The Fire Seer (8 page)

Mandir headed out into the rain again. Rasik’s house looked, from the outside, a lot like his own guesthouse, except a little larger. He banged on the door.

Rasik answered it with an expectant air but frowned when he saw Mandir. “I’m off duty. Talk to me in the morning.” He started to shut the door.

Mandir caught the door and forced it back open. “My partner’s missing. Help me find her.”

A baby wailed somewhere inside the house, and a woman’s voice spoke. Mandir couldn’t make out the words. Rasik turned in the direction of the voice and called, “No, dinner’s not here yet. It’s something else.” Then to Mandir, “I’m not your partner’s keeper. You lost her, you find her.”

“She left the guesthouse through the front door,” said Mandir. “You’ve been out and about preparing for the storm—if not you, then the servants under your command. Somebody must have seen her leave.”

He heard splashing behind him in the street. Mandir turned, hoping it might be Taya, but it was only a servant boy delivering a leather pouch. Rasik accepted it wordlessly and said to Mandir, “You want me to question all the magistrate’s servants because you don’t know where your partner is? Do it yourself.”

“If she comes to harm, things will go badly for you,” said Mandir. “The Coalition will send another team out here—”

“Who’s to say she’s come to harm?” said Rasik. “Maybe she just went for a walk.”

“In this?” Mandir gestured at the pouring rain.

“Excuse me,” said the servant boy. “Do you mean the Coalition lady?”

Mandir turned eagerly. “Have you seen her?”

“She’s in the stable,” said the boy.

“The
stable
?”

The boy nodded.

“Where is the stable?”

“Show him,” Rasik said to the boy.

Mandir followed the boy through the muddy streets to the stable. The huge doors, large enough to admit a horse or even a wagon, were ajar, and he found himself able to slip inside without opening them farther.

The barn was warm and dry. It smelled wholesome, of hay and straw and well-groomed horses, with just a hint of manure. The animals were restless. Some stamped their feet or circled in their stalls, distressed by the storm. But the servant boy was right. Taya was here. Mandir couldn’t see her, but he could hear her voice. She was crooning to some creature in one of the far stalls.

Mandir brushed the rivulets off his rain-spattered clothes—flood and fire, he hated looking disheveled—and finger-combed his hair. He stalked down the aisle, relieved at having found her but furious that she’d made him worry and run around like a fool in the rain.

He rounded the stable aisle and spotted her. “What in the Mothers’ names are you doing here? I looked all over for you!”

Taya jumped at his sudden words. She was standing in one of the animals’ stalls. The black horse in the adjoining stall, startled, flung up its head and reared, and then capered about the stall, kicking at the walls.

“Look what you’ve done,” snapped Taya. “I only just got her calmed down.”

Mandir looked again at the black horse. “Is that Pepper?” He felt sheepish. Even he ought to know better than to make sudden movements in a stable. If Taya had been in the stall with Pepper, she might have been hurt.

“She gets crazy during storms.” One of Pepper’s hooves connected with the stall door. Taya winced.

“Well, you shouldn’t have run off without telling me.”

“I didn’t go running off. I went to the stable, which was practically next door.”

Mandir opened his mouth to retort, and then closed it. He was making a mess of things. However justified his anger might be, he was going to have to rein it in, or he’d lose Taya again like he had at Mohenjo. Taya was too sensitive and too stubborn to be won with harsh treatment. He would win her with gentleness or not at all.

He unclenched his fists and tried to breathe normally. The stall Taya stood in held, to his surprise, a dwarf elephant, which Taya was scratching behind the ears as she eyed her fractious mare. “Who’s the elephant?” he asked. “Is he yours?”

“His name is Piru,” she said. “A placid creature, thank the Mothers. He’s not mine; he belongs to the Coalition. He’s to carry back Hrappa’s tax payment.”

“He traveled here with you?” Mandir tentatively stroked the elephant’s trunk, and it came questing up toward his face. Alarmed, he stepped away. “What does he want?”

Taya laughed. “Food—he thinks you might have a treat. Yes, he traveled here with me, and he’ll travel back as well.”

