by J. S. Bangs
“Navran-dar, my lord and king, Heir of Manjur,” she said breathlessly.
“Srithi,” Navran said with a little confusion. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to beg for your help.” She had not risen from her knees, but she raised her head and peered at him with pleading eyes.
“What help? Get up. This isn’t necessary.”
Srithi shook her head. “I’m worried, Navran-dar. Veshta is worried. He didn’t want me to come but with my maid….” She laughed nervously. “I don’t know if Veshta would have provided me with a maid if he had known how easily I could escape with her help.”
“Escape?”
“No, no, I didn’t mean to sound alarming. Veshta is so worried since I’m with child. He smothers me. He’s worried that the spirit will take me while I’m with child or in a public place. He doesn’t want me to go out.”
“Is that why you’re here? I can talk to Veshta.”
Srithi shook her head again. “No. I ask a gift from you as the Heir of Manjur.”
“A gift.”
Srithi’s clothing rustled, and she unwound a cloth which had been bound at her waist. She offered it into Navran’s hands: a gauzy white veil, with silver pentacles stitched into its edges.
“What is this?”
“My pansha,” Srithi said. “I want you to bless it.”
Navran’s heart stuttered. The pansha was a customary garment that Uluriya women wore during the new moon sacrifices, a thin, easily washable veil that could accept the tincture of blood and milk. Navran was a saghada, in theory, and he could perform blessings. But his spiritual duties were much neglected for his political ones. He rifled desperately through what Bhudman had taught him for an appropriate ritual to say. Srithi cut him off before he could find anything.
“It must be you, the Heir of Manjur. Please, believe me. I want you to dip it with the sanctified water from the ram.”
A vessel filled with the tincture of water, blood, and milk stayed in the bhilami attached to the palace. He could enter at any time—he had that right as saghada, to say nothing of being the Heir of Manjur, and it would be a trivial matter for him to enter and fulfill Srithi’s request. But he had never heard of anyone doing such a thing.
“Why?”
“To keep the amashi from me. At least as long as I’m pregnant.”
“But why me? There are many saghada in Virnas.”
“But you are the Heir. I beg you, my lord and king. The spirit will obey you. Bhudman says that the spirit is one of the amashi come down from Ulaur, and perhaps it is—but your blessing might convince even the amashi to have pity on me. Please, only while I’m pregnant.”
She pressed the pansha into Navran’s hands, wrapping the gauzy white fabric around Navran’s wrists. Her expression was so sincere and so plaintive that he looked away, his cheeks burning with reciprocal shame.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Tonight. Send a maid tomorrow—”
“I will,” Srithi said. She kissed Navran’s ring. “Thank you, my lord and king. Thank you.”
“Srithi, please,” he said. “You don’t need to beg me.”
She bowed her head, then rose to her feet. “I understand. Until the child is born, that’s all.”
He nodded. He kneaded the pansha. It felt heavy and peculiar in his hands. Srithi backed away from him swiftly, the edges of her sari whispering against the stones, until she disappeared through the open arch of the doorway into the starlit darkness beyond.
He turned and saw Dastha a few paces away, a spear resting casually in his hand. “Did you hear that?”
“Most of it,” Dastha said.
“Very strange.”
Dastha shrugged. “Not so odd that a woman with her second child wouldn’t want to be afflicted by a spirit. Whether it’s one of Ulaur’s amashi or something less benign.”
Navran heaved a heavy breath. “Let’s go to the room.”
They found Utalni’s maid waiting in the anteroom that joined his chamber to the queen’s. As soon as Navran entered she jumped up, bowed, and whispered, “My lord and king, the queen would like to see you.”
“Everyone does tonight,” he said wearily.
The maid flinched. “I’ll tell my lady—”
“No,” Navran said. He shook his head. Too much going on. He’d barely spoken to Utalni in days, and he had no idea why she would ask for him now and little energy to waste on something frivolous. But she was, after all, his wife. “I’ll come.”
