Laldasa (16 page)

oOo

The next morning, when Ana would have gone to the Nahar Zone for her drill bits, Jaya sent Ravi instead, armed with enough money to offer the bribe he was certain the equipment broker had been holding out for.

Ana was disgusted. “I am beginning to think this entire society runs on bribes and threats,” she told him. “Are you often forced to conduct business this way?”

Jaya raised his brows in mock surprise. “You don't do business like this on Avasa? Tsk. How uncivilized.”

“Oh, we're horrible savages on Avasa. We sell mining equipment to women all the time, without extorting any extra gain from them.”

“Now, according to the travel services, you Avasans live a pretty mean existence. What was it I read? ‘An existence pried out of the miserly earth by brute force.' Something about a ‘desperate struggle for survival,' ‘frontier lawlessness,' ‘pagan life styles.' Very exciting.”

Ana laughed. “Have you ever been to Avasa?”

“Once, to a private resort in the Sagara.”

“Ah, the Garden Spot.” Ana nodded. “I was there once, myself. I stared at the ocean for hours. I couldn't believe how big it was.”

Jaya smiled wryly. “By Mehtaran standards it's a large lake.”

“We are impressed with it, and so I guess are many wealthy Mehtarans, or they wouldn't be buying up the sea shore for their private resorts.”

Jaya felt a surge of guilt lock in combat with a warring sting of annoyance. It was a brief scuffle won by neither. “Yes, I do feel shame when I compare my life with what some other people have to endure,” he said baldly, answering her veiled accusation. “I also feel a slight twinge of resentment that you insist on reminding me of the disparity.”

“I'm sorry, mahesa.” She changed the subject. “Can we tour the Port Zone?”

Jaya shook his head. “I have a Varmana assembly later. But we could breakfast at the Kiritan.”

Breakfast was not all they got. Naru had some information about the thief. His name was Parva Rishi, or at least that was the name he used when he dined at the Kiritan. He didn't seem to have any particular friends among the regular patrons, but he was on nodding terms with several of them. Not, Naru added, that those people seemed overly pleased to see Rishi-sama. When asked for his impression of the man, Naru disclosed that he ate too much and had questionable table manners. And he only left gratuities for the more well-endowed female servers.

It wasn't much. In fact, it wasn't anything at all, to Ana, but Jaya had a resource very few of his class would appreciate. He knew a madman named Govinda.

The room was dark and close, full of the sweet, warring perfumes of a variety of tobaccos. Candles flickered in the darkness, their inconstant light picking out bits of faces—the curve of a cheek here, the gleam of an eye there. Jaya came down the short flight of steps into the dingy grotto and headed for a stall in a far corner.

He was not himself tonight. No one would recognize the dark, rough-looking young man in the scuffed leather coat as the lord of anything. A woman smelling of a thousand night flowers brushed by him and tried to draw his eyes to her. He offered only a sly glance—the merest hint of a smile—then continued on this way.

“I'm glad you're a man of habit.” He slid into a badly padded seat and grinned across the table.

The answering grin revealed a set of impossibly white teeth, slightly uneven due to a chip on one incisor.

Jaya noticed it. “That's new. Been fighting, Govi?”

“Not me. Got nothing to fight over. Someone thought I needed to relocate my cozy, is all.”

“You disagreed?”

“Not a bit. I saw their superior reasoning immediately. I was just a grain too slow in moving, is all.”

“So you're not in the alley behind Badan-Devaki anymore.”

“Nah. Someone else is at home there now.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

Govi shrugged. “T'was getting a bit busy back there anyway. What brings you into Marketzone?”

“Parva Rishi. Heard the name?”

Govi was nodding. “Smalltime thief, bigtime schemer. That's not his real name.”

“I didn't suppose it was. What others does he use?”

“Pel Ruche, Pidar Rel ... a few others. Got idea none which is the real thing.”

“All with the initials P.R..”

Govi shrugged again. “He's consistent. Or maybe just superstitious. He's also the one who rushed me out of my cozy behind B'n'D. Him and his three thugs.”

“Why? Surely he didn't need a place to live.”

Govi laughed outright. “That's God's promise! That boy's got funds!” He rubbed his palm illustratively.

“Where does a ‘smalltime thief' get funds?”

“This escapes me,” Govi admitted. “Guess he's made some schemes pay. Why d'you ask?”

Jaya hesitated, considering how much he wanted to confide. “I know someone who had an experience with Rishi-sama that was a lot like yours.”

“Rushed out of their cozy?”

“Rushed out of their id and 25,000 dagam.”

Govi whistled. “Sarngin get ‘em?”

“Very nearly.”

“What's the plan?”

Jaya shook his head ruefully. “No plan. I was just trying to figure out what Rishi's up to.”

He paused long enough to order drinks from the girl who loomed suddenly out of the darkness beyond the lamplit table. She took their order, then stayed overlong to play the coquette. Jaya flirted in return, and hinted that he might be around after her shift.

“He's up to his ears in money, from what I've seen,” commented Govi when the girl was gone. “You really gonna wait that out?” he asked, jerking his head at the server's swaying hips.

Jaya shook his head. “Just being polite. How does Rishi come to be up to his ears in money? He doesn't seem to be stealing that much of it.” Jaya leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “My friend saw Rishi strike twice. Both times he was after his victim's leaf. The first time the money just happened to get discovered. It was on a thong around her neck—so was her leaf. They lifted both. The second time they didn't even look for money. They went straight for the id. The Sarngin arrived to take the victim into custody—obviously by pre-arrangement—and brought him to the Badan-Devaki. My friend thinks the two things are connected.”

