Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (4 page)

“Here,” Mandhi said. The ninth door on the left bearing the pentacle.

“Are you ready?” Taleg asked.

She brushed passed him and squeezed his hand. “I have been for a very long time.” She knocked on the door.

A middle-aged man in a shabby blue kurta answered, his lips parting into a sly smile as soon as he saw Mandhi. He bowed.

“The stars upon your house,” Mandhi said.

“They are,” the man said. “You must be the one that Srithi told me of. Come in. My house is pure, those who follow Ulaur may enter without fear.”

Mandhi and Taleg came inside, touching only the tips of their fingers to the water in the clay vessel by the door for ablution. Taleg crouched to get through the door and stood with his shoulders slouched and head down to avoid banging against the palm thatch of the ceiling. The house had but one room aside from the curtained bed-chamber in the rear. A woman and a small child sat at a low table, and the woman bowed her head to Mandhi briefly but said nothing.

“So, you need the services of a saghada,” the man said. He reached up to bring down one of the baskets hanging from the rafters. “My name is Ghauna. I serve the Uluriya families of this district, but I have never seen you before. Of course, that is the point, no?” He winked at her.

“I need you to perform a wedding,” Mandhi said. “It must be according to the law in every respect. But no one else can know.”

“I guessed as much,” Ghauna said. He removed an ivory brush, a jar of oil, and a silver-bound palm-leaf book from the basket. “And where is the groom?”

Mandhi pointed to Taleg.

The man made no effort to hide his surprise. His eyes grew wide, and he looked Taleg up and down from the crown of his ruddy head to his broad, sandaled feet. Taleg grew red, and Mandhi took his hand with defiant brazenness.

“I see why this is a secret,” the man said. He pointed to Taleg. “You cut your hair in our style, but do you truly belong to the Uluriya?”

“I do,” Taleg said.

“I have never heard of a Kaleksha who became an Uluriya. But don’t tell me about it. I agreed to do this, but I want to know as little as possible. Just tell me your names.”

“Taleg. And my wife will be Mandhi.”

A thrill of pride went through Mandhi at hearing the words. She stepped closer to him so their shoulders touched.

Ghauna opened the book and found the page he wanted. He pulled the lid off the jar of oil, and the smell of myrrh flooded the room. In a moment, his demeanor stiffened into total seriousness. He dipped his first finger into the oil and drew the pentacle on his own forehead and the palm of his left hand. “In the name of Ulaur, who formed the stars and cast them to the earth, who makes the seven-winged amashi his servants, who gave the iron of heaven to Manjur his chosen, whose Heir we remember forever.” He anointed Mandhi and Taleg with a pentacle on their foreheads, then said, “Join hands. This will not take long.”

True to his word, the man performed the ceremony quickly but exactly. When it ended, the pleats of their hair were braided together, and the hands they clasped together were fragrant with oil. The man read the last lines of the rite, then carefully folded the book shut. Mandhi gasped for air as if she had not breathed in an hour. Her heart thudded in her chest.

“Now,” Ghauna said. “Unbraid your hair so that no one sees it when you return. And don’t touch each other until you’re far away from here. I don’t want the least bit of trouble coming back to me for this. Now, does one of you have something for me?”

Mandhi tossed the pouch of coins onto the table. The man emptied it into his palm, nodded once, then slipped them into the pocket of his tunic. “The stars upon your house. Go.”

Taleg ducked out the low door, and Mandhi followed. Without hesitation, he took up his usual, swift, fearless gait through the city. Mandhi followed a pace behind him. It seemed like a mile stood between them. How had she stood so close to him for so long? Her hands were shaking, and her tongue was dry. The smell of myrrh covered both of them. If anyone met them they would know that something was afoot. She hadn’t thought to bribe the doorkeeper at Veshta’s estate. But no, perhaps a bribe would raise more suspicion. They would enter quickly, go through their respective entrances, and then—

When they reached the estate, the doorkeeper merely nodded at them before opening the door of the outer chamber. When they were alone, Mandhi took Taleg’s hand and whispered, “Go through the men’s chamber, then to your room. I will go to my bed-chamber and ensure that all is safe. Then you can come to me.”

Taleg nodded. A thin smile wanted to escape his lips, but he seemed to try to hold it back. Without a word, he disappeared through the curtain.

Don’t run
. Oh, she wanted to run. Instead, she washed her hands and feet in the ablution chamber and walked up the stairs to her room with quiet, measured steps. Srithi’s chamber was next to hers, but when she peeked through the curtain she saw Srithi’s silhouette in the bed and heard her quiet breathing. Her own room was dark, lit only by the slivers of moonlight leaking in from the window over the courtyard. She slipped inside the curtain and parted it to watch his approach.

