The Fire Seer (17 page)

Taya shrugged. “I’m not going to heal his banana plants.”

“But you’ll drink his wine?” He shook the half-empty amphora. “We have a day of investigation ahead of us, and you’re drunk.”

Taya folded her arms. “I’m not drunk. Banana wine isn’t strong like...whatever you ruling-caste people drink. And you know as well as I do that if I’d waited for you, you’d have poured out the wine and I wouldn’t have tasted a drop.”

“You’d better hope it wasn’t poisoned.”

“I just staked my life on it, didn’t I?” said Taya. “Put the amphora down. If it was poisoned, I’m slated for death already.”

Mandir set the amphora back on the table. “It won’t be poisoned this time, since Zash was drinking from it himself. But if that banana farmer shows up again, I want you to fetch me immediately.”

“Why, so you can run him off again?”

“So I can
protect
you,” said Mandir. “What do you see in that zebu’s ass?”

“He’s kind,” said Taya. “And he’s handsome—”

“No, he isn’t,” said Mandir. “He’s scrawny and ugly.”

“You’re not one to judge.”

Was she serious about Zash being handsome? Surely she could not be attracted to the banana farmer. The thought offended Mandir down to the marrow of his bones. To think that this idiot might have the woman he’d been pursuing for years...flood and fire, he should slap himself in the balls right now. “Zash doesn’t love you. He wants you to heal his plants, and apparently he doesn’t care if you get caught and the Coalition burns you to death. Is that the kind of lover you want?”

“He’s desperately afraid of losing his farm,” said Taya. “I understand that. I’ve told him repeatedly that I’m not going to heal his plants. If that’s all he’s after, he’ll give up soon enough and stop coming around. And he’s not my lover.”

“You called him handsome.” Mandir doubted Zash would give up on coming around to see Taya. He’d stake a silver stick on the likelihood of that slippery man’s return.

“He also makes pleasant conversation,” said Taya. “And he’s never been cruel to me.”

That was a dig at him if he’d ever heard one. “What about the way he treated his mad sister?”

“I know little about the situation with his sister. I realize he has an ulterior motive in coming here. But you’re my partner in investigation, Mandir, not my lover, and it’s not your business to tell me who I can and can’t spend time with—“

“It
is
my business, if I feel your life is in danger.”

“You don’t truly believe Zash is dangerous. You’re just jealous of him. Back at Mohenjo, you isolated me and deprived me of friends so you could have me all to yourself to mistreat. But you’re not going to do that here.”

Her words stung. Each barb was a needlefly digging into his skin. Yes, he was jealous of Zash. But jealousy was not the only reason for his unease. “Let’s be clear on something. You’re a fire seer, which makes you a rare and valuable asset to the Coalition. They sent me here to protect you, and I take that job seriously, as you learned when I fished you out of the river yesterday. Someone in Hrappa is trying to kill you. Why spend time alone with a strange man, one who is in fact on the list of suspects, without your
quradum
present?”

“Zash isn’t the jackal. He’s the wrong sex. Besides, I like him.”

“He’s a suspect,” insisted Mandir. “Regardless of what you saw in your vision. And consider this. The wine might not have been poisoned with something that could kill you, but what if Zash had laced it with
kimat
? It wouldn’t affect him, but it would certainly affect you. Once he’d disabled your magic, he could have killed you.”

Taya opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it. The chagrin in her eyes told him that he’d scored a point—she hadn’t considered the possibility of
kimat
. She whispered a word and made a subtle gesture with her hand. A tiny fireball appeared in her palm, cradled by her fingers. “My magic’s fine.”

“You were lucky,” said Mandir. “You let him in, gave him access to your person, and drank his wine.”

Taya dismissed the fireball and closed her hand into a loose fist. “Maybe I was a touch careless, but there was no
kimat
in the wine
.
He obviously didn’t mean any harm.”

“Not this time,” said Mandir. “Maybe the time wasn’t right for the kill. Maybe he wanted to find out first if you’d heal his plants.”

“You’re too suspicious. You think everyone is an enemy.”

