by J. S. Bangs
“So we go on as before,” Gocam said. “This changes nothing.”
“It changes everything!” Mandhi said. “What are we going to eat? How are we going to get to Jaitha? Should we beg for roti?”
“There are worse fates than begging.”
“I am the daughter of the Heir of Manjur! I do not beg.”
Navran snorted to himself. He had begged and worse, and if he needed to, he would again. Let Mandhi keep her dignity. Any dignity that he’d had was squandered long ago.
The camp slid into sullen silence. No one spoke for several minutes, and the longer the silence went on the less anyone seemed to want to speak. The fire began to fade.
“I’m going to sleep,” Mandhi said. “We should all go to sleep.”
Navran spread his mat and lay down without a word. The expectation of little food stretched before him, stirring up dread in his stomach. But he had little time to dwell on it. The exhaustion from the day’s travel and the night’s battle quickly drowned him in sleep.
* * *
“… trust him with it,” Mandhi said quietly.
“Why not?” Gocam answered. It was night, and they whispered in total darkness. The moon was down, and the sky was visible as a star-speckled shard between the black outlines of the mountains.
“Because he’s not trustworthy. In Virnas he was drunk half the time and gambled away all the money we gave him. And you heard the debauchery that Ruyam goaded him into. Why should he deserve to hold the ring of Manjur?”
Of course. Navran closed his eyes again. He would close his ears to this if he could. But Mandhi only spoke the truth.
“Deserve. That is a strange word to use here,” Gocam said.
“There’s nothing strange about it. He’s never shown himself worthy of that sort of charge.”
“The ring is a gift, not a reward.”
“You can be unworthy of a gift.”
“No one is worthy of the gifts of the Powers. They cannot be earned, only received.”
“Is that what the thikratta teach? Because the Uluriya behave differently.”
“Do you? How did Manjur earn the favor of Ulaur? And the blessing which has lain upon your people since then—”
“We keep ourselves pure. We do not sully the light of Ulaur which is given us. Well, most of us don’t.”
“And yet the light is still a gift. It was given as a gift and maintained as a gift.”
Mandhi was quiet for a while. “If Taleg were here….”
“I’m sorry I never met him.”
“In many ways he was a truer child of Manjur than me. Kinder. More faithful.” She let out a laugh which turned into half a sob. “And if he had been with us on the road, no band of thieves would have attacked us.”
“Dear child,” Gocam said. A quiet scrape of movement, then Mandhi’s muffled crying.
Navran tried not to hear. The words were not for him. The box containing the rings pressed into his skin with a slight pain.
Another gift? But he sided with Mandhi. The ring may be a gift, but it was a gift he didn’t deserve, a gift he couldn’t bear. He had come to Gocam hoping to be free of the burden of the Heir, and that hope hardened into determination. The gifts would crush him if he didn’t escape.
* * *
On the night of the new moon, Mandhi declared that they had run out of food.
They had stayed on the shepherd’s paths in the foothills the entire time, as they continued to spot Red Men when they approached the villages below them. Travel was slow. Their rations were stretched to breaking, and every night Navran slept with hunger growling in his throat. Mandhi’s temper was even shorter than usual, and she seemed to be ill, vomiting nearly every morning. Navran bore her verbal daggers with indifference and a kind of pity. He had brought this upon them, and he deserved their discomfort. But Mandhi was innocent.
“How much farther to Jaitha?” Navran asked after Mandhi made her announcement.
“I don’t even know. Too far.” She gestured ahead of them. “I’ve never traveled south by this route. I’m going on faith that eventually we’ll reach the Amsadhu, and then can follow or float it out to Jaitha. But how far?” She glanced at Gocam. “Do you know?”
“No.” Gocam said. “But your plan is sound. So we continue.”
“Except we have nothing to eat. How much farther can we go without food?”
Navran glanced down the hillside. There was a village below them. But he wouldn’t suggest it. Not yet.
