by J. S. Bangs
“And so I should flee? Leave my cousin, a priest, and two women to the most dangerous duty any of us have faced?”
“You should do the thing you’re meant to do.” Mandhi swallowed and bowed her head. “Do you think I don’t want to stay? That I want to send Aryaji and Nakhur and Glanod into danger?”
“But you…” Kest’s face turned a deeper shade of red, and he turned around. He faced his cousin Glanod. “You convinced her to do this.”
Glanod laughed. “When? When have I talked to Mandhi since this morning?”
Kest took a step toward his cousin and tapped him hard in the chest. He said something in Kaleksha that rumbled like thunder in his belly.
Glanod responded, giving Kest a hard shove. More Kaleksha shouting. And then Kest swung his heavy fist and slugged Glanod in the stomach.
Glanod bellowed and leaped forward, tackling Kest around the waist. They both tumbled to the ground. Mandhi jumped aside to avoid being crushed. Billows of dust rose around them. Their shouts and grunts mixed together. Elbows battered against ribs. Kest’s hand pressed back Glanod’s face. Glanod wrested it aside and crushed Kest’s nose with his forehead. They rolled over the ground, sending Aryaji and Vapathi scampering back. They shouted and snarled like wrestling tigers.
And then Glanod was on top, Kest’s face in the ground, with his arms pinned behind his back. Kest let out a bellow. Mandhi thought he was weeping, but a moment later she realized he was wrong. He was laughing.
Glanod collapsed next to him, and they lay side by side, gasping for air and laughing. Kest elbowed Glanod in the stomach, and his cousin slapped his hand. Their laughter wore itself into a winded pant.
Mandhi had no idea what had just happened. Some Kaleksha custom? A fight over leadership? She despaired of ever understanding what went on in the minds of these pale giants. But both Glanod and Kest seemed more cheerful for it.
Glanod pushed himself upright and extended his hand to Kest. They both brushed themselves free of dust, then Kest turned and found Mandhi watching. “How far is it to Uskhanda?” he asked.
“Far,” she said. “You know how long it took us to get to Virnas from the Amsadhu delta.”
“Can we even make it there in three days?”
Mandhi took a deep breath. “Once, when Taleg was dying, I got from Old Rajunda to Davrakhanda in two days and three nights. That’s about how fast we’ll have to move.”
“But it’s not impossible.” He nodded at Glanod sharply. “The dhow will be waiting for us there?”
Nakhur answered. “The os Dramab are on the dhow with the Heir and your mother. They will wait until the next new moon before sailing away. And there is a place in the islands where we will rendezvous with the rest of Jasthi’s fleet.”
“When the lance strikes,” Aryaji said, “You must be as far away from Amur as possible. You will not have much time.”
Glanod pulled Kest into an embrace. For a moment they stood, chests and cheeks pressed together. Kest whispered something in Glanod’s ear.
Mandhi found Aryaji. She walked over to the girl and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Well,” she said.
Aryaji looked down, embarrassed. “You know this is the right thing.”
“It wasn’t quite how I expected things to turn out when we first met in the palace of Davrakhanda.”
Aryaji laughed, a bright, clear, girlish sound, and for a moment Mandhi forgot she was also a prophetess who spoke to the amashi, who had sailed to Kalignas and back and seen the fall of Davrakhanda and the battle of the Amsadhu. “You’re right,” Aryaji said, “I didn’t quite expect to wind up here when Aunt Kidri suggested I go with Sadja-dar as a maid.”
Nakhur came over. He put his hands on his niece’s head and looked at Mandhi with his eyes dark and clouded. “You are doing the right thing,” he said to her. “That’s why Glanod and I chose to convince you.”
“I know—” Mandhi began.
“Let me finish,” Nakhur said. “The Uluriya will need you. The os Dramab will especially need you: they barely know the ways of Ulaur, and the Uluriya of Virnas and Davrakhanda who have escaped with us don’t trust them. It will be your job to unite them.”