The maid bowed her head and pulled the curtain to the queen’s chamber aside. She didn’t enter, but kept her head bowed and waited for Navran to go in alone.
Utalni sat by the window of her chamber on a cushioned stool, the stars tracing her outline. Hot summer air blew gently through the window. Navran walked toward her silently. When he was a pace behind her, she spoke.
“Who was the woman who called you?”
Damn, but the servants carried rumors fast. “Srithi. You remember her. Wife of Veshta, of the House of Ruin.”
“The one that the spirit speaks to?”
“Yes, her.”
“What did she want?”
“This,” he said, extending the pansha he still held. “I’ll bless it. To protect her.”
She murmured quietly, still looking through the window at the starry darkness beyond. “Is that truly all?”
A moment of quiet confusion. Then he chuckled. “She’s not my mistress.”
“Ah. Then it’s the other one.”
“What other one?”
She turned toward him at last. The starlight glittered in the wet tracks on her cheeks. “The woman who was before me.”
“Josi?”
“Yes,” she spat. “Is she keeping you sated? Because you’ve barely come to me—”
“Utalni-dar, I have not been with Josi.”
“Then why haven’t you been with me?”
She shifted her position on her stool, and Navran’s voice caught. The fold of the sari slipped aside, and Navran could see that it was loosely draped around her waist and falling off her shoulders. Another twitch of movement and it would fall away entirely. His blood grew hot, and his heart rose into his throat.
“I’m giving you your liberty, my queen,” he said quietly. “You don’t need to do this. We can… leave each other alone.”
She sniffed and pulled the fabric of the sari a little closer around her. “Have I offended you, my king?”
“No,” he snapped. At least, she hadn’t. If any one had harmed him it was her father. Who was, alas, an ally he could not afford to estrange.
“So you say.” She turned away from him again. “Well, I guess you can amuse yourself elsewhere.”
Navran stamped down on the heat rising in his belly. There was nothing good he could do here, nothing he could say that would convince her. “Good night, Utalni-dar.”
He turned and marched out of the room, his belly and cheeks still hot with anger and arousal. He charged past Utalni’s maid without a word and split the curtain of his own chamber.
He nearly ran into Dastha standing in rigid attention to the right of the doorway. The guard stepped back and bowed. “Forgiveness, my lord and king.”
Navran growled and threw himself onto the cushions of the couch near the entrance. “It’s nothing.”
Dastha looked at him. “Shall I call your valet?”
“Yes. No.” Navran pressed his fingers into his temples and ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”
Dastha stood in a stiff Grass posture for a moment, the curtain still rocking behind him at Navran’s sudden entrance. “My lord and king,” he whispered. “May I speak freely?”
“Dastha, I made you my guard so someone would speak freely with me.”
“Yes,” Dastha said. He lifted his head and looked at Navran with his lips pursed and a frown on his brows. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Doing what?” Navran snapped.
“Holdin
g yourself aloof from Utalni.”
“Were you listening at the curtain?”
“No, my lord and king, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what Utalni expected when you went in. Her maid chose to stay back.”
“And?”
Dastha cleared his throat. “You haven’t entered her chamber since your wedding, nor invited her into yours, except for a handful of times. Are you trying to slight her?”
“I’m trying…” Navran began. He stopped. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to do, but he knew what drove him. “Neither of us wanted this.”
“So you wanted another. And? How many men marry the one they long for? How many women?”
“I don’t know,” Navran said flatly.
Dastha gave him a stern, disapproving glare. “Come, Navran-dar. Do you think you’re doing her a favor by abstaining from your marriage bed?”
“She was given to me in trade. I’m giving her the liberty to do what she wants now.
“You’re giving her what you want. Not what she wants.”
“And how do you know what she wants?”
Dastha raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious? The maid knows. I know. Why don’t you know?”
Navran closed his eyes and put his hand over his face. He said nothing.
