by J. S. Bangs
The door was already open. A soldier stood at attention in the doorway. When he spotted Navran his eyes grew wide and he bowed suddenly.
“My lord and king, we couldn’t drive them off. Our arrows did nothing—”
“I know,” Navran said. “The Devoured. Follow us. We fly to Virnas, and Ulaur help us to arrive before any of them take the gates.”
The watchtower was emptied, and they marched down the road. The fire charged across the fields to the west, driven by the wind.
Mandhi
The dried bed of the Amsadhu was a better road than anything else in Amur. Their feet crushed the crust of silt and kicked up clouds of brown dust that rose like towers into the rainless sky. The Kaleksha and the Uluriya walked together in huddled, fearful groups, eyes scanning the banks for any sign that the Devoured followed them. So far, they were safe.
“Four more days to the mouths of the Amsadhu,” Mandhi said to Kest. The sun was sinking into the thick dust hanging over on the western horizon and slowly turning it the color of blood.
Kest glanced at the mingled Kaleksha and Amurans following them. He heaved a heavy sigh. “We walk another hour. Need to stay ahead of them.”
Mandhi nodded. No need to say who they were.
They plodded along. Jhumitu rested in a sling looped over her neck, sleeping with his face pressed against her belly. He was getting heavy, or maybe she was just tired. She could ask Aryaji to carry him for a bit, but she pitied the girl. She was smaller than Mandhi, and bore enough weight already.
The eastern horizon grew dark. Kest murmured, as if wanting to speak but unsure of how to begin.
“What is it?” Mandhi asked.
“I am thinking. What do we do at the mouths of the Amsadhu?”
“Sadja’s fleet is there,” Mandhi said.
“And? Where will we sail to?”
Mandhi was quiet.
“Davrakhanda is overrun,” Kest prodded.
“Maybe the Devoured withdrew from it for the battle of the Amsadhu.”
“And how long will they stay withdrawn?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “I haven’t heard anything about Gumadha.”
“Where is Gumadha?”
“Northeast of Davrakhanda. If it’s still there, then Gumadha, Virnas, and Patakshar are the last of the great cities the Mouth of the Devourer hasn’t overrun.”
“And what makes you think it’s still free?”
Mandhi looked down. Her feet scuffed the dirt. The hem of her sari was brown and caked with the dust of the riverbed. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard either way.”
Kest growled. He gave Mandhi an impatient glare. “I feel like you’re missing the obvious.”
“What’s so obvious?”
“We sail back to Kalignas.”
Ah. That. It was obvious, after a fashion, and she hadn’t missed it. “You know there are problems with that idea.”
“Bigger than the problems with staying in Amur?”
“We have nowhere to go in Kalignas. No clanhome. No city large enough for us to slip into.”
“Mabeg—”
“Mabeg isn’t big enough, and you know it. My one boat full of mercenaries caused a stir and enough disturbance that the harbor-master wouldn’t let us dock there. We have… how many? Fifteen dhows at the mouths of the Amsadhu? And the only Kaleksha among us are the os Dramab.”
“There are places other than Mabeg we can put in.”
“I know, Danadl—”
“Forget Danadl. There are wild places in Kalignas, where no clanhome has yet been claimed. Set down there and form a city.”
“Are you serious?”
Kest gave her another fierce glare.
“Never mind. You’re always serious.”
“You prefer me to lie?”
“Taleg at least had a sense of humor.”
“Don’t compare me with my brother.”
Mandhi lowered her gaze, abashed. It was never a good idea to bring up Taleg. She should have known better.
The brown dust blended with the color of her toes, but it turned Kest’s white feet piebald with clay-colored streaks where the sweat ran down from his calves.
“Don’t we need to stop soon?” she asked.
Kest looked to their right nervously, peering at something in the dried brush overhanging the riverbed. He paused a long time before answering. “It’s probably fine.” There was reluctance in his voice.
“Is something wrong?”
