by J. S. Bangs
“And I am the next Heir,” Navran said.
“Yes. If you don’t get yourself killed in a gambling feud or kidnapped by a slave trader first.”
“And the ring.” He pointed to the star-iron band on his finger.
“All of the rings were forged from the iron of the star that Ulaur cast to the earth to destroy the great serpent. Our father’s is the original, worn by Manjur and kept by the Heirs since the fall of the Kingdom. Yours and mine are copies, kept within the family, and passed down to the children of the Heir.”
The bowl sat untouched before Navran. He held his head in his hands and rocked slowly. “Star-iron. There wasn’t enough wealth in my whole village to buy a star-iron ring. I wore it around my neck.”
“I figured you didn’t know what it was, or you would have sold it.”
“The Heir of Manjur….”
“It’s not such a bad deal,” Taleg said. “You get room and board, and you spend lots of time talking to the other saghada. There are worse inheritances.”
“You don’t understand. I was… I was not…” He threw aside his bowl. “Let me go to the dining room.”
Mandhi and Taleg jumped to their feet. “Why?” Mandhi asked.
“To be left alone.”
“No.” Mandhi was firm.
“I won’t run off. But I want to be alone.”
“How can I trust you? You’ve run away at every opportunity.”
“I want to think.” He gave Mandhi an iron glare. “You want me to be Heir. Will you trust me to stay in a room by myself?”
Mandhi looked at Taleg. Taleg slowly nodded, keeping one eye on Navran.
“Fine,” Mandhi said. “Have Paidacha get him some rice beer, and tell him to keep an eye on him. Only a little beer. Then come back.”
“Sure thing,” Taleg said. “Come here, Navran.” He put his arm over Navran’s shoulders. “Take your time. We understand.”
They disappeared through the curtain. Mandhi paced the length of the room, listening to Taleg’s and Paidacha’s muffled voices. She was a fool. This was a terrible idea. And yet, her father had begged her to tell him. What had he expected? What else could they possibly expect? As if this burden of responsibility might transform him.
Taleg appeared through the curtain a moment later. “That was not so bad,” he said.
“Not so bad?”
“He didn’t immediately try to run away, at least.”
Mandhi stopped her pacing. Taleg still stood by the door, rubbing his head. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
He looked up. “Come again?”
“Give me something else to think about. Hurry, before Navran decides to come back.”
Taleg walked towards her. Mandhi met him halfway, seized his face in her hands, pushed her lips against his and opened her mouth.
* * *
Mandhi’s sari and choli were heaped on the floor with Taleg’s dhoti and kurta, while the two of them lay spent in the bed. She was nestled into his chest, drawing her hand gently across his collarbone, while Taleg sat up on one elbow, his free hand wandering from her spine to her thighs. She leaned forward and kissed the center of his chest.
“Tonight you don’t have to run away,” she said. “Finally.”
“And if Navran comes back and finds us here?”
“I don’t care. He knows.”
“He knows everything, now.”
She flicked his chin. “I asked you to take my mind off that subject.”
He bent down and kissed her ear. “Sorry.”
“How long do you think we should stay in Jaitha?”
“You don’t think we should leave right away?”
“I want,” she said kissing his neck, “to stay here a few more nights. Davrakhanda and Sadja can wait for us. And maybe Navran needs a little more time.”
“I can’t say I’d mind that.”
She rested her head on the cushion and listened to Taleg breathe. The sounds of gossip from the dining room had died down, and through the curtained window the only sounds were the droning of frogs and flies.
Taleg sat up. “What was that?”
There was a scrape in the dining room and the mutter of voices. Someone cried out, and a violent hollow thud sounded.
Taleg leapt to his feet and tied the dhoti around his waist. “I’ll see what it is. Wait for me here.” He disappeared through the curtain.
A moment later she heard his cry, followed by a thunderous fall. She leapt up, slung the sari around her waist and breasts, and bolted through the curtain.
