Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  He does not look at me, not even when Shayla decides to prick the underside of my chin with the tip of her weapon, drawing blood.

  “You’re right,” Shayla says. The atashban stops short of making a deeper wound and withdraws. “I do despise filth.” She points at her dusty boots. “Clean up, boy. Put that tongue to good use.”

  Bile rises to my throat. Forcing a non-magus to lick the dirt off magi shoes wasn’t an unusual punishment a few years before and during the Great War, even though it was banned by the king afterward. A ban, however, will not stop someone like Major Shayla from abusing her power with little or no consequence.

  “We don’t have time for your antics today, Major.” Tahmasp’s voice is harder than I’ve ever heard it.

  Shayla stares at him and then laughs. “I’d forgotten how sympathetic you are to these abominations. Don’t be mistaken, General. These dirt lickers will do anything—even sell their own mothers—for a bit of coin.”

  I try not to flinch or express any outward sign of relief under her gaze, which still assesses my body as if it were a slab of cut meat at the bazaar.

  “Get back to work,” Tahmasp says, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or to Shayla.

  I bow again, careful not to show either of them my back. As I rise again, I see it: the flash of concern in the general’s eyes when he looks at me, the slight stiffening of his mouth before he turns around, joining his long stride with Shayla’s.

  I wait for several long moments after they leave, partly shaken by the encounter, partly relieved at the prospect of finally providing Latif with the information he needs. Ignoring the thin trail of blood seeping down my neck, I reach into my pocket again and rub my thumb hard against the green swarna before whispering Latif’s name.

  A moment later, grass erupts from the ground surrounding my feet, long and green, growing so fast that it’s already up to my shoulders in a few seconds. This is the sort of magic Latif performs whenever he feels we need a shield from prying eyes—or if he feels like showing off. I never get tired of watching the grass, can never stop the growing sense of claustrophobia it causes whenever it surrounds me.

  “What news, boy?” Latif’s voice is a thousand whispers scraping my inner ears, his gray face growing disembodied from the leaves.

  “The Spider is here,” I tell him quietly. “With the Scorpion.”

  Memories rush in: the snake in the grass, stepping in to save the general. Only now, I’ve become the snake.

  Have you, really? the voice in my head asks. It’s not like General Tahmasp is anything to you. He has done nothing for you except offer a single moment of kindness and then chosen to ignore your existence.

  Even now, had it not been for his own aversion to being touched by a non-magus, he would have let Major Shayla have her way with me, would have simply watched as I licked the dirt off her boot. “The Spider’s horse has been to the Desert of Dreams. And the Scorpion does not know,” I say.

  “Interesting,” Latif says. “Really interesting. Do you remember what I told you last? At the moon festival?”

  “Remember the girl you saw.” I repeat Latif’s words.

  “And do you remember her?”

  “Gold eyes. Brown skin. Black hair worn in a braid. Skinny. Short.” I am careful to keep my voice detached and aloof, even though I haven’t been able to forget the thief. Even now I can picture her with an annoying ease.

  But Latif’s words also make me wary. The only other time he asked me to remember someone like this was around the same time last year. A boy—General Tahmasp’s personal servant—turned up suspiciously dead in the Walled City, his broken body found lying a few feet outside the Sky Warrior barracks.

  As irritated as I was with myself for stupidly rushing to the thief’s rescue at the moon festival, something within me tightens at the thought of her ending up like that boy, the sparkle faded from her eyes.

  “Good,” Latif says. “Make sure you don’t forget.”

  “Why? What does she have to do with you? Or me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Latif tells me before disappearing again, the sort of answer that doesn’t bode well for me—or for the girl. I close my eyes and whisper a prayer to Sant Javer. Keep her out of trouble. I don’t ask myself why I didn’t make a simpler wish to keep my own misfortune at bay: one that would involve my never having to see her again.