Mandhi bowed her head. “I understand.”
“And get the Uluriya some decent clothes. It’ll be terribly cold in Kalignas.”
Mandhi laughed. “I’ll do that.”
He leaned forward and kissed Mandhi’s cheek. He drew a pentacle over her head. “The stars upon you and Kest.”
Aryaji kissed Mandhi’s other cheek. “The stars upon you,” she whispered in Mandhi’s ear.
Vapathi was the last one. She stood a ways off, her arms folded under her chest, looking aside awkwardly. When she saw Mandhi looking at her, she shook her head.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said softly. “It’s my fault you’re here in the first place.”
“No it’s not,” Mandhi said. She clasped Vapathi’s hands. “You’re as brave as any of us. Go save your brother.”
Vapathi nodded. “I will.”
Kest and Glanod released each other from their embrace, and Kest came to Aryaji and Nakhur, bending over to kiss each of them in turn. Then he came to Mandhi and put his arm around her shoulder. The gesture filled her with a warm, fierce feeling of rightness.
“Run, you two,” Glanod said. “We don’t have much time.”
Kest nodded. Aryaji waved at them. And without another word Glanod, Nakhur, Aryaji, and Vapathi walked down the path toward Virnas.
Mandhi turned to the east. Miles and miles lay between them and the sea.
“We’ll practically be running the whole way to Uskhanda,” Mandhi said. “You know that, right?”
“I’m prepared,” Kest said. He squeezed her shoulder. “Will you make it?
Mandhi laughed. “Just don’t fall behind.”
* * *
They marched until the moon was two spans above the sky. Mandhi’s legs ached and her tongue was parched. With sundown the heat had abated a little, and the sweat that gathered on her brow and trickled down her belly could cool.
“We should stop here,” Kest said. They were on a low hill that overlooked the Maudhu, where the path passed through a tall stand of sal trees. The trees blocked out the silver moon and had left a bed of dry leaves beneath them.
They had abandoned the idea of staying off of main roads. Speed was more important than stealth. And they hadn’t seen any people, living or Devoured.
“Yes,” Mandhi said, breathing heavily. The trees protected them from casual onlookers, not that she expected to see many. They had no bedrolls, but the grass and leaves beneath the trees would do better than hard dirt.
Kest threw himself to the ground and unrolled the little bundle of food that Glanod had left them. He handed Mandhi a tiny piece of roti and took a slightly larger one for himself. She sat beside him, listening to him chew and hearing the rhythm of his breathing.
“How far have we gotten?” he asked.
“For enough for the first day,” Mandhi said. “I hope.”
She had no real idea. There were cities between Virnas and Uskhanda that they should pass through on their way, but they hadn’t reached them yet. She had to believe it was enough.
Kest swallowed his roti in a handful of bites. He stood up and pointed to the trickle of the river. “I’m nothing but dust and sweat. I’m going to rinse, then I’m going to sleep.” He strode away.
Mandhi watched him go. She was no cleaner, but her feet ached enough that she didn’t really want to walk to the river and back. At the riverside Kest stripped off his Amuran kurta, waded knee-deep into the shallows, knelt, and began sloshing water over his shoulders and his chest. The water glittered on his skin in the moonlight. He dipped his head beneath the water, and his wavy red hair dripped down his neck and onto his broad shoulders.
On second thought, maybe she could go down to the river after all.
She swallowed the last of her roti and rose to her feet.
In a few seconds she had descended the hill and crossed the dried-up riverbed to the channel where Kest washed. Kest didn’t seem to hear her over the gurgle of the water and his own splashing until she was about six feet away.
He stopped. For a moment he watched her in silence.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want…” she started, but she was unsure how to finish.
He watched her, unmoving. The water streamed past his waist, making moonlit eddies in the current around him.
She should do something. She was a woman of action. So she lifted up the hem of her sari and waded into the water.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to wash,” Kest said.
