saw her in a vision from Isatis.”

  A few of the farmers exchanged glances.

  “May I examine the body?” Mandir asked the farmers.

  Someone slipped out of the group to speak to the mother. Her wailing intensified, but the man returned with a nod.

  Mandir pushed the cotton plants aside and gently turned the body over. He lifted her clothes just enough to search for wounds. “Not a mark on her.” He opened her mouth and checked the color of her tongue. Then he lifted her hands and examined them. “No signs of struggle and no obvious cause of death. Are you going to scry?”

  “Yes.” Scrying could tell her how this woman had died, and possibly who had killed her. Taya was already putting the pieces together as far as motive was concerned. Whoever had drugged her and Mandir last night had stolen her mission tablets. That person must have read the tablets and discovered Taya’s references to the witness. Then he or she had disposed of the witness. It was logical to guess that this person was the jackal, but Taya wasn’t sure they could make that assumption, especially since the method of attack had changed. Flood and fire had killed the first three victims. It was not apparent what had killed this one. “If I’m going to scry, I need this space cleared.”