FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

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 XXIX

  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.”

  Mandir reached for the body, but thought better of it and drew away.

  “I’ll get her,” said the brother. He carefully lifted the dead woman out of the tangle of plants and moved away. With a little encouragement from Mandir, the other farmers followed him. They walked back about thirty yards and turned, forming a rough semicircle to watch the scrying.

  Taya swept her arms through the air, calling fire in a great swath around her. Mother, you are death and you are rebirth, she spoke in the mother tongue. You are the warmth which sustains us and the punisher who scours sinners’ bones. You are the torch and the candle flame; you are the grass fire that licks across the prairie. I am your humble daughter, who loves and fears you.

  The flames around her pulsed yellow, a sign of approval.

  One of your daughters perished here. Great Mother, help me learn how it happened.

  Images appeared in the fire. Taya saw young Jaina crouched in the fields, plucking weeds from between the cotton plants. No one was in her immediate vicinity, though in the distance other farmers weeded their crops. Jaina raised her head to mop her face, and Taya noticed she didn’t look healthy. She had the stiff, glassy-eyed look of someone in pain. For a while, she continued to work. Then, blinking, she staggered to her feet. Her body cramped. Her muscles bulged, and her limbs bent at strange angles. She fell to the ground, jerking and seizing. After a short while, her body stopped moving. The images disappeared.

  Taya extinguished the fire. Thank you, Mother.

  Across the field, Mandir and the farmers stared.

  Flushed and faint from the proximity of the fire, she headed toward them. It wasn’t Coalition policy to share the content of fire visions with people outside the organization, but in this case she and Mandir needed help interpreting the vision. It had not shown the murderer. “She died of convulsions. Either she was afflicted with a fast-acting illness, or she was poisoned.” She turned to the stricken brother, who held the body. “Help me reconstruct her day. Where had she been before she began her work in this field?”

  “At home,” said the brother.

  A distant jingling signaled the approach of a zebu-drawn cart, sent by the priests and bureaucrats to collect the body. The farmers fell silent.

  “Did she go to the fields alone, or in company?” asked Taya.<
br />
  “Alone.”

  Taya nodded. That left any number of possibilities as to where she could have been poisoned. She could have met the murderer along the way and drank or eaten something he’d given her. Or she might have been poisoned at her own home. “Where did she eat breakfast this morning?”

  “She did not eat breakfast,” said the brother.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “We had nothing.”

  The cart pulled up, and Taya moved away so that the appropriate rituals could be performed. A priest sprinkled the body with flower petals and then with purified water for the closing of the eyes. She waited as the chants were intoned and the body ritually offered to the Mothers. Jaina’s body was frighteningly thin, which suggested that either she was chronically ill or food was scarce in her family. She’d been farming cotton at the time she died, so her family was probably one of those which had taken out a loan and fallen prey to Bodhan’s greed.

  When the body had been loaded onto the cart, Taya pulled the brother aside again. “Had she been ill before now?”

  “Not at all,” said the brother.

  “Will you show me your house?” she asked.

  The brother nodded.

  They made a solemn procession back to Hrappa, the zebu cart carrying Jaina’s body and the peasant farmers walking alongside with lowered heads. Taya and Mandir rode horseback, holding their mounts to a mincing walk.

  At the gates of Hrappa, the zebu cart departed for the artisans’ district, where the body would be washed and prepared for its funeral pyre, and Jaina’s brother led Taya and Mandir into the farmers’ district. He brought them to a home of mud brick, much like the others except that its thatching had been punched through on one side by the storm and hadn’t yet been repaired. Here Jaina had lived along with her parents, her grandmother, and her siblings. The grandmother and two young children were the only ones at home. Everyone else had gone out to the fields when they’d heard the news, or had already been there working at the time it had happened.

  As the still-wailing mother was led across the room to a seat, where her family members surrounded her with hugs and a fresh flow of tears, Taya retreated a step and almost backed into Mandir. He laid a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and almost immediately removed it. She felt the warmth of his body behind her. At first she found it comforting, but then the memories flooded back, her waking unexpectedly in his bed this morning, the argument that had followed. She grimaced.

  A young woman, perhaps Jaina’s sister, approached Taya, brushing tears from her eyes. “We greatly appreciate your help. May I get you anything?” she asked in a trembling voice. “Tea? Beer?”

  Taya stared at the woman. Her family was obviously poor. They hadn’t had enough to eat breakfast this morning, and for a farmer heading out to work in the fields, that was the day’s most important meal. Why would she offer anything to well-fed Coalition members such as Mandir and herself?

  “No, thank you,” rumbled Mandir.

  “But we appreciate your kindness,” added Taya. “I’m sorry for your loss. Mandir and I will do everything we can to find and punish the person who murdered Jaina.”

  Perhaps that was why this family was so welcoming, as compared to the families they’d visited previously. These people wanted justice. That was something the Coalition could deliver, and without charging a fortune for it. The woman drifted away, returning to her family.

  Jaina’s brother stood apart from the rest. Though his face was etched with misery, he seemed the calmest and most resigned of the group. Taya beckoned to him, and he joined her and Mandir.

  “What’s your name?” Taya asked.

  “Navati,” said the brother.

  “Mandir and I need to ask you some difficult questions.”

  “I will answer what I can,” said Navati.

  “Has your family had a court case up for judgment by the magistrate within the last few years?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the court case about?”