“I’m sorry I spooked your horse,” said Mandir. “I was worried when I couldn’t find you. I thought something might have happened to you.”

Taya smiled wryly. “You needn’t worry about me so much. I know what the jackal looks like, and she’s just an untrained girl. She doesn’t frighten me.”

“Worrying about you is my job,” said Mandir. “And the jackal is not the only danger in Hrappa.”

“My magic is strong. The Coalition wouldn’t have given me this if it wasn’t.” She touched the fire agate on her belt.

“And they wouldn’t have assigned you a
quradum
if they didn’t think you needed protection,” said Mandir. “Help me do my job by letting me know when you’re going to leave the guesthouse. Please?”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Taya frowned at him. “But you have to promise not to yell at me.”

“Deal,” said Mandir. “Touch fingers?”

Taya hesitantly extended her hand, and they touched fingers.

“There’s something else,” said Mandir. “I want to apologize.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “For what?”

“For the way I treated you at Mohenjo Temple,” said Mandir.

Taya turned away with a bitter laugh.

Anger simmered in Mandir’s chest. “You think that’s funny?”

“You think you can make up for four years of torment with an apology?”

She had a point. Mandir felt the inadequacy of his words. “It was wrong of me. All of it, especially the fire maze. I look back on those days with regret.”

Taya shrugged. “Thanks, I suppose.”

“You
suppose
?”

“Did you think it would make those four years go away?”

Mandir left the stall door and paced down the aisle. He hadn’t expected this to go well, but still, he’d hoped. “What do you want from me, Taya? You want me to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness?”

“No.” She made a face. “That would be embarrassing for both of us.”

Mandir stared at her. He’d thought for certain she would go for the begging-on-his-knees option, not that he planned to seriously do it.

“Maybe you underestimate how much harm you did at Mohenjo. I was a farmer, the only person of that caste in the entire class. You were not only ruling caste, you were royal—”

“A royal
bastard
,” said Mandir. “With no title, no inheritance, and no acknowledgement from the royal family, except from my father, who’s the family embarrassment.”

“Important details you kept secret for almost a year,” said Taya. “Everyone looked up to you. The way you treated me set an example. Had you been kind and accepting, they would have been kind and accepting too. Instead you mocked and harassed me. And they joined in.”

Mandir grimaced. That was true. He’d been the de facto leader of that initiate class, thanks to his name and tattoo, and he’d set the tone. He couldn’t even claim it had been accidental. He’d singled her out on purpose.

“All those years at the Temple, I had no friends my own age. You made certain that I was alone. And I stayed alone after you left.”

“That I don’t believe,” said Mandir. “Several of the boys in our class secretly liked you. They wouldn’t have approached you while I was there, but after I left, I’m sure a few of them came sniffing around.”

“They did,” said Taya. “I sent them away.”

Mandir spread his arms. “How is that my fault?”

“Would you want to be friends with someone who used to torment you? I don’t even understand
why
you did it. How did it profit you to harass me? You were respected and admired without even trying.”

“I did it because I was in love with you,” said Mandir.

Taya rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. Give me a real reason.”

“That
is
the real reason,” said Mandir. “Do you remember the day we met, when I showed you how to eat lirry fruit?”

“I remember.” Her eyes went distant, and she looked sad.

“I fell in love with you the instant I laid eyes on you,” said Mandir. “But I was horrified by that. You were a farmer! I was a bastard, and I didn’t want that discovered. To throw off suspicion, I associated exclusively with the ruling caste. I pushed you away, publicly and emphatically, determined I should fall out of love with you.”

“Mandir, you can’t treat someone like that and call it love.”

“It was...a twisted love. The only excuse I can claim is that I was fifteen years old and stupid, and I grew up in a household that taught me nothing but cruelty.”

She shook her head. “You made your own choices.”

“Did you ever like me?” asked Mandir.

“Never.”

“Liar,” said Mandir. “The day you met me. You liked me then.”

Taya sniffed. “All right. I liked you for one day, before I learned what sort of boy you were.”

“I’m not that boy now. I’ve left that boy behind.”

Pepper shoved her head over the partition, bumping Taya’s shoulder with her nose and whinnying for attention.