  7

  CAVAS

  When Govind finally lets me go, the sun has sunk into the hills beyond Javeribad. Sunheri is still full but ashy against the sky, stark and lonely without Neel.

  “Follow Sunheri,” Papa told me when I was a young boy. “Follow Sunheri and you will never get lost.”

  Built on Barkha Hill, Ambar Fort can be a maze of buildings to anyone who doesn’t know it well. After a princess got lost wandering many years ago, her mother had palace workers discreetly engrave Sunheri’s moon in its various phases across the wall bordering the complex. The trail leads to the Moon Door, the palace’s rear gate, where two full moons are engraved right next to each other, atop a towering cusped arch. The Moon Door directly faces a window into Rani Mahal’s kitchen—which, some say, was one of the princess’s favorite haunts.

  I follow the engraved Sunheri now, but in waxing order, around the perimeter of the wall, out of the Moon Door, and into the Walled City—a fortified area that surrounds the palace. Built on a steep incline, with stairs connecting the various havelis and ministry offices, the Walled City is where the higher-ranking royal servants like Govind live, along with the king’s ministers, courtiers, and Sky Warriors.

  Palace servants hurry up the steps past me, carrying various items—baskets of laundered clothes, pots of cosmetics, bushels of safflower and millet—sweat pouring down their foreheads and darkening the armpits of their clothes. No one takes notice of me. The workers in the Walled City are far too busy, constantly at the royal family’s beck and call.

  The stairs eventually taper to a smooth road, which ends in a giant outer gate leading to the city of Ambarvadi, a couple of miles away. The guards at the outer gate check everyone who comes into the Walled City by verifying the badges on their saris or the pins on their turbans. They also keep an equally careful eye on who goes out, nodding at me curtly as I walk out the gates. I avoid the temptation to glance up at the watchtower, where a Sky Warrior always stands guard, atashban in hand. Though this doesn’t happen often, there have been a few cases where a bystander stood gaping at the watchtower for too long and was shot at—as a warning. Don’t act suspicious, I remind myself. Don’t draw their attention in any way.

  The knot above my stomach does not loosen until I’m well away from the gate. Instead of heading down the darkened path that leads to the city of Ambarvadi, I turn left, making my way down another smaller path, paved by footprints instead of the city’s road builders.

  Here, there are no lightorbs, nor is there any of the magic that envelops the palace like a shroud. The air grows thick, smells strongly of tar. Sunheri glows faintly over the gravel and dust, illuminating the path to a cluster of small houses and buildings that form the west end of the tenements.

  During the day, smoke from the mines lingers perpetually over the area in a brown haze. It’s only during the nights, when the mines shut down, that the homes—and the people living in them—grow visible again. Lanterns hang from poles along the path, moths dancing around the yellow flames. A man plucks an ektara’s single string outside a dilapidated haveli, his rich baritone rising in the air without blending into the evening din. Soon enough, a group of enthralled children are drawn in to listen, followed by some weary adults. As tempted as I am to linger, I force myself to keep moving. Past mud-brick buildings patched up with sheets of wood and hammered metal. Past homes where old tent canvases serve as roofs against the rain and the sun. Thin flower garlands made of jasmine and marigold bracket the tops of many doors, some of them so well made that for a moment I forget they’re nothing more than temple discards sal
vaged from the waste pits.

  The smell of frying kachoris rises, scenting the air with sugar and grease. After a long day with only khichdi and honeyweed stew for sustenance, my mouth automatically begins to water. As if sensing my approach, a head pokes out from a kitchen window, white hair turning silver in the moonlight. A wrinkled face breaks into a wide, familiar grin. “Come here, boy! Have a kachori!”

  “Ruhani Kaki!” I feel the day’s invisible load roll off my shoulders and don’t even mind the slight burn of the piping hot pastry Ruhani Kaki pops into my mouth. Self-appointed aunt—or kaki—to everyone in the tenements, Ruhani is often said to be over a hundred years old. People say that when she first arrived here, she looked exactly the way I see her now.