  “Some years ago we borrowed money from Bodhan isu Kasirum,” said Navati. “But we could not pay it back. Now we farm cotton for Bodhan, and he does not pay us a fair price.”

  “So you took your case to the magistrate. Has he ruled on it yet?”

  “He ruled against us.”

  “Now we come to the part you may not wish to talk about, but it’s important,” said Taya. “Did your family make any sort of private arrangement, concerning the case, with any member of the magistrate’s family? Specifically, with the magistrate’s son who was murdered?”

  Navati’s face hardened. “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Think carefully. I swear on the Fire Mother’s name that I mean no harm to your family. I intend only to capture and punish the person who killed Jaina. Was there an arrangement that involved Jaina?”

  “There was no such arrangement.”

  “There are penalties,” Mandir drawled from behind her, “for lying to the Coalition.”

  Navati darted a fearful glance up at Mandir. “There was no arrangement. Also, this jackal you are looking for—that is not the person who killed Jaina.”

  Taya frowned. How could he possibly know it was not the jackal, unless he had information he wasn’t sharing? “Why do you say that?”

  “The jackal kills with fire. This other kills with poison.”

  That was true—she’d had the same thought herself—but she couldn’t help feeling that he knew something more, something he wasn’t telling her. “It is not uncommon for a murderer to kill using more than one method.”

  His eyes slid away from hers. “The jackal did not kill Jaina. I am certain of this. You must find the person who did.”

  “We need to inspect your house,” said Mandir. “Jaina may have been poisoned within these walls.”

  Navati nodded and gestured for them to proceed.

  Taya went first to the cellar, a cramped, below-ground space crowded with clay jars. She lifted the lid off one jar after another. They were empty. A stray grain or two lurked at the bottoms of some, telling her what they had held in better times: wheat, peas, barley. A wooden cask held a few inches of beer. Mandir smelled it and tasted a drop. He shook his head.

  They climbed out of the cellar and searched the house itself. There were only two rooms, the common room where the family slept, and a washroom. In the washroom, they found a ewer of water. Again, Mandir smelled and tasted it. “Not poisoned, at least not that I can taste.”

  Finally they went out into the courtyard. Like most Hrappan courtyards, it was fully enclosed by other houses and shared with three other families. In the center was a cook pit filled with ashes. Each family had its own personal garden, encircled by a low rock wall.

  A spectacular banana plant grew in the garden belonging to Jaina’s family.

  “Look,” said Taya, redirecting Mandir’s attention from the cookpit, where he was inspecting the ashes. “It’s not blighted.”

  He nodded.

  She walked up to the banana plant to examine it more closely. Its stem was thick and straight, its sail-like leaves wide and unblemished. Coolness drifted down from the plant’s canopy, a blessed relief from the hot sun. The plant carried no fruit at all, but when it was ready to produce, she had no doubt it would do so in spectacular fashion.

  Across the courtyard, she spotted a second banana plant, also healthy. “That one’s not blighted, either.”

  Mandir nodded. “You’re right. Well, I see no evidence of poison here, or anything else.”

  “Yes, but the banana plants...” She couldn’t help but feel that this was important. The family they’d visited two days ago had said that all the farmers’ trees were blighted, except for a few on Zash’s plantation. But here were two flawless, healthy plants. How could the blight not have spread to them? They were close in proximity to the blighted ones she’d seen before, and blight was notoriously contagious.

  “Their plants haven’t caught the bligh
t yet,” said Mandir.

  Taya frowned. Her farmer instincts told her that was unlikely. “I want to take another look at that plant we saw night before last.”

  Mandir grunted. “We’ve got more important things to do.”

  “It won’t take long. We needn’t even speak to the family; I can look at the plant from outside their courtyard.”

  Taya expected Jaina’s family to be relieved when they said they were leaving, but instead she found herself surrounded by adults and children thanking her and touching fingers. Mandir was similarly mobbed. He was gracious, but she could see that the attention of these strangers made him ill at ease. Just inside the door, the mother ran up to them, carrying a necklace of glass beads. “I am sorry we have nothing more to offer,” she said, pressing the necklace into Taya’s hands. “We are grateful for your help.”

  The family left them alone once they were outdoors. Puzzled, Taya examined the necklace. It seemed perfectly ordinary and safe. She collected Pepper from where she was ground tied, and mounted. This family was so friendly and the others so resentful. Why the difference? Was it because their daughter had been killed and they hoped Taya and Mandir would bring her justice? Or was there some other reason?

  “Let’s go back to the house and talk this over,” said Mandir.

  Taya nodded; maybe Mandir had noticed something she hadn’t. “On the way back, I want to look at that other tree.”

  “You’ve seen it before,” said Mandir.

  Taya ignored him and neck-reined her mare down to the street where the other family lived, the one which had been so rude to her and Mandir when they’d visited. From her vantage point on Pepper’s back, she could just see over the courtyard wall. She fixed her eyes on the banana plant, whose canopy reached well above the wall. The plant was lush and healthy.

  She twisted around, excited. “It’s not blighted anymore.”

  Mandir squinted at the tree. “It must be, if it was before. Blight doesn’t heal on its own, does it? Maybe you can’t tell from this distance.”

  “No, I know a blighted tree when I see one. That plant is no longer blighted, and that means somebody has healed it.” A terrible thought occurred to her. Her heart pounded. “What if it was the jackal who healed it?”