Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “No, madam,” he says, his eyes on the boy. “Your son isn’t willing. And you cannot go in with him.”

  When she argues, he slams the lathi onto the ground, shooting purple sparks into the air. “There are no compromises here, madam! This is Ambarvadi, not Havanpur. As keeper of the flesh market, I am bound to its rules. The very first rule is: Humans selling themselves must be of age or older. Your son is not sixteen years old. He is also unwilling, which contradicts the second rule: Humans selling themselves must do so of their own volition.”

  The smell of pearl millet, spices, and ghee rises from the bundle in my hands, a stack of the bajra roti I’d stolen from the pantry last night. Under the food, there’s a brief, reassuring click. The familiar grooves of the seaglass daggers, their engraved hilts growing warm under my touch.

  Around me, people are slowly filtering in: stallkeepers, assistants, a few early shoppers grumbling about the rise in safflower prices. A farmer steps out from the entrance to the flesh market, holding a camel by a heavily tasseled bridle. A boy of perhaps eighteen years trails behind him, his eyes lowered to the ground, familiar blue bands of light glowing on his wrists and ankles.

  Shackling. At least I’ve enough practice with that.

  I trudge toward the entrance, but my jootis still cover the distance more rapidly than I expect. Steps away from the banner and the colorful flags surrounding the makeshift entrance, I allow the part of the sari covering my face to fall down. The guard at the entrance watches me carefully. My tongue feels gritty, as if coated with sand. In the background, a shout rises, and for a second, I think I’ve heard my name.

  “Gulab! Chameli! Rajnigandha!” a woman cries out. “Fresh flowers for sale!”

  I don’t look back.

  * * *

  The first thing I see as I step across the threshold of the flesh market is a giant elephant in chains. What’s most striking about it is not that it’s an elephant—I’ve seen a few of those already in Ambar—but the length of its tusks, which are nearly twice as long as a normal elephant’s, and that it’s covered entirely, from head to hooves, in thick brown fur. It also looks exhausted: bent at the knees, head resting on the ground, barely an eye opening when a small man prods it with a whip.

  “Up! Up, filthy beast!”

  Another sharp prod and the elephant cries out—a horrible rumbling sound that vibrates through me, even though the man seems to feel nothing. I try to whisper to it the way I do to Agni and other animals, but its pain is so intense that the first mental touch scalds, makes me leap back as if I’ve been burned.

  Furious, I can’t help but march up to the man and tell him to stop. “Can’t you see the elephant is in agony?”

  “This is no elephant, stupid girl,” the man says, spraying me with spittle. “This is a mammoth from Prithvi. Nearly gored my whisperer to death when we first let it out of its cage. Bloody beast cost me a fortune! And that was without the cost to bring it here!”

  “It needs to be cold,” I point out angrily. “Don’t you have ice or something?”

  “Ice! Ice, she tells me!” The man roars with laughter. Our argument must have captured the attention of a few other traders in the flesh market, because they, too, join in with laughs of their own.

  “You’d need a block the size of Barkha Hill to cool that beast down,” someone else shouts.

  “Go home to your mother, girl! This place is not for you!”

  The mammoth’s eyelid flickers, its long lashes coated with red dust. Cold, I think. I need it to be cold. Spying a bucket of water nearby, I douse the edge of my sari’s pallu into it, soaking the cloth. When the man’s back is turned, I sneak closer to the mammoth, pressing the wet cloth to its furry face, right under its eyes. The water may not be much, but it’s the best I have right now.

  Another rumble escapes, but this one sounds more relieved.

  Are you feeling better? I ask the mammoth.

  A single-worded reply: Yes.

  Whenever I whisper to animals, each one makes a distinct sound of its own. While Agni’s voice is whip-smart and snappy, the mammoth’s voice is deep, almost fatherly in its gruffness.

  “Ayy! Girl!” A whip snaps against my ankle, stinging it. “Get away from there unless you want me to sell you with the beast!”

