FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Bantu kasu annasi,” growled Mandir. “Did you never tell your father?”

  Kalbi grimaced. “He didn’t believe me.”

  “You said Hunabi guessed at who would win based on which way your father was leaning,” said Taya. “Did he ever guess wrong?”

  “It’s possible,” said Kalbi. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Taya recalled the angry woman in her scry-vision who had confronted Hunabi in the empty field. Could she be someone he’d slept with as part of a bargain, and then she felt he’d reneged on that bargain? How did the jackal fit into all this? Could she, too, be one of those exploited women? “Do you keep records of the magistrate’s court cases?”

  “Of course,” said Kalbi. “They’re filed in the archive. Rasik can show you.”

  “Thank you.” Taya rose to leave.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” said Kalbi. “There’s only one person in Hrappa who truly mourned Hunabi’s death, and that was my father. The rest of us were relieved.”

  Chapter XXI

  Hrappa

  IN THE ARCHIVE, TAYA FOUND that the cases were filed neatly but dated only by season and year. Hunabi had died early in the season of Lalan, which meant they had to consider all cases from that season as well as those from the season of Agu which had preceded it. That turned out to be twenty-six cases. Taya’s hope that there would be only four or five evaporated in the mountain of tablets sitting before her. Resigned to the task, she divided them between her and Mandir, settled onto floor across from him, and began, slowly and haltingly, to read.

  The first case was a dispute over a loan. A peasant farmer had borrowed money from Bodhan isu Kasirum—which was interesting; Zash had borrowed money from Bodhan as well—and failed to repay it. The terms of the loan were confusing, but apparently they specified that if the loan was not repaid, the farmer was required to compensate Bodhan by growing cotton on his land instead of whatever else he normally grew, and selling it to Bodhan at a below-market price. In his suit, the farmer claimed this arrangement was unfair.

  “It’s amazing how many of these cases are about bad loans,” said Mandir, thumbing through his stack. “Five of the first seven I’ve looked at.”

  Taya stared at him. “You’ve read seven cases already?”

  “Skimmed them,” said Mandir. “It seems our Bodhan isu Kasirum isn’t just a cloth merchant. He’s a moneylender.”

  “Was he the lender in all five of your cases?”

  “Yes,” said Mandir.

  “I’ve got a case like that too,” said Taya.

  “Just one?”

  “So far,” she said defensively.

  “This Bodhan fellow is looking suspicious,” said Mandir. “He may be connected to every single murder. He could be connected to Hunabi’s, if Kalbi is right and Hunabi was murdered over some court case in which Bodhan played a role as moneylender. Not to mention the pending marriage between his daughter and Hunabi and Kalbi. He’s connected to Narat’s murder, because Narat is his daughter. And he’s connected to Amalia’s murder, because Zash was indebted to Bodhan as well.”

  “If he’s the town moneylender, he may simply be connected to a lot of prominent families because of that role,” said Taya. “It may have nothing to do with the murders.”

  “Still,” said Mandir, “we need to talk to him again. Or talk to some people about him.”

  Taya nodded. “I have to wonder how Bodhan felt about having someone like Hunabi as a future son-in-law. Hunabi and Kalbi were a matched pair, right? But if Kalbi was a decent sort and Hunabi was an exploitative womanizer, I can see how Bodhan might have a motive for wanting Hunabi dead.” She put down the first tablet and picked up the second. This case was more straightforward. Someone’s pig had gotten into a neighbor’s garden and eaten up his plants. The neighbor had then killed the pig and claimed the meat for his own. The pig’s owner had sued for compensation. She smiled and settled in to read the details—this was a dispute much like the ones she’d seen back home.

  “Tell me something,” said Mandir.

  Taya looked up from her tablet.

  “Your parents weren’t banana farmers. What were they? You told Zash—date farmers, was it?”

  She nodded. “They have date palms.”

  “Hmm.” He sounded disgruntled.

