FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “His name is Piru,” she said. “A placid creature, thank the Mothers. He’s not mine; he belongs to the Coalition. He’s to carry back Hrappa’s tax payment.”

  “He traveled here with you?” Mandir tentatively stroked the elephant’s trunk, and it came questing up toward his face. Alarmed, he stepped away. “What does he want?”

  Taya laughed. “Food—he thinks you might have a treat. Yes, he traveled here with me, and he’ll travel back as well.”

  “I’m sorry I spooked your horse,” said Mandir. “I was worried when I couldn’t find you. I thought something might have happened to you.”

  Taya smiled wryly. “You needn’t worry about me so much. I know what the jackal looks like, and she’s just an untrained girl. She doesn’t frighten me.”

  “Worrying about you is my job,” said Mandir. “And the jackal is not the only danger in Hrappa.”

  “My magic is strong. The Coalition wouldn’t have given me this if it wasn’t.” She touched the fire agate on her belt.

  “And they wouldn’t have assigned you a quradum if they didn’t think you needed protection,” said Mandir. “Help me do my job by letting me know when you’re going to leave the guesthouse. Please?”

  “I suppose that’s fair.” Taya frowned at him. “But you have to promise not to yell at me.”

  “Deal,” said Mandir. “Touch fingers?”

  Taya hesitantly extended her hand, and they touched fingers.

  “There’s something else,” said Mandir. “I want to apologize.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. “For what?”

  “For the way I treated you at Mohenjo Temple,” said Mandir.

  Taya turned away with a bitter laugh.

  Anger simmered in Mandir’s chest. “You think that’s funny?”

  “You think you can make up for four years of torment with an apology?”

  She had a point. Mandir felt the inadequacy of his words. “It was wrong of me. All of it, especially the fire maze. I look back on those days with regret.”

  Taya shrugged. “Thanks, I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “Did you think it would make those four years go away?”

  Mandir left the stall door and paced down the aisle. He hadn’t expected this to go well, but still, he’d hoped. “What do you want from me, Taya? You want me to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness?”

  “No.” She made a face. “That would be embarrassing for both of us.”

  Mandir stared at her. He’d thought for certain she would go for the begging-on-his-knees option, not that he planned to seriously do it.

  “Maybe you underestimate how much harm you did at Mohenjo. I was a farmer, the only person of that caste in the entire class. You were not only ruling caste, you were royal—”

  “A royal bastard,” said Mandir. “With no title, no inheritance, and no acknowledgement from the royal family, except from my father, who’s the family embarrassment.”

  “Important details you kept secret for almost a year,” said Taya. “Everyone looked up to you. The way you treated me set an example. Had you been kind and accepting, they would have been kind and accepting, too. Instead you mocked and harassed me. And they joined in.”

  Mandir grimaced. That was true. He’d been the de facto leader of that initiate class, thanks to his name and tattoo, and he’d set the tone. He couldn’t even claim it had been accidental. He’d singled her out on purpose.

  “All those years at the Temple, I had no friends my own age. You made certain that I was alone. And I stayed alone after you left.”

  “That I don’t believe,” said Mandir. “Several of the boys in our class secretly liked you. They wouldn’t have approached you while I was there, but after I left, I’m sure a few of them came sniffing around.”

  “They did,” said Taya. “I sent them away.”

  Mandir spread his arms. “How is that my fault?”

  “Would you want to be friends with someone who used to torment you? I don’t even understand why you did it. How did it profit you to harass me? You were respected and admired without even trying.”

  “I did it because I was in love with you,” said Mandir.

  Taya rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. Give me a real reason.”

  “That is the real reason,” said Mandir. “Do you remember the day we met, when I showed you how to eat lirry fruit?”

  “I remember.” Her eyes went distant, and she looked sad.