  “Here.” She hands me two large kachoris wrapped in a banana leaf. “Take these to your father.”

  “But, Kaki—”

  “I’ve put some herbs into these.” Unlike many tenement dwellers whose eyes have grown milky with age, her pale-brown eyes are unclouded and far too sharp. “They will help with the night sweats.”

  I silently accept the package. Feeding Papa has become more and more difficult these days; he throws up most of the food I cook for him. Perhaps something more delicious might stir his appetite.

  “Tenement Fever is a curse,” Ruhani Kaki says, sensing my thoughts. “The air itself is riddled with disease. But he’s a strong man, and you’re a good son. You take care of him.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “I try.”

  There are times I wonder if she knows how Papa has survived for so long. If anyone has guessed what I’m doing to keep him alive. If she does, Ruhani Kaki says nothing, her face suddenly breaking into a smile again.

  “Tell him that if he complains, he’ll have me to contend with,” she says. “No one insults my cooking!”

  I feel my lips curve into a smile. “I will. Shubhraat, Kaki.”

  She waves in return—both good night and dismissal—and turns back to her stove.

  Mouth still savoring the sweet pastry, I nearly forget where I am until I pass another building—the one Bahar’s family lives in. Since Bahar’s arrest by the thanedars, her parents have avoided me completely, and today is no exception. Perched on the steps leading into the building, Bahar’s mother looks right through me, her eyes dull, listless. Bahar’s father, who was recently elected to the tenements’ governing council, pretends I don’t exist. Leaning against the lathi that marks his elevated status, he talks loudly to a neighbor about the new identification pins and badges the palace issued its workers last month.

  “… one of the sweeper’s boys forgot his turban pin at home and was beaten to a pulp by the guards at the Walled City entrance!” Bahar’s father spits on the ground. “If he’d had the coin, he could’ve just paid them off and entered the place. Poor boy! Thank Sant Javer they didn’t split him to pieces.”

  My own turban pin feels like an added weight to my head. The two men glance up as I pass by, both of them glaring at me.

  “You watch yourself,” Bahar’s father says suddenly after three years of silence. “You watch yourself closely, boy, or you’ll face the same.”

  I do not reply. For the longest time, I wondered if Bahar’s parents blamed me for her arrest. Papa said back then that I was imagining things.

  “My daughter was innocent!” His voice grows loud, drawing more stares. “She had no magic in her. She hadn’t even talked to a magus! Not like his whore of a mother!”

  It’s been a while—several years—since someone has made such a reference to my mother directly in my presence. Death mollifies most people, and after my mother died, many chose not to speak of her and the past out of respect for Papa. Except when they thought I wasn’t listening. The damage was already done when I finally put meaning to the words people used for my mother—words Papa slapped me for uttering in his presence.

  “You know nothing about your mother or the sacrifices she made,” he said, neither accepting nor denying the accusations.

  No, I think bitterly now. I don’t know my mother. What I do know of her is from whispers and conjecture, from the malice of brokenhearted fathers. The shouting shakes Bahar’s mother from her stupor. She pulls her husband back in, leaving me standing there, surrounded by stares.

  * * *

  The tenements outside Ambarvadi are set up like a small town, with wards to the north, south, east, and west, each area populated with a fixed number of houses and buildings, which are little more than ruins of old havelis and temples.

  Even though the population of non-magi has doubled over the past couple of decades, the government has done nothing to increase the land allotted to us, ignoring every request and petition we’ve made. To accommodate the increased inhabitants, larger apartments are now divided with bedsheets and tarps to house two or more families. In some cases, whole other floors were added atop the roofs of existing buildings, the walls a patchwork of mud brick, corrugated metal, and old wood.