  I dodge the other hit and run, my heart heavy with regret. The man’s comment also reminds me of why I’m here.

  I force myself to look elsewhere, to ignore the other animals in chains, until I see it in the far corner of the market—the stage where humans put themselves up for auction. The auctioneers, a middle-aged man and woman, sharply assess each candidate, dismissing cases where they suspect foul play or lack of consent. I wonder if anyone ever considered the consent of these captured animals.

  A prickling sensation at the back of my neck gives me pause. I turn, expecting to see the mammoth’s horrible owner, perhaps even a thanedar. There is no one. Nothing, except a sinking feeling that I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

  16

  GUL

  “Name?” The male auctioneer looks up to assess me.

  “Siya.” I pick a name commonly found throughout Ambar—a name that will likely be forgotten.

  “Parents’ names?”

  “I’m an orphan.”

  “Age?”

  “Sixteen years today.”

  He holds out a yellowing scroll so old that I’m afraid it will fall to pieces at a single touch. “Hold the scroll for a moment.”

  I do—and it turns green in my hands. He nods and takes it away.

  “The scroll tells me you are of age, which is why you must listen to what I say carefully. If you are sold today, you will have to sign a contract. Indenture contracts are magical in nature and can bind you to another person for ten years or more. Do you understand this? This is not a joke or something to do because your friends dared you.”

  I swallow hard. “I understand.”

  “You have a village girl’s accent, but you look healthy and well cared for. Why are you selling yourself today?”

  “I lost my position in my mistress’s household last week. This was the only way to get work at the palace.”

  “How did you lose your position?”

  “The master died, and they needed to cut expenses. Half the staff was let go.”

  The story is perfect—so perfect that I expect the auctioneer to challenge it, to find that single thread that will unravel everything and have me tossed out.

  “Hurry, Ghayur!” the female auctioneer shouts from the stage area. “We need to begin soon!”

  The auctioneer shakes his head and waves a hand in the air. A strip of gold cloth appears.

  “Tie this around your wrist. You will wait with the others in the back. When we call your name, you will come out on stage. Understand?”

  I nod. I follow a trail of people to the back of the stage; they have gold ribbons tied around their wrists as well. The female auctioneer’s thick white bangles click together as she checks over the humans they expect to fetch the most coin: A farmer, built like an ox, muscles bulging like the man on King Lohar’s emblem; a wispy young woman with stringy hair, shooting butterflies from her fingertips; and at the very end, a man of unearthly beauty, his skin golden in the sun, his yellow eyes missing nothing.

  “You will go first,” the auctioneer tells them. “We will take you out as a lot.” She then glances at me and two others—a dark-haired girl of my age, wearing a red ghagra and choli, and an elderly man—and grimaces. “The rest of you will be called at the end, one by one.”

  “I thought they always saved the best for last at these things,” the girl in the red ghagra says out loud, commenting to no one in particular.

  “Human auctions don’t work that way—especially not when Ambar Fort is buying,” the old man says quietly. “The palace buyers don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  My throat tightens.

  “What about the rest of us?” The girl sounds as ten
se as I feel. “Aren’t we being sold into the palace, too?”

  “Perhaps. The stables, the laundry, and granaries in the Walled City also require workers.”

  “I didn’t leave my position in Ambarvadi to work in the Walled City,” the girl mutters under her breath. She turns to me and asks: “What’s your story?”

  I repeat exactly what I said to the auctioneer named Ghayur.

  “You were with Shalini Bai, weren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, the girl continues talking. “Such a kind woman. And what a tragedy! One day her mate was alive, and the next day dead without a word. Everyone in the neighborhood was so devastated.”

  “Oh, yes!” When I see her staring, I hastily draw my expression into one of sorrow. “It was terrible.”

  Then, after a pause, I risk a question of my own: “Why wouldn’t you want to work in the Walled City? It surrounds Ambar Fort, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s not Ambar Fort or the palace itself, is it?” the girl says. “You’ll be lucky if you even see a royal in the Walled City, let alone get to serve one.”