The dining room was a confusion of shadows and movement. Paidacha cowered in the entrance to the kitchen holding an oil lamp, the only source of light in the room, which cast a flickering glow across a jumble of cushions and baskets strewn about in violence. Two bodies lay sprawled in the center of the room atop the low tables where the evening’s feast had lain. A silhouette stood at the outside door with bronze glinting in its fist. “Leave us alone, woman,” a man’s voice hissed.
One of the bodies on the floor heaved forward and reached for the shadow’s foot. The man leapt and struck downward with his blade, but missed the grasping hand. He scampered back a step and alit on the top of the ladder which descended to the street, then disappeared from sight with his blade held ready before him. The man on the floor lumbered up and stuck his head out the door, but returned a moment later.
The shape resolved itself into Taleg’s looming bulk. “They’re gone,” he said. “Lost already in the darkness.”
Paidacha stepped forward with the lamp and illuminated the scene. Taleg hulked in the doorway, blood trickling down his temple, while a strange man lay on the floor in a slowly spreading pool of blood. It took Mandhi a moment to understand the scene. And then it hit her like a falling stone.
“Where is Navran?” she asked. “Where is Navran?”
“They took him,” Taleg said. He collapsed onto a cushion and hung his head in his hands.
“Who took him?”
“Four men. Three got away with Navran. One of them….” He gestured to the limp body on the floor. “I hit him pretty hard. He fell on his knife.”
Mandhi put her hand over the man’s nose to feel his breath. “He’s dead.” She cursed under her breath. She would have liked to question the man. “But you? Are you okay?”
Taleg grinned. “They knocked me down for a moment with a good blow to the head”—he reached up and touched the gash on his forehead that was leaking blood—“but other than that I’m fine.”
Mandhi tried to hide the depth of her relief. No use getting Taleg worked up, nor giving Paidacha any ideas. She glanced over at the innkeeper, who still stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his mouth opened in an expression of wordless horror.
“What is it?” she said. “Do you know who did this?”
He shook his head and moved his tongue silently, as if he had forgotten how to speak. “I had no idea. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” He began to weep.
Mandhi thundered across the room and grabbed Paidacha by the beard. “What didn’t you know? Did you have something to do with this?” He continued sobbing. She shook his head with her grip on his beard until he cried out in pain. “Tell me!” she shouted.
“They threatened my wife,” he said. “And little Kalishni. They said they would hurt them unless, unless…”
“What did you do?”
He covered his face with his hands. “Mandragora in his beer. Just a little, not enough to kill. Just enough to make him delirious and disoriented. And when I called for them, he couldn’t fight.”
Mandhi let go of him. He slid to the ground, put his forehead on the floor, and chanted a prayer for forgiveness. She looked across the room at Taleg, who sat rubbing his temples with a grim look on his face.
“Sadja-dar,” she said.
“It would seem so. He wanted Navran more than we thought.”
“But how did he know we were coming? And have time to corrupt—” She gestured at the t
rembling face-down Paidacha.
“Same way he knew to send the original message? Farsight, perhaps.”
Mandhi nudged Paidacha with her toe. “When did these men come to you?”
His mantras stopped. He looked up and spoke in a creaking voice. “Four days ago. They gave me the root and told me to wait for a man named Navran.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone? Your saghada, a militiaman, anyone.”
“You don’t understand. They had imperial seals.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure!” He bowed and kissed her hand. “Believe me, please.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Sadja-dar,” Taleg said. “Unless he is working with the Emperor.”
“Or someone else is. Ulaur save us. The Emperor.”
“And now Navran knows.”
A chill went down Mandhi’s back. Her fists clenched.
“Knows what?” Paidacha said.
“You don’t get to know,” Mandhi said. “You gave over a fellow Uluriya to agents of the Emperor. You should go to your saghada and beg that he doesn’t strike out your name from the books.”
Paidacha began to weep.
“Have pity, Mandhi,” Taleg said. “He was protecting his family. And he has no idea who Navran is.”
“And I have to protect my family. My father. And even my drunken half-wit brother.”
