Purifying Fire
Prem, Preet and Pranay boarded a large prop-boat with a full squad of the Royal Guard—nine red-coated members in all, and began the journey down the river at sunset. Prem’s motion sickness somehow never bothered her on the Genja, something that she was quite thankful for that day. The engine chugged away and the huge vertical propeller hummed as it spun, leaving a cloud of white froth and a long wake behind them. Kurien Dhaar piloted the boat, a Guardsmen and one of Preet’s best soldiers, one of the men who’d accompanied Prem and Pranay from the city gaol that morning.
Wide boulevards of stone stretched on both sides of the Genja, with steps or gentle slopes of chiseled rock stretching down into the water to allow for bathing, washing, and so on. Advances in filtration and indoor plumbing now rendered such practices obsolete in many parts of the city. Prem remembered stories as a child, hearing about thousands upon thousands of people that came to the river every single day. The people were mostly gone now, but the steps remained as did old statues, altars for burnt offerings, and other decorations left forlorn and forgotten, discolored from exposure and disuse, bleached white like dead men’s bones. Prem made the trip in silence, listening to the hum of the engine and the whistling of the wind in her ears. She heard the calling voices of her companions as they shouted to be heard over the din. She felt at peace with herself, calm and composed, whole for just a little while. Such moments like those were fleeting and short-lived, and she savored them whenever she could.
The Grays wasn’t a true district of Bhai Mandwa, not like the other parts of the city. The elite built their palaces in the Gilded Quarter; the well-to-do merchants and wealthier citizens worked, shopped and lived their lives in West End; commoners and the large numbers of immigrant workers and their families filled the neighborhoods of Khar’s Gate and Fort Hill near to overflowing, while poor and criminal elements skulked about the Industrial District and the Black Bay. Jaira’s caste system once decided a person’s fate, but now the district where he or she was born dictated that instead. The largest of all of them was the Grays, but few of its denizens ever escaped it—the vasi, the city’s untouchables and the lowest social caste in the capital, called it their home. The Grays sat on the other side of the river from Black Bay and Industrial. It was a waterlogged peninsula, walled off from the rest of the city to the north, while the bridges connecting it to the opposite bank were old and starting to crumble into the river. Whatever streets and roads existed in the Grays were unpaved. Prem had spent some days there during her time in Vati’s service, and she always felt a little relieved after moving on.
Sometimes going into the Greys felt like walking about in another world. Across the water, Prem saw shining lights and tall buildings silhouetted against an empty sky. By comparison, squat temples and huge shanty towns dotted the landscape of the Grays like mushrooms pushing out of the dark earth, cloaked in shadow or spotted with flickers of lonely firelight. She also saw the enormous cemetery fields, where gravestones stuck out of the ground like broken teeth, glinting in the light of the rising moon.
The air was still after Kurien shut off the engine, but chirping crickets and nocturnal birds began to call almost immediately afterwards. A faraway boat whistle sounded in protest, but soon it too faded and the sound of the animals returned. The earth was uneven near the water’s edge where the boat landed, but it soon leveled out and stretched on for miles, flat as a pane of glass. The stone causeway on the riverbank was broken and ruined from need of repair; silt and erosion had crept in and swallowed much of the old masonry. Scrub trees and waving reeds stuck out of the mud. The Genja was slowly receding from its year’s-end flood, leaving the landscape a morass of tangled undergrowth, floating garbage, sewage run-off, and thick, black mud. The smell was almost overpowering at first, leading to a harsh round of coughing from the other passengers, but Prem breathed it in without so much as a tremor while she re-acclimated herself to its stink. It was familiar, something she remembered from long ago. Sachin knew that smell, and savored it.
Preet stepped onto the shore first. The soil was a mix of mud and black sand, and it crunched under their feet. The Seneschal and her squad all had a revolver and a talwar saber in their belts, while others had side-lock Explora rifles strapped to their backs, decorated with ivory inlay and golden stars. Kurien carried a zaghnal over one shoulder, an antique warhammer with a long, curved blade on one side.
“That is a truly terrifying-looking weapon,” Prem told him.
Kurien grinned and reached back to pat the blunt side of the large hammer. “My good luck charm, Mari.”
Pranay looked uncomfortable in her new outfit: at Preet’s insistence, the mantrik had left her white dress behind and donned a Guardswoman’s uniform. She’d made adjustments to the ensemble: the coat was fully unbuttoned, the golden regalia removed, and she rolled up the sleeves of both coat and shirt to bare her arms to the elbows. The long, thick braid that hung down to her knees wasn’t acceptable by military standards, either, but Pranay’s hair was one of her few vanities; Prem couldn’t even remember the last time it’d been cut.
“Prem, we’re ready,” Preet said. The rest of group turned with their commander to face the younger Marantha sister, their faces smooth and serious, their eyes intent.