“You’re not suspicious enough,” he retorted. “And there
is
an enemy, someone who tried only yesterday to kill you. It could be anyone. I need to be present whenever someone has access to you. So I’m afraid it may be rather difficult for you to have affairs with scrawny banana farmers bearing gifts of wine. And it’s not just because I’m a zebu’s ass. Are we clear on that?”

“We’re clear,” she said. “But you
are
a zebu’s ass.”

He couldn’t disagree.

Chapter 23: Hrappa

As she readied herself to leave the guesthouse, Taya was quietly pleased that despite the tongue-lashing she’d had to endure, she had finally managed to taste Zash’s banana wine. Mandir needed to learn that there were some things that his customary techniques of bullheadedness and force couldn’t accomplish. She wasn’t a child anymore. She wasn’t going to let him push her around, no matter how much he claimed it was “for her protection.”

She’d grant that as annoying as Mandir was, he was a decent
quradum
. It seemed he’d found his niche in this new role of threatening people and being paranoid all the time. But like needleflies at a picnic, he took the fun out of life. He was so concerned with neatness and order; nothing could induce him to take a chance in the interest of adventure or pleasure. Who knew that the bully who’d tormented her at Mohenjo would grow into someone so straight-laced? Someone needed to teach that man how to relax.

She was pleasantly tipsy as she mounted Pepper and rode with Mandir to the farmer district of Hrappa. There they hoped to speak with some of the peasant families from the court cases they’d read about, but at the first house they visited, only the elders were at home. That was no good; Taya needed to visit with the whole family. The second and third houses they visited were no different: the young and able-bodied were out working in the fields.

Mandir suggested that while they waited for the farmers to return, they could speak to the tax collector. He was the man in town most proficient with numbers. As such, he might be able to explain the terms of Bodhan’s loans in language they could understand.

They found him in the ruling district, in a modest brick house that served as both home and office. He greeted them with neither warmth nor rancor and invited them into his home.

The tax collector’s name was Wasan isu Damodar, and he was a big man, taller even than Mandir, and several inches wider. “I fear I can offer little to your investigation,” he said, taking a seat at a table so covered with tablets that one couldn’t see the wood underneath. He gestured at the pile. “Just move them out of the way.” When Taya hesitated to touch the tax collector’s tablets, he grabbed some of them himself and dumped them into a precarious-looking pile, freeing a token amount of space on the table.

“We seek your expertise with numbers. Here are some loan documents from the magistrate’s archive.” She placed her tablets in the space he’d cleared. “They’re from recent court cases. Neither Mandir nor I have had much schooling in mathematics. Can you explain the terms of these loans to us?”

Wasan took the documents and studied them. His forehead wrinkled. “Do these have something to do with the jackal you seek?”

“We’re not sure yet,” said Mandir.

“Well, I’ve seen these before,” said Wasan.

“These documents?” asked Taya.

“These loan terms,” said Wasan. “Bodhan offers them to anyone who comes to him looking for money, but if they understood what they were signing...”

Taya sat up straighter in her chair. “What
are
they signing?”

“Well, first of all, they’re agreeing to pay a fifth in interest.”

“A fifth?” Taya asked awkwardly. She turned to Mandir, who shrugged his shoulders.

Wasan frowned. “It means that if you borrowed five silver sticks, at the end of the year you have to pay back those five plus one more. Six in total.”

“Oh,” said Taya. That made sense. Except... “No farmer would borrow five silver sticks. Would they?”

Wasan shook his head. “That was just an example. It’s proportional, see? The actual amounts borrowed are lower. But here’s the real problem. If they fail to pay back the original amount, plus interest, by the agreed-upon date, they are charged a fine. And the amount of the fine is the entire amount of the loan. So if your peasant borrowed five silver sticks—bear with my example, however unlikely—and then failed to pay it back by the end of the year, he would then owe ten silver sticks plus one more, so eleven total. And another fifth will be charged on
that,
so it gets even worse—”

“Wait a minute,” said Taya. “If a peasant can’t pay back six silver sticks after a year, how could he possibly pay back eleven sticks the second year?”

“You’ve got the idea,” said Wasan. “If he fails to pay back his loan the first year, he’ll never pay it back. This document also states that if Bodhan has not been paid back the full amount of the loan within five years, the borrower must cede him all of his land holdings.”

