Tinder Stricken (12 page)

“It's just that I can't afford a yak cart
for the spiral road. A-And the time I'd need to spend away from
work, and—“

“I know this must be difficult,” Atarangi
said, soft as a wool blanket. “I will aid you any way a diplomat
reasonably can. But the decision is yours to make.”

With a deep breath, Esha found balance.
“There's no decision. I need that khukuri back. When will we
leave?”

“I suggest tomorrow,” Atarangi said like an
apology. “Waiting won't help.”

Esha's breath escaped in a sigh, a long
deflating of air from a tired woman's body. “Yaah, I suppose. Will
the property token and the phoenix's capture be payment enough for
your trouble?”

“It will if you guide me along the way. You
are more familiar with Tselaya Mountain than I am.”

“I'm no guide. I can't carry much — my bones
...”

“The land provides food and shelter. And so
do towns.”

It was a reckless but simple plan, like
seeds thrown aimless onto bare earth. Esha filled their teacups
once more and murmured, “Alright.”

“I will visit your farm's owner,” Atarangi
said, “and request hiring your services. Janjuman Farms will
receive compensation for your absence, and you will receive a small
salary for your service in locating a wild phoenix. For filing
purposes, we will describe this wild phoenix as a problem
bird.”

It certainly had upended Esha's life. She
nodded. “Tomorrow is Shiva's Gift. My work won't be missed — yaah,
but I'm sure you know that.”

“Will the clerk be present at Janjuman?”

“I'm not convinced he ever leaves.”

“Very well,” Atarangi said. “Then let us
arrange some more particulars. About your legs ...”

The trip would be a collaborative effort,
they decided. Atarangi would provide a supply of painkiller herbs;
Esha would do the bulk of the fuel-cutting and meal preparation;
both would bear the burdens of travel. One of Atarangi's phoenixes
would accompany them, for negotiations and for an additional pair
of eyes while on the road. The others would mind Atarangi's house,
she said, and

And since climbing the spire passes made for
faster travel than a steep-priced yak cart, they would climb.

“I haven't got a yak but I do have a cart to
use,” she explained. “A travelling pack with a wheeled frame, able
to carry a human being's weight in supplies. It'll spare our backs
for most of the trip.”

“You've done this before,” Esha guessed.

“I don't need to tell you: I'm not from
here.”

She smiled at her soft-spoken enormity, and
kept laying out terms. If all efforts turned out successfully,
Atarangi would recruit the clever thief as one of her own flock;
Esha would pay one property token; and they would divide between
them any resources gathered while walking the wilds. The deal would
then be complete; the truth of it would be shared with no one.

With jet-black ink, Esha signed Gita's name
on their agreement of slanted ethics, and Atarangi locked it away
in an iron chest. All that remained was for Atarangi to formally
commandeer Esha as her travelling companion. Simple business, since
any one farm woman was a small request to make.

Except that Atarangi would be asking about
Gita, the name of a missing dead woman. This entire bargain was
based on a lie. Esha was stepping into another trap knotted by her
own hands and she didn't want to face it, didn't want to see any
more plans fall to tatters.

“Good diplomat,” she finally managed, while
stepping out into the night. Dread made her hands shake. “About
requesting my leave— Well, there may be trouble when you give my
name ...”

Atarangi only smiled, a firm mercy beneath
the mask. “I know who to ask for, Esha Of The Fields.”

Here it was, the lie exposed. To Atarangi's
credit, she kept holding the door open.

Chapter 7

In her bed that night, Esha stared unseeing
at the ceiling shingles. Of course a diplomat had permission to
view taxation records and property documents. What a simple fact to
overlook. Esha had tried to lie to someone more resourceful than
herself — yet Atarangi's human smile was what stayed in her mind.
Atarangi saying her true name when Gita's false-inked name was
barely dry. For all their differences, the animist seemed
trustworthy. Esha hoped that was true, since her hands were bound
and all she could do was have faith.