  “I fell in love with you the instant I laid eyes on you,” said Mandir. “But I was horrified by that. You were a farmer! I was a bastard, and I didn’t want that discovered. To throw off suspicion, I associated exclusively with the ruling caste. I pushed you away, publicly and emphatically, determined I should fall out of love with you.”

  “Mandir, you can’t treat someone like that and call it love.”

  “It was...a twisted love. The only excuse I can claim is that I was fifteen years old and stupid, and I grew up in a household that taught me nothing but cruelty.”

  She shook her head. “You made your own choices.”

  “Did you ever like me?” asked Mandir.

  “Never.”

  “Liar,” said Mandir. “The day you met me. You liked me then.”

  Taya sniffed. “All right. I liked you for one day, before I learned what sort of boy you were.”

  “I’m not that boy now. I’ve left that boy behind.”

  Pepper shoved her head over the partition, bumping Taya’s shoulder with her nose and whinnying for attention.

  “Look who’s back,” crooned Taya, stroking the mare’s face. She turned to Mandir. “The onager appears to change its color, but it’s an illusion, nothing more. When it trots back out into the sun, its color changes back.”

  “I am no color-changing onager,” said Mandir. “Tell me how I can prove myself to you.”

  “I don’t think you can,” said Taya.

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  Taya shook her head. “I can’t trust you. If you say something nice, it’s because you’re going to twist it around later. There’s no such thing as sincerity with you. There’s only what you want and what you have to say in order to get it.”

  Mandir smiled sadly.

  “Even you don’t deny it.”

  “I do deny it. But you give me no means of showing you the truth.” Mandir had spent four years teaching this woman he couldn’t be trusted, and unfortunately for him she’d learned the lesson too well.

  Chapter XI

  Mohenjo Temple, Nine Years Ago

  TAYA STARED AT THE WRITING on the clay tablet, willing the beautifully scripted words to make sense. They remained inscrutable. But at least they were inscrutable to all the other students of her class. This tablet, like all the others in this wing of the Mohenjo library, was written in the mother tongue. Some of the tablets were so old they dated from the days before the Atrocity, when the Mothers walked the river valley in human form. This might be one of those tablets.

  With a sigh of longing, Taya ran a hand over the ancient script. She picked up the tablet, replaced it on the shelf, and took down a new one, equally unintelligible.

  Here in Mohenjo Temple lay the history of her people. Not the stories she’d been told over the years, the lies and distortions. The real history, the words her ancestors had written down in their true language. It astonished her that these writings had been preserved. Until she’d come here, she’d had no idea they even existed. If she worked hard, if she was patient, she would one day be able to read the words of the men and women who had walked in the presence of the Mothers.

  One season into her training, life wasn’t as miserable as before. After speaking to the instructor after class, she’d been placed in an additional, special class for initiates who needed to learn to read and write. It was a lot of extra work, but she didn’t mind. All the other students in the special class were farmer caste, like her, and while none of them were her age�
�the nearest was a boy two years older—she now sat with them at meal times, and didn’t feel quite so lonely. It encouraged her to see the other farmers’ progress at reading and writing. Others had trod this path before her and been successful; that gave her hope.

  The door to the library swung open.

  Taya froze. She couldn’t see the door from where she was sitting, but she was fairly certain Mandir isu Sarrum had seen her come in. For someone who acted as if he had no interest in her, Mandir watched her awfully closely.

  She heard the footsteps of several people entering the library.

  “What’s that smell?” came Mandir’s voice.

  “Musty old clay?” said another boy.

  “It smells like zebu shit,” said Mandir.

  The boys rounded the corner and came upon Taya with her tablet.

  “Oh, it’s the farmer girl! No wonder,” said Mandir. The other boys laughed.

  Taya, not the least bit fooled by this farce, stood and gathered her things. She would flee to her room, the one place Mandir could not follow.

  “What’s this?” said Mandir, grabbing the tablet.

  “It’s not mine,” said Taya quickly, terrified he would damage it. “It’s the library’s.”

  “What are you doing with it? You can’t read that.”