Taleg bowed his head. “So what now?”
“We follow them, obviously.”
“Do we know where they’re going?”
“There are only two ways out of this city that make sense. Either they take a boat down-river and then sail to wherever they’re going, or they head north over the Emperor’s Bridge. With a little time and coin we can find out if anyone saw them. Then we follow.”
“They’ll be ahead of us.”
“We’ll move faster. We leave at first light.” She wanted to leave now, but there was no way they could follow the men in the darkness, and no way they could figure out which way the kidnappers had gone while the city slept. She turned back to the whimpering innkeeper. “Paidacha, you will supply us with food for the road. As much roti, cold rice, and dried fruits as we can carry.”
Paidacha nodded and retreated into the kitchen. “Yes. Of course. I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help.”
Mandhi pulled her sari closer around herself. It was slipping off of her, and she realized that she was half-naked and dressed in obvious hurry in the middle of the dining room. Paidacha, fortunately, seemed too distressed to notice. “Might as well try to get some sleep,” she muttered.
Taleg stretched. “I’ll join you.”
When they reached their chamber, Mandhi let the sari slide off of her and slipped naked into her bed. Taleg came a moment later and lay down next to her, putting his hand on her belly. She rested her hand on top of his.
“If we had waited another day to tell him,” she whispered.
Taleg kissed her ear. “You had no way to know. Now, sleep.”
She turned towards him and kissed him on the lips. Then she nestled her head in the crook of his neck. How was she going to sleep after this? But she closed her eyes and remembered nothing else.
6
“Three Red Men, and a man with tied hands between them. Yep, I saw ’em.” A guard for the city of Jaitha stood at the entrance to the Emperor’s Bridge and spat a red lozenge of saliva, briefly showing them the betel nut in his mouth. “Left at first light this morning.”
Red Men, Mandhi thought with a scowl. Last night they had been dressed in ordinary clothes, but if the bridge guard called them Red Men, then they were wearing the uniform of the imperial guard. But what was the imperial guard doing here in Jaitha? The vassal kings of the empire had their own militias, like the bridge guard standing before them who served the king of Jaitha. Ordinary military action was delegated to them. The Red Men stayed near Majasravi most of the time, unless there was some duty of the Emperor for which they were needed—revolts or riots or threats of independence on the part of the Emperor’s vassals.
But the Red Men were here in Jaitha, and they had taken Navran. She turned back to the guard. “Did you ask where they were going?” Mandhi said.
“I don’t question imperial guards carrying prisoners,” the man said with a shrug. “But if you want to know where they were going, I could tell you.” He grinned and tapped his palm.
Mandhi flicked a coin at him. The man caught it and spat again. “They crossed the bridge and took the north-east road.”
“Very good.” Mandhi tossed another coin at the man and nodded to Taleg. “If anybody asks, you never saw us.”
“Pleasure to help you, dear lady.” The soldier bowed, and the two of them proceeded through the gate onto the bridge.
The Emperor’s Bridge was a wide expanse of cut stone, as wide as three Jaitha streets, with a stone railing as tall as a man on either side. It leapt on arches from the south bank of the Amsadhu River to the stone sliver in the center of the river, where an imperial temple to Am rose, then crossed at a slightly different angle to the north shore. It was the surest sign of imperial power here in the south, the symbolic union between the halves of the empire, built by the first Emperors to fuse their conquests together. The edges of the causeway were tiled with ramshackle kiosks and tables of wares, an informal market presented to everyone who crossed the great river of Amur, and the bridge was choked with traffic in every daylight hour. Mandhi and Taleg could only proceed forward in the narrow channel through the middle of the bridge. But once they emerged on the other side, the crowd thinned, as travelers spread out onto the six roads which converged at the bridge. Taleg nodded towards the north-east road, and Mandhi followed.
Only a hundred yards from the bridge, the crowd of the city receded to a distant murmur. The road became a wide, flat path winding between gum acacia trees and coconut palms. Ahead of them a shepherd whacked at the laggards of his flock of goats with a thorny branch.
