Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1)

The trader’s eyes first went to the rubies on Mandhi’s fingers and the jade pentacle at her throat, then to the knot of hair resting against the nape of her neck. The order was important. It meant that he valued money over worship and would capitulate on those grounds. She raised her right hand to tuck a stray wisp of hair into the bun, flashing him the star-iron ring on her first finger. His eyes, small and quick as a mongoose’s, darted to the ring for a moment, brief enough that she would not have seen it if she wasn’t watching closely. It was enough.

“I am looking for a slave, Rishakka,” she said.

The trader drew his breath in sharply as if her words had wounded him. He pressed his hands together and bowed, his cap nearly touching the tea-tray in front of them. “My lady, I am honored that you chose to meet with me. But I do not know if I can provide you with a slave.”

“You cannot? Are you not a slave trader? Is that not a slave pen?” She gestured through the yellow cotton curtains of the window towards the courtyard walled in red mud-brick and striped with chains.

“May I pour you some more tea? No, I see your cup is full. The problem, my lady, is that my trade is solely with the merchants who run the markets, and there are contracts, you understand. Contracts which prohibit me from plying my trade with anyone else. I am pleased to entertain a woman of your station, but I tremble at the thought of the penalties the merchants will inflict on me should I transgress the bounds of our agreements.”

“But surely you can make an exception. For a price.”

“It would be a very great price. Perhaps you don’t understand.”

Mandhi took a sip of her tea. Bitter, though she liked it that way. More importantly, she learned he was eager to entertain her but too greedy to spare his cane syrup. This confirmed what she had inferred from the room’s decor: cushions of cotton rather than silk for guests, clay teacups on an unlacquered tray, a statue of Dhashi in a niche behind the table with miserly offerings of rice and flowers before it. Each of these things was enough to satisfy propriety, but not enough to indicate
wealth
. “I understand,” she said. “Now, you do take debt-slaves, don’t you? Not just mountain-folk.”

“Yes,” Rishakka said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“I’m looking for a very particular slave. A man you took as a debt slave from Chivakshi. His name is Navran.”

The man waved his hand in a tight circle next to his shoulder. “My lady, forgive me. I don’t recall the names of the slaves that pass through my pen. I try not to even learn them.”

“But you recall this.” She slipped the star-iron ring from her finger and set it on the tea-tray. The metal made a deep, low click against the wood. The trader’s breath caught in his throat, and his hand clenched briefly at something hidden beneath his kurta. A moment later his face had regained its obsequious smile, and he shook his head.

“What would a slave be doing with such a ring? Especially a debt slave. You could pay the debts of ten lifetimes with such a ring. No, no, my lady, if you’re looking for the slave who stole a ring from you—”

“So you’ve never seen a ring like this before?”

“Perhaps you overestimate the wealth which a trader such as me acquires.”

“Or perhaps he lost it before coming to you.” She slipped the ring back on to her finger and pursed her lips. “His name is Navran. Are you sure you never heard of him?”

“Never once, my lady.”

“Then I’ll have to continue my search elsewhere.” She rose from her cushion and bowed briefly to the trader, then turned towards the curtained arch through which she had entered. At the doorway she paused. “We have taken the largest chamber at the Uluriya guest-house a short way from here. I’m sure you know of it. Perhaps, if you hear anything about this Navran, you’ll send someone to let us know. You will be suitably compensated.”

An avaricious grin glimmered through the man’s mustache. “If I hear anything, I will run like lightning to tell you.”

“Very well. The stars upon your house.” She did not wait to hear the man’s stammered response.

In the shade before the entrance Taleg, Mandhi’s bodyguard and escort, sat hunched on a bench. Rishakka’s door guard sat opposite him, and a sacchu board balanced between them, the beads tapping erratically as the men made their moves with indifference. With a hefty shout Taleg clicked the last of his beads into place and clapped his hands together in victory. The guard grunted and swatted the board away. The beads clattered against the wall and scattered on the ground.

