The city of Jaitha clung like a barnacle to the south shore of the Amsadhu river. From atop the river bluffs, the entire city stretched before them, running from the black marshy shores of the river to the feet of the bluffs and beginning to climb the slopes. In its center, hidden behind red stone walls, clustered the old city’s houses, markets, wharves, and temples, which stood on stilts to save themselves from the annual flooding. Encrustations of slums and warehouses and markets accumulated around the walls. Near the eastern tip of the city, at the farthest point from them, the Emperor’s Bridge stretched like a chain of white marble across the wide, shallow river.
“The stars upon Jaitha,” Taleg said, reaching his fists to the sky in an exuberant stretch. “One more night in the miserable hovels between here and Virnas and I might have gone mad. A great step down from the estate, eh, Navran?”
He elbowed Navran, who shrugged and looked away. Navran had barely said a word in their five days of walking. Without alcohol to loosen his tongue, he seemed determined to recede into that same hostile silence that had marked their first meeting.
Mandhi leaned into Taleg and wiped the dust from her forehead. “Come on. It’s already afternoon, and we want to get to Paidacha’s early enough to eat.”
From the bluffs overlooking the city, the road plunged down to the floodplain and into the heart of Jaitha. Once through the boggy slums that sulked on the edges of the city, they found themselves in a cacophonous surge of bodies on the central road. Taleg took the lead, cutting through the crowd like a plow through mud, while Mandhi followed close on his heels to ensure she didn’t get lost in the human froth. Navran took the rear. Kiosks and shops crowded in on the narrow, damp passage, the calls of the merchants mixing with the bleating of goats and sheep and the bells of chanting dhorsha. Ahead of them the cracked red wall of the old city loomed, decorated with reliefs of the sun and tiger icons of Chaludra, its crenelated top like broken teeth. From one direction the smell of incense and blood leaked out from a temple to Chaludra, while from the other direction the smell of grilling fish tempted them to a kiosk.
Taleg glanced down at the fat skewered eels. “I’d buy this man out of these if I had coin to spare. After a hard day’s travel—”
“Paidacha has better,” Mandhi said. Taleg looked over her head back into the crowd. “We should hurry on. Why have you stopped?”
“Where is Navran?” he asked.
She whirled. The street traffic flowed around them like water around a stone, but she didn’t see Navran anywhere. She cursed under her breath. “That ungrateful worm. If we have to search the city for him….”
Taleg put his hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find him. I’ve been finding him every day for a month.”
“That was in Virnas. Do you know Jaitha as well as Virnas?”
“We’ll find him. Follow me.”
He forged ahead as quickly as he could push through the crowd, glancing back periodically to ensure that Mandhi still followed. Her eyes darted from face to face in the crowd, but no Navran. She saw no signs for beer-sellers that might entice him, and she wasn’t even sure where to look for gamblers. Would Navran know where to go? It didn’t matter. They couldn’t have lost him for more than a few minutes, so he must be relatively near. But the side streets were a warren of swampy alleys and narrow, dark passages, and he could have disappeared down any of them. Her eyes peered into the gloom between the buildings but saw nothing.
They had walked nearly back to the edge of the city when Mandhi tugged at Taleg’s sleeve. “This is pointless. We’ll never find him this way. You need to go digging in the sorts of rat-holes where he hid in Virnas.”
Taleg wiped the dust off his brow and stamped his foot. “So what are we doing?”
“We should go ahead to Paidacha’s. I’ll stay there while you dig him up. You’ll be faster without me anyway.”
Taleg frowned. “I’m going to miss dinner, aren’t I?”
Mandhi pulled out a coin and tossed it to Taleg. “Buy yourself some eel skewers.”
Paidacha’s guest-house was in the old city, a sprawling structure of ancient wood, brightly painted in red and green and glistening with oil. Like all the buildings in the lower parts of Jaitha it was raised on stilts to keep it above the rainy season’s floods, though now, at the tail end of the rains, the water had receded to a mere puddle around the bottoms of the posts. Paidacha appeared at the top of the ladder as soon as he heard Taleg’s knock on the posts.