“She wants the honor of being a queen in fact and not just in name,” Dastha said after a pause. “She wants to bear your child and get the respect of the women of the court. She does not want to be an object of their pity, or yours. She doesn’t want to sit alone in her room while your reticence plants rumors in the ears of every khadir who visits the palace. You think you are giving her a gift? You’ve taken away from her the one thing that could make her position bearable.”
“Shut up,” Navran said.
“My lord and king,” Dastha said with a bow. “You told me to speak directly.”
“So I did,” Navran said. He groaned and sat up. He paced slowly around the room.
Dastha bowed again. “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll hold my tongue.”
“No,” Navran said softly. “Don’t you dare. I need someone….”
“Then let me add, Navran-dar, that Mandhi and Jhumitu are gone. No one knows if they’ll return. You have no heir right now.”
Navran breathed heavily. He closed his eyes and put his thumbs to his temples.
“You would be more secure, and Utalni-dar would be much happier, if you had an heir by her.”
Navran breathed heavily. “Do you actually think so?”
“About your heir. My lord and king, it’s not difficult—”
“No. About the queen.”
Dastha paused for a moment. His fingers tapped the hilt of his sword. “The servants talk,” he said. “And not just the servants. We hear what the khadir say amongst themselves. You’re tormenting her.”
Navran stopped his pacing. A tumult of anger, regret, and desire thundered in his stomach. He tugged at the tips of his gloves. “I suppose you’re right,” he whispered.
A glimmer of surprise showed on Dastha’s face. “Thank you, my lord and king. I’ve spoken my peace. I’ll go now.”
“Wait,” Navran said. He took a deep breath. There was no point in waiting. “Tell Utalni-dar’s maid to bring her here.”
“Here, my lord and king?”
“Send her into my chamber alone.”
“Yes.” He paused with the curtain half-parted and gave Navran a shy grin. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Navran waved him away. The curtain fell into place behind him, and he heard Dastha’s muffled words in the antechamber. The curtain parted again.
Utalni. She still wore her sari loosely, and she held her hands at her belly and kneaded them nervously. A quick glance at Navran, then she cast her gaze to the floor.
“Come here,” Navran said. She walked up to him, and he put his hands on her shoulders. With a finger on her chin he lifted her face to look at her.
Was this the first time he had looked at her? Really looked at her, seeing her for herself rather than through the filter of chagrin and regret. A long high nose and narrow lips. Heavy brows, close together, but arched gracefully over deep black eyes. Wide hips and small breasts. She would bear handsome children. She was handsome herself, though it felt a little like betrayal to admit it.
“My lord and king,” she whispered. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said, blinking away the sudden sting of tears. “No, all is well.”
He pressed her against his chest for a moment and kneaded her shoulders. His heart was divided, but his body was ready. And where the body led, perhaps the heart would follow.
Daladham
Daladham leaned forward and put his hands against the captain’s chest. “Listen,” he begged. “I’m of the Amya dhorsha. I was at the temple in Tulakhanda—”
“Every one of these fleeing cowards was in Tulakhanda.” The captain spat into the frothy gray water beside the dock and pointed toward the crowd that had overrun the shores of the village bay. “Look behind you,” he said. “There’s a whole horde clamoring to get on this boat ahead of you and more coming out of the city every day. A lot of them have hard silver.”
“Please, sir, I showed you the plates.”
“I want coin, not dishes,” the captain said. “I have no time to go finding a buyer for your pilfered goods. You bring me a pouch of silver eagles and we can talk.
The captain folded his arms and pushed Daladham away. Daladham sagged back into the arms of Amabhu and Caupana. The silver dishes from the temple were in a hemp basket tied to his back, covered in straw and hidden beneath a half-empty sack of rice. A treasure, Daladham would have thought. But the terror of the Mouth of the Devourer’s approach had deprived him of buyers.
Another man pushed past Daladham to make his offer to the captain, and the rest of the crowd waiting on the pier surged after him.