“I changed my mind,” she said. But she stopped a few feet into the water. She couldn’t go any deeper without either soaking the sari or taking it off entirely. If she took it off—well, she tried being forward once before, and hadn’t gone well. Maybe a gentler touch was called for.
The sari needed to be washed anyway. She let it drop into the water and waded toward Kest.
“It’ll dry by morning,” she said to him. “It’s very dusty, you know.”
She came close to him, bent, and splashed cold river water on her face. It felt wonderful and fresh after a day of hard travel in the heat. The cool water brought new energy to her tired limbs. She scrubbed her face clean of dust, then began to rinse her arms.
A huge, heavy hand closed over her shoulder. She looked up into Kest’s eyes. The moon was behind him forming a silver halo around his head. In the dark she couldn’t make out his expression.
“Just because you think we’re in danger—” he started.
“What danger?” Mandhi said. “Do I have to be in danger to come bathe in the river where my husband is?”
“You know what I mean.”
She took a deep breath and dipped her head into the water. The braids that Aryaji had made for her fell into the water, and she ran her fingers over them, rinsing the dust into the cold stream. When she pulled her head up, she found Kest standing directly in front of her. His hands were raised as if to grab her, but he hesitated.
“Why do you keep doing this?” he asked.
“Doing what?” She twisted her hair together to wring the water out.
“You are trying to…. You don’t want me. You want my brother.’
“Do I?” Mandhi said. “How do you know?”
“Because you loved him and married him. You married me for your people and for the clan.”
“You know that’s why most people get married. Marriage for love is a fantasy of young, reckless girls.”
“Like yourself.”
“I’m not quite the reckless girl I was, but…”
“As I thought.” He lowered his hands to his side and looked away.
“You’re an ass, Kest, you know that?”
He gave her a sharp glance, but her tongue had been loosed, and there was no stopping her now. “You married me to save your people, the os Dramab, and it was brave and honorable. You saved us in Davrakhanda, broke the Devoured who were entering the palace, and saved the life of the Emperor, you absolute ewe-brained fool. You saved us again at the Amsadhu, so we could escape. You were about ready to walk into Virnas and die just so the rest of the clan could live, like a beer-addled idiot. And at every point you’ve been kind and considerate with me, an exemplary husband, never once taking what you had every right to demand, but shrinking back like some hairless boy because… because what? Because your brother was as good as you? Because you’re afraid you’re not as good as your brother?”
“You took him first—”
“Yeah, and I took you second. But I have known you, and you have every one of his virtues. Well, except one. You lack the gall to take your wife.”
“You be careful how you speak,” he growled, but there was no real malice in his voice. “If you were one of the os Dramab—”
“If I was an os Dramab woman, I would already have wrestled you to the ground to teach you a lesson. Or whatever it was you and Glanod were doing.”
He stepped a little closer to her. “You want to wrestle, woman?”
She stepped up to him and put her hands on his chest. Hard muscles beneath warm skin. She could feel the galloping of his heart. “Of course I do,” she said.
In a flash his hands closed over her wrists, and he had pinned both of them behind her back with one hand. His other arm encircled her waist, and he lifted her into the air until they were eye-to-eye.
“I’ll have to teach you a lesson,” he said.
They stumbled frantically to the shore. Kest’s waterlogged dhoti dropped to his ankles in a moment, and half a heartbeat later he stripped Mandhi’s sari away and hurled it into a patch of dried grass. She pulled her choli over her shoulders and pressed her chest against his belly. Her heartbeat in her ears was louder than the murmur of the river, her breathing like a gale.
They fell into the firm mud alongside the river. His chest pressed against hers, lips to lips, thighs to thighs.
“Careful,” she said after a moment, pulling away to take a breath of air. “Better let me pin you down, love, lest you crush me.”
He pushed himself up. “What did you say?”
“I said you might smother me. You Kaleksha men—”
“No, I mean… you said…”
Her words came back to her in a rush. She laughed. She pushed herself up onto an elbow, wrapped her other arm around Kest’s neck, and kissed him on the lips, deep and hard. “I love you, Kest.”