“Ah! The stars upon you, my friends!” he shouted. “Come up, come up. It has been a year, two years since you were here?”
“Two,” Mandhi said. Their very first investigations of Navran brought them to Jaitha, where they had learned about the incredible culinary talents of Paidacha.
“Too long! Did you find the one you were looking for?”
Mandhi hesitated on the top step of the ladder. Taleg stood below her and gave a chagrined shrug. “We found him, but we lost him here in the city.”
“Really? Terrible. Tell me, what was his name?”
“Navran. Taleg is going to look for him,” Mandhi said. “He’s leaving immediately, but with Ulaur’s favor he’ll return later tonight.”
“Oh.” Paidacha’s face fell. “Tonight’s dinner will be splendid. You chose a good night to come. But Taleg, you will miss it?”
“Perhaps tomorrow?” Taleg said with a pained shrug.
“Certainly.” Paidacha grinned. “I’ll come up with something special. Mandhi, you remember Kalishni my daughter? She’ll show you to your room. The largest chamber, Kalishni, and put up the curtains to provide Mandhi with her seclusion.”
A little girl appeared at the edge of the doorway, and at her father’s command she took Mandhi’s hand.
“Find him,” Mandhi said over her shoulder to Taleg as the girl led her into the house. “And come back quickly.” She didn’t add I’ll miss you until you return, since gossip from Jaitha could easily return to Virnas, but she hoped that Taleg understood that she meant it.
Night settled over the city with the scent of woodsmoke and the boasting of frogs. Mandhi sat on a cushion near the front door of the guest-house, her belly full. She had eaten saffron-scented rice, roast duck stuffed with dates and mint, fish stew with leeks and coriander, and honeyed roti. The dining room in the center of the guest-house was packed, both with the guests and with others who had come just for one of Paidacha’s famous feasts. Most of them were Uluriya, and if the others knew or cared that the food was prepared under the law of Ulaur and blessed by a saghada, they gave no indication of it.
The chatter continued in the dining room, but Mandhi had retired to the door and looked out into the darkness. Overhead, the stars gleamed in an inky blue sky, and the city imitated them with candles and fires flickering in windows. Mandhi’s food sat uneasy in her stomach. Taleg had not returned.
If Navran was gone for good…. What would she tell her father?
But isn’t this what you want?
Yes, but not this way. Cauratha’s heart would break. He would not blame her, at least not openly. He was too gentle for that. But she would feel the recrimination every time they spoke.
But weren’t you relieved, just a little, when you realized he was gone?
No. Yes. I don’t know.
Her thoughts chased themselves in that circle with the inevitability of the stars turning in the sky.
There was a noise in the street. She stood and looked out, then fetched an oil lamp from the house and hoisted it. Someone was coming. Two someones.
“Taleg?” she called out.
His laughter echoed through the night air. “Am I late for dinner?”
Two dim silhouettes emerged from the gloom into the light of the lamp. Taleg stood there grinning, his arm slung over the shoulder of a mute Navran. Navran looked up at her with a cold, inflexible expression.
“Was he drunk?” she asked Taleg.
“I wasn’t drunk.” Navran said.
Mandhi made a noise of disgust. “Get up here.”
Navran ascended the ladder with Taleg behind him. As soon as he stepped onto the deck Mandhi slapped him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
He did not open his eyes in response to her slap. “What?”
“What? What?”
“Tell me, Mandhi. What did I do to rouse your anger?”
Taleg got off of the ladder and loomed behind Navran. “Let’s talk quietly,” he said.
Mandhi put the oil lamp down. Another moment and she was going to hurl it into Navran’s face. Instead, she grabbed Navran by the beard and pulled him down to meet her eyes. “You ran off. You made Taleg chase after you while I sat here like an idiot and waited. You abuse Veshta’s hospitality and our father’s graces. And you ask me what you did?”
Navran shoved her away. She staggered back and caught herself on the lintel of the door. Taleg put his hand on Navran’s. Navran shook him off. His voice was knife-sharp and cold.
“Neither of you touch me. Listen, sister Mandhi. You treat me like a slave. You bought me and forced me to call Cauratha my father. You lie to me. You do not tell me why I’m here. You let me leave during the day, but you drag me back every night. And when I slip away in Jaitha, you hunt me like a dog.”