“We should go,” Amabhu said.
“But his is the last boat,” Daladham said. His head sagged. He wiped tears from his eyes. “We don’t have time—”
“We have to,” Amabhu said. “Or we’ll just have to walk away from the Mouth of the Devourer.”
Daladham sobbed. “But silver…”
“We can get silver. Listen, maybe the next town has a silversmith who will give us money for our plates.”
Daladham stood up straight and looked Amabhu in the face. The young thikratta viewed him with pity. A pang of shame twisted Daladham’s gut. He rose straight, attempted to compose himself, and wiped his eyes clean. “We can go, but where?”
Amabhu lay a comforting hand on Daladham’s shoulder. “We’ll be fine. Look, there’s three of us, and we don’t look like targets for bandits. A day or two to get where someone will buy our silver.”
“Not if the rumor of the Mouth of the Devourer gets there before us….”
“Even then.”
“We’ll go,” Caupana said with heavy finality. “It’s not too far, Daladham.”
They walked off the crowded pier and onto the trampled dirt of the shoreline, pushing through the crowd attempting to buy the last berths in the trade dhow. This town hosted a small and pitiful harbor, a long strip of trampled clay overlooking a shallow bay, pierced by a single dock with room for a dhow and a half-dozen fishing coracles. Listless palms drooped over the narrow clay shore, offering thin shade to the crowd, while a few fishers’ huts and a trader’s warehouse hid behind hedges of brush.
Daladham’s steps on the palm-shaded shore were heavy and lifeless, and were it not for Amabhu’s hand on his shoulder he would probably have collapsed into the yellow dust and not gotten up. He leaned into the young thikratta’s chest.
“Right here,” Amabhu said calmly. “The market is beyond these huts. We’ll find someone to tell us where the next port is.”
It was as Amabhu said. Daladham watched in depressed detachment as Amabhu asked quietly for the way to the next port town and was directed down a path to the east. Would there be gue
sthouses along the way? Were there bandits? Yes, both, the answers came. Daladham plodded through the rattan stalls of the market after Amabhu and Caupana, following the path pointed to them. They walked past a long, crooked row of mud-brick homes with palm-leaf thatching. Anjili trees and thick shore scrub grew tall on each side of the path, shading them from the fierce noon sun.
He plodded ahead. Trees slouched by him. Sweat crawled down his forehead.
They were alone. Daladham’s heart lurched. He looked around, saw no other travelers or dwellings along the path. He had hardly been aware that they had left the town behind.
“Dying,” Caupana said quietly. He looked through the trees to the south.
Empty rice paddies showed in the gaps between the trees. They were dry of water, unplanted, their crumbling yellow dirt baking in the summer sun. At the far end of the fields, little farms could be seen, with sheep and goats bleating plaintively.
“I don’t think the animals are dying just yet,” Amabhu said. “Sheep always make that sound.”
Caupana shook his head. “No monsoon. Everything here is dying soon.”
“If the monsoon doesn’t come, they’ll all starve,” Daladham said. His voice was flat, and he spoke with a dull, dead evenness. “Not yet, of course. When the harvest fails.”
“The monsoon could just be late,” Amabhu said.
“Can’t be a coincidence. The Mouth of the Devourer must have eaten it, like my nephew. Black bubbles and steam and…” He made a popping motion with his hand. Then he began to sob.
Caupana stopped. The tall thikratta put both of his hands on Daladham’s shoulders and crushed him in an embrace.
“You had no other,” Caupana said.
“None,” Daladham choked. “My wife died. Three children she bore me, but none of them saw ten years. My brothers are dead. My sister’s son Jairatu… he was the last.”
Amabhu rested his hand on the top of Daladham’s head. “My heart weeps with you,” he whispered.
“He was a better dhorsha than me,” Daladham said. “Young and pious. But me… an old single man with no children, trying to wring silver from widows. An embarrassment to him and to the rest of the dhorsha.”