“Perhaps you should learn to fast,” Gocam said. “It isn’t such a hard thing to go a day or two without food. You can make a small ration go a long way.”
Mandhi didn’t answer that. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains, and the dark and the cool evening winds would begin soon. Candles began to twinkle in the windows of the village below.
“Are we stopping here?” Navran said.
“Up here,” Mandhi said. “If we don’t have food, we certainly can’t afford to seek lodging in the village.”
He would wait a bit. Not far ahead they found a sheltered area out of sight of potential bandits and began to make camp. As every night, Navran started the fire while Mandhi tended to Gocam and set out food. Except tonight there was no food.
Still, he found a moment when Mandhi was talking to Gocam and their backs were turned. With quick, silent steps he crossed the path and descended the hill. A few paces brought him to the shelter of some stones and hid him from view. They would know he was gone, already, but they wouldn’t follow him, not tonight.
They probably assumed he wasn’t coming back. And once he realized that, the thought wouldn’t dislodge from his mind. He could leave and not come back. No Taleg to chase him down, this time. Up here, in the hinterlands between Jaitha and Majasravi, he could disappear. Work as a shepherd in a village. Earn money for beer. His hands shook. He was so close to being free. Free.
But there was a voice that whispered with his heartbeat. How many times will you run, and how many times will I find you?
He swallowed hard. He had something to do right now, and he might as well finish it.
It was dark by the time he reached the bottom of the slope and peeked down the dry mud streets of the village from behind a lonely chir pine. The moon was waning past full in the muggy night sky, casting barely any light. He didn’t see any Red Men outside, but that didn’t mean that none were lodging. He couldn’t get caught.
When he was sure no one was watching, he slipped from behind the pine and sprinted to the edge of the street, then began a confident stroll. No use skulking in the shadows at night. Anyone who saw him would be sure he was a thief. Just be a villager, out for a walk. Don’t get close enough for anyone to see that you’re a stranger.
It was a larger village, with three long parallel streets and several dozen houses. Most of them were the familiar mountain-village type, slouching stacks of mud-brick with pine bark roofs, but a few of them were larger, with wooden walls and painted arches over the doorways. He walked the full width of the village down all three streets before he decided on his mark. The biggest house in the village was well-lit and full of voices on the inside. Probably the khadir, making it too rich a target. The second-biggest had lights in the east windows but none elsewhere, and whoever was awake inside made no sound. When he was sure, he switched back to stealth.
At the end of the street, he crouched as if peeing into the shallow gutter that ran next to the road. He stayed there for a while, waiting for the darkness to deepen. Slow, silent steps brought him into the shadow behind the nearest mud-brick house. From there, he peeked around the corner to check for watchers, then slipped across the narrow patch of moonlit ground into the shadow of the next house. The villagers built their houses very close together. Convenient for him. In only a few minutes he reached the neighbor of the target.
The large house had a dirt yard fenced by a low wall of mud-brick. He peered over the top of the wall. Only a trio of nanny goats. No dogs or gua
rds that he could see. A moment later he vaulted the fence and crept into the yard itself.
The hardest part of stealing from a big house was knowing where they kept the stores. Fortunately, this was still a mountain village, and even the big house was built on a simple, consistent plan. On the south side, where Navran approached, was the outdoor hearth with Sathirvan’s wheel hanging over it. A dark curtained square in that wall of the house would bring him to the dining room, which is where they doubtlessly kept their rice, cheese, and any other foods that could travel. Beyond that he could see three or four other rooms, but they were of no interest to him. Into the dining room and back out.
He bolted to the door. Silently through the curtain. He hesitated once inside, as the interior held a profusion of clay pots and bronze dishes, and he couldn’t tell which one of them held food. Outside, a dog barked. In the yard? It sounded farther than that. If the house held a dog he would have heard it by now. He reached for the nearest dish, stacked atop a tall clay jar, and the dog barked again.
He flinched. The dish clattered to the floor with an angry metallic clang. Navran bolted.