“So what’s the plan?” Taleg said quietly.
“We follow them. Ask in every village who saw them to make sure we don’t take a wrong path. They have a half a day’s lead, so we walk morning and night until we catch up.”
“And when we catch up with them?”
“We take Navran back.”
Taleg stroked his beard. “I appreciate your confidence in me, but we are talking about three Red Men. I don’t know if I can take that many at once.”
“Did I say we should fight them?”
“What other option do we have?”
“I have plenty of coins.” Mandhi gestured at the pouch that she hid between her breasts.
Taleg raised an eyebrow. “That could be expensive.”
“More expensive than the alternative?”
He laughed. “The problem with the alternative isn’t the expense.”
By the time they stopped that evening, their feet were sore from walking, and the first stars had begun to peek through the dying sunlight. The guest-house was not Uluriya—there were none in this village as far as Mandhi could see—so they were rendered unclean by eating the food and spending the night and would have to purify fully the next time they came into a proper household. Mandhi discounted this as a necessary annoyance. The fact that they had a bed at all was miraculous enough under the circumstances. The innkeeper recalled having seen Navran and his captors pass through earlier that day. Mandhi and Taleg were still about half a day behind. They slept and woke at the crack of dawn to continue the chase.
And so it continued for the next ten days. The winter rice harvest was coming in, and the paths were busy. Women carried baskets and men pulled carts of rice stalks and clay jars. The mosaic of rice paddies alongside the road was filled with peasants, dhotis and saris tied above their knees, their sickles slicing swick-swack through the stalks, building up the great golden heaps of grain that crowned the village squares. The mood of those they met on the road was pleasant, and at every pause, they asked those whom they met if they h
ad seen the Red Men leading a captive north. The reports they got indicated that they had made up some of the distance, as the captors had been seen only a few hours, then two hours, then an hour beforehand. Every evening Mandhi collapsed to sleep next to Taleg, and every morning they rose exhausted, but continued.
* * *
“Isn’t that Ganatha’s head?” Taleg said, pointing up the road to a lump of yellow stone lying beside the road.
Mandhi squinted and shaded her eyes. The stone resolved itself into a weather-worn human face wearing an expression of divine indifference. She grinned. “Old Rajunda already! We are moving fast.”
“I think my aching feet are a testament to that,” Taleg said. “But I appreciate Ganatha the Unwise donating the head of his statue so that you could remember as well.”
Mandhi snorted. “Wasn’t the head of the monument left by the road as a warning to others? Much like his actual head was put on a spear.”
“To warn us to slow down, maybe?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
Mandhi smiled wryly. “Is this your way of asking if we can stop here in Old Rajunda?”
“It would be a waste to not respect Ganatha’s donation.”
Mandhi sighed and shifted the position of her pack. “The Red Men might be here in Old Rajunda as well. And they’re just barely ahead of us, so I think we can risk it.” She tallied the days on the road between Old Rajunda and Majasravi. At the pace they had kept, they might catch up with Navran’s captors in another day or two. And the sun was falling in the west anyway—at most, they had an hour or two before they would have to stop anyway. A single day of extra rest was an acceptable risk.
Just beyond Ganatha’s head lay the village of Old Rajunda itself, a haphazard collection of mud-brick homes tucked between the ruins of the old city. Stones had been borrowed from the fallen palaces to form the corners of the peasants’ hovels, and between the rice fields lay piles of stone with the worn echoes of friezes visible on them. The central square of the village was ringed by heaps of harvested rice, and the threshers were heartily beating the sheaves into enormous baskets. Just beyond the threshers, a pair of farmers stood next to their filled basket of rice and accepted the chanted blessing of a dhorsha, who wafted a hand censer desultorily about the rim of their basket. Just beyond the dhorsha waited an agent of the majakhadir, holding a scale and a palm-leaf ledger book to collect his tax. Mandhi was about to ask the agent where to find a guest-house, when Taleg touched her elbow.