  “Neither can you,” snapped Taya.

  Mandir raised his eyebrows, held up the tablet and intoned, “Ipulma mummu apsu immallik, sukkallum la magiru—”

  “You’re just saying the words,” said Taya. “You don’t know what they mean.”

  “Sure I do,” said Mandir. “It says, ‘Once there was a farmer woman who grew banana trees. She was contracted in marriage to a farmer man, but when she came to the marriage bed and removed her veil, he said, “Bantu kasu annasi, woman! How can I sleep with you, when your face is like a wrinkled monkey’s ass, and you smell like zebu shit?” I shall have to—’ Wait a minute, I’m not finished.”

  Taya, flushing with anger and humiliation, tried to hurry around the boys, toward the library door, but Mandir moved to block her path, and the other boys, snickering, surrounded her.

  “Did I say you could leave?” said Mandir. “I’m still reading. ‘I shall have to hold my nose, turn you over, and fuck you from behind so I don’t have to—’”

  “Shut up!” cried Taya, trembling with rage, and fear, too, because they had her trapped, and no one else was around. “That’s not what it says.”

  “How do you know?” said Mandir.

  “Get out of my way,” said Taya.

  Mandir folded his arms. “You’ll go when I say you can.”

  Hating herself for giving in, but knowing that Mandir responded to only one thing, total capitulation, she said, “Please. I need to study.”

  Mandir looked thoughtful, as if considering this request. He turned to one of the other boys. “Sukal, what’s the banana girl studying?”

  Sukal snatched a tablet out of her satchel. It was the one on which she practiced her letters, scrawling them in her large, clumsy script. Sukal laughed and handed it to Mandir.

  “Flood and fire!” Mandir guffawed, showing it around. “When did you guys do these, when you were seven years old?” He shoved the tablet back in Taya’s satchel and, finally, stepped aside to give her an escape route.

  As Taya ran for the door, one of the boys grabbed her bottom in passing.

  “Banta kasu annasi, Sukal,” said Mandir. “You must be pretty desperate if you want that ass.”

  Chapter XII

  Hrappa

  TAYA WAS AWAKENED IN THE wee hours by the horn sounding its two long calls, which meant the Lioness had overflowed its banks. She lay awake for a while, listening to the rain as it pattered on the rooftop. It was slackening, and she knew that the third call, the one signaling a breach of the city walls, would not come. She drifted back to sleep and woke again at dawn—once a farmer, always a farmer. She lounged in bed, knowing the town would be in no hurry to rise. Some of the fields would be underwater, and no work could be done until they drained. Mandir, furthermore, was a late riser.

  She was at her breakfast a couple of hours later when Mandir let himself in through the courtyard door, perfectly groomed. “What are we doing today? More scrying?” He stopped short and stared at her.

  “What?” said Taya, irritated.

  “You’re not planning to go out like that, are you?”

  “Like what?”

  “Your headdress. It’s a mess.”

  Taya shook her head, wondering which of the Mothers she had offended to be cursed with this man as a partner. “No one has these impossible standards of perfection but you. It’s fine.”

  “Have you looked in a mirror?”

  “I’m not going to let you fix it for me.” She didn’t have the knack for headdresses, but honestly, nobody else ever cared. And judging by Mandir’s clothes and hair, he had some kind of neatness obsession. She got up from the table, pushing her breakfast dishes away.

  “You’re representing the Coalition. You need to look the part.”

  “I do look the part,” said Taya, heading for the door. “Green and silver. And it doesn’t matter. We’re Coalition. They hate us no matter what.”

  “You want to look like an ignorant farmer?”

  Taya halted midstride. Mandir knew how to hit her where it hurt. “I suppose just this once you can fix it for me. But if you try anything—”

  “What would I try?” said Mandir. “I just want to fix your headdress.”

  Taya eyed him suspiciously. “What do I do?”

  He indicated a chair. “Sit down.”