  “So you can’t get into Ambar Fort if you live in the city?” I ask, feigning innocence. Pretending to be naive has often served me well in such instances, and today is no different.

  “Of course not!” the girl responds imperiously. “You need a special badge, which is checked by the guards. I hear they’ve added more security measures recently—the servants’ old badges and turban pins were replaced with new ones.”

  I nod, digesting the information. I hadn’t heard about the new security measures—but then I hadn’t had the chance to sneak into the city for the past two months. A moment later, cheers erupt behind the stage, the sound vibrating in my chest.

  The yellow-eyed man watches us expressionlessly. Next to him, the farmer fidgets with something in his hands—a toy? I wonder, before his eyes connect with mine and he tucks it back into a pocket of his tunic. A moment later, the male auctioneer returns for a final look at us. Except for the old man, the men are asked to remove their tunics—“for inspection purposes,” Ghayur says.

  “Are they going to ask us to…” The girl’s voice trails off nervously, and I don’t blame her. Are they really going to make us strip for the crowd?

  But Ghayur simply asks us to uncover our faces and hair and to stand straight while facing the crowd.

  “Show them you are strong, and perhaps you’ll find a good owner,” he tells us.

  Then, Ghayur marches out on stage, pressing his fingers to his throat. His voice reaches us in the back, magically amplified.

  “From the edge of the desert, the desert,” he chants.

  “The desert, the desert!” The crowd—obviously no stranger to this—repeats the final refrain, their sounds vibrating down the wood, into my body.

  “From the humblest village, oh, village!”

  “Village! Oh, village!” the crowd shouts.

  “From cities brighter than the sun and the moons!”

  The crowd’s chants turn into hooting and clapping.

  “You’d think we were at a celebration, not an auction,” the girl in the red ghagra comments, and I can’t help but agree.

  “Some bring magic with them, some skills beyond your imagination!” Ghayur shouts. “First: a farmer from Sur, a woman who magicks everything out of nothing, and a peri with a voice that can put even the rowdiest children to sleep—in a single lot!”

  I stare at the gold-skinned man, who is the last to walk out. Not a man, but a Pashu. A peri, without the wings always depicted on their backs in paintings and scrolls. Now, with his back turned, I finally see them—or what’s left of them—a mass of thick scars and bony ridges protruding from his shoulder blades and the sides of his spine, ending a handspan above his plain white dhoti.

  “Clipping a peri’s wings is the worst thing you can do to them,” my father told me. “It affects their magic, their music. It’s an unforgivable crime.”

  It was a crime that the king committed without conscience after the Battle of the Desert, a crime that magi continue to commit to this day. I cannot tell if the clipping affects the peri’s music. Because when he’s asked to sing, the low, haunting notes of the morning raag fill the air, quieting even the rowdiest among the audience.

  The male auctioneer starts the opening bid: Four thousand swarnas per person.

  The howls that go through the crowd cover the gasp that leaves my mouth on hearing the number. Four thousand swarnas is more coin than what I ever imagine seeing in my lifetime—an amount that could have supported not only me but also my parents for several decades. My head begins to pound as Ghayur shouts out the bids that go up:

  “Four five! Five! Five five! Six! Oh, come now! Only six thousand swarnas for such fine flesh? Friends, can we not have a ten?”

  The price goes higher and higher, finally stopping at eight thousand swarnas apiece. The winning bid goes to an unnamed person, who the old man next to me says will likely be from the palace.

  “How do you know for sure?” I ask.

  “No one else has that much coin to spend at once.”

  It’s the last thing he says before he is called out to the stage, leaving me alone with the girl in the red ghagra.

  “Whatever is he capable of?” she mutters.