A fragment of a dream receded — something
about running, needing to get somewhere and cover up the
goat-hooved monstrocities where her bare feet ought to be— and she
couldn't get back to sleep. She spent the time preparing travelling
food. By the guttering light of a candle, Esha picked all of her
garden onions and rubbed the dirt from them. She dug up the sesame
plant with careful spadestrokes and settled it inside a dirt-filled
sack: if she was careful, it might tolerate the travel and provide
some green food. Once that was done, she filled her humble home
with the scent of fresh-baked chapattis and popped maize. If
nothing else, this was a good way to remember the place.

Morning was bleeding white through the
chimney when Atarangi arrived. Esha hardly looked up from her work;
the doll's body would hold together after one more sure knot.

“Hail,” Esha said. The gumgrass stems
muffled and bittered her words. “Grant me a moment to finish this,
if you would.”

“Granted.” Atarangi shifted closer, a
Manyori-patterned haze in Esha's side vision. “Another one of your
dolls?”

Esha tugged a leather trimming, tightening
the doll's selfrope into place over her jute chaff sari. “I make
them sometimes. Not always for reasons. Today, the doll will rest
in my stead.”

“Ah. Is that a custom?”

She shrugged. “Grewiers make dolls on the
Day of Colours, when we're children. I've just found that dolls are
a good offering for any occasion. Like I'm leaving someone else
here to keep watch. Not simply wandering away.”

“I am sorry about all this,” Atarangi said.
“My birds and I have managed smaller bargains over distances
...”

“It can't be helped. It's my own fault. One
more moment, please.”

The doll was done, Esha realized after a
moment of fussing with its gum-leaf skirt. She had nothing to do
but place it and carry on with her own life. She turned away from
Atarangi, the enormous presence in her home, and stood the doll on
her clay-brick prayer stand. Beside it, Esha lit a juniper twig
until it flared and smoldered.

Closing her eyes, immersing in her own
voice, Esha hummed the hymn of invitation. Everyone knew this song,
no matter their caste. She asked the gods to be present here, to
listen to her request and grant her a small forgiveness. Rising and
falling notes came from deep within her, from the unnamed place of
memories that didn't hurt.

When she opened her eyes again, the doll
still laid there staring with charcoal-dot eyes, silent as the
earth that made up the prayer stand, humble as the lashed bamboo
walls. The air weighed with divinity. Glancing to Atarangi — who
watched intent — Esha said, “I've worked on holy days before. I
imagine it's one of the minor sins.”

“Seems like a small tool to borrow,”
Atarangi agreed.

Esha stood there still, balanced on her own
aching joints, bound by the gravity of her staring doll.

“We'll spend a few days climbing. Few more
to come back.” Esha grimaced; it had been years since she used her
selfrope to haul herself between plateaus and she didn't recall
liking the trip. “How long will it be to negotiate with the thief?
She'll either drive us off immediately or agree to haggle, is that
right?”

“Likely,” Atarangi said, turning her empty
palms skyward. “But I can't promise anything but to try.”

“That's plenty,” Esha said immediately. She
watched the juniper's flame smoulder and dwindle. “Alright. Let us
go.”

There outside the door was Atarangi's
phoenix. It was her favourite partner bird, she said, the one she
placed most confidence in. Esha was reasonably sure he was the
tolerant male who had unknotted the door for her, the one with red
streaks in his crests that Esha was starting to recognize. He sat
on a canvas pack nearly the size of another person: it was fitted
on a metal frame, with four spoked wheels each the measure of
Esha's forearm.

“Tell the dealmaker that we're travelling to
meet her,” Atarangi told the bird, with herbs rustling in her
voice. “Ask her not to destroy the flower-stone; we'll bring better
trades. Something more valuable to her than a single
song-flower.”

That wasn't anywhere near the truth. Esha's
packed savings chest and trade goods — the entirety of her worldly
possessions — couldn't buy back the khukuri, never mind buy
anything better.

But the phoenix creaked agreeably, and took
flight. He circled upward, sending gusts of lungta spinning in his
wake, before soaring away toward the higher plateaus.

Janjuman's clerk went tight-mouthed at
Atarangi's suggestion, but he couldn't refuse a diplomat's slightly
superior rank. Watching him sign and seal the papers was like a
warm meal in Esha's belly.