It struck Prem at that moment that they were looking to her for instruction, and her stomach promptly melted down into her toes. She coughed, several times, closed her eyes and did a frantic scramble for her thoughts. For a moment she stayed completely silent, uncertain of what to say. “I… I’m not somebody who gives speeches,” she told the small crowd. “I told Preet to bring her best, and she chose you, so I’ll be brief.” Prem had changed into a clean corset of tight, dark fabric. The evening was cool, so she pulled her gloves on just a little tighter, hearing the leather squeak between her fingers. “Our target is an assassin named Gomati. We believe that he’s hiding somewhere here in the Grays. He’s old, but he’s a trained killer. He’s also empowered by an earth-realm Kushin, which means he has magic at his disposal. If you see him, be on your guard—don’t underestimate him.”
“Do you want us to kill him, Commander?” one of the women asked Preet. Prem’s warning didn’t appear to have intimidated her or the other Guards in the slightest.
Preet shook her head. “Not a chance. I want Gomati alive by any means necessary. Break every bone in his body if that’s what it takes; chop off his limbs and stuff him in a rucksack if you have to. But I need him still breathing, no matter what.”
“Do we know Gomati’s location?” Kurien said, shifting his huge hammer from one broad shoulder to the other. Kurien was even taller and stockier than Preet, and that was saying something.
“No,” Prem said. “Pranay’s going to handle that.”
The eldest Marantha sister now had everyone’s eyes on her, and she looked uncomfortable but determined. “Preet, who are we taking with us?”
The Seneschal started barking orders: “Abhay, Sanjaya, you stay here and guard the boat. Vina will run reconnaissance—keep an eye on the river and the far bank, watch out for any Parliamentary forces. The rest of you are with me. Watch for the signal. You know what to do.” The two men nodded at their orders. Vina, the woman who’d questioned Preet a moment earlier, tightened the cinch of the rifle over her shoulder, then started off at a brisk pace away from the boat in a northern direction, away from Black Bay.
The remaining nine started overland, heading south in the direction of the closest bridge, a decaying structure of dark brick and rusting iron hanging over the swollen river. They walked in silence, climbing up the embankment and passing through thick typha reeds to reach the flat marshes on the other side. The ground was thick with standing water, but surprisingly firm underfoot. The mud sloshed and sucked at their boots. Kurien’s piloting had brought them nearly to their destination: a squat, ugly temple of flaking gray stone standing a few hundred feet from the water’s edge. Around it stood row after row of gravestones, all about a foot high, radiating out from the temple like the cogs of a giant wheel. The temple’s only decoration was the silhouette of a large hand in white paint, standing stark and bright in the pale moonlight.
Prem’s tranquil ride on the river was a pleasant memory, but now her prey was ahead of her. She couldn’t sense Gomati, but her instincts told her they were on the right track. She swiped her tongue between dry lips like she could taste his scent, ready to howl to the rising moon that the hunt had started. “This could be a good place to check,” she said to Pranay.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not. But this cemetery is close to the shore, so the Police wouldn’t have to go far to reach the burial grounds once they cross the river.” She pointed towards the suspension bridge. “Call it a hunch.”
“Fair enough.” Pranay turned to face the others. “This is the only time I’ll say it: the Rani’s protection is your one and only law. Anyone who disagrees should leave now and go back to the boat.” The mage narrowed her eyes, looking at each member of the Guard in turn; there remained four men and two women, and Prem watched to see if any of them would flinch under Pranay’s heavy-lidded gaze. None did. “Do we understand one another?” Several of the Guard nodded.
Pranay took a breath, then began to twist the small gold ring she wore on her left hand. The moonlight coalesced and thickened, like wisps of smoke rising from a smothered fire. A second later, a figure materialized from out of the fog. He had skin pale as alabaster and wore a white vest and dhoti, with a gold sash around his waist and a round, circular buckle in the shape of a silver crescent. Prem immediately recognized just what the man was. Anash was a jinn—one of the Kushin, but a benevolent spirit rather than a demon. A jinn bound him or herself to a magician willingly, eliminating any need for mantras, for a familiar, or to treaty with the spirits in order to perform spells.
The figure opened his eyes and focused on Pranay immediately. “You summoned me, Mistress?”
“Yes, Anash.” Pranay reached out and touched him on the cheek. Prem saw honest, real affection in the mantrik’s eyes as she and Anash stared at each other for a moment. That one gesture showed more to Prem than any words Pranay could have said. It made Prem want to have someone to look at like that, and her heart ached for it.
The man bowed his head. “How may I serve?”
“We seek a lost spirit,” Pranay said. “It may know how to locate someone we’re looking for.” She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small, yellow stone as long as her thumb, which she placed on the palm of her left hand. “You must find its spark for me.” Prem caught a hint of sulfur, like a whiff of spoiled eggs sitting in the sun.