  Taya sat, and Mandir took up a position behind her chair. She braced herself, remembering that first day of Coalition classes when he’d ripped the headdress out of her hair. But that was a long time ago. This time, his hands carefully freed her hair from the loops, and it fell to its full length, brushing her back. She waited patiently for Mandir to gather it back up again, but instead he fiddled with something behind her. “Well?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “Just a minute,” said Mandir. “I’m figuring out how the headdress works.”

  Taya turned in her chair. “You’ve never done this before? And you think you can do it better than me?”

  “Taya,” said Mandir, “anyone could do this better than you.”

  Taya faced forward with a sigh. Somehow Mandir’s pestering her about wanting to fix her headdress had given her the idea he’d done this for other women—a series of past lovers at Rakigari, perhaps, or one favored lover he’d been with a long time. She wasn’t sure which thought bothered her more. It was something of a relief to learn he did not know headdresses, although she did not doubt he had known women.

  Finally he reached for her and began to gather up her hair. Taya swallowed. She had always thought Mandir a rough, crude sort of man and expected his touch to be similarly harsh and unpleasant. But he handled her as gently as imported silk. His fingers brushed her neck as he swept up her hair, divided it, and worked out a tangle. His light touch was so pleasant that she had to restrain herself from leaning into his hands.

  “You’ve got it backward,” she said. “The hair goes in the other way.”

  “Oh. So it does.” He withdrew her hair from the loops, let it go, and started over, unhurried and unflustered.

  Somehow, after all these years of knowing Mandir, she’d failed to understand certain things about him. She’d noticed his clothes and hair were always perfect, but she’d attributed it to vanity, not to his being a careful, patient man who paid close attention to details. When he finally had the headdress in place, she could tell he’d done a good job because it was comfortable and perfectly centered, not pulling to one side or the other, yet he seemed dissatisfied. He made some adjustments, viewed it from several angles, and adjusted it again.

  She didn’t mind that he was taking a while. Every time his hand brushed her skin, he set it afire, stirring a desire in her that had long lain dorma
nt. She hadn’t realized how much she hungered for the touch of another human being. Not Mandir’s, necessarily. As a young girl, she and her sisters had cuddled up in one bed at night like a heap of kittens. She missed that. And she was too old for it now.

  Perhaps she should seek a lover in Hrappa. The thought seemed ludicrous—everyone hated her here—but one never knew; she might find someone she liked, someone who could see beyond the green and silver to the person underneath. It was past time she found a lover. Flood and fire, she was twenty-three years old! Coalition women enjoyed an unusual amount of sexual freedom. Her magic allowed her to postpone pregnancy until she chose to bear children, and her family could not compel her to marry. Her body was hers to do with as she pleased. She’d turned away the men at Mohenjo, for obvious reasons, and of course Mandir was out of the question, but there might be some man in town with whom she might satisfy some mutual desires, at least on a temporary basis until she could find somebody suitable for the long term.

  “There,” said Mandir. “What do you think?”

  Taya rose from the chair, fetched her sheet of polished copper, and looked. She was astonished. She’d never seen a headdress look so perfect. Of course, she had to allow, it was easier putting a headdress on someone else than putting it on one’s own head. “It looks nice.”

  “Nice,” mocked Mandir. “Admit it. That’s the best your headdress has ever looked.”

  It was, but Taya wasn’t going to admit it.

  “You can’t go there,” said Rasik. “The water’s running too high.”

  “The sun’s up and the water level’s falling,” Taya argued, as the black mare danced anxiously beneath her. “I’m not concerned about more flooding—”

  “The place where Narat died is completely underwater,” said Rasik.

  Taya exchanged a look with Mandir. “I can’t scry a site when it’s underwater. We’ll have to go somewhere else.”

  “The third victim,” suggested Mandir.

  “Yes,” said Taya, turning to Rasik. “Take us to the family of the third murder victim. What was the father’s name?”