Taleg let out a rumble of victory and rose, laughing at the other man’s scowl. Once on his feet, Taleg stood a full head over the other man and looked down at him with congenial pity. “Better luck next time, eh?”

The guard spat and moved wordlessly to sulk next to the doorway, glaring at Taleg with naked hostility.

Mandhi tapped Taleg’s elbow. “We’re finished here.”

“Soon enough!” Taleg bellowed. “If I keep beating this chap at sacchu he’s going to test his spear on me.”

He let himself smile at her for a moment, then bent to pick up his stave. Mandhi glanced down to hide the rush of heat in her face. Taleg laughed, his ruddy mane shaking, and thumped the ground with his stave like a ram’s hoof. Then he pushed forward into the open street.

Mandhi kept herself a short pace behind him, though her legs churned the ground beneath her sari keeping up with Taleg’s stride. His girth and boldness plowed a path through the street, forcing aside farmers laden with baskets of grain and women with jars perched atop their heads. Beggars lined the streets, pleading for scraps of roti, and the chanting of dhorsha in the street-side shrines mingled with their cries to drown the area in babble. The air was thick with the smell of dung fires and sweat, smoke and sacrificial blood.

“Anything there?” Taleg asked once they were well away from the Rishakka’s residence. He spoke just loud enough for Mandhi to hear.

“Yes,” Mandhi said quietly. “Navran was there, and Rishakka has his ring. Not that he would admit to any of it.”

“But Navran’s not there now?”

“Not unless Rishakka’s hiding him, and I don’t think he has reason to. But we’ll ask him tonight.”

“Tonight? We’re going back?”

“He’s coming to us. I planted bait.”

“Eh.” Mandhi could not see Taleg’s face, but his voice creaked with concern. “That could be trouble.”

“Trouble? It’s a good thing that my escort is an enormous man of incredible courage, then.”

The half-circle of the moon pearled the curtains over the archway of the door. A bed covered with down-filled cushions embroidered in silk and sprinkled with spikenard reclined on the far side of the room, half-lit by a square of moonlight. A sleeping figure was draped in thin satin sheets on the bed, the moonlight drawing a white curve over the figure’s hip. The murmur of the night’s traffic pattered through the window with the smell of dung smoke and the town’s effluvium. Something scraped beneath the window.

Hands appeared on the window ledge, then the crown of a white cotton cap, then a face. The man pulled himself up with a stifled grunt and got his knee onto the ledge. He paused a moment to catch his breath. Then he swung his legs over and dropped to the floor with a patter like falling leaves. The sleeping figure did not stir.

Three silent strides brought the man to the bedside. His hand disappeared into the breast of his tunic then reappeared with a glittering knife. He crept to the head of the sleeping form and pressed the blade against its neck. He whispered. “Get up. Make no sound. Do not call for your guard.”

“Too bad he’s already awake,” the sleeping figure said. Taleg’s sinewy arm bolted from beneath the blanket and seized the thief by the wrist. With a flex of his legs he hurled himself off the mat.

Rishakka howled. There was a moment of struggle in which they were shades wrestling in the darkness, but it lasted no more than a breath. The knife clattered across the floor tiles. Then Taleg sat atop the trader, pinning Rishakka’s wrists to the ground with one hand, his other hand at the man’s throat.

“You can come out now, Mandhi,” he said.

Mandhi emerged from the darkness of the alcove leading to the servant’s chamber, where Taleg would have slept on an ordinary night. “Did he harm you?”

“He didn’t get the knife in me, no. And a little tumble in the night isn’t going to hurt me.”

Mandhi knelt next to the trader. “I’m a little surprised to see you here personally, Rishakka. I thought you might send a hired thug. You came to get my right?”

He shook his head vigorously.

“Loosen your grip on his throat,” Mandhi said. “I want to hear him talk.”

The man gasped as soon as Taleg’s fingers widened. A half a sob dribbled out of his lips. “What do you want from me?”

“First off, I want Navran’s ring.”

“I don’t have it.”