“Must I?” Anash said, sounding more sad than reluctant as he took the rock from his Mistress. “The aimless dead suffer enough without my needless interference.”
“Without questioning her, the one we pursue may escape us. We are in haste, my love. Do this for me. Please.”
The spirit hesitated, but the look on Pranay’s face said that she would not be denied. “How shall I identify this lost soul, Mistress? Have you any offering with which to locate her?”
Pranay shook her head. “I’m afraid not, but she was very young, and freshly buried. We believe the body is close-by, so the spirit should be also.”
“As you say, then. I shall endure.” Anash took the piece of sulfur and put it in his mouth. There was a series of loud pops, and a crunching sound that made Prem’s jaw ache to hear it as the jinn ground the yellow stone to bits with his teeth. A moment later, his body vanished in a flash of flame that shot off through the dark, traveling parallel to the river in the direction of the bridge.
Preet whistled. “I didn’t know you had a jinn, Pranay.” Prem saw the eyes of several Guards had gone wide in surprise. Others nodded in agreement.
“And now you do,” Pranay said. It was a curt answer, like she didn’t want to speak of it any further. “Let’s go.”
They started off at a brisk pace, hurrying between the gravestones, following Anash’s light as it stretched farther into the distance. The jog felt good to Prem. The cool air and the smell of the river was thick and pleasant in her nostrils while her heart pounded and she drank in the night air with long, deep breaths, keeping pace with the others.
Most people received a funeral pyre after their death, severing the body’s hold over the lingering spirit and freeing it to begin the journey to the next life thereafter. Those who couldn’t afford proper rites after death received a burial instead, but the spirit oftentimes lingered behind with the rotting physical shell it no longer needed. Every few years, the oldest graves were dug up and the bones burned with proper prayers offered, freeing those lost souls and, more importantly, emptying the land for more of the dead that would replace them. There were too few to perform the thousands upon thousands of burial rites needed in the Grays, so the cycle continued on without end.
Anash’s light grew stronger as they drew nearer to it, hanging high above one particular burial plot a few rows back from the edge of a muddy track that was as close to a road as the Grays had. The grave was filled with dark mud, but the plot looked fresh, untouched by lichen or castor plants with their violet leaves and red berries, whose seeds could kill a grown man. The jinn’s fire became a pinpoint, looking weak and pitiful in the air as it floated down into the muck and began to spit like a defective Kali Shodh firework. It seemed like an inauspicious end before Anash’s light shot out in four directions, crisscrossing the muddy burial plot in a bright X of incandescent light that sank into the mud. A massive cloud of something thick and foul-smelling billowed up, fluttering into the dark twilight over their heads as the earth itself began to glow.
“Get ready,” Pranay said.
Prem didn’t draw her weapons as several of the others did—she knew the dead didn’t fear the might of the living. The ground began to dry and crumble into dust and thick clumps, tumbling into a yawning black pit. Out of that hole emerged a figure, something deceptively small at first sight, clawing at the ground to free itself, raising a dark, swollen head. “What do you want?” Nakushi’s voice had a weird, unsettling mix of bubbling, malevolent anger and childish terror. Her face was nearly gone after a day in a muddy grave, while her mouth frothed with a dark, writhing substance: bits of worm, shining maggots and decomposing fluid that dribbled down her chin like foul, viscous milk. Her wide, gaping chest wound looked even blacker and more fetid than before. Half-devoured organs and rotting flesh could be seen within, while tips of clean, white bone stood out, stark and bright in the moonlight.
Necromancy was illegal magic, for it interfered with a soul’s transmigration between one life and the next. The act carried a mandatory prison sentence if caught, and it wasn’t unheard of for crowds to mete out mob justice if an unfortunate witch or mantrik ever got caught in the act. Given the appearance of the child’s rotting corpse, Prem could understand why it was banned. One of the Guardsmen stumbled away in shock, throwing up behind a nearby gravestone.
“We would speak with you, spirit.” Pranay’s pale face was nearly drained of color. Sweat spotted on her upper lip and temples as she wrestled with the child’s essence, the spirit so much stronger now than she ever was in life. “Will you treat with us?”
The dead child pushed up to her full height. She screamed, a frightening sound that only the three sisters withstood without backing away. Kurien took a half-step towards Preet, as if ready to strike down the dead creature himself if it attacked his commander. When the child stumbled towards Pranay instead, one of Anash’s fiery strands of light lashed itself around her wrist like a chain, dragging her back. Another chain of living fire wrapped around the child’s other wrist, while a third coiled around her neck, pulling the girl down onto both knees.
“What’s wrong, what’s happening?” Preet said.
“She’s fighting me.” Pranay’s voice was tight as a frayed string. “She’s strong!”