  Taya’s eyes went skyward. “You have a problem with date farmers?”

  “No, it’s just that date girl doesn’t have the proper ring to it.”

  Taya threw her tablet at him.

  Mandir flung his hand up to catch it, laughing. “Watch it! These are the archives.”

  “You could just call me Taya, like normal people do.”

  Smiling, he folded his arms. “What’s in it for me?”

  “I’ll hate you less.”

  “You drive a horrible bargain, date girl. You want me to stop calling you nicknames, I’ll do it—for the right price.”

  “What price?” Taya practically spat the words.

  A shadow passed over Mandir’s eyes. “Never mind. Date girl sounds stupid anyway.” He picked up another tablet and began to read.

  “What price?” Taya asked again. “Do I have to let you into my room? Do I have to be your secret companion?”

  Mandir lowered the tablet, all humor gone from his face. “You could have just said no. You didn’t have to run off like I was the most disgusting thing you’d ever laid eyes on.”

  “I ran because I was scared,” said Taya. “You’d gone into my room, where you weren’t allowed, and made some oblique threats about getting me in trouble. You wanted to do something with me—and believe me, I knew exactly what you wanted—but you’d been calling me ugly and stupid for years, so I knew it wasn’t because you liked me. I didn’t know where those other three boys were. I figured they might be lying in wait. If I said no, I thought you might rape me—maybe all four of you would—so I ran.”

  “I was horrible,” said Mandir. “I know it. But I would not have raped you. I’ve never forced a woman, and I never will.”

  “Your friends put their hands on me all the time, and you never stopped them.”

  “I made sure they didn’t take it too far—”

  “It was already too far, those boys touching me when I didn’t want them to.”

  Mandir swallowed. “I mean I wouldn’t have let them do more than that—”

  “I didn’t want them touching me at all,” insisted Taya.

  “All right, I was a zebu’s ass back then. I know it,” said Mandir. “But the others had nothing to do with that ‘secret companion’ business.”

  “No, that was all you,” said Taya. “And it was disgusting. You gave me a choice between sleeping with you or being harassed by you and your friends. You say you’ve never forced a woman, but you have. At least you tried.”

  “I gave you a choice. I never forced you into anything. Obviously—because we never slept together.”

  “Because I chose the harassment instead. You think that’s not forcing a woman, giving her a choice between one type of abuse and another type?”

  “Sleeping with me would have been abuse?”

  “If I didn’t want it, yes.”

  He dragged a hand down his face and sighed. “I guess I never thought about it that way. At the time, I thought you secretly wanted me.”

  Taya arched an eyebrow.

  Mandir rubbed the back of his neck. “I suppose I was just that arrogant. Look, I’m sorry. I get it now: no bargains. Your affection’s not for sale or for trade, and, honestly, I was just joking with the date girl business.” He picked up his tablet and resumed reading.

  Taya rubbed at a needlefly bite on her leg and read her third case, another one involving Bodhan as moneylender. She was just finishing the concluding words when Mandir set down his tablet, stretched, and sat back against the wall. “I take it you’re finished?” she asked.

  “Yes. You want me to help you with yours?”

  She’d hoped he wouldn’t notice ho
w far behind she was, but she supposed there was no hiding it. He’d read thirteen cases, and she’d read three. “Help me how?”

  “I could read them to you.”

  Taya snorted. “I don’t need to be read to like a child.”

  “Or I could take half the ones you have left and read them myself,” Mandir suggested.

  That wasn’t unreasonable, but Taya didn’t like it. If she let Mandir do that, he would end up reading eighteen cases to her eight and would be more knowledgeable than she. How was she to be an equal partner on this case, let alone in charge of it, if Mandir had all the information? She bit her lip.

  “I think I know why you have trouble reading,” said Mandir softly.

  “Why, because I’m stupid?” Taya snapped.

  “No. Because you got a late start.”

  “You certainly called me stupid often enough,” said Taya.