Govi's face had puckered into a comic frown. “That's an odd one. Why would Parva Rishi be stealing id?”

“Possibly to help one of the dalalis make das that are cheap to obtain and sell for a high price.”

“I don't track.”

“They target people who don't have cree and whose legal rights on Mehtar are, shall we say, not that well-protected. With the leaf gone-“

Govi whistled. “Instant yevetha.”

Jaya nodded. “I take it you don't know anything about this.”

“No, would you like me to?”

“It would be very helpful to my friend.”

“If I find out something, how should I get to you?”

“You know where I live.”

Govi looked skeptical. “They call me the ‘Crazy Beggar,' but I'm not so crazy I'd walk right up to the Sarojin Palace and ring.”

“Why not?” asked Jaya. “I just invited you to.”

“Jaya Rai, the existence of our friendship proves you an eccentric man. An invitation into your home proves you a demented one. Are you sure you want the whole city of Kasi privy to this?”

“I don't really care,” Jaya admitted.

“Stone bet your mata do.”

“The Rani may care all she wants, that doesn't mean I have to.”

Govi's shiny, black eyes took on a particularly knowing gleam.

Jaya saw it and shook his head, grinning wryly. “No, I am not embarking on a token rebellion against Melantha Sarojin's shallow values. You're a friend, Govi, not a challenge to the Rani.”

“Ah, this is true. I am your friend. But have you not, like your father before you, embarked on a crusade against rita?”

Jaya's face flamed with sudden embarrassment. He hoped Govi couldn't see the blush by candlelight. “I'm not a crusader, Govi. I would never presume to follow my father in that.”

“Ah, well, it is a token rebellion, then.”

“I pray it's not a token anything. I'm simply weary of hearing rita used as an excuse for injustice.”

Govi laughed. “So you pray, do you? To what god does an atheist pray?”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“Ah! Then what figurative injustice do you speak of?”

Jaya's patience was beginning to stagger with exhaustion. “The injustice is completely real, Govi. Someone I know was free three days ago. She set foot on Mehtaran soil and was robbed of a stupid piece of metal. According to rita, the thief who stole it also stole her identity and her freedom. The loss of that worthless trinket makes her suddenly and mysteriously less than human—a commodity. Subject to the whims of someone like me.”

Govi's face was finally completely sober. He was, himself, yevetha, an idless non-entity—but he was that by choice.

“And she's now a dasa in your house, this someone?”

Jaya glanced warily over his shoulder before answering. “She's in my household, but not as a dasa.”

Govi nodded slowly, knowingly. “The young princess you were about with this morning. The Rani Sadira. Rumor makes her your cousin.”

“Rumor is supposed to make her my cousin.”

“A milk-skinned beauty ... from Avasa?”

Jaya nodded, watching the server make her way toward them with their order. Both men were silent until she had done flirting and was out of earshot.

“Then she has no cree,” guessed Govi.

“She does now,” said Jaya grimly.

“Dascree?”

Jaya nodded.

“What leaf?”

“Saroj.”

Govi's brows fluttered to a perch beneath his scraggy fringe of graying hair. “You marked her?”

“It was that or turn her over to the Sarngin.”

“Ah, a dilemma. So, now you try to retrieve her stolen identity. A worthy cause. Consider my assistance your right.”

To someone else the assistance of a half-mad indigent might be beneath contempt. To Jaya it was invaluable.

In the misty quiet of the late night streets, he wound his thoughts through Anala's predicament, trying to separate it from the KNC and AGIM. It would be dishonest to deny that he had already lost the neutrality that was the ideal for a member of the Vrinda Varma. How could anyone remain neutral around Ana?

He amended the question: How could any man remain neutral around Ana?

He returned his horse to the stable and meandered into the House. Eyes on his thoughts rather than on his path, he nearly collided with Helidasa and a tray of channa and cakes. He apologized, she scolded him respectfully, he apologized again and asked if Anala was still awake.

Heli lifted the tray slightly. “This is for her.”

“I'll take it,” he said, and did, not quite oblivious to the sudden change of Heli's expression.

He went to his own suite first, divested himself of his cloak and the ragged coat beneath it, and knocked on the connecting door to Ana's rooms. That, he figured, would at least give her some warning in case she was in a state of undress. He side-stepped the thought, listening for the click of the door latch. He didn't hear it and the door came open silently, making him jump.

She stood a little inside her room, fully dressed in a long robe of Saroj crimson, only the tips of her toes showing beneath the hem. He couldn't see her hands.

“Nathu Rai?” she said and waited for him to speak.

“I-I didn't hear the latch,” he said irrelevantly.

“It wasn't locked.”

“Oh.” He raised the tray and bowed slightly. “Tea, Rani?”

“Are you practicing to be das?” Her eyes mocked him and her hands appeared, reaching for the tray.

He pulled the tray away. “Sit down. I'll pour.”

The hands retreated beneath the sleeves of the robe. “That wouldn't be appropriate, Nathu Rai.”

He brushed past her into the room, moving to deposit the tray on a table before her hearth. “I was ‘Jaya Rai' yesterday and ‘Jaya' earlier today. What happened?”

She followed him, cautiously, watched as he poured the tea and took the cover off the cakes. “I'm sorry. I forgot myself this morning.”

“I encourage you to forget yourself more often,” he said and handed her the cup. “Ravi got your drill bits, by the way.”

“Thank him for me ... and thank you.”