Read Tinder Stricken Online

Authors: Heidi C. Vlach

Tags: #magic, #phoenix, #anthropomorphic, #transhumanism, #female friendship, #secondary world

Tinder Stricken (8 page)

BOOK: Tinder Stricken
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But the phoenixes made no such movements.
They only watched each other, feather crests moving. The crippled
phoenix considered the tame one, its hackled back feathers falling
slow. It turned, hesitant, and fluttered to a farther rooftop.

The tame one stayed where it was, raising
its door-hinge voice. It chattered a long string of notes. For a
mad instant, Esha felt a need for bitter lungta herbs in her
mouth.

The crippled bird considered the tame one's
cries, fire fading from its gaze. It creaked low. Then it lifted
off, circled with a spiralling of stringfeathers and flew back the
way it came. The tame one followed, showing its flashing tag
against the lungta-trimmed sky, and the two of them sailed away on
the wind.

The crowds settled, people dropping their
makeshift weapons and grumbling about the fright of it all.

Gradually, Esha turned back the way she
came, as well, watching faces to be sure that none watched her
back. She picked up her feet and wove between buildings, headed in
the direction those phoenixes had vanished. The tagged phoenix had
to report to a human animist — or maybe a noble who liked
destructive pets, but far more likely an animist.

She had a hazy idea of where the birds had
gone: somewhere southward. The buildings stymied Esha until a
thought struck her: if an animist's trained bird was at work,
someone had summoned the animist. Probably a farm protecting its
crop.

She kept hurrying south, worldedgeward,
until she reached the outer fence of Janjuman's neighbour farm.
Their seedling yams — greenburst variety, a good crop if less
flavourful than Janjuman's — stood unattended on this, Rama's Day.
A few overseers stood gathered at the far edge of the field, and a
soldier stood firmly restless beside them. In the middle of the
dust-blown field, there were only the two phoenixes and a tall
woman of strong bearing — a masked woman.

She had to be the Manyori woman, because
that mask wasn't from Tselaya. It was some pitch-dark material
carved in fierce ridges, a deity's face covering the mortal woman
from forehead to upper lip. Revulsion and fascination gripped Esha
tight: this animist must have been older than her, to have to cover
most of her face like that. Older or less fortunate. Maybe
both.

The phoenixes stood silent, and the
animist's sonorous voice came rolling like distant thunder. She
didn't sound elderly. It was hard to tell past the vowel-heavy
patterns of her foreign language and the treetop rattling of her
extended lungta — but that couldn't be old woman's worn throat.
Whatever she was saying must have reached the one-footed phoenix —
because it turned its back to her and stood patient, while the
animist knelt and tied a tag onto its tail.

This stranger did in a scant afternoon what
some animists took weeks to achieve. No one was hurt, and no food
fields were lost, and now two phoenixes circled together like kites
on strings. The animist stood there, statuesque as a story-told
rogue, as the tame phoenix settled on her shoulder and its tail
feathers fell like a second cloak. Then she waited.

One of the farm overseers approached her,
shuffling along tilled lines. He spoke vanishingly timid words and
gave a payment packet to the animist.

Her masked face bowed in a nod. She gave
namaste to the overseer – and as if to accent the gesture, her
phoenix bowed to match.

If nothing else, Esha needed to know. Would
this Manyori speak with dignity to a low-caste, and was she truly
lax enough to live together with a tar dealer? Because that sounded
like someone who might stoop to help Esha Of The Fields mend her
torn-rag life.

So Esha waited by the fence until the farm
staff dispersed, and the animist left the yam field gates. Here she
was, close enough to call out to but the two phoenixes made Esha
forget all her words. She simply stood, fish-mouthed. The animist
passed her by, tall and present as the mountain they stood on, her
visible skin patterned with tattoos as bold as tiger stripes. Esha
received a near-secret flick of eyes within the fierce mask, and
matching glances from the thieving beasts. Then the animist was
striding away in the street dust. Esha watched the back of her
masked head — the patterned strap that held the mask on, with
soil-dark skin and wavy, human hair wound into a swirling topknot.
Someone different. Someone Esha needed.

“Hail,” Esha stammered. “Good animist?”

She stopped. She turned her secret eyes back
to Esha and planted her feet like tree roots. “Citizen?”