  The female auctioneer takes over now, binding the crowd with lavish praise for the old man’s skill: seeing, a form of magic that allows him to see living specters. I hear the crowd’s curious murmurs—“a half magus”—and feel a little fascinated myself. Only the half magi are capable of seeing living specters. Like whisperers, these days, seers are rare—with next to no magi and non-magi bindings taking place. Any half magi who do remain are probably as old as the man now being auctioned off.

  “Must be awful to see dead people everywhere,” the girl in red mutters. “More of a curse than a gift, I’d say.”

  I continue to listen to the rapidly escalating bids until the old man is sold for two thousand swarnas.

  The girl looks at me. “Well, then. Just you and me. Wonder if they’ll call us together. Serving girls go in pairs sometimes.”

  But they don’t. Perhaps they think they can make more if they bring us out one at a time, because the girl is called out next by name, leaving me alone in the back.

  The minute she goes out, though, I hear a few whistles and leering voices call out: “Look at us, too, girl! Show us your pretty face!”

  I close my eyes, bracing myself for my false name to be called, when someone grabs hold of my arm and claps a hand over my mouth to muffle the scream that emerges. I am about to use my teeth and elbows to do maximum damage when a voice hisses in my ear: “It’s me, Cavas! Don’t scream!”

  I don’t. I realize, with a shock, that I would have recognized his voice by its deepness, by the anger in it—even if he did not tell me his name. When I grow calm and he’s certain I will make no sound, he releases me, frown lines marring his broad forehead under his palace-issue turban.

  “Come with me! Quick!”

  Heart thumping against my rib cage, I follow him out of the backstage area, toward a part of the market that is deserted. There, he leans behind a now-shut-up sweets and ghee shop to catch his breath.

  “Have you lost your mind?” His voice is low, hard. “You’re going to sell yourself?”

  I am so shocked by his sudden appearance that for a long while I don’t answer, the female auctioneer’s voice and the crowd’s cheers a distant echo in the background.

  “So what if I am?” I finally say. “It’s not against the law!”

  “Do you even know what it means to be indentured?” The look he gives me makes me want to shrink. “To give up your freedom? They can do anything to you. Anything they like. No matter what the law says.”

  “So what?” My grip on the bundle containing my daggers tightens. “I’m not completely helpless. Why do you care what I do, anyway?”

  He opens his mouth as if to say something, then shakes his he
ad. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The words hang between us, making the fine hairs on my skin rise.

  “If I have any hope of getting into the palace, I need to go back there.” I point toward the auctioneer’s stage. “It’s not like I have a choice.”

  I see him register the words, his frown deepening. There’s a part of me that wonders for a brief moment if I should try to beg him for help again. But then I shake my head. It would be foolish to try—not after he rejected me so firmly the last time around.

  “… twenty-five hundred!” the auctioneer shouts. “Going once, twice…”

  “Shubhdivas,” I say curtly. I’m nearly halfway back to the stage when I hear Cavas shout a single word: “Wait!”

  Don’t, I tell myself, even when I hear him jogging to catch up with me. Keep walking to that stage, Gul.

  He blocks my way, forcing me to stop. “What if you do have a choice?”

  * * *

  We remain hidden until the auction ends—the girl in red going for three thousand swarnas to a minister’s household in the Walled City. For some reason, the name I gave Ghayur isn’t called out. I see Ghayur’s female companion look around before shaking her head.

  “Many people change their minds before the auction,” Cavas tells me, as if sensing the question. “But more than that, Ghayur and Shirin are good people. They don’t magically bind anyone to a contract before the auction itself.”

  “You know them?” I ask, surprised.

  “I’ve been coming to the market for the past four years,” he says. “Once my father fell ill, the stable master, Govind, started bringing me in to handle some of the more aggressive horses. This year, he let me come here on my own to bid on a spare horse for the palace.”

  He falls silent at that, which makes me ask: “Did you win the bid?”

  “No. A zamindar from Amirgarh outbid me today.” He speaks the words with an ease that suggests the truth—or a practiced lie. “It doesn’t really matter. If the king really wanted a horse, he wouldn’t have let Govind or me handle the sale.”