He searched the right riverbank again. “Someone is following us,” he said quietly.
She tensed. The familiar dread rose up in her gut, the nauseous anxiety that had gradually subsided since they began their flight from Jaitha. “Devoured?”
“I… can’t tell,” Kest said. “I think it’s just one person. A woman.”
That confused her more than anything else. “A woman? Just one? Maybe she’s from one of the villages. We’ve passed—”
“The villages have been empty,” Kest said. “This woman has been following us for two days.”
“A spy for the Mouth of the Devourer.”
“Maybe.”
“Who else could it be?”
Kest rolled his broad, heavy shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what I don’t like.”
“Well, if she comes close to the camp—”
“She’s stayed away so far. I already talked to Nakhur and Glanod.”
“So I’m the last one to find out?”
“Keeping watch is not a woman’s concern.”
“That’s something else that Taleg would never have said.”
“What did I tell you about my brother?” Kest said, a harsh edge to his voice. “Anyway, as I understand it, your father had no sons and so forced you to undertake much of the work your brother should have done.”
“Yes, so don’t assume—”
“You’re a mother, now, and you have plenty of male relatives. Your time for running away on adventures is done.”
“I was a mother when I went after my son in Kalignas.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
Mandhi gave him a harsh glare that time. For a moment they stared at each other, eyes burning with anger. Kest did not look away, and neither did Mandhi. Eventually it seemed to turn into a kind of duel, neither of them willing to back down.
“At least I follow my adventures through to their conclusion,” Mandhi said.
“I would never say you didn’t,” Kest said. And he suddenly erupted into a barrel-chested laugh, dispersing the smoke of anger that hung between them. “Mandhi, I would never accuse you of being inconstant or weak. I begin to see why my brother agreed to marry you. He knew better than to get in your way.”
Mandhi looked away fuming. Kest had broken their stare first, but it felt nonetheless like she had lost the duel. Kest clapped a hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s stop now,” he said jovially. “No more need to push ourselves tonight. The sentries know to watch for the woman, and if the Devoured appear in earnest… we’re always ready to run.”
* * *
The next day around noon they caught sight of a trickle of smoke rising from a village on the south shore of the Amsadhu. Kest sent Glanod ahead to check it out, and he returned, breathless, an hour later.
“A inhabited village,” he said, a mixture of surprise and resignation. “Not even burning. Some rubbish in one of the fields was on fire, that’s all. I hid from them just in case, but I say we approach with arms. If they want to join us, or have any food to give us…”
“Do it,” Kest said. “Get a bunch of the Kaleksha, and we’ll go together.”
“I want to come with Nakhur,” Mandhi said. “If they’ll join us—”
“If you insist,” Kest said.
Soon they reached the fringes of the village, a crooked line of mud-brick homes with palm-leaf thatch and rickety fences of braided bark surrounding little gardens. Glanod walked at the head and be
llowed with a booming, Kaleksha-accented voice, “We come in peace, fleeing from the Mouth of the Devourer. We invite you to join us in peace.”
A trio of skeletal, elderly men emerged from one of the first mud-brick huts in the village. After a moment of hurried discussion, two ran off to the east, and the last approached the Kaleksha.
“You are not the Devoured?” the man asked cautiously.
“We are not,” Glanod said. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Hurt us?” the man said. He scowled. “We were hoping the Devoured would save us.”
“Save you?”
The man looked at Glanod with fury and resignation. “We have no rice. We hope the Mouth of the Devourer would come to us—”
“You were hoping for the Mouth of the Devourer?” Glanod shouted. His face grew red, and his hands drew together into fists.
Kest stepped forward. He touched Glanod’s arm and gave the villager a sharp look. “Are you a fool or a liar?”
The man gave Kest an exasperated look. He held his arms out away from his body. “Do you see us?” he said. He pinched the parched, flabby skin hanging from his bones. He gestured at his ribs where skin stretched tight across them. “Do I look like a man who will lie?”