And once the deal was done, Esha followed
Atarangi out of the clerk's office and off Janjuman Farms. She
pulled her wheeled pack by a canvas strap; Esha's pack and satchel
felt weightier by the moment.

The town passed them by, with fewer stares
than before. Flags flapped in the day's breeze; a goatherd led
patchy-furred tahr goats to market; people carried celebration
kites and grinned to one another.

Esha grabbed glances at the familiar
patterns of windows and roofs, to tamp them sure into her memory
before she left this plain expanse she called home. If she was
fortunate, she would return. But if her bones failed her, maybe it
would be best if she didn't.

They walked on; Esha watched Atarangi's
bristled cloak bounce with her every sure stride. The Farback
passed them by and the main road rambled around ragged stands of
bamboo. Men cut bamboo, their khukuris thunking into the fibrous
stalks. Once they were past the coppices of bamboo stumps, the
chopping sounds faded behind them, Atarangi flicked a glance back
over her shoulder — like Esha might escape into the wilderness
unless watched.

“Come here, my business partner. Walk beside
me if we're to be allies.”

Her back was unreadable. Esha was sworn into
a leave of absence, trapped in a net of her own sins, and so sick
of lying that she wanted to spit. It was a chafing relief to hold
her tongue silent and take one step after another, to stand at
Atarangi's side. Like yaks yoked together, they began awkwardly to
walk again.

“So,” Atarangi asked, “Should I speak to you
as Gita, or Esha?”

“Esha.” Speaking her own name was a pleasant
sting of truth, like a meal spiced with too much cayenne.

“Esha, then. Why are you using two names?
Just to match the property tokens?”

“I ... It's a story full of troubles.”

“Rocks hear all the waves in the ocean.”

“What?”

Atarangi slid a glance to her. “I'm a rock.
I have time to listen.”

“I ... Gita is gone. So I've been using her
name as mine sometimes. Her property, too — but you know that, I
suppose.”

“That will get you demerits if you tell the
wrong person,” Atarangi said. It hung prickling, like a
question.

Esha nodded, and hummed flat answer. “Will
you be reporting me?”

“Why would I? I use two names, as well.”

The two of them were equals, in a way —
using names like false flags, and slinking about in the shadows.
Atarangi just managed to have a way of dignity about her. Esha
mulled that truth in her mouth; they walked steady and the bamboo
thinned; the next block of farmers' square-hewn homes came rising
out of the grass and the dust.

“You are registered with the Empire as
Atarangi,” Esha asked under her breath, “are you not?”

She didn't look up but she felt Atarangi's
brown-gold eyes on her, lancing through the headwraps.

“That is right. Atarangi Te Waaka, gifted
with the diplomat caste. Birdnose is a name no bureaucrat
knows.”

“I won't be telling it to them. You need not
worry about that.”

Wind stirred light between them. Gwaras
tumbled in the street dust, and festival music drifted from the
distant well plateau, and at Esha's elbow, Atarangi the high-ranked
was smiling her simple smile.

“I'm pleased to hear that, Esha.”

Wind carried the scent of popped maize and
spices, and the robust sound of people in the town square. Shiva's
Gift revellers parted around Atarangi and Esha, glancing curious at
the wheeled cart and the animist's mask and carrying on, unworried.
Field sisters saw Esha across the busy street — and meeting their
eyes made Esha freeze like a hunted hare — but then the sisters saw
the diplomat Esha walked with and they only gestured namaste, that
simple well-wish.

Atarangi and Esha kept on down the road, and
the festival petered away behind them, the drum-beaten songs fading
into the wind. The only rhythm was their two sets of footsteps on
the worn dirt, and the grinding cart wheels, and the wind swirling
silvery-red lungta flecks to earth.

Atarangi's phoenix returned after half an
hour's walking. It swooped down to Atarangi's offered arm and
landed light as a thrown rag, then hopped onto her shoulder and
settled. From open beak and working tongue, he croaked a long
tirade that Atarangi listened to, her head tipped thoughtful.

“The dealmaker bird has been notified that
we're coming to negotiate,” Atarangi finally said. “She will
tolerate our presence, but only in specific areas of her
territory.”

“Lot of nerve she has,” Esha muttered.
“Making conditions when she's the thief.”