by J. S. Bangs
A different Devoured man spoke up. “Let’s move them. This room’s more comfortable than they deserve anyway.”
“And what if the Queen attacks them?”
“Kest will help us,” Mandhi said. “Or we’ll call for help. But please, anywhere but here.”
The Devoured man nodded toward the door. “Carry her out.”
They picked up Vapathi, one man on each limb, and they carried her out with Mandhi and Aryaji trailing. As soon as they left the room the remainder of the twenty Devoured who had infested the house pressed around them, to be sure they wouldn’t escape.
“This way,” Mandhi said, directing them toward the rear of the house. Down the stairs, across the courtyard, into the narrow passage which connected to the kitchen. There was a bare storeroom next to it, with a true wooden door rather than just a fabric curtain. One of the Devoured shoved the door open.
Mandhi’s heart stopped for a second. There was a chance that everything would fail once the Devoured saw the room that Mandhi had chosen for their prison.
But it looked like it hadn’t been opened since the Devoured had taken up residence. Jars, boxes, heaps of fabric and sheaves of paper were stacked against the far wall. There were no windows, and no doors visible other than the one they entered through. Mandhi suppressed her smile.
The Devoured threw Vapathi to the ground, and shoved Mandhi and Aryaji through after them. “Don’t come out,” they said. “And don’t let us find you making any more trouble.”
They closed the door. Darkness drowned the room save the tiny sliver of light creeping in beneath the door.
Mandhi heard Vapathi pull herself to her feet. She coughed and cleared her throat. “Was that enough?”
“Perfect,” Mandhi whispered. “Wait a moment, now, for our eyes to adjust. We need to be very quiet.”
A few minutes passed before she could clearly make out the interior of the storeroom. Vapathi sat on the edge of a crate rubbing her neck. Aryaji clasped her other hand.
“Very good,” Mandhi said. She pointed at the boxes and jars stacked against the far wall. “We need to move all of those.”
“Why?” Kest asked.
“Because behind them there is a door.”
* * *
The door had been unused for decades, an artifact of a time before one of Veshta’s ancestors had rebuilt some of the estate’s interior. Vapathi and Aryaji wailed and argued loudly to cover the noise of Kest forcing the door open with his shoulder.
It opened into the kitchen, empty, because the Devoured never bothered to eat. And the kitchen let out into the rear alley by the rubbish door through which they emptied wastewater and chamber pots. The rear alley was unguarded.
They slipped into the narrow alley and tiptoed beside the gutter filled with refuse and sewage. The sun was touching the tops of the western wall of the city, now. Long shadows cast by the estates put all of the alleys into shadow. They followed the alley to the edge of the Uluriya district and into the western quarter of the city before any of them dared to talk.
“We could try to just walk out,” Aryaji said. “Pretend to be Devoured.”
“Not me,” Kest said. “Seen any other Kaleksha Devoured?”
“And not me,” Vapathi said. “Too many of them know me.”
“And we’re all a little too well-fed,” Mandhi said. “In the dark it might be easier. They don’t seem to be guarding the streets much. Only the Uluriya captives. And us.”
“Safe enough?” Kest asked.
Mandhi looked around. “If we can get into one of these houses.” She peered around the corner of the house and into the street. A handful of Devoured gathered around a game of sacchu at the far end of the street. None of them looking their way. The house they were nearest to seemed to be uninhabited.
“We slip into this house,” she whispered to the others. “Quickly, before anybody sees us.”
“And then?” Vapathi asked.
“You and Kest hide inside where no one can see you. Aryaji and I will wait in the front rooms, pretending to be Devoured. These clothes are ragged enough that no one should suspect us.”
“Someone who was at the House of the Ruin could see you,” Kest pointed out.
“We have to risk it,” Mandhi said. “Now get into the house.”
Aryaji pushed herself forward. “Let me watch.”
“Watch what?”
Aryaji undid the knot that tied her hair up and ran her hands through her long, straight black hair. Once loosened, it flowed over her shoulders halfway down her back. “I’m just a Devoured girl. No one cares about me. I’ll watch the street.”