“Did you want us to leave you alone?” Mandhi said. “You were a star-damned debt slave when we found you. And you’re still a drunk and a gambler and pain to Cauratha. You owe us your freedom and your comfort. And what do we owe you?”
“The truth.”
The sounds of gossip and laughter leaking in from the dining room filled the silence.
“What do you want to know?” Mandhi said at last.
“Who you are. Who I am. What you want with me.”
“You are Cauratha’s son. I am Cauratha’s daughter.”
“And who is Cauratha? More than an old saghada living with a rich merchant. I can see that much.”
Damn, but Navran was smarter than he looked. Mandhi glanced up at Taleg. He raised his eyebrow and said, “Maybe we should go to our chamber.”
“If I tell you,” Mandhi said, “you will be bound to secrecy. The highest secrecy that you can imagine. Do you understand?”
“I don’t say much,” Navran said.
“But when you drink….”
Navran grimaced and pretended to study something in the street. “I understand.”
“Then let’s go to our chamber. Taleg, grab some dishes for you and Navran from Paidacha. There should be plenty left. Might as well not let the whole evening go to waste.”
She plunged into the dining room and pushed past Paidacha into the narrow corridor beyond. At the rear of the house was their chamber. An embroidered curtain hung from the central rafter dividing the room into two halves, with a low bed adorned with thin silk sheets and silk-covered cushions on each side. As soon as Taleg and Navran appeared through the doorway, Mandhi glanced into the hallway to ensure that no one was listening, then yanked the curtain shut.
Taleg sat by the door with his clay bowl of rice, roti, and shreds of the remaining duck. He gave a bowl to Navran, then Mandhi pointed to a spot next to the outside wall. Navran scowled at her for a moment, then bowed his head and began to eat. “Well?”
“Are you ready?” Mandhi asked.
He took three bites of rice before answering. “Tell me.”
“Protect us, Ulaur.” She sat on the floor and took up the Moon posture. “This is the deepest secret you will ever learn. Are you ready?”
Navran swallowed and nodded. “Tell me.”
“Fine.” She leaned close to Navran and spoke softly. “You’re right. Cauratha is not just an elderly saghada. He is the Heir of Manjur, the chosen of Ulaur. When the Kingdom is restored he or his heir will be the rightful king of Virnas and all lands south of the Amsadhu.”
Navran’s hand froze above his bowl. The roti fell from his hand.
Mandhi went on. “This is why Veshta supports him, or rather, why the estate which Veshta inherited has housed the Heirs for generations. The crypt beneath the estate is a buried remnant of the temple of Ulaur, from the days of Manjur. Many of the Uluriya know that it’s there, but we keep it a secret. Veshta knows that Cauratha is the heir, as does Taleg. There are a few other saghada in the city who may know or suspect. But no one else does.”
“And I am the next Heir,” Navran said.
“Yes. If you don’t get yourself killed in a gambling feud or kidnapped by a slave trader first.”
“And the ring.” He pointed to the star-iron band on his finger.
“All of the rings were forged from the iron of the star that Ulaur cast to the earth to destroy the great serpent. Our father’s is the original, worn by Manjur and kept by the Heirs since the fall of the Kingdom. Yours and mine are copies, kept within the family, and passed down to the children of the Heir.”
The bowl sat untouched before Navran. He held his head in his hands and rocked slowly. “Star-iron. There wasn’t enough wealth in my whole village to buy a star-iron ring. I wore it around my neck.”
“I figured you didn’t know what it was, or you would have sold it.”
“The Heir of Manjur….”
“It’s not such a bad deal,” Taleg said. “You get room and board, and you spend lots of time talking to the other saghada. There are worse inheritances.”
“You don’t understand. I was… I was not…” He threw aside his bowl. “Let me go to the dining room.”
Mandhi and Taleg jumped to their feet. “Why?” Mandhi asked.
“To be left alone.”
“No.” Mandhi was firm.
“I won’t run off. But I want to be alone.”
“How can I trust you? You’ve run away at every opportunity.”