“You look like a man who doesn’t know what he asks for,” Kest said angrily. “You want the Mouth of the Devourer—”
“I do not want to die.”
“Too bad,” Glanod said. He raised his fist to strike. The peasant cowered and scurried away.
Mandhi grabbed Glanod’s wrist. “What are you doing?”
“These men will be our enemies,” he growled. “Right now, they’re starving peasants we can destroy in a half-minute of fighting. But when they get their wish—”
“They already are our enemies,” Kest said.
The peasant crawled on the ground toward the nearest hut, looking around furiously. “Don’t hurt me,” the man said in a panicked whine. “You say you’re not with the Mouth of the Devourer, but can you help us?”
“You want food?”
“We could give them—” Mandhi began.
“No we couldn’t,” Kest said. “We’ll barely make it to the mouth of the Amsadhu with what we’re carrying.”
“You aren’t half as starved as us,” the man said, and his whine took on an edge of anger. “Two years in a row without a monsoon. And where have you been?”
“If you come with us,” Mandhi offered, “we’ll spare you what we can. We all get to the Amsadhu together.”
“No!” the man shouted. He regained his feet. “Running to the sea, and then what?”
“We’ll escape—”
The man laughed bitterly. “You’re more deluded than we are. We just need to stay alive until the Mouth of the Devourer finds us.” And he turned and ran through the village after his other two friends.
Kest watched the man flee with an expression of regret. “Clear them out,” he said.
“Kill them?” Glanod asked.
Kest glanced at Mandhi.
“No,” she said. “But if they won’t join us…”
“Chase them out of the village and take whatever supplies we find,” Glanod said. His lips pressed together into a grim line. “Better we have their food than leave it for the Devoured.”
Kest nodded at Glanod and gestured to the other Kaleksha following them. They carried their swords and cudgels and advanced into the village.
“Ugly work,” Mandhi whispered.
The inhabitants of the village were few, and in half of an hour the Kaleksha had cleared out every building, taking whatever the villagers left behind for them to plunder. A few cotton bedrolls, a skein of thread and some copper pins, a single jar of wheat flour. Glanod showed them to Mandhi in a rat-eaten sack that he had pulled from one of the first houses.
“This is all they had. Presumably the last of their food—”
“They didn’t have any food,” Mandhi said angrily. “Where did they go?”
“They ran south,” he said. “But we saw some of them moving to the west. Going to Jaitha to find the Mouth of the Devourer.”
“Fools,” Mandhi said angrily. “Enemies.”
Shouting from the south end of the village. A woman’s voice rose above the din, then a strange silence. Kest appeared around the hedge of thorns, pulling a woman in a mud-splattered green sari behind him. A grim Kaleksha man followed them, his raised sword ensuring the woman’s compliance.
“I found her,” Kest said softly. “The woman who was following us.”
He pulled her up to Mandhi and threw her on the ground. She looked to be one of the mountain-folk, densely curled hair and a broad nose, full lips and a voluptuous figure that seemed untouched by famine. Her sari had been of excellent quality at one point, shimmering silk and fine cotton with yellow stitching along the edges. Its lower hem was ragged and torn, and it was heavy with dust up to the waist. Other than that, everything about the woman was out of place here in the village.
“Who are you?” Mandhi asked.
For a moment the woman’s gaze was fearless and defiant, then a mask of servility and meekness fell across her face. She bowed her head.
“A slave,” she said softly.
Her facial features matched the fact that she was a slave, but her dress and her location did not. “Slave to whom?” Mandhi asked. “And what are you doing out here?”
She kept her head bowed. “No one you know. A khadir. He’s dead now.”
“He kept you well-fed,” Mandhi said. “Did he just cast you out?”
A moment of hesitation. “Yes,” the woman said. “I was just recently… cast out. Several days ago.”
“And are you going to the Mouth of the Devourer?” Kest asked.
