by J. S. Bangs
Navran was pleased. He was unaccustomed to getting good news. “So can I pay my soldiers?”
“All these questions! And here I thought that the finances of the kingdom were just a pretext to get me alone.”
“We’re not alone,” Navran said, gesturing at the guards standing motionless at the door. “What would Amashi say?”
“They hardly count,” Josi said. “And I don’t care what my mother says. But since you insist on asking me, then the answer is a solid maybe. We’ve been saving up.”
“How much?”
Josi winced a little. “Maybe a third of what they’re owed.”
“Oh.” Navran’s good mood plummeted. He shouldn’t have asked. “Fifteen more days until I release them. What can I do?”
Josi tore off a piece of roti and ran it through the juices of the lamb. She looked uncomfortable. “Well, you could just… pay them less. Look,” she said, suddenly speaking very quickly, “if Adjan has a ship whose cargo he can’t sell for some reason, then the sailors get paid less, regardless of what they thought they would get when they signed on. You can’t give away money that you don’t have. So you short their pay. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Maybe,” Navran said, downcast. “And them? What do they do when I tell them?”
“I don’t know,” Josi said. “I’ve never had to pay soldiers.”
The room collapsed into awkward silence for a few minutes. He shouldn’t have brought up that subject. Leave the finances for the days when Josi was here as the Purse. Change the subject. “You lived in Uskhanda?”
“Yes,” Josi said, still seeming a little glum.
“I’ve never been there. Tell me about it.”
She perked up. “It’s very nice. I can’t say that I like it better than Virnas—they’re very different. Uskhanda is wide and flat, while Virnas is built on these bluffs. It’s a little swampy.”
“Doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“Not everywhere. The south edge of the city sort of just sinks into the mud, and you get to the mud flats which stretch out into the ocean. But on the north, the water is deep and there’s the harbor. That’s where Adjan has his office. The wind comes in off the sea, and it’s cool and fresh and smells like green water and fresh fish. Oh, the fish.” Josi shook her head. “We don’t cook fish much here in Virnas, so I never learned how to make it properly. But if we eat at a guesthouse, we can get excellent fish. Spicy fish soup. Fried clams and rice. Street vendors sell skewers of eels….”
Navran let her ramble. It was pleasant to listen to her, and she seemed to lose herself in the description of a place he had never been to. As she spoke she smiled more and her gestures became animated, nearly knocking her platter aside once or twice. He could listen to her the whole day.
But a bit of movement in the corner of the room caught his eye. A messenger had entered, standing between the two guards, and upon catching Navran’s gaze he bowed. Josi fell silent, following Navran’s stare.
“May I enter, my lord and king?” the messenger asked.
“Enter and speak,” Navran said.
The man stood directly in front of Navran and bowed deeply. “Navran-dar, I bring news of your mother.”
“What?” Navran said.
Josi gave Navran a startled stare. “Your mother? But I thought your parents—”
Navran shook his head. “My mother lives in Idirja. Tiny village, up the Amsadhu. But Mandhi sent men to bring her.” He turned to the messenger. “Where is she?”
“The men who were sent to escort her sent a message ahead of them. They are coming, but slowly. Your mother is ill.”
“Ill?” A black wave of dread rose in his belly.
The messenger nodded. “She fell ill during the monsoon. She is well enough to walk, and so they judged it best to bring her here where she could be cared for in the palace. But they go slowly on the road. It will take them long to reach Virnas.”
The dread ebbed. “But she is alive.”
“Yes, my lord and king.”
“How long?”
The messenger bowed. “Perhaps a month from today, they expect to reach Virnas.”
Navran took a deep breath. A month and his mother would be here. Foreboding and relief mixed in his stomach. He could at least resolve his debt to her. If she arrived. He rested his head in his hands and waved off the messenger. “Thank you.”
The man bowed and retreated from the room. Navran closed his eyes. “Mother.”
Josi spoke softly. “May I ask, my lord and king… are you hoping for or dreading your mother’s arrival?”