She stepped into the street and around the corner. “No one’s looking,” she called out quietly.
Mandhi slipped into the street, and caught a glimpse of Aryaji, leaning against the wall of the house next to the one where they would hide, playing with the ends of her hair. With her hair unbound and her ragged, travel-worn sari drooping over her shoulders, she looked for all the world like one of the Devoured lounging about in boredom. Mandhi went through the door of the house and hid in the shadows.
“Free again,” Aryaji called out. “Mandhi, undo your hair and join me.”
Good idea. Mandhi untied the bun at the base of her neck and let her hair hang loose, all the way down to her hips. She ran her hands through it and tousled it to make it slightly unkempt. Kest slipped into the room with her.
He glanced at her loose, flowing hair. “Haven’t seen you much like that,” he said. He moved into the darkened inner room of the house, where Mandhi could only see his eyes glinting.
“I don’t think I’ve ever gone out in public with my hair unbound,” Mandhi said. “We Uluriya always—”
“I know,” Kest said with a sparkle of amusement in his voice.
Vapathi entered a moment later. She glanced at Mandhi, then hid in the rear.
Aryaji appeared in the window. “Come out, Mandhi,” she said in a childish sing-song. “Let me braid your hair.”
“Braid?” Mandhi asked. She stepped out into the street, doing her best to turn her face into the expressionless, indifferent mask that the Devoured usually wore.
Aryaji pointed to an upright stone below the window. “Sit down.”
Mandhi sat. “When did you learn to braid?” The Uluriya never braided their hair—the bun tied at the base of the neck was their customary hair style, and Mandhi had never worn another. She sat and felt Aryaji’s thin, nimble fingers working against her scalp and separating her hair into pleats.
“The os Dramab taught me,” Aryaji said. “I learned in Kalignas.”
“I don’t remember seeing you go around with your hair braided. If your uncle had seen—”
“You don’t learn to braid by having someone braid you,” Aryaji mocked. A few moments of silence passed as Aryaji’s fingers worked through Mandhi’s hair. “The idea,” she said softly, “is that we can stay outside the house and watch without seeming suspicious. And we will look a little different than the last time any of the Devoured saw us.”
“Clever idea,” Mandhi said. She drew her breath in. “Someone’s coming.”
At the end of the street, a cluster of four Devoured men rounded the corner and approached them. They wore filthy dhoti that reached below their knees and no shirts, long uncombed hair drifting into their eyes. None of them reacted to the sight of Mandhi and Aryaji.
“Time to find out if it works,” Aryaji said playfully. “Tip your head to the side.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
The Devoured sauntered toward them. They talked amongst each other in grating, raucous voices. Their glares raked over Mandhi and Aryaji. Aryaji’s fingers continued to work through Mandhi’s hair.
The Devoured passed them. “Hey, little thing,” one of the men called out to Aryaji. “Your fingers good for anything else?” He put his hand on his crotch.
“Only if you want me to tie it in a knot,” Aryaji said cheerily
.
The Devoured laughed, a raspy, unnatural sound. They seemed not at all bothered by Aryaji’s refusal, and continued past without another glance at the women.
Mandhi let out a little yelp of pain as she yanked on Mandhi’s scalp.
“Sorry,” Aryaji said. “I was a little….”
“That was a good answer,” Mandhi said. “Just keep it up. Nightfall comes soon.”
The sun drooped slowly behind the western wall of the city. Mandhi submitted herself to Aryaji’s commands, as the girl tilted her head this way and that, running her hands through her hair. The sky was growing orange when she finished.
“Stand up,” Aryaji said. “Try moving it around.”
Mandhi rose. She turned her head rapidly from side to side, and felt the braid like a silky rope striking her shoulders. There were no mirrors here, but she felt at the knobby shapes that Aryaji had woven. A thick, heavy band atop her head, and two more woven from the hair above her ears. The braids met behind Mandhi’s head and mingled in a pattern too complicated for Mandhi to understand with her fingers.