Esha signed namaste as she should have
already, bowing deep and feeling embarrassment hot behind her
cheekbones. “I hope you'll forgive my forthrightness, but I'd like
to make a deal with you.”

A smile pulled the animist's broad lips,
stretching the tattoo on her chin. Her eyes' glimmer darted to
Esha's shoulder, to her farming caste marker, and the smile
remained. “I don't discuss business in the street. If you'd like a
deal, come see me in my home. Colleagues of yours will know the
way.”

With that, she kept on, her wind-flapping
cloak overlaid with the tail feathers of the tame phoenix. Esha was
fish-mouthed again until she hummed a decision to herself. That
Manyori was strange but respectable, which was all Esha really
wanted. All she had to do was find a way to talk to the animist.
She walked brisk toward town, because she had a strong hunch of how
to do that.

Ren welcomed her inside, returning Esha's
namaste while chomping betel. He looked healthier these past days —
fuller in the face, surely better fed.

“I think,” Esha told him, “you've got
connections that will help me, friend.”

If Esha wished to enter the Manyori women's
home and do business, there was a sequence she had to follow.
Arrive after duskfall and don't draw attention: the ladies did not
appreciate guards' attention.

They were glad to entertain low-castes,
though, the dyemaker assured her. Esha only needed to use the
special door chime and then ask for
bird-nose
.

It was a nonsensical passphrase, Esha
thought, but a prudent way of doing business. This way, trusted
friends would lead more trusted friends to the animist's door and
she wouldn't face anyone dishonourable — no more dishonourable than
Esha was, anyway.

Night fell. Esha followed the dyemaker's
directions, toward the mountainside and the shadow of the higher
plateaus. The homes here were built of clay brick here but still
humble in design, barely within the glow of the Empire-maintained
oil lamps the higher castes enjoyed in their streets. Esha watched
that distant street — set into the mountainside, firelit and hazy
like the gate to another world. No one there saw her except one
guard, who stared brief and then kept his eyes moving.

As leisurely as she could manage, Esha
peered at the house's patch of yellow flags. One flag had a
lengthly request for lake shellfish but only certain kinds of it —
and below that, a black smudge on its tip. This was the Manyoris'
home.

Esha circled the right side of the house
and, refreshed with relief once she was out of the guard's line of
sight, searched the shadows until she found a hollow pipe set into
the wall.

She had brought pebbles in her satchel, like
the dyemaker said. One by one, she dropped seven of them down the
pipe to clatter away into the dark. Then Esha returned to the front
door to wait for answer.

No light shone through the narrow slashes of
windows, though. No movement showed from within. Esha stood there
conspicuous, without enough eyes to watch all the shadows around
her. She turned back to the door — but movement flickered above
her, on the roof's edge. There sat a phoenix, staring at her with
eyes as bottomless as a lake.

Esha stared back, her fright gone but her
innards still glowing hot. She had seen more than enough phoenixes
for this lifetime — but if the animist kept phoenixes as pets, she
would need to rally her patience. This bird shifted on its feet and
something flashed on its backside; this was a tagged bird from
earlier and its master had to be nearby.

“Hail,” Esha called out, her voice ripping
the quiet. She looked again to the shadows around, and the many
building corners that might be hiding a listener. “Is anyone
here?”

Silence answered her. She waited. Wind
whistled over tin roofs outside and the phoenix blinked calm at
her.

“Well?” Esha asked it. “Where is your
owner?” She felt immediately foolish, talking to the thing, but
standing around useless was foolish, too.

It tipped its head, crests moving.

“I want to see the animist,” Esha said,
enunciated clearly like she would speak an order to a dog. Maybe
trained phoenixes knew commands in human tongues. They were clever
enough to be menaces, so it might surely be possible. After a
heart-gripping hesitation, Esha lowered her voice and added,
“Bird-nose.”

The phoenix stood. It turned suddenly toward
the peak of the roof, hopping up the incline and over, out of
sight, its two stringfeathers trailing away like knotted lengths of
yarn.

Esha was alone in the street again. She
grumbled a small oath, and shifted on her aching feet. She resolved
to leave in another five moments and raised fingers to chance
scratching under her headwrap, where her goat pelt always itched
after a day of sweat.