“Hoping,” Navran said. He looked down at the platter in front of him, then to the north. Somewhere on the road from Jaitha to Virnas, his mother approached.
“Ah. I thought, based on your reaction, that perhaps she was a burden to you. Like Amashi.”
Navran laughed softly. “I burdened her more than the reverse. And compared to Amashi…. There are worse things than an overbearing mother.”
Josi was quiet. She seemed to be waiting for him to go on, but he couldn’t explain now. There was too much to say about the wreckage of his family and the way he had stumbled into becoming Heir.
Eventually she cleared her throat. “I understand. Perhaps I should go.”
“Yes,” Navran said. He added quickly, “But I’m very glad that you came.”
“Of course,” Josi said, bowing her head to him in return. “A pleasure.”
“A great pleasure,” Navran said. “I’ll send men to escort you to Veshta’s. Also,” he paused a moment to decide whether he should say anything. “Thank you.”
Josi’s cheeks reddened and a smile broke out over her mouth. “It was lovely,” she said. “I hope we can do it again.”
Mandhi
Aryaji’s knuckles were white from the strength with which she clutched the pentacle charm in her hand. Mandhi buried her annoyance at the maid’s fearfulness. Aryaji was only a girl, after all, and if it weren’t for the armed escort that Sadja provided for them, Mandhi wouldn’t have been willing to venture into the Kaleksha district either.
No, that was false. She would go alone if she had to, but she would be a lot more afraid.
Aryaji whimpered and clutched Mandhi’s hand as the narrow alley entrance to the Kaleksha quarter neared. “I’m worried,” she whispered in Mandhi’s ear.
“I can tell,” Mandhi said. Then, a little more gently, “Don’t be afraid. Look, we’ve got Sadja’s guards with us. The Kaleksha won’t harm us.”
Aryaji nodded. At times like this she seemed wholly a girl and not much a young woman. Mandhi was surprised at having to play her mother so much, but it was a reasonable price for companionship on her excursion into the Kaleksha quarter.
They passed through the narrow opening into the noisy alley which held the Kaleksha sailors’ homes. As before, a half-dozen prostitutes stood along the walls of the alley with arms folded, watching them with open curiosity and a little hostility. Worried that Mandhi and Aryaji were there to steal their business? Mandhi stifled a shudder.
They rounded a corner into the Kaleksha district proper. Today Mandhi had the presence of mind to observe it a little better. It was filthy, to begin with: trash filled the gutters, the plaster on the buildings was peeling and black, and the air reeked of old fish and sewage. They saw no women other than the brown-skinned Amuran whores at the entrance. The pale Kaleksha men stared at the two Amuran women and their guard in Sadja’s livery.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Mandhi asked the escort.
The man nodded. “I’ve come here before to hire men for Sadja’s galleys. Just up ahead.”
Mandhi was already lost, for they had gone down different streets than those from their first excursion. It had taken her half a month to convince Sadja to permit her to go and provide a suitable escort. But the escort knew his way, and a moment later they stopped before a two-story building with a rough sculpture of Ashti in a niche beside the door.
The soldier bowed his head, kissed his fingers and brushed them against Ashti’s feet. Then he gestured for Mandhi and Aryaji to enter. “The sailors’ guild. Here’s where you want to go.”
It took Mandhi a moment to adjust to the dim, windowless interior. A few lamps guttered in niches along the wall, lighting up a long, narrow room with many doors. A ladder at the far end climbed to the second story. Next to the entrance lay a dirty, frayed rug where a pot-bellied man with wrinkled skin and silver hair sat. He balanced a board across his knees, atop which was a palm-leaf page and a slate with a piece of chalk. A bowl of clay ghita coins sat at his knee.
He looked up at Mandhi and Aryaji and scowled. “Go away,” he said.
“I am looking for the brother of a man named Taleg os Dramab,” Mandhi said.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” the man said. He didn’t look up at them, but continued to read off of his page and make marks on the slate.
