Toads and Diamonds (18 page)

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place to eat, wash, and rest. Tana had never traveled so far from home. If she hadn't been worrying about the others, she would have enjoyed her morning and evening glimpses of the countryside. Gradually, the road curved north, away from the river Saris marshy course. As the ground became higher and drier, the coastal landscape of fields carved from jungle changed. The vegetation thinned. In place of great mango, pinkfruit, and tamarind groves, scrubby trees and bushes poked out of the soil. Fewer people lived in the northeastern part of Tenth Province. They seemed poorer, scratching out a living from fields pinched between walled white-coat estates. The powerful artisan guilds didn't extend this far, making craft enclaves less common. Tana rarely saw the vivid swaths of dyed fabric drying on a village's mud-brick walls, or heard the distinctive rattle of gem drills and polishers. Even the region's stepwells were plainer affairs, large open tanks without the shade pavilions of Gurath's sacred well.

Whenever Tana entered one of the small market towns, she looked at the goods for sale. The stalls of common household items and food told the same story: poor-quality cloth, rough baskets, crude wooden tools. At home in Gurath, market tables were heaped with foodstuffs. Ordinary dried beans came in many shades of yellow, brown, red, and dark purple. Here, vendors displayed bins of common red lentils alongside grit-flecked rice, a few vegetables, and wild greens.

Only one kind of stall showed an abundance. After the first horrified glance, Tana averted her eyes from the tables where the local white-coat officials paid out Governor Alwar's bounty on dead snakes. Disgust hardened Tana's determination not to speak and give these people more creatures to kill.

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Unsurprisingly, given the cruel slaughter of ratters, their prey had multiplied.

It turned Tana's stomach to see the evidence everywhere. In town, gnawed rinds, husks, and droppings littered dusty streets. In the countryside, she heard rats rustling and squeaking in the undergrowth. After an inquisitive mouse stuck its nose in her ear and woke her, she stopped using her bag for a pillow. Instead, she wrapped up her supply of dried chickpeas and fruit and slept curled tightly around it. If she had had a snake basket like Indu's, she might have been tempted to carry a house naga to patrol during the day, while she rested. But she knew people would remember a girl traveling with a snake, and she wanted to pass unnoticed.

She succeeded almost too well. Although Tana of course spoke to no one, the talk she heard in the markets was all of taxes, wheat blight, and the putrid fever infecting estates and villages. None of the vendors cared about a traveler who had nothing to buy or sell, no news to trade or diversion to offer. Tales about the toad girl and the diamond girl hadn't reached this far north. Even when Tana's shawl slipped off her head, the stubble there attracted no more than brief sympathy. Louse infestations, she discovered, had caused many people to shave their heads. Sleeping by day and walking by night, she might have been a ghost wafting after the kidnapped villagers.

Until the afternoon she overslept, and lost them.

Just past the white-coats' way station, the road forked. Tana couldn't tell which direction the party had gone, but at first she didn't worry. Then the road split again. She hurried through the misty darkness, first one way, then the other, then back to the starting point. The emperor's road was easy to find, because of the double

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row of shade trees that lined it. Since they had followed it this far from Gurath, Tana ran along it until her side hurt, and then walked for hours without hearing the familiar creaking carts or horses' hoofbeats. When dawn brightened the eastern sky, she saluted Mother Gaari with regret. She had chosen the wrong road. They had turned off somewhere, perhaps even reached their destination.

Not knowing what else to do, Tana retraced her steps to the way station. That day, she didn't sleep, but haunted the closest market town, listening for news of them. Without success. She walked again down the roads that had been so confusing in the dark, past the high walls of several white-coat estates. For lack of a better idea, she returned to the biggest one. Circling around it in the late afternoon, she noticed a patch of uncleared brush opposite an open gate. Women were leaving the estate, their bent backs eloquent of time spent toiling in the fields.