“I want to think.” He gave Mandhi an iron glare. “You want me to be Heir. Will you trust me to stay in a room by myself?”
Mandhi looked at Taleg. Taleg slowly nodded, keeping one eye on Navran.
“Fine,” Mandhi said. “Have Paidacha get him some rice beer, and tell him to keep an eye on him. Only a little beer. Then come back.”
“Sure thing,” Taleg said. “Come here, Navran.” He put his arm over Navran’s shoulders. “Take your time. We understand.”
They disappeared through the curtain. Mandhi paced the length of the room, listening to Taleg’s and Paidacha’s muffled voices. She was a fool. This was a terrible idea. And yet, her father had begged her to tell him. What had he expected? What else could they possibly expect? As if this burden of responsibility might transform him.
Taleg appeared through the curtain a moment later. “That was not so bad,” he said.
“Not so bad?”
“He didn’t immediately try to run away, at least.”
Mandhi stopped her pacing. Taleg still stood by the door, rubbing his head. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
He looked up. “Come again?”
“Give me something else to think about. Hurry, before Navran decides to come back.”
Taleg walked towards her. Mandhi met him halfway, seized his face in her hands, pushed her lips against his and opened her mouth.
Mandhi’s sari and choli were heaped on the floor with Taleg’s dhoti and kurta, while the two of them lay spent in the bed. She was nestled into his chest, drawing her hand gently across his collarbone, while Taleg sat up on one elbow, his free hand wandering from her spine to her thighs. She leaned forward and kissed the center of his chest.
“Tonight you don’t have to run away,” she said. “Finally.”
“And if Navran comes back and finds us here?”
“I don’t care. He knows.”
“He knows everything, now.”
She flicked his chin. “I asked you to take my mind off that subject.”
He bent down and kissed her ear. “Sorry.”
“How long do you think we should stay in Jaitha?”
“You don’t think we should leave right away?”
“I want,” she said kissing his neck, “to stay here a few more nights. Davrakhanda and Sadja can wait for us. And maybe Navran needs a little more time.”
“I can’t say I’d mind that.”
She rested her head on the cushion and listened to Taleg breathe. The sounds of gossip from the dining room had died down, and through the curtained window the only sounds were the droning of frogs and flies.
Taleg sat up. “What was that?”
There was a scrape in the dining room and the mutter of voices. Someone cried out, and a violent hollow thud sounded.
Taleg leapt to his feet and tied the dhoti around his waist. “I’ll see what it is. Wait for me here.” He disappeared through the curtain.
A moment later she heard his cry, followed by a thunderous fall. She leapt up, slung the sari around her waist and breasts, and bolted through the curtain.
The dining room was a confusion of shadows and movement. Paidacha cowered in the entrance to the kitchen holding an oil lamp, the only source of light in the room, which cast a flickering glow across a jumble of cushions and baskets strewn about in violence. Two bodies lay sprawled in the center of the room atop the low tables where the evening’s feast had lain. A silhouette stood at the outside door with bronze glinting in its fist. “Leave us alone, woman,” a man’s voice hissed.
One of the bodies on the floor heaved forward and reached for the shadow’s foot. The man leapt and struck downward with his blade, but missed the grasping hand. He scampered back a step and alit on the top of the ladder which descended to the street, then disappeared from sight with his blade held ready before him. The man on the floor lumbered up and stuck his head out the door, but returned a moment later.
The shape resolved itself into Taleg’s looming bulk. “They’re gone,” he said. “Lost already in the darkness.”
Paidacha stepped forward with the lamp and illuminated the scene. Taleg hulked in the doorway, blood trickling down his temple, while a strange man lay on the floor in a slowly spreading pool of blood. It took Mandhi a moment to understand the scene. And then it hit her like a falling stone.
“Where is Navran?” she asked. “Where is Navran?”
“They took him,” Taleg said. He collapsed onto a cushion and hung his head in his hands.
“Who took him?”
“Four men. Three got away with Navran. One of them….” He gestured to the limp body on the floor. “I hit him pretty hard. He fell on his knife.”