“I’m not going,” Mandhi said. “Five years ago in Davrakhanda there was a man named Taleg, who sailed with an Uluriya trader named Adjan. Someone named Kest is looking for him. Tell Kest that I know about Taleg.”
The man raised an eyebrow at her. “Women should not be here in the sailor’s building. In any case, we’ve had a dozen men named Taleg here in the last five years. Go away.”
“Come on,” Aryaji said behind her quietly. “He can’t help us. We should go.”
“Kest,” Mandhi said firmly. “Someone put up the graffiti with Taleg’s name, and he obviously isn’t looking for any of the dozen that you know. Where can I find him?”
The man set down his chalk and spent a long time looking at Mandhi. He tapped his chalk against the edge of the slate insistently. “I don’t work with women. Sorry.”
Mandhi suspected it would come to this. She palmed two copper paisha out of the purse hidden in her sleeve and dropped them onto the slate. “You work with me. Now where is Kest?”
The man looked down at the coins, then up at Mandhi, who crouched with her face close to his. He spoke reluctantly. “Kest is here. He sails out the day after tomorrow, on a deep-sea dhow to Kalignas. He’s bunking three doors down, now—” the man gestured to one of the doors down the hallway, “—but, wait!”
Mandhi had started down the hallway to the door the man indicated. The man’s frantic yell stopped her.
“Don’t go in there!” the main said, rising suddenly to his feet and spilling the bowl of ghita coins on his knee. “Bad luck. It’s bad enough you came into the building at all.” He put a filthy hand roughly on Mandhi’s shoulder and turned her back toward the door. “Wait outside. I’ll send him out for you.”
He made the sign to ward away evil behind them as they exited.
“What a horrible man,” Aryaji said with a sour expression as soon as they crossed the threshold into the street.
Mandhi concurred, but she tried to hide her revulsion from Aryaji. “I haven’t spent much time with Kaleksha other than Taleg.”
“And why would you?” Aryaji made a face of disgust.
“But Taleg wasn’t like that,” Mandhi said. “Even the first time I met him he was clean, polite, and kind. Adjan brought him to the house in Virnas, and he bowed to me and—”
She stopped abruptly to swallow the cracking in her voice. Not here in the midst of all these Kaleksha, she wouldn’t cry. Who knew how they would take it? Probably as another sign of womanish bad luck.
They heard footsteps within the door, and the gnawing voice of the door-keeper. A man stepped out, blinking and rubbing his eyes.
Mandhi’s chest tightened when she saw him. He was younger than Taleg, tall, with a bulky build, a barrel chest and long, heavily muscled arms. But his hair was fire-orange like her husband’s, and his green eyes could have been plucked from Taleg’s head.
He eyed her nervously, taking in the armed escort standing behind Mandhi. “You’re the woman that the house-master mentioned?”
“Yes,” Mandhi said.
“And you know my brother Taleg?”
Brother. Her heart thundered. Of course he was Taleg’s brother; they were two stones cut from the same block. “I did.”
The man nodded. He seemed nervous. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. There’s a place nearby.” He motioned for them to follow.
Mandhi glanced at her escort and raised an eyebrow. He nodded. She and Aryaji followed after the man.
Just around the corner was some kind of guesthouse, with straw on the floor and several long, low tables. The man sat down atop the straw and pointed for the women to follow. Their escort remained in the doorway, his eyes raking the room for signs of trouble.
The man raised his hand for the innkeeper to bring them something to drink. “Sorry about the trouble,” he said. “We sail soon, and women should not be under our roof. Lady Ashti is jealous.”
“That’s your custom?” Mandhi asked. “How many women do you even have here?”
“Very few,” the man admitted. “And we’re not allowed to bring whores into the common house anyway.”
The innkeeper set down a tall bowl of rice beer before each of them. Aryaji recoiled from hers, looking at Mandhi with an expression of horror. Mandhi smiled with chagrin and said, “Our own customs, alas, prevent us from enjoying your hospitality. We cannot partake from drinks which are unclean.”