“A triple weave,” Aryaji said proudly. “The most complicated one that the os Dramab taught me.”
“I wish I knew what it looked like,” Mandhi said.
“Oh, it’s fine. I think all the Uluriya should take to wearing braids.”
“Hmmm. Not very traditional.”
“I’ll talk to my uncle about altering the tradition,” Aryaji said playfully. Then the levity evaporated from her voice. “Is it dark enough to leave?”
Mandhi looked at the sun, still half-visible behind the western wall of the city. “Just a bit longer. Kest, you know—”
“We’ll be sneaking out one way or another.”
Mandhi went inside and checked that Kest and Vapathi were well. The woman was dozing with her head resting on a scrap of a hemp sack, while Kest sat on the ground and drew figures in the dust. A few more wandering groups of Devoured passed them by, but none of them spoke a word.
Finally, when the first stars glittered in the hazy veil of the east, Mandhi returned to Kest. “It’s time to go.”
Vapathi had woken up and sat with her back to the wall. She stared straight ahead, unblinking and unmoving. Mandhi nudged her with her toe.
“What are you going to do when we leave?” Vapathi asked.
“We’re all getting out now,” Mandhi said. “Or we’ll go down together.”
Vapathi shook her head. “It’s my fault you were captured. You should leave me behind.”
“We won’t.”
“You ought to.”
Mandhi crouched next to the woman. Vapathi continued staring straight ahead, until Mandhi put her hand on Vapathi’s chin and pulled her eyes to meet Mandhi’s. “We’re not going to leave you,” she whispered. “We’re going to save you just as much as we save ourselves. Trust me.”
Vapathi laughed. “The only person I ever really trusted was my brother. And look how that ended.”
Mandhi stayed there for a few moments, unsure whether she should or could comfort the woman. “Do you want to stay?” she asked at last.
Vapathi gave her a wounded stare. “No.”
“Then come with us.”
Mandhi helped Vapathi to her feet. Kest was beside them in a moment, and they joined Aryaji at the front door of the house. The evening gloom reduced all of their faces to shadowy, blue blurs.
“We’ll keep to the shadows and the alleys,” Mandhi said. “We’ll try for the east gate, if it’s unguarded. In the worst case, we’ll go down by the River Quarter and walk the riverbank.”
They all nodded.
It was fortunate that Mandhi knew the alleys and avenues of Virnas as well as she knew the House of the Ruin. The advantages of a childhood spent in the city. Most of the Devoured gathered in listless clumps in the main squares or at the corners of great houses. Mandhi led them on shadowed, little-seen paths behind houses and between shops. No one saw them, until they approached the eastern gate.
The area before the eastern gate was an open square, with stone-walled homes butting up against the wall on two sides and four different crooked streets branching out from the plaza. Mandhi and the others crouched in the shadowed niche where one of the streets let out, just out of sight of the commotion in the center. Men with torches stood in the middle, and a loud, angry voice spoke.
“—gotten far. Keep your eyes open, and try not to be as dreadfully stupid as you were to let them escape.”
It was a woman’s voice. Vapathi grabbed Mandhi’s arm and whispered in her ear. “The Empress!”
“I gathered,” Mandhi said. “But—”
She bit her tongue. Basadi had stopped talking, and she folded her arms and kicked at the team of ten Devoured before her. The Devoured lumbered away to the east, passing under the arch with their torches lifted high. Basadi folded her arms and watched them go.
They think we’ve already left the city, Mandhi thought. So there was a chance.
But Basadi didn’t leave. She stood with her arms folded over her belly and her eyes drawn into little black jewels, watching the Devoured disperse into the night. She waited.
Mandhi breathed softly. She heard Kest fidgeting behind her and prayed Basadi wouldn’t notice. But the Empress didn’t turn.
Go, Mandhi thought. Go.
A shout sounded outside the walls. Hollers for aid. Basadi’s eyes grew wide, and she bolted forward through the gate.
No one was left in the square.
“Do we dare?” murmured Vapathi behind her.
“Go,” Mandhi said. “We might not get another chance.”