Outside, he heard shouting but ignored it. He ran to the mud fence, hoping to vault it and disappear again into the shadows, but from his left a human shape moved. Someone had been outside. One pace short of the fence, they tackled him, and the pair of them tumbled, sprawling to the ground.
“Thief! Thief!” shouted the man atop him. Lamps appeared in the doorway of the big house, and a fat man rumbled towards them.
“Kaushinda!” shouted the fat man. “You have him?”
“I have him.” Navran squirmed and tried to wriggle away, but the man gave him a punch in the gut. He talked in a thick montane accent. “You try to steal from the khadir’s brother? You take your licks.”
A moment later a tall, portly man with a fleecy mustache appeared above him holding an oil lamp aloft. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before. You come up here from Jhaupti?”
There was no getting away now. Time to be pitiful. “No, sir, he said. I’m not from Jhaupti. I’m not from around here at all. I’m fleeing from—” No, wait, he couldn’t mention Ternas, nor the Red Men. Too many chances the man would turn him in for a reward.
This could be his chance to get away. If he was turned over to the Red Men, he would return to the Ushpanditya, and then?
But Mandhi and Gocam would starve or beg. And he had already betrayed them once.
“Fleeing from where?” the man demanded. “Is your tongue tied?”
“From Jaitha,” he said. “From debt collectors. We were beset by bandits on the road, and we ran out of money. Please, have pity. My sister and my elderly father are with me. They’re hiding among the rocks up in the foothills.”
The man frowned and glared at him for a moment, the errant whiskers of his mustache moving back and forth with his breath. “You have no food?”
“None at all. That’s all we were looking for.”
“Kaushinda, let him go. Get up.” Navran rose to his feet. The top of his head reached the man’s nose, and the man looked down at Navran with paternal disdain. “I don’t believe you, first of all. However, if you do have a sister and a father hiding up in the rocks, bring them to me, and I will feed all of you. But if you’re lying, as I suspect you are, then run away and don’t come back, and if I find you again I’ll have you beaten.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get my sister and return.”
“I’m sure. Now get out of my sight.”
He walked as fast as he could without seeming to flee to the entrance of the courtyard, and turned to the north to walk out of the town. Many people had come to the doors of their houses, drawn by the ruckus, and they watched him with silent condemnation.
Walking upright, it didn’t take him long to reach the edge of town and turn west into the foothills. The outcropping of rock that hid their fire was not hard to spot. But when he stepped into the circle of firelight, Mandhi started and shouted, “Navran!”
“I’m here,” he said. “I found us something.”
“Where did you go? Ulaur, I thought you had left us for good.”
And perhaps she wished that he had. “I went looking for food.”
“How? Where?”
“I was going to steal it,” he said quietly.
Mandhi’s expression soured. “Of course. The child of the Heir consorts with prostitutes and steals his roti.”
Gocam stirred and laid a hand on Mandhi’s shoulder. He had been crouched next to Mandhi so still that he might have been a stone. “Peace, Mandhi. He tried to help.”
Navran cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was caught. I told the master of the house that I traveled with my sister and my elderly father. He said that if it was true, I should come with you and he would feed us.”
Mandhi stared at Navran in horror and contempt. But Gocam simply rose, picked up a small stone, and shovelled earth onto the fire.
“What are you doing?” Mandhi asked.
“Banking the fire. We must not refuse the invitation.”
“This is not an invitation. It’s pity. I told you, I do not beg.”
“It seems that Navran has done the begging for you. Perhaps you should thank him.”
“But their food will be unclean. We can’t—”
Gocam pierced Mandhi with a glare. Navran looked away. He had received several of those glares himself, and even the indirect heat of it seemed to scorch him.
“Mandhi,” Gocam began, “by the laws of your people you have been unclean for all of these weeks of travel. Will you use this excuse now in order to turn down a man who offers you a gift?”
The fear and humiliation in Mandhi’s face did not lessen, but she sighed and kicked some dirt onto the fire. When the coals were safely buried she lifted her pack and said, “Fine. Show us the way.”