“Something that small should be child’s play for you!”
“She is a child,” Prem said. “She needs to be reasoned with like a child.” With no time to explain herself further, Prem raised her voice. “Nakushi!” When the girl’s milky eyes focused on her, Prem didn’t falter. “Please, don’t be angry with us. We want to find the one who did this to you.”
“Why should I care what you want?!” Nakushi lowered her head, trying to fight with the muscles she still had left. One cheek was eaten through, and Prem could see the girl’s tiny teeth grinding together. “No one wanted me when I was alive. Now I want to rest and wait for the end of all things.”
At the edge of her vision, Prem saw her sister still struggling to restrain the girl’s spirit, but there was no guarantee that Pranay and Anash could hold out for long, especially if Nakushi insisted on fighting them—the dead weren’t limited to a mortal’s strength or willpower, and she wouldn’t tire out like Pranay. A thought occurred to Prem, and she seized on it. “What if we were to free you? In exchange for the information we need?”
“And we can promise justice for your death,” Preet added. It sounded awkward to Prem’s ears, but Preet’s heart seemed to be in the right place. The offer surprised Prem, made her see Preet just a little differently than before. “Would that…please you?” the Seneschal added.
The tension on the dead girl’s face went slack. “I don’t care about justice,” Nakushi said in a flat, uninterested tone. “If you promise to free me from this place, I will speak with you.”
It was the best offer they could get and Prem wasn’t going to waste it. “The man who killed you, Nakushi,” she said. “Do you remember his face? What he looked like? Anything?”
“I remember that it was dark.” The child’s voice became clearer once her anger faded. She stared at Prem without blinking. The girl no longer needed to blink, to breathe, or do anything that normal children did. “I remember darkness, the smell of ash. I smelled something burning. I remember pain. I screamed as the blade cut me, sliding through my flesh, burning like fire, until I couldn’t scream anymore.” Behind her, Prem could hear one of the women catch her breath in a sob. “Then I died. I was surrounded by darkness until you brought me back.” Nakushi’s voice started to change again, anger and indignation warping the child’s tones into that eerie, inhuman sound. “You brought me back! I didn’t want to come back!”
“We think we know who killed you,” Prem said. She had to hurry to hold the girl’s attention, to keep her from fighting Pranay again.
“Then serve your justice on him, if you wish.”
“He belongs to one of the Kushin. The spirit that resides in him is keeping them both hidden, but we believe he’s somewhere near this place.” The Grays was a large geographic area, but Prem didn’t want to bog down their discussion with pointless explanations. “We need your help to locate him, Nakushi. Will you please help us find him?”
The girl frowned, more of a puzzled look than one of anger. “He has a spirit? Is it like yours?”
Prem took a breath and nodded. “Yes. The man’s name is Gomati. A spirit of Uthav is helping him.”
The dead girl stared at Prem for a long time, perhaps a minute or more, not moving or saying a word. It was always slightly unnerving to be under the scrutiny of a spirit, dead or otherwise. Prem worked hard to stay still, resisting the urge to scratch her nose or shift her feet. It saddened her to see the unfortunate end that the girl had come to; it made Prem wonder what sort of woman Nakushi might have grown up to be.
“I see your demon now,” Nakushi said to Prem. “He doesn’t like me.”
“My demon doesn’t really like anyone,” Prem said.
Nakushi’s face showed no reaction, no smile, nothing. She turned her head, and the sound of her denuded vertebrae grinding together set Prem’s teeth on edge. “I sense someone in that direction,” the girl said, pulling at Anash’s flaming chain to raise one arm, pointing at another temple down the road, a rectangular shape of dark stone in the gloom. “The other lost souls sense nearby your man and his demon there. The dead unnerve him and the one that dwells within him.” Nakushi turned back. “You promised. Now keep your word.”
Prem looked at Pranay, whose color had returned and now seemed more relaxed, finally able to catch her breath. “Let her go, Pray.”
The dead child looked relieved, Prem thought. Nakushi let her head fall back, looking up at the moon. The light of Anash’s presence grew brighter. “Will my next mother want me?” The earlier fury in her voice was gone. Now she only sounded afraid, just like any lost little girl would be.
Prem forced herself to speak: “I don’t know. I hope she will.”
The fiery chains coiled about the dead girl’s body; the corpse began to burn. Nakushi looked back at Prem and pinned in place with her stare. An outline of Anash appeared, and it seemed to Prem that his fiery form wrapped up the girl in a final embrace as she burned, her rotting, corrupted flesh consumed until nothing remained. Then even the ash was gone, leaving only a fire-scorched stone behind to mark where the body had been buried.
The girl named Nakushi was gone. Prem wasn’t one for prayer, yet she still prayed for the child’s spirit anyway—just one time couldn’t hurt.