“What do you want of bird-nose?”

Esha dropped her hand, heart turning to ice
— at the sight of the tall shape around the house's corner. A tall,
large-nosed figure stood in shadow. Round curves marked her a woman
and her voice was low and accented just like the Manyori
animist's.

“You—“ Esha spluttered on her confusion. She
couldn't see a caste sigil on this woman, couldn't imagine how to
ask or explain.

“Out with it,” the animist's sister said.
She spoke Grewian, accent-clipped but without lungta. “What do you
wish of bird-nose?”

Bird-nose
wasn't a pass phrase, Esha
realized. It was a name — surely not a name the Empire had on any
records.

Rank was moot and Esha was here to ask
someone's favour. She went ahead and pressed her hands together,
offering namaste to this Birdnose. “I'd like to make a deal.
There's a phoenix—“

“I know. It's fine,” Birdnose said. Her nose
really did command her entire face, like a beak. “Your name?”

“Gita of the Fields.”

“Show me your payment.”

“Wh-What?”

Heart in her throat, Esha's plans all flew
away on wind. She had hoped to suggest the thief phoenix as a form
of reward, but that was no collateral. She couldn't offer her
heirloom khukuri for the same reason, and her meagre trove of
rupees was across town in her home. She had only one thing to offer
right now — and under Birdnose's silent glower, Esha reached into
her clothing.

“I don't know if this is enough for a first
offer,” she relented, “or too much. But it's all I can show to your
eyes.” Uncurling her hand, she revealed Gita Of The Fields's last
remnant, her property token and the shining nameplate attached.

Birdnose's eyes flared within their deep
sockets. “You're offering the property token?”

“That's right.”

Birdnose took it — with a soft hand, no
laborour's hand to be sure. She drew a knife with a tooth-shaped
blade and pushed its tip against Gita's property token. The token
didn't yield.

“Good,” she said, “No offence meant, but
I've been offered silvered wax before.”

“I wouldn't insult you before asking for
your help.”

Birdnose considered her. Esha held the gaze
like the honourable woman she wished she was.

“Please,” Birdnose said, “come in.”

She led Esha around the back of the house,
into a door only discernible from the wall by its knotted latch
string. Inside, the respectable brick home looked more like the
elder relatives of Esha's shack — with walls made of unfinished
bamboo and hand-splinted furniture, lit acrid by a pine candle. The
hearth fire smouldered into a tin chimney, one of three openings in
the ceiling.

The phoenix was there, perched on a wrought
metal stand seemingly meant for it. Esha felt more eyes on her —
and noticed another phoenix sitting in the corner, the one with a
missing foot. She had never heard of an animist who kept multiple
phoenixes but then, some people liked to stockpile.

Esha returned her attention to Birdnose, to
find that she was being studied, too. By a Manyori woman dressed in
porridge-plain homespun but still clearly kin to the masked woman
Esha had stared at earlier. She was bigger than most Grewian men,
the same broad frame as the animist, and the dark spot on her chin
was the very same black-line tattoo that the animist had. Maybe a
family's defining mark.

“Please, sit.” Birdnose gestured to a
rough-felted stool.

Esha was bristlingly aware of her body, of
her presence in this den of secrets. She lowered herself on panging
knees, and she sat.

Birdnose eyed Esha then, and placed Gita's
nameplate on a table between them. “About this deal you want — we
may speak freely now. The walls are double-thick to hold in our
voices, and one of my birds is keeping watch outside.”

“One of
your
birds?” Esha said. She
had never heard of a tar dealer keeping pets who could start
fires.

“The fellow you spoke to already.” Smirking
fond, Birdnose said, “He's trustworthy. Take that on my word.”

Phoenixes were as trustworthy as gamblers,
bandits, and next month's weather. Esha stifled her frown.

“And since you seem trustworthy as well,”
Birdnose went on, “I'll trade for your property token. You must
want quite a supply.”

“Not a supply — only one task.”

Birdnose was picking up a lockbox, a small
one overwhelmed with steel bands and latches, when she froze and
stared stark at Esha. “A
task
...? Wait. Say it clearly. Are
you here for tar?”

BOOK: Tinder Stricken
4.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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