“Look who’s back,” crooned Taya, stroking the mare’s face. She turned to Mandir. “The onager appears to change its color, but it’s an illusion, nothing more. When it trots back out into the sun, its color changes back.”

“I am no color-changing onager,” said Mandir. “Tell me how I can prove myself to you.”

“I don’t think you can,” said Taya.

“There’s got to be a way.”

Taya shook her head. “I can’t trust you. If you say something nice, it’s because you’re going to twist it around later. There’s no such thing as sincerity with you. There’s only what you want and what you have to say in order to get it.”

Mandir smiled sadly.

“Even you don’t deny it.”

“I do deny it. But you give me no means of showing you the truth.” Mandir had spent four years teaching this woman he couldn’t be trusted, and unfortunately for him she’d learned the lesson too well.

Chapter 11: Mohenjo Temple, Nine Years Ago

Taya stared at the writing on the clay tablet, willing the beautifully scripted words to make sense. They remained inscrutable. But at least they were inscrutable to all the other students of her class. This tablet, like all the others in this wing of the Mohenjo library, was written in the mother tongue. Some of the tablets were so old they dated from the days before the Atrocity, when the Mothers walked the river valley in human form. This might be one of those tablets.

With a sigh of longing, Taya ran a hand over the ancient script. She picked up the tablet, replaced it on the shelf, and took down a new one, equally unintelligible.

Here in Mohenjo Temple lay the history of her people. Not the stories she’d been told over the years, the lies and distortions. The
real
history, the words her ancestors had written down in their true language. It astonished her that these writings had been preserved. Until she’d come here, she’d had no idea they even existed. If she worked hard, if she was patient, she would one day be able to read the words of the men and women who had walked in the presence of the Mothers.

One season into her training, life wasn’t as miserable as before. After speaking to the instructor after class, she’d been placed in an additional, special class for initiates who needed to learn to read and write. It was a lot of extra work, but she didn’t mind. All the other students in the special class were farmer caste, like her, and while none of them were her age—the nearest was a boy two years older—she now sat with them at meal times, and didn’t feel quite so lonely. It encouraged her to see the other farmers’ progress at reading and writing. Others had trod this path before her and been successful; that gave her hope.

The door to the library swung open.

Taya froze. She couldn’t see the door from where she was sitting, but she was fairly certain Mandir isu Sarrum had seen her come in. For someone who acted as if he had no interest in her, Mandir watched her awfully closely.

She heard the footsteps of several people entering the library.

“What’s that smell?” came Mandir’s voice.

“Musty old clay?” said another boy.

“It smells like zebu shit,” said Mandir.

The boys rounded the corner and came upon Taya with her tablet.

“Oh, it’s the farmer girl! No wonder,” said Mandir. The other boys laughed.

Taya, not the least bit fooled by this farce, stood and gathered her things. She would flee to her room, the one place Mandir could not follow.

“What’s this?” said Mandir, grabbing the tablet.

“It’s not mine,” said Taya quickly, terrified he would damage it. “It’s the library’s.”

“What are you doing with it? You can’t read that.”

“Neither can you,” snapped Taya.

Mandir raised his eyebrows, held up the tablet and intoned, “
Ipulma mummu apsu immallik, sukkallum la magiru
—”

“You’re just saying the words,” said Taya. “You don’t know what they mean.”

“Sure I do,” said Mandir. “It says, ‘Once there was a farmer woman who grew banana trees. She was contracted in marriage to a farmer man, but when she came to the marriage bed and removed her veil, he said, “
Bantu kasu annasi
, woman! How can I sleep with you, when your face is like a wrinkled monkey’s ass, and you smell like zebu shit?” I shall have to—’ Wait a minute, I’m not finished.”

Taya, flushing with anger and humiliation, tried to hurry around the boys, toward the library door, but Mandir moved to block her path, and the other boys, snickering, surrounded her.

“Did I say you could leave?” said Mandir. “I’m still reading. ‘I shall have to hold my nose, turn you over, and fuck you from behind so I don’t have to—’”

“Shut up!” cried Taya, trembling with rage, and fear, too, because they had her trapped, and no one else was around. “That’s not what it says.”