Taya blinked. “But that’s not legal. Bodhan can’t own farmland; he’s artisan caste.”

“Correct,” said Wasan. “He’s not claiming ownership of the land, just control over it.”

“What does that mean?” said Mandir. “He controls the farmer’s land but doesn’t own it. So what does he do with it?”

“It says in the contract he’s permitted to specify what is grown on the land.”

“That’s all?” Mandir frowned. “Is he owed a share of what the farmer produces off that land? A fifth, maybe?”

“No, that would be illegal for his caste,” said the tax collector.

“I don’t understand,” said Mandir. “Why would he care what’s grown on the land if he has no ownership either of the land or what it produces?”

“He wants cotton for his business,” said Taya.

∞

“Where to?” asked Mandir, after they’d left the tax collector. From the ground, he gathered up the reins of his blood bay. He grabbed a hank of mane and vaulted onto the creature’s back. “The farmers won’t be home yet.”

“While we’re waiting, we can go back to the river. I need to scry again.”

“Back to the river, are you crazy?” Fool woman, throwing herself as bait to the jackal again. He was not going to allow it.

She didn’t answer and instead attempted to vault up onto her black mare. Somehow she didn’t get her right leg high enough. She slid back off, and the sensitive mare, distressed by this turn of events, danced away to the end of the reins.

He frowned. It was odd for her to have difficulty getting on her horse. She didn’t seem drunk from the banana wine; it looked more like she was exhausted or in pain. “You need a boost?”

“Flood and fire, no.” She coaxed the mare back to her and made a second attempt at mounting. It was clumsy but successful. She scrambled messily onto the mare’s back. “Let’s go.”

“Not to the river.”

“We have to. I never got my vision—”

“You didn’t get your vision because someone tried to kill you. I’m not letting the jackal have a second go at you.” He studied her and noted the sag in her shoulders. Her rosy cheeks had faded, leaving her looking pale and strained.

“It’s my job,” she said. “I’m not scared of the jackal.”

“You should be.” Gods, if any woman needed a full-time
quradum
, it was Taya. She was brave and determined to succeed, but not always sensible. She had no business going near that river until the jackal was found, especially in the condition she was in. She hadn’t recovered yet from yesterday’s attack.

“I’m going,” she said, sending Pepper into a canter.

He touched heels to the blood bay. His bigger horse leapt into a gallop and easily caught the black mare. He seized the mare’s reins, pulled her to a stop, and turned her around. “You’re going
home
. You’re going to have lunch and rest through the heat of the day.”

“Mandir, you’ve no right—”

“As your
quradum
, I have the final word on matters of safety.”

She yielded then, perhaps a testament to how exhausted she really was. She gave the mare a pat of apology and turned her in a gentle trot toward home.

Mandir rode behind her, admiring the fineness of her form and the quality of her riding. The black mare Pepper was a sensitive animal of the type that so many riders ruined. Taya guided the mare with a light hand, never punishing her for over-exuberance or yanking around that delicate mouth. She’d had the horse for only a short time, he knew—it was customary for initiates to receive their first mount when they became fully qualified—yet an affectionate bond had already formed between them.

It shamed him to see a relationship in which everything had been done right. He, on the other hand, had done nothing right. If at Mohenjo Temple he had treated her with gentleness, the way she did that pretty black mare, she could be his right now.

Instead he’d tried to break her.

His father, Tufan, used to break horses the way he broke people. It amused the old man. First he would try spurs and a whip and a bit so sharp it cut the tongue. If that didn’t subdue the beast, he’d try other methods: isolation, starvation. Most beasts succumbed and became docile, but they also became dull, spiritless animals.

A few animals did not succumb. They grew wild and turned outlaw. They bit and reared and kicked. If Tufan could not tame them, he would cut their throats.

The man had been equally brutal with his children. Kindness had no place in Tufan’s household. Any show of weakness and Tufan would shame Mandir before his brothers. Then his brothers would steal him away and hold his head in a bucket of horse piss, or tie a feral cat to his head and laugh uproariously as it shat on him and scratched him in its desperation to escape.