The women scattered before a government courier who rode his horse out at a rapid pace. The distinctive red and white stripes of his saddlecloth gave Tana the first encouragement of a long, dispiriting day. This estate had business with Lomkha, or Gurath's fort, or both. Only high officials were allowed to send messengers who took priority on crowded roads. She might still hear something of the vanished artisans if she could get inside.

Once the light faded and the gate closed, Tana wormed her way into the bushes until she found a sheltered spot under a ledge. Chewing the last of her dried fruit, she drifted off to sleep. If the estate hired day laborers, she'd apply for work. She'd watch, and listen. She wouldn't give up until she found her people, including Kalyan.

Especially Kalyan.

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***

Tana shoveled filth for days.

Getting inside the immense walled property had been simple, though her jaw had clenched in fear every time someone looked at her twice. Shivering in her clammy dress wrap, she had lined up with the local women at the side gate in the early morning. As they gathered outside the wall, the rising sun burned off the mist. The gate opened; one by one, women filed through it.

At the guard post inside, a clerk sat at a table. His ledger was open to a page filled with columns of numbers. Tana held her breath. Would he see her as a fugitive or simply another poor young woman here to work in the fields?

"Day labor pays two coppers, plus the midday meal," he droned. "Wash off the mark, you don't get paid. Understand?"

When Tana nodded, the clerk added a number to a column. She had watched the other workers, so she knew to hold out her arm, which looked naked without her two gold bangles. The clerk inked the same number just above her elbow. "Cow barn," he said, and jerked his head. "Next!"

Tana followed the vague direction to a maze of long, low buildings. On one side, fields of barley and peas alternated with wheat. Bright spots of color marked women crouching to pull weeds from the young plants. Trees screened the estate's other half from view. Tana kept her head lowered as she glanced around; she didn't want to be caught acting like an obvious newcomer. She smelled cow and reached a doorway.

A bored-looking overseer stood beside it, running a leather whip through his fingers. When he pointed with the whip handle, the motion pulled his white coat snugly over a round belly. Tana

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took a shovel from a row of tools hanging on wall pegs. She walked through the door. Muck squished under her bare feet. The stench made her eyes water.

"That's ten," the overseer shouted to the gate clerk. "All I need today."

As the women inside had already done, Tana hitched her dress wrap above her ankles. Their task wasn't complicated. She helped herd forty or so cows through a wide arched opening into a courtyard. By stringing a rope across the opening, two women stopped the animals from wandering back inside. All ten women shoveled cow dung and fouled straw into baskets, which they dumped on a pushcart.

Tana quickly fell into the rhythm of the work: Shovel. Carry. Dump. Would her mother and Diribani laugh or cry, seeing her doing this kind of work?

The overseer sat on a bench with his feet propped on a barrel, out of the filth, and snapped his whip at flies. His aim was good; Tana figured he had plenty of practice. He didn't care whether he startled the workers. After a while, Tana stopped jumping at every
hss
-CRACK!

The women, mostly Ma Hiral's age, didn't talk much. Their dress wraps were faded and patched, like the one Tana had borrowed from the artisan village. Several wore shawls or scarves to keep the flies off, so Tana's covered head wasn't conspicuous. None of them had dowry bangles. Given other resources, they wouldn't be working so hard for the pitiful wage. The previous night, Tana had tucked her own bangles into her bag, which she had hidden in a fig tree not far from the gate. She had picked one whose branches stretched over the wall, so she could retrieve the bag from either side.

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When the women had cleaned the barn, spread fresh straw on the floor, and replenished the water troughs, they herded the cows inside. Then they took their shovels, baskets, and pushcarts to the next building. Shovel. Carry. Dump.

Walking across Tenth Province had strengthened Tana's legs, but her shoulders and back burned from the unaccustomed shoveling by the time a loud clanging noise signaled the noon meal. She stretched and followed the others, hoping to see more of the place, or at least hear the local gossip. Surely the arrival of a whole village's worth of people, in chains, accompanied by their animals and escorted by soldiers, would have caused comment.