  “I said it to upset you,” said Mandir. “Not because I believed it. No one who spends any time around you could believe you’re stupid.”

  “I made up for my late start,” Taya said angrily. “All those hours you spent hanging around with your nasty friends—I spent them practicing my letters.”

  “I know you did,” said Mandir.

  “I don’t care how young you were when your awful father taught you how to read, I’ve still practiced more than you have.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Mandir.

  “So I’m stupid.”

  “You know better than that.” Mandir leaned back against the wall, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Have you heard of the Vaksha family? Artisan musicians?”

  Taya shook her head.

  “I think they reside only in Tivette, the royal city. They start their children on their musical instruments very young, at the age of three, I believe. They do not believe in waiting to see which instrument each child might show a talent for. If they wait, they say, it is too late—the child must begin instruction at the earliest possible age in order to reach the fullness of his ability.”

  “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “On the contrary, it’s the foundation of our caste system,” said Mandir. “When children are born into their assigned roles, they have their entire childhood during which they can learn to perform those roles with a high degree of excellence. It’s only when someone is first trained for one role, and then switched unexpectedly to another that there are problems.”

  “You mean someone like me,” said Taya. “A farmer who becomes a fire seer is a problem.”

  “Not just you, all of us,” said Mandir. “All of us discover our Gift in adolescence. You were trained through childhood to be a farmer. And then you discovered you would be something else, and you had to learn to read and write. But you learned it too late for it to come easily for you.”

  “If the goddesses meant for us to learn our roles in early childhood,” said Taya, “they would not have made our Gifts manifest so late.”

  “The goddesses never meant for the Gift to exist at all.”

  Taya pursed her lips. He had a point. And maybe he was right about the reading and writing. If someone had taught her to read and write at an early age, would her eyes fly across the tablet the way Mandir’s did? Her heart twisted with envy. It wasn’t fair. He’d learned all sorts of useful skills as a child, like literacy, while she’d learned worthless ones, like how to pull weeds and feed the pig. “Well, come over here,” she grumbled, “and read these tablets to me. Otherwise we’ll be here all night.”

  “As you wish,” said Mandir, and he settled beside her.

  Chapter XXII

  Hrappa

  MANDIR WOKE FEELING UNUSUALLY REFRESHED. He glanced out his window and groaned. Full sun outside. Flood and fire, why had he slept in? Every day since Taya had arrived, she’d dragged him out of bed at the crack of dawn, a bit of torture he’d begun to accept as part of his penance for the torment he’d inflicted on her at Mohenjo. For some reason she’d spared him this morning. Why?

  He rose, made the bed, and began to dress. Maybe Taya was exhausted after her ordeal in the river. Anyone would want to sleep late after that. It would do her good, a little time off for rest and recuperation. He stepped up to the polished copper mirror, dabbed water on his face, and, picking up his straight razor, began to shave.

  All right, Taya might be exhausted, but knowing her, she wouldn’t sleep in unless she was half dead. Maybe she was angry with him, or at least angrier than usual. The conversation they’d had yesterday had spun through his head most of the night, awakening long-dormant thoughts and feelings, shaking dust from corners of his mind that had lain undisturbed for years.

  Had he forced himself on her at Mohenjo? No, it wasn’t possible. He didn’t sleep with her. If he hadn’t slept with her, he couldn’t have forced her. That was simple logic.

  But maybe it wasn’t so simple. He’d reacted badly when she’d rejected him. He’d smashed her homework tablets and stepped up his harassment, making his threats more explicit and more frightening. He’d punished her for not sleeping with him. He might not have literally forced her into his bed, but it could be argued that he’d tried to get her there using threats and manipulation.

  At the time, he’d believed his behavior justified. He was righteously inflicting pain on a woman who’d inflicted pain on him. He was standing up for himself, showing her she couldn’t treat him like zebu shit and get away with it.