  Years before the Great War and King Lohar’s reign, Papa said, the tenements did not exist. The area that now forms the northern tenements consisted of houses inhabited by both magi and non-magi, of buildings that were an integral part of Ambarvadi itself. Queen Megha wasn’t the most egalitarian ruler, but during the earlier part of her reign, non-magi still had a voice and the ability to use it when they wished to challenge a royal edict. But as the queen grew older—and more unstable, some say—things began to change.

  Ministers, who envied higher-ranking non-magi for their positions at court and non-magi farmers for their prosperous land, began poisoning the old queen’s ears. They eventually convinced her to introduce a set of land taxes on non-magi for “occupying magical soil.” My people revolted—and in doing so, played right into the ministers’ hands. Non-magi were branded traitors, and people like Papa, who had trained to work at the Ministry of Treasure, were replaced with magi workers without explanation.

  The idea of the tenements came from a priestess in the queen’s council. She suggested housing us at a distance, ensuring the safety of the magical population from further rebellion, and integrating us back into society through hard, honest work. As for King Lohar—one of his first acts as the new ruler was to make the last remaining non-magus minister on his council lick the dirt off the ground, and then kill him without mercy.

  “Because we know how dangerous non-magi are to people with magic in their veins,” Papa liked to joke when I was younger and knew little better than to laugh at everything my father deemed funny. I hardly think Papa would find the things people say about Ma funny, either.

  But perhaps Papa knows more than he lets on. Even before he fell ill, my father hardly ever talked to the other tenement dwellers, except Ruhani Kaki, which earned him a reputation of being self-contained and aloof. After Bahar was taken away, I became much the same.

  People look at you only if you give them a reason to, I remind myself.

  So I do what I’ve always done when faced with unwanted attention. I lower my gaze and hunch my shoulders. I walk away, neither too fast, nor too slow. The farther I move from Bahar’s building, the fewer stares I draw. My muscles relax, my feet picking up the pace as I approach our house.

  “Papa!” I push open the door and step inside. “Papa, are you awake?”

  Formed from the ruins of an old haveli, our house itself is no bigger than a small room. The only light that spills in is from a latticed window near the ceiling. A few pots in the corner and an ashy woodpile function as our kitchen, the flat stone slab in front of it our dining area. A bucket in another corner to be taken outside for bathing and washing—when the only reservoir in the tenements doesn’t dry up or get defiled—and a pair of netted cots in another corner where Papa and I sleep.

  Only today my father is nowhere in sight.

  “Papa!” Panic raises my voice to a shout. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here, boy.”

  I turn to the sound of his voice and find him standin
g right behind me, hazel eyes alight with curiosity. “You were outside?”

  “A man has to relieve himself from time to time,” he says mildly and not without a touch of humor.

  My heart slowly returns to its normal pace. “I thought something happened. The last time I found you unconscious on the floor, remember?”

  The corner of Papa’s mouth turns up. “I’m not on the floor now, am I?”

  Yet, even as he says the words, his knees knock together, a spasm going through his limbs. I catch hold of him before he falls, ignoring the protests that emerge from his mouth, and guide him to his cot. For a thin, small man, Papa is still heavy, weighed down by his bones, even though the muscles he built working at the palace stables have long since wasted away. I pour out a cup of precious drinking water from the large clay pot and, from a small cloth bundle next to it, withdraw the last of the medicinal herbs I bought in Havanpur. Latif’s coins, hidden inside my tunic pocket, arrived in the nick of time.

  “I don’t know why you make me drink this. You’d be better off saving that coin to bind with a pretty girl.”

  “Papa, please.” I crush the mix gently between my fingers—black sleeprose stamens, dried champak flower petals, the wings of a fire beetle, bits of garlic, and the saints know what else—before adding it to the water.

  “Come now, Cavas. Are you telling me you’ve never had your eye on a girl?”

  I expect to feel my heart squeeze out of habit, for Bahar’s face to flash in my mind. Instead, I see someone else, her gold eyes startling me enough to reply with a snap.

  “No. Drink your medicine.”