To her disappointment, the barn and field workers were herded--much like cows--into yet another empty courtyard. A woman had just finished sweeping it. When she dumped her basket on the closest pushcart, Tana was sorry to see that the refuse included rodent droppings. On the bright side, the overseers didn't make them sit in filth. The workers lined up in rows. Each person received a bowl of rice with some mushy vegetables and gray broth slopped on top. From the scraps of talk Tana overheard, these women walked quite a distance every day from huts and villages in the countryside. Most, she gathered, were widows, without family to support them. None had much interest in her or in the Believers who employed them.

Only the promise of the courier she had seen leaving the estate brought Tana back to the side gate the next day, and the next, after teeth-chattering nights spent outside. She didn't know what else to do. The regular servants were all white-coats, who looked down on the day laborers. She couldn't ask anyone what she wanted to know,

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but at least her silence raised no awkward questions: Commoners weren't expected to speak, just to work.

Frustration smoldered inside her. She had started out on a pilgrimage, and ended up a drudge. She'd surrendered her former dreams, her community, her gold bangles. Her hair. Was this her punishment, to labor like a mute beast, far from her home and family? If her mother saw Tana's hands now, what would she say?

What Ma Hiral always said, probably:
Why can't you be more like your sister?

And Diribani, at the ladies' court? She wouldn't be washing in ditch water. The palace baths would have scented soap, soft drying cloths, and a maid to help with the tangles. Not that Tana's prickly stubble needed combing.

She stabbed her shovel at a pile of dung. She had to find Kalyan and the Piplia villagers. If Tana's work pleased the overseers, maybe they'd send her someplace more interesting than the cow barn. Someplace she might overhear a nugget of gossip. Until then, she had a task to do.

Shovel. Carry. Dump.

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***

CHAPTER NINETEEN Diribani

COOL
, dry days sharpened to frost-flecked mornings, and Diribani drew flowers.

She filled page after page with sketches: tulips with their fringed bells, freckled orange lilies, the four square petals of a pink blossom whose name she didn't know. If Naghali-ji withdrew her gift, Diribani could share the images with her family after the flowers had faded. She wished she had more to show for the goddess's blessing. The grand plans she had once laid out for Ma Hiral seemed farther away than Gurath itself.

The jewels left her the moment she spoke them, to be secured in a guard's box and sent to Tenth Province's governor. Not that Diribani required any for herself. Princess Ruqayya was the soul of generosity, showering her with beautiful clothes and gifts. As a royal guest, Diribani was free to eat with the court, sleep in her elegant rooms, or wander through the gardens. But with a palace to run, her hostess had little time to spare for the diamond girl. Prince Zahid,

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too, seemed in constant motion, meeting with advisers and administrators throughout the area. Diribani rarely encountered him. Except in her dreams, where he was a regular visitor.

The court ladies mostly concerned themselves with their families. The scholarly pursued their studies, the religious spent time at the prayer hall, the vain practiced elaborate beauty rituals. Even Ladli was busy with her own affairs. Temple dancing, it had been suggested, wasn't an appropriate pastime for pious young ladies.

A couple of letters had arrived for Diribani with a trade caravan from Gurath. Tana was serving at the temple grove while she, too, struggled to find the deeper purpose of her gift. Old news by now, written weeks earlier. Diribani hoped her sister had since met with more success than she. Casting about for occupation, Diribani started riding lessons.

She also visited the court artists. In the large, spacious workshop, she felt almost at home. Engrossed in their work, the artists paid no attention to her lack of rank or title. Even the novelty of flowers and jewels didn't distract them for long. Each artist, she discovered, had a specialty. Some painted portraits of nobles riding elephants or horses. Others depicted scenes conveying the grim spectacle of battle or the luxury of palace life. Again and again, Diribani found herself going back to the albums illustrating the empire's plants and animals. Perhaps art would be her life's work? At least it might fill more of the hours as she waited for Naghali-ji's purpose to be revealed.

"First, you must observe," one of the masters had suggested to her. "The eye and the heart, as much as the hand, guide the brush."

He also gave her a list of materials. One cool morning, Nissa accompanied Diribani to the market stalls inside the fort's main