They ran to the gate, clinging to the walls of the houses. Beyond the wall, torches moved, and Mandhi heard Basadi’s distant voice.
“—over there, chase them,” Basadi screamed in annoyance. “That Kaleksha is so big, you can’t miss him.”
Torches darted frantically through the night. Mandhi pointed to a run-down cluster of buildings about a hundred yards beyond the wall, a shepherd’s outpost where they used to bring their sheep in from the highlands for sale.
“We can run—”
Kest put his hand on her arm. “Kaleksha,” he said frantically.
“What?”
“They’re chasing someone. And Basadi said there’s a Kaleksha. Don’t you understand? They’ve found our rescue party.”
Mandhi let out a long, slow breath.
Aryaji butted in. “Go! We can’t stay here. Get to those buildings, and then we can talk.”
They ducked their heads and sprinted across the open lawn to the daub-and-wattle huts and wrecked fences. Mandhi leaped over the wall into a pen and ducked behind a fence of pounded clay. Vapathi came a moment later, then Aryaji and Kest.
“We have to get to them,” Kest said, not even stopping to take a breath. “We can’t—”
“You can’t save them,” Vapathi said flatly. “Not if the Devoured are on their tails.”
“Don’t say that,” Kest said. “It’s my clanmates who will die if they find them.”
“All right, we can’t leave them,” Mandhi said. “But what do we do?”
They were all silent for a few minutes.
“They won’t kill them,” Vapathi said. “They think they’re chasing us, so Basadi will try to capture them.”
“And after they know it’s not us?” Mandhi asked.
“Then they’ll be added to the Mouth of the Devourer’s pens.”
Mandhi shivered. “Worse.”
“Ambush,” Kest suggested. “Let them be captured, and when they return to the gate—”
“Won’t work. There’s too many of them. And we have no weapons.”
Kest scowled.
“We could distract them,” Aryaji said. “They’re looking for us, right? Let them know they’ve found us. Run up waving our arms.”
“And then?” Mandhi asked.
“Run away.”
“I don’t see how—”
“Listen,�
� Vapathi said insistently. “They want me. The only reason they’re chasing you at all is because the Empress came after me. So I have to be the bait. You should just… give me to Basadi, and the rest of you get away.”
There was a logic to it. As much as Mandhi pitied the woman, she wasn’t sure she should give up her husband and their rescuers for Vapathi.
Kest broke her train of thought. “Absolutely not. But you’ve given me an idea.”
* * *
Basadi and her Devoured bore torches, making them easy to spot. They had descended on a tiny speck of a village about a mile from Virnas. The sun’s glow in the west had entirely died, and only the stars and bulging half-moon illumined the field below.
Mandhi, Kest, Vapathi, and Aryaji ran toward the village. There was little time to look for the perfect place. Mandhi spent all of her attention making sure she didn’t stumble on the uneven ground. When she could pick out Basadi’s silhouette in the firelight of the torches before her, she stopped and threw herself on the ground.
Aryaji and Vapathi hit the ground next to her. Kest had hidden himself behind a dense, gnarled bush ten feet away.
“Are you ready?” he whispered hoarsely to them.
Vapathi nodded. She stepped out into the space between Mandhi and Kest.
“Basadi!” she called.
The Empress flinched. Pressed flat against the ground, Mandhi couldn’t see clearly what occurred. But she heard Basadi speaking in imperious tones to the Devoured around her, then a pause.
“Who dares use the devoured name?” she shouted back.
“I do, you bitch,” Vapathi said. “Aren’t you looking for me?”
A cackle sounded in Basadi’s throat. “Oh, so that’s how you’re doing it. Come back, Devoured. Leave the other rabbits. We have found the jewel.”
Vapathi took a step back. Mandhi peered through the grasses. There were many Devoured behind Basadi at the edge of the village, but only two accompanied her carrying torches. Mandhi prayed no more would come closer, or what followed would be even more difficult.
The dried grasses crackled beneath Basadi’s feet. The fires of the Devoured cast lurid shadows. Basadi approached until she was about four paces from Vapathi.