  Now he looked back with wiser eyes and asked himself what exactly she’d done to deserve his retaliation. She hadn’t treated him like zebu shit. She’d simply refused to sleep with him. He had felt pain when she rejected him and blamed her for it. But now he understood that his pain was his own responsibility. He’d loved a girl, and she hadn’t loved him back. It was that simple, and it wasn’t a crime.

  Besides, considering the way he’d treated her at Mohenjo, could he really be surprised that his feelings were not returned?

  Maybe he had tried to force himself on her. The thought made him shudder. He’d believed at the time that the Atrocity could be committed only by physically overpowering a woman and forcing a joining. He had never done that, would never do that; it was the ultimate offense against the Mothers. But he’d tried to accomplish a similar end using threats and manipulation.

  Taya’s distant laugh carried across the courtyard. Frowning, he set down his razor. What was she laughing at? Surely she would not laugh alone—someone must be with her. And she was without the protection of her quradum.

  Forgetting the remainder of his grooming, he ran out the door and across the courtyard. At Taya’s door, he stopped and listened as voices drifted through the open window.

  “Your partner’s obviously opposed,” drawled a man’s voice. “But I thought you and I, together, might work something out.”

  Zash the banana farmer. Rage bloomed in Mandir’s chest, and he felt hot all over. That zebu’s ass had come to visit his partner in secret.

  He flung the door open so hard that it struck the wall and rebounded with a shudder. Taya and Zash, who’d been sitting at her little table with wine goblets in hand, leapt to their feet. A few droplets of Taya’s wine spilled on the floor.

  Mandir took in the scene, noting the amphora in the middle of the table and the rosy flush in Taya’s cheeks. “No one told me about a party this morning.”

  “For the Mothers’ sake, control your temper,” snapped Taya. “You’ve spilled my wine and nearly broken my door.”

  Zash forced a smile. “Mandir isu Sarrum, good greeting to you. I heard about the attempt on Taya’s life yesterday, and I came to call upon her and see for myself that she was all right.”

  “No,” said Mandir. “You came here with your serpent’s tongue to talk her into healing your banana plants.”

  Zash’s smile became strained. “On the contrary, the matter of the banana plants was settled days ago. I brought a gift for the two of you.” He lifted the amphora from the table. “Banana wine. Will you join
me?”

  “I don’t drink that piss.” He could see that Taya, on the other hand, had imbibed some already. If it was poisoned, and Taya came to harm, Zash would not see another sunrise—Mandir would make sure of it. “Don’t bring any more gifts. Neither of us wants them.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Taya. “I haven’t had banana wine since I was a child.” She raised her goblet appreciatively. “Thank you, Zash. This brought back memories.”

  Zash inclined his head.

  “Get out,” barked Mandir.

  Zash raised a brow at Taya. Clearly he’d figured out whom to appeal to when he didn’t like Mandir’s orders.

  “You’d better go,” she told him apologetically.

  Mandir watched Zash as the man collected his things, touched fingers with Taya, and left through the front door. That’s right, banana farmer. I’ve got my eye on you.

  The door shut behind him.

  “Don’t say anything,” said Taya.

  Mandir sauntered to the table and picked up the amphora to see how much wine was left. “I have a great deal to say. And you’re going to hear it.”

  Taya rolled her eyes and sat at the table, swirling the little bit of wine that remained in her goblet. “I suppose you think this is charming, bursting in to protect me from myself.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s not charming.” He stabbed a finger at the door, where Zash had been. “That bollhead of a banana farmer showing up again to try to get you to break Coalition law. With your quradum absent.”

  Taya shrugged. “I’m not going to heal his banana plants.”

  “But you’ll drink his wine?” He shook the half-empty amphora. “We have a day of investigation ahead of us, and you’re drunk.”

  Taya folded her arms. “I’m not drunk. Banana wine isn’t strong like...whatever you ruling-caste people drink. And you know as well as I do that if I’d waited for you, you’d have poured out the wine and I wouldn’t have tasted a drop.”