No one moved for several long minutes. Then, with steps as silent as a tree planting its roots, Taleg appeared through the shadow. Mandhi let the curtain fall and retreated into the darkness of her room.

Taleg entered. “Mandhi,” he whispered.

Mandhi stepped forward and found his hand. His fingers closed over hers, and he raised her knuckles to his lips for a kiss. His other hand clutched her waist and pulled her to him.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

She took his hand and put it on her breast. “Do you feel how hard my heart beats?” It was hammering as if to break itself against her ribs.

“Yes.”

“That isn’t fear. It’s joy.”

She slipped her hands underneath his dhoti. His skin was warm, his flesh firm and smooth. He pulled aside the folds of her sari. The silk fell away in ruffles at her feet. His hands encircled her waist. He lifted her feet off the ground, bringing her up into his chest. She threw her arms around his neck, leaned in, inhaling the smell of sweat of his chest, the cumin on his breath, the myrrh on his forehead.

They kissed, hard, lips and tongues mingling and releasing all the frustration and impatience they had built up over the last year. His hands flowed from her waist to her thighs and rose to cup her breasts. And they fell into her bed.

Taleg stirred in her bed. His breath warmed Mandhi’s cheek. Her hand rose to find his cheek. He withdrew his arm from where it rested across her stomach, kissed her forehead, and sat up.

“It’s nearly dawn. I have to go.”

Mandhi rolled over and rested her head for a moment against his thigh. She rubbed his calf and reached down to his toes. “So go already.”

A laugh rumbled in his chest. “Good to hear you won’t be missing me.”

She leapt up, grabbed his beard, and pulled his face down for a long kiss. “Were you expecting something else?” she said. “Today is the offering in the Ruin, and you have to purify yourself before you go. Just make sure you come again as soon as possible.”

Groaning, he rose to his feet and pulled on his loose cotton pants. “Tonight. Every night, if I can make it.”

“Eventually you’ll get tired of me.”

“I doubt that.” He bent down, grabbed her beneath her arms, and pulled her into the air, where she slid down onto his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and buried her in kisses.

Several minutes later she caught her breath. “You
were
leaving,” she said. “If you’re here when Cauratha wakes up….”

“I know.” He lowered her back into the bed and turned toward the opaque curtain over her door. “Once I go through that curtain, I’ll be your escort and sometime friend. You understand that, right?”

“Yes.” She had lived with that arrangement for years. She could live with it another day.

He nodded. With a heavy sigh, he parted the curtain and left.

Immediately a curse sounded in the hallway, and a voice other than Taleg’s responded. Mandhi’s stomach twisted. She wrapped the sheets of the bed around herself and bolted to the door, throwing the curtain aside to see a red-faced Taleg standing over the sulking form of Navran in the dim narrow hallway.

Navran.
At least it wasn’t Srithi or Cauratha or someone that she cared about. “What in the world are you doing here at this hour of the morning?” she hissed.

Navran glanced from the half-clothed Taleg to Mandhi’s improvised covering and gave half a nod, without any change in expression. “I was awake.”

“Were you spying on us?”

“No.”

“I swear, if you’re lying I’ll have Taleg throw you over the railing.”

“Mandhi, that’s not necessary,” Taleg said. “He was only out for a walk. Dumb luck that he happened to be passing your room when… when I left.”

“Aren’t normal people asleep at this hour?”

Navran shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Is
that
all you can say? By light and blood, if you tell anyone—”

Navran’s face hardened into a grimace. “I don’t care what you and your manservant do at night. Leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone.”

“My name is Taleg,” Taleg said. “And I’m not exactly her manservant.”

“So I see.”

“What I mean is—oh, never mind. You’ll figure it out later.” He looked at Mandhi with an expression of cautious optimism. “But now that he knows, maybe he can help. It would not hurt to have a co-conspirator.”

“I prefer one that I can trust.” A vagrant like Navran would sell her out at the first opportunity. At least his taciturn nature might delay their doom for a while. She waved him away. “Get out of here. Don’t say anything.”

Taleg lingered for a moment as Navran continued a slow, aimless walk down the passage, past Srithi’s chamber and deeper into the estate. “That could have gone better,” he said.

Mandhi ran her fingers down Taleg’s back. “We have to be more careful.”

“I agree.” He stepped away. “And that includes not touching where people can see us, even if we think no one’s there.”

“I agree.” She looked into his eyes and suppressed the surge of heat in her belly, the urge to drag him naked back into her chamber. Instead, she wiped the nascent tears from her eyes and returned to her chamber alone.