Mandhi put her hand over the man’s nose to feel his breath. “He’s dead.” She cursed under her breath. She would have liked to question the man. “But you? Are you okay?”
Taleg grinned. “They knocked me down for a moment with a good blow to the head”—he reached up and touched the gash on his forehead that was leaking blood—“but other than that I’m fine.”
Mandhi tried to hide the depth of her relief. No use getting Taleg worked up, nor giving Paidacha any ideas. She glanced over at the innkeeper, who still stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his mouth opened in an expression of wordless horror.
“What is it?” she said. “Do you know who did this?”
He shook his head and moved his tongue silently, as if he had forgotten how to speak. “I had no idea. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” He began to weep.
Mandhi thundered across the room and grabbed Paidacha by the beard. “What didn’t you know? Did you have something to do with this?” He continued sobbing. She shook his head with her grip on his beard until he cried out in pain. “Tell me!” she shouted.
“They threatened my wife,” he said. “And little Kalishni. They said they would hurt them unless, unless…”
“What did you do?”
He covered his face with his hands. “Mandragora in his beer. Just a little, not enough to kill. Just enough to make him delirious and disoriented. And when I called for them, he couldn’t fight.”
Mandhi let go of him. He slid to the ground, put his forehead on the floor, and chanted a prayer for forgiveness. She looked across the room at Taleg, who sat rubbing his temples with a grim look on his face.
“Sadja-dar,” she said.
“It would seem so. He wanted Navran more than we thought.”
“But how did he know we were coming? And have time to corrupt—” She gestured at the trembling face-down Paidacha.
“Same way he knew to send the original message? Farsight, perhaps.”
Mandhi nudged Paidacha with her toe. “When did these men come to you?”
His mantras stopped. He looked up and spoke in a creaking voice. “Four days ago. They gave me the root and told me to wait for a man named Navran.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone? Your saghada, a militiaman, anyone.”
“You don’t understand. They had imperial seals.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure!” He bowed and kissed her hand. “Believe me, please.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Sadja-dar,” Taleg said. “Unless he is working with the Emperor.”
“Or someone else is. Ulaur save us. The Emperor.”
“And now Navran knows.”
A chill went down Mandhi’s back. Her fists clenched.
“Knows what?” Paidacha said.
“You don’t get to know,” Mandhi said. “You gave over a fellow Uluriya to agents of the Emperor. You should go to your saghada and beg that he doesn’t strike out your name from the books.”
Paidacha began to weep.
“Have pity, Mandhi,” Taleg said. “He was protecting his family. And he has no idea who Navran is.”
“And I have to protect my family. My father. And even my drunken half-wit brother.”
Taleg bowed his head. “So what now?”
“We follow them, obviously.”
“Do we know where they’re going?”
“There are only two ways out of this city that make sense. Either they take a boat down-river and then sail to wherever they’re going, or they head north over the Emperor’s Bridge. With a little time and coin we can find out if anyone saw them. Then we follow.”
“They’ll be ahead of us.”
“We’ll move faster. We leave at first light.” She wanted to leave now, but there was no way they could follow the men in the darkness, and no way they could figure out which way the kidnappers had gone while the city slept. She turned back to the whimpering innkeeper. “Paidacha, you will supply us with food for the road. As much roti, cold rice, and dried fruits as we can carry.”
Paidacha nodded and retreated into the kitchen. “Yes. Of course. I’m so sorry. Anything I can do to help.”
Mandhi pulled her sari closer around herself. It was slipping off of her, and she realized that she was half-naked and dressed in obvious hurry in the middle of the dining room. Paidacha, fortunately, seemed too distressed to notice. “Might as well try to get some sleep,” she muttered.
Taleg stretched. “I’ll join you.”
When they reached their chamber, Mandhi let the sari slide off of her and slipped naked into her bed. Taleg came a moment later and lay down next to her, putting his hand on her belly. She rested her hand on top of his.
“If we had waited another day to tell him,” she whispered.
Taleg kissed her ear. “You had no way to know. Now, sleep.”
She turned towards him and kissed him on the lips. Then she nestled her head in the crook of his neck. How was she going to sleep after this? But she closed her eyes and remembered nothing else.