* * *
When Navran knocked at the man’s door accompanied by Mandhi and Gocam, the surprise on his face was palpable. But he held to his word. His wife set them out dishes of lentil stew and soft cheese, while the man introduced his two sons and inquired about their journey. Navran answered, skirting as close to the truth as possible without giving themselves away, and parried with queries of his own interest.
Had Red Men visited the village? Yes, looking for escaped criminals of some kind. Had anybody seen where the criminals went? Oh, there were bandits in the hills often, but no one that would interest the Emperor.
But the man was most interested in the cut of their hair, and after a moment he asked, “Are you worshippers of Ulaur?”
Navran balked a moment. Did they know that the “criminals” which the Red Men pursued were Uluriya? There were so few Uluriya in the mountain hinterlands that anyone passing through would attract attention. But Navran’s beard was cut in the prescribed style, and Mandhi kept her hair tied in a bun atop her head, so anyone who knew the Uluriya customs would recognize them.
But Mandhi saved him from having to answer. “Yes,” she said. “Are there any others nearby?”
The man and his wife gawked at them as if they were talking sheep. “No, none at all,” the man said. “I have heard of you, but up here by the mountains I’ve never seen one. You’d have to go all the way to Jaitha—”
“Not quite as far as that,” Navran broke in.
“But certainly far. Peshliti, have you ever seen one of the Ulaur-worshippers in the village?” The man’s wife shook her head.
“Once you get near to the Amsadhu, you come to an area where there are many Uluriya,” Navran said. “Even whole villages of them.”
“Ah, but the Amsadhu is very far away. I have never made the journey. One of the boys who sells wool in Ghatmi could tell you. My brother, the khadir, he sends them in spring after the shearing, and they return in mid-summer. Ghatmi is nearer than Jaitha. But of course you know, since you came from that direction.”
“We’ve gone slowly and taken a long time,” Navran said. “I don’t know how long it would ta
ke if you went directly. Honestly, I’ve lost track of the days.”
The man looked at them with pity. “You should rest here a day. No debt collectors will find you while you’re under my roof.”
“We can’t,” Mandhi said firmly. “We’ve come too far north already, and I think we’ll turn back south. We have friends near Jaitha who will help us, so long as we can get to them without being caught.”
“Ah,” the man said, nodding. “Wise. If you go through Ghatmi on your way back, speak to the majakhadir there and tell him that you were sent by Sujaur-kha. That’s my brother. He’ll help you get the rest of the way back to Jaitha.”
Mandhi raised an eyebrow and glanced at Navran. “Can we go through Ghatmi? We want to stay off of main roads.”
“Perhaps if you covered your hair,” the woman offered. “So no one would see you as Uluriya. Does it offend your god to do so?”
“There are degrees of offense,” Mandhi said. “This food, for example—”
“The food is wonderful,” Navran cut her off. “Thank you.”
Mandhi shot him a sharp glance. “I was going to say, Navran, that the Law of Ghuptashya has several allowances for travel. I don’t know if there is an allowance for covering the head, and we have no saghada to help us, but in any case we can beg forbearance when we’re back in Jaitha.”
“Perhaps we should go to bed soon,” Gocam said, the first words he had spoken since they had sat down to eat. The man and his wife looked at Gocam with surprise, but they too exclaimed that it was late and that of course they should rest.
“Are you sure you won’t stay with us an extra day?” the woman asked plaintively when they went to bed. Mandhi declined, but at the woman’s insistence said that they should see in the morning.
They laid out blankets and straw mats for the three of them in the front room of the household, where a cool breeze ruffled through the front door and stirred the air on the floor. When they were done they left a small oil lamp hanging on a hook by the door and bid them good night.
Sleep did not come to Navran easily. He turned over several times while listening to the creaking of crickets and birds outside the door. Mandhi breathed quietly and regularly. Finally, he said, “Gocam, are you awake?”