Mandhi’s candle lit only the two stone steps below her as she descended into the Ruin. Above her the soot-blackened vault of the stair swallowed light, and ahead the lamp’s feeble beams died in the darkness of the tunnel. The desiccated air of the catacomb rose to meet her, biting at the flame. Her hand cupped cautiously over the lamp to keep it alive. The folds of her sari brushed against the stones of the narrow passage, and her breath echoed off the lime-encrusted walls. Leather hinges muttered far above her as the next worshipper entered the passage and descended. She pulled her pansha closer around her and hurried.

At the bottom of the stairs she entered a wide, low passage roofed by a sagging ceiling of brick. Here and there wooden props had been added to support the ailing masonry, though some of the props themselves were now nearly as old as the Ruin. To her left and right, passages trickled away into darkness or had collapsed under the weight of a millennium of stone. One of the passages led out of the city, she had heard, a secret exit used sometimes by Heirs to escape the city when necessary. The distant glitter of candles like yellow stars marked her destination. She walked past niches full of bones on her way to join the constellation. These were the graves of the Heirs of Manjur, preserved in this buried remnant of the ancient royal temple. Ahead of her lay the grave of Manjur himself.

The heavy scent of incense mingled with the dust, and the voices of those at the end of the passage rippled incoherently off of the walls. Beneath the incense grew the iron smell of old, dried blood. A lamb bleated.

She reached the candle-lit circle and joined a small crowd to watch the holy men at work. Her father was there, assisted by two other saghada. The drone of their mantras echoed off the bricks and made the cramped passage into a prayerful tumult. Too weak to perform the sacrifices himself, Cauratha leaned on a cane and repeated the mantras while the other saghada sprinkled water and salt on the pair of clueless lambs. Their ears and tails twitched randomly.

And Taleg was there. She pretended not to notice him, as if his presence had no special significance to her. He had probably helped her father descend to the site of the sacrifice and so had been present since the beginning. Going into the Ruin was the farthest he ever got from his bed these days. Taleg nodded at her, the smallest plausible acknowledgement of her presence. She nodded back and took her place on the other side of the passage from him. Above her stretched the warped and chipped image of Manjur, painted in centuries past on the inner surface of the vault to sanctify the Ruin.

Behind them, other lights approached like falling stars, casting haloes on the walls and ceilings of the passage as they neared. These were the Uluriya of Virnas who knew that the entrance to the Ruin was in Veshta’s estate, who came to worship in this last remnant of the kingdom. Srithi was among the last to come. She slipped through the worshippers and sidled up next to Mandhi with a grin and squeezed her hand. Behind her came Navran, his face betraying only the slightest hint of surprise at the existence of the Ruin. Veshta was the last.

Srithi cupped her hands over Mandhi’s ear. “You haven’t told me your secret, yet,” she whispered.

The echoes of the mantras intensified. Blessing them with the pentacle, Cauratha motioned for the two saghada to take hold of the sacrifices. Mandhi leaned in to Srithi. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

“No one can hear us.”

This was true. The mantras were loud and the vault echoed, and if she whispered with Srithi she took no chance of being overheard. And Srithi could hardly make a scene here, which was a considerable advantage. So she said, “I’m married now.”

Srithi’s eyes bulged. She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head. “Are you serious? To whom?”

The mantras stopped abruptly at the moment of sacrifice. The first of the lambs bleated once. The saghada’s knife cut through his throat. The stench of hot, wet blood filled the crowded catacomb.

“Taleg,” Mandhi said when the mantras resumed.

“What?”

“Did you hear me? I am married to Taleg.”

“
What?
Mandhi, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m completely serious.”

“Why would you do something like that? Does your father know?”

“If my father knew, would I need to sneak out at night and seek a trustworthy saghada to marry me? And what did you think the saghada was for?”

Srithi put her hands on her face and gaped at Mandhi. Mandhi shrugged and looked back towards the front. The first lamb had been quartered, and the saghada took its entrails and placed them atop Manjur’s grave. A clay bowl with the animal’s blood sat at Cauratha’s feet. He bent and added another stick of incense to the brazier, sending up a billow of white smoke that dissipated into a haze. The sultry cinnamon smell of the incense swallowed the odor of blood.

“Are you mad?” Srithi’s voice tickled Mandhi’s ear.

“No, Srithi. I know what I’m doing.”

Srithi shook her head. “Do you? I thought you were a practical woman. Not the sort of person who consummates a love marriage in the night. When did you decide to do this?”

“When we were away. We traveled together for nearly two years, with only a few returns to the estate. We were alone for much of it. Is this really so surprising?”