“Oh,” the man said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ll pay for them, since you didn’t know.” She got the impression that buying three drinks was a meaningful expense for the man and didn’t want to spurn him. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“Kest,” the man said. “Kest os Dramab.”
“And I’m Mandhi, daughter of Cauratha of Virnas. This is my maid, Aryaji.”
Aryaji gave a small, embarrassed wave. Kest looked at her with hesitation, as if unsure how to include her in his calculus of the situation. He turned back to Mandhi and said, “But you knew my brother Taleg.”
Mandhi was unsure of how much she should reveal at the outset. She simply said, “Yes.”
A hungry gleam appeared in his eye. He leaned forward eagerly. “Can you tell me what happened to him? We thought he was dead, but the guild had no record of it.”
“Why did you think he was dead?”
“He sailed away with the guild six years ago. After two years we expected him to come back. Most sailors who go to Amur return every other year. But… nothing. He never came. And no one could tell us where he went.”
A strange pang of sorrow passed through Mandhi. Taleg had never talked about his life before coming to Amur except in the vaguest terms. She knew the story of what happened to him on Adjan’s ship and how he came to the Uluriya. But when she had asked about what had come before, all his life in Kalignas, he refused to answer. She had always assumed that there was something painful or shameful that he wanted to keep buried. It never occurred to her that he might have parents and brothers back in Kalignas, waiting for him to come home.
“I met him because of my father,” she began. “He was sailing on the ship of a man named Adjan, a friend of my father’s, and he violated some taboo.” She stopped herself from making a disparaging remark about sailors’ superstitions in an inn full of sailors. “Adjan stepped in to save him, and when they landed in Uskhanda, Taleg entered Adjan’s service. And then, a little while later, he came into my father’s service.”
“Service as what?” Kest asked.
“A bodyguard and escort for me, actually,” Mandhi said with a grin of embarrassment. “My father was very old and had no sons, so I did a lot of traveling and business for him. Unusual work for a young woman, but with Taleg as my escort it worked out very well. Also—” she hesitated a moment, then decided that it would be better for her to tell everything— “he was my husband.”
Kest coughed into the bowl of rice beer he had raised to his lips. He set it down and stared at her with eyes wide. “He what?”
“He married me,” Mandhi
said quietly. “In secret, to stay out of my father’s disapproval. But after so much time spent together on the road, I knew that he was kind and brave and good. The marriage was my idea. Not that he fought it, of course.” She smiled coyly.
The boy muttered something in Kaleksha which Mandhi assumed was a curse. “He had a wife,” he repeated quietly. “But you,” he began, gesturing to her clothes and the cut of her hair. “Aren’t you one of those who don’t worship the Powers? I forget what you call yourselves—”
“We are Uluriya, if that’s what you mean.”
“So how could you marry a Kaleksha man? Your kind keeps to your own.”
“Taleg converted. It was a condition of his employment with my father, who was also Uluriya.”
Kest swore again in Kaleksha and fell silent. He rested his head in his hands and didn’t look up for an uncomfortably long time. Aryaji looked at Mandhi with an expression of alarm and mouthed, “What should we do?”
At that moment Kest began to speak again. “So where is he now? Is he here in Davrakhanda? Did he send you because he is ashamed to see his friends and family again?”
“Actually,” Mandhi said, carefully covering the quiver in her voice, “he is dead.”
“Oh.” Kest did not look up. When he spoke again his voice was heavy and cracking. “How did he die?”
“Bravely,” Mandhi said. She considered how to relate the story without further burdening the boy with unwanted revelations. “We were in Majasravi. The Red Men had captured my brother unjustly, and Taleg and I were working to release him. But when we went to the place where my brother was supposed to be, there was an altercation. The Red Men attacked us. Taleg died so that my brother and I could escape.”
Kest looked up, his eyes bleary with tears. His pale skin made the redness of his eyes fiery and urgent. “He was always loyal and always brave. So he died for his wife and his brother-in-law?”
“Yes.”
The boy sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “I can bring a good report back to my mother in Kalignas, at least.”