“You had it today. I saw you touch it under your shirt, and somehow I doubt you left it behind if you are too paranoid to leave it in your strongbox during the day.” She slipped her hand beneath the man’s kurta and found a purse bound by a leather thong to his belly. “Is there anything in here other than the ring?”

“It’s mine. A safe purse, I sleep with it, honest gold from trade. Nothing stolen.”

“I’m sure,” Taleg said.

Mandhi undid the knot in the leather and pulled out the square cotton purse. A fistful of yellow coins and a black ring clattered onto the floor. She picked up the ring and raised it to the moonlight.

“Is it the one?” Taleg asked.

A pentacle etched into the surface of the ring glinted in the silver light. Her mouth was dry for a moment, and a wave of elation and weariness washed over her. “It’s the one,” she whispered.

“I don’t know how a drunk slob like that man got such a thing,” Rishakka said. “I swear on Am’s thighs, I’ve never met a more dissolute and feckless debtor in all my life. If he had an inkling of what that ring is worth, he would have sold it ages ago. You’re lucky I took it from him, or else you’d never see it again.”

“And that’s why you were so keen to get my ring as well? As a token of our gratitude, I’ll let you keep the rest of the gold in your purse. Also, Taleg will not break your neck.”

“Can I at least break his fingers?” Taleg asked.

Mandhi smiled. “Let him answer one more question. Where is Navran now?”

“What? Why do you want to know? He was a worthless man, barely worth my trouble to capture him.”

“Taleg, break his—”

“No! I’ll tell you! I sold him north, in Virnas, as a rower. He’s probably festering in the belly of a trade-galley by now.”

“To whom? I want a name.”

“Bhila. But he doesn’t own the ships, he buys the slaves in bulk and sells them to the ships. I told you, I don’t work directly with buyers. If you’re looking for him you’ll have to find Bhila.”

Mandhi slipped the ring onto her right hand, where it fit snugly above the other one. She nodded at Taleg. He rose to his feet and nudged Rishakka away with his toe. “Get out.”

“You’re not calling the majakhadir’s militia?”

“I said get out,” Taleg rumbled, “before we lose our patience.”

The trader scrambled to his feet and began to shepherd the scattered coins into his purse with short, quavering breaths. He straightened and squinted at Mandhi, who was half-hidden in the moonlit darkness. “My lady, forgive me one question. What is your interest in Navran? A rich woman such as yourself can get better slaves than Navran.”

“That’s not for you to know,” Mandhi said. “This is your last chance to leave intact.”

Rishakka glanced towards the window, then at the door which would lead to the common room of the guest-house and to the front door. Mandhi and Taleg did not move. “As I came, then.” He went to the window, batted the curtains aside, and climbed down.

Taleg let out a sigh. “Well, we got it,” he said.

“We didn’t get
him
, though.” Mandhi rubbed the rings on her finger. “Bhila. One more name to chase.”

“We’re close. Very close.”

Mandhi moved to the window and glanced out. There was no sign of Rishakka. She closed the curtains tightly, casting the whole room into blue-tinted gloom. Then she went to the door of the servant’s chamber and pulled its curtain closed. They were alone. Her heart began to pound, and her breath became labored. Taleg was a black pillar in the center of the room.

She crossed to him and groped for his hand. His enormous pale fingers closed over hers, enveloping her small dark hand like a shell over a pearl. She laid her head on his chest. His heart sounded like monsoon thunder in her ears. “At least we’re going back to Virnas now.”

“It’s been four months.”

“It feels like a year.”

The thunder in his chest seemed to quicken. “Will you speak to your father?”

“You mean of more than Navran?” Her heartbeat stuttered. “Yes. And if Navran will wear the ring—”

Taleg bent down, the threads of his beard brushing against her forehead. She raised her face towards his, and their lips met. For a moment she forgot how to breathe.

“You said,” she whispered, “that a tumble in the night would not hurt you.”

He laughed, the noise breaking the silence like a stone in a pond. “When we get to Virnas. Not before.”

“And in Virnas we’ll do as we planned?”

He bent down and kissed her again, hard, one hand squeezing hers, the other pressed into the small of her back. “Yes. I promise.”