The woman laughed, a bitter laugh that seemed to go on longer than was warranted. “No,” she said, “never there. I can’t go to the Mouth of the Devourer. I was following you because…”
She didn’t finish. Kest tapped her shin with his toe.
“Why were you following us?”
“You seemed to know where you were going. More than I could say for myself. Please,” she said suddenly, “let me come with you. I have no food, I’m hungry—”
“A lot less hungry than everyone else in these villages,” Kest said.
“As I said, I was with the khadir until a few days ago. But now, please, I’ll help any way I can—”
Kest’s expression softened. “I suppose,” he said with a glance up at Mandhi.
“One more person won’t hurt,” Mandhi said. “We’ll take as many as we can, if they have the will to fight against the Devoured.”
“Will you fight against the Mouth of the Devourer?” Kest asked.
The woman drew her breath in sharply. She looked up at Mandhi with a look of confusion and pain. “I’m just a woman,” she said.
“Fighting does not always mean carrying a sword,” Mandhi said.
A strange look passed over the woman’s face. “I know.”
“Then follow us,” Kest said, “do what we ask, and you’re free to come along to… wherever we’re going.”
“The mouths of the Amsadhu for now,” Mandhi said. She offered her hand to the woman. With only a moment’s hesitation she took Mandhi’s hand and rose to her feet. “What is your name?”
The question seemed to provoke a long, serious thought from the woman. She is hiding something, Mandhi thought.
“Vapathi,” the slave woman said at last.
Daladham
Daladham collapsed onto the bedroll at Yavada’s home and covered his head with his hands. His feet throbbed from six days of desperate flight. His shins ached, and the calluses on the soles of his feet were cracked and leaking blood. The dust of the road had dyed his beard brown, but he couldn’t be bothered to wash it.
Oh, he would have to. He contaminated the room by lying in the bed without washing. He was glad for a moment that he was not Uluriya, whose cleanliness laws were twice as scrupulous as those
of the Amya.
He grunted and pushed himself to his feet. There was a ewer of clean water by the door. Someone had prepared the room for him. He bent, rinsed his hands, and began running his wet fingers through his beard.
The curtain over the door stirred. “What is it?” he snapped.
“Someone here to see you,” a servant said.
“How is that even possible?” Daladham said. It was midnight, and they had just gotten into the city that day. How many people even knew they had arrived?
“The saghada was waiting for you,” the servant said apologetically.
“The—oh, dear. Well, send him in.”
Bhudman was coming to Yavada’s house. Bhudman never came to Yavada’s house. It wasn’t clean—even after the unification of the saghada and the dhorsha, the stricter rules for the Uluriya meant that the priests could not freely visit each others’ homes. They always met at the palace, in the purified rooms they both could visit. Or at Veshta’s house.
Daladham finished washing, combing the snarls and dust from his beard with his fingers, wiping his forehead and face clean, and rinsing his hands in the now-murky water. He had left a half a finger of silt in the bottom of the bowl. And now he wanted to sleep. This had better be important—but if Bhudman was willing to come to Yavada’s house, then it was.
A few moments later the servant reappeared. “He’s waiting for you in the reception room.”
Daladham went out to meet him, crossing the tiled hall into the wide reception room that was strewn with cushions across the bright red carpets, a row of silver lamps shining brilliantly on the wall. He expected to see Yavada in the room as well, but Bhudman was alone.
He had the ebony-wood book case with him. Atop it were three different slates in frames of bamboo, covered with Bhudman’s dense, precise handwriting. Bhudman had been studying.
When Daladham entered, Bhudman leaped to his feet and bowed deeply. “Daladham, my brother,” he said, reaching out and clasping Daladham’s hands. “How was the journey? Are you well?”
“It’s midnight,” Daladham said. “You know perfectly well how the journey was.”
“I have heard something about it,” Bhudman said mildly. “Not much. I came here as soon as I heard Navran-dar had arrived.”