“For you? Yes.” Srithi’s mouth was pressed into a hard, stiff line, her eyebrows knotted. “You should have told me.”

“So that you could convince me otherwise?”

“Of course.”

The mantras stopped again. The second lamb made no sound as the saghada cut his throat. The blood dribbled into the clay bowl with an insistent tapping. Cauratha took a little ladle of blood and dripped it into a cup of water, then raised the cup to his lips. When he and the other saghada had all tasted the sacred blood and water, they began to drone the final prayer of consecration.

“Listen,” Mandhi said. “If Taleg should come to my chamber….”

Srithi rolled her eyes. “I should let you two continue in your folly.”

“Navran already knows.” Perhaps Srithi would bear it better if she wasn’t the only one burdened with protecting them.

“I thought you didn’t like Navran.”

“I don’t. But he found Taleg as he was leaving my room last right. There was no way around it.”

“And how long do you think it will be before everyone knows?”

“Please, Srithi.”

Srithi stuck her lip out in a pout. “Until now, I never once thought you were a fool, Mandhi.”

She pointed suddenly to the front of the chamber. The two assisting saghada raised their clay bowls of blood while Cauratha hobbled to the position between them. Mandhi stiffened. This was the one moment to which she must pay attention. She pulled the gauzy white pansha over her head and checked that no part of the sari’s fabric was exposed where it was likely to be splattered with blood.

Bowing once to each of the other saghada, Cauratha dipped a bundle of rice stalks into the blood. Then he turned and faced the gathered Uluriya and chanted with a loud, clear voice: “One is the king and lord of all the Powers, Ulaur enthroned in the heavens, and this is the offering which is pleasing to him. We curse the faithless Powers, and we curse those who offer their dhaur to them. But you who are clean, be cleansed; you who are pure, be purified; you who are true remain true to the Heir of Manjur until the day when Ulaur restores the kingdom to him.” And with a gesture of sudden agility he splattered the first row with the blood-soaked stalks of rice.

Warm beads of blood battered Mandhi’s face. She knelt and lowered her face to the ground, and the next row was blessed, and so on until all the gathered were blood-stained and clean. The saghada began to drone the final prayer of the rite, and Mandhi rose to her feet. Taleg raised the wicker basket which held the quartered kids to his shoulder and processed out of the candle-lit chamber with Cauratha and the saghada following. He glanced for just a moment at Mandhi, and could not help but smile. Mandhi hid her red face behind her hands. Behind her, Srithi tisked.

In the bright central courtyard of the estate, the Uluriya gathered around the central pool and rinsed the blood from their faces and panshas. Mandhi slipped in next to a middle-aged woman in shabby clothing and washed in silence, putting a little distance between herself and Srithi. Taleg carried the butchered meat to the kitchen for the feast. She would not see him for a few hours, perhaps. And then, it would be public.

Tonight, perhaps, she would
see
him.

The woman next to Mandhi plunged her hands into the cold water, spitting out the prayers as quickly as she could say them. She leaned close to Mandhi and whispered, “Are you the lady of the house?”

Mandhi stepped back. The woman had the accent of a northerner, and Mandhi had never seen her before. “You’re not from Virnas.”

“No, no. My husband and I arrived here a few days ago. One of the women from this quarter, Talivartha, she told me I should come here for the offering and seek the lady of the house.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From Majasravi. Please, listen, I need your help.”

Mandhi spotted Srithi across the courtyard waiting to wash. Veshta had disappeared with Cauratha and Taleg to prepare the sacred meal. The woman obviously wanted money, which meant she was better off talking to Srithi and not to tight-fisted Amashi, and Mandhi had nothing to give her directly. Yet a glimmer of curiosity flickered. “What do you need?”

“Money, and a place to stay. Right now we’re sleeping in Talivartha’s house, but she barely has room for us and stated quite openly that we have to leave. Listen, please—”

Mandhi narrowed her eyes. The story sounded suspect. “What brought you here from Majasravi? Looking for better handouts?”

The woman reddened and hid her eyes behind her hands. “You mean you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

Her voice dropped as if naming a curse. “The Red Men have begun to expel the Uluriya from Majasravi again.”

“What?”

“It’s as bad as Ruyam’s purge. They burned every house with the pentacle on our street and cast us out of the city. We were happy to escape alive.”

Confusion and alarm mixed in her mind. She had heard stories of such things but not in her lifetime. Happening now in Majasravi? What else had happened while she was searching for Navran? She looked across the courtyard and saw that Srithi had not yet left. She put her hand on the woman’s shoulder and pointed. “Do you see the young woman there in the blue sari? That is the lady of the house, not me. Ask her, and she’ll help you.”