He laughed, a deep rumbling from the depths of his belly. “You mad Amuran woman.” He rolled onto his back and pulled Mandhi atop of him. His hands ran down from her shoulders to her waist. “I love you, Mandhi.”
She kissed him and let herself rest atop his chest. Their movement became quiet, urgent, and firm. Weary muscles burned with newfound strength, arms and fingers intertwined. Skin to skin, breath to breath, senses flooded with release so long denied.
Her fingers twined into Kest’s hair. Her muscles tensed. Her lips brushed against his ear, and she let out a little cry of delight. When they were done, she collapsed onto Kest’s broad chest. Neither of them said a word. She was aware of the mud staining her knees and palms. She would have to get up and wash again before they moved on in the morning. She didn’t care.
She rolled onto her back, resting her head on Kest’s arm. She looked up at the burning stars overhead. The red star in the heart of the serpent blazed with scarlet light, the threat of destruction, the promise of deliverance. But in that moment, she felt total peace. This was the place she was supposed to be: the union of two peoples, ready to take them to a new place where they would make a new home. Her and her husband.
She pressed her face against Kest’s shoulder, kissed him once, and fell asleep.
Vapathi
Vapathi and Aryaji crouched in the scrub that hid them from the walls of Virnas. Nakhur stood a pace behind them, rising from a crouch just enough to see over the top of a tangle of dried branches. He dropped down with a gasp.
“He’s coming,” he whispered. “I don’t know if he saw me, but stay down and wait here.”
Aryaji squeezed Vapathi’s hand and gave her a grin which, Vapathi guessed, was supposed to comfort her. Vapathi was not comforted.
She felt as if she were already dead. Everything she saw, she saw through a haze, as if none of it were real. The Devoured were merely her nightmares, and the Uluriya with her were helpful spirits she had imagined. If it were not for Kirshta, she would lie down in the dust and never get up again.
But her brother was real, and he suffered. For ten years as slaves, they had protected each other. This would be her last gift to him.
The sound of running feet in the dry grass, and then the crackle of dried sticks as Glanod crashed into their hiding place. He panted heavily, but he grinned at Aryaji and Vapathi.
“Did anybody see you?” Nakhur asked.
“No,” Glano
d said. “They’re not even looking. No one on the walls, no one watching the gates. Heck, most of the city is empty.”
“Really?” Aryaji looked at him curiously. “It was full of Devoured when we were there.”
“Oh, there’s still plenty of Devoured. But they’re all crowded up toward the northwest corner of the city. That quarter is filled while the rest of the city is empty.”
“Around the House of the Ruin,” Aryaji said.
“Must be,” Glanod said with a nod. “Because it looks like the Mouth of the Devourer has started the sacrifice already.”
“You saw them?” Nakhur asked in alarm. “What’s happening?”
Glanod shook his head. “I didn’t see any blood. But I got on top of one of the roofs, looked down. They have the captives in the middle of a giant circle of Devoured, right in the center of the district. No chance to get in there and rescue anyone. And anyway, I saw them taking people one at a time out of the group and into one of the buildings.”
“He has to spill the blood of hundreds,” Vapathi said softly. Her stomach lurched as she said it. “It will take him days to finish.”
“When is the full moon?” Aryaji asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Nakhur said. His tone was grim and hopeless.
“But anyway,” Glanod said, “I didn’t see any sign of a ram anywhere in the city. No pens, no bleating. No straw to feed them. If there were any, they’ve long since been eaten.”
Nakhur peered through the brush alongside their hiding place at the gray walls of the city. Everyone was silent for a while.
“Does it have to be a ram?” Glanod asked.
“A male kid will do,” Nakhur said reluctantly. “But given the importance, I wouldn’t make any further compromise than that. Did anyone see any signs of a live animal in the villages we passed through?”
They all shook their heads. Vapathi bowed her head and heaved a sigh. There was nothing they could do.
