Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (23 page)

Ghatmi was a real town, which made for a change of pace after the weeks trudging through the hamlets in the toes of the mountains. There was a market square, surrounded by a honeycomb of warehouses holding cotton, dyes, rice, and wool, a temple whose painted stone spires glowered over the mud-brick houses crowding around it, and a three-story estate at the far side of the village which housed the majakhadir. Its entrance hall was a modest, dimly-lit room that smelled of rosewater and wet wool. Mandhi asked the little girl who met them there to bring the khadir, and a moment later a short, fat man with a slick mustache appeared. He glanced disdainfully at the seals they had brought from Sujaur.

“You’ve brought these from Daijasthi? What in the world made you go that far west?”

“We were running, Padna-kha,” Mandhi said.

“And if you ran that far, why did you come back?”

“We have to return to Jaitha eventually,” she said with a demure blush. “But we had to escape from the debt slavers first.”

“Debt slavers!” Padna made a noise of disgust and threw the seal onto the rug, where Gocam knelt to pick it up. “The last thing I need running through here. I just got rid of the Red Men.”

“The Red Men were here?” Navran broke in. Mandhi hissed for him to be quiet. Padna seemed not to notice.

“They were, like a thorn in a lamb’s hoof. Fortunately, they left two days ago.”

“Where did they march to?” Navran asked.

Padna waved vaguely to the southeast. “Off to Jaitha. If you hurry, you might catch up with them—walking behind a company of Red Men would be safer than much else on the road.”

Mandhi gave Navran a look which suggested that she would murder him if he said another word. Then she turned to Padna and asked, “We are very poor, as Sujaur-kha mentioned. We beg for your mercy, my lord, just as Sujaur-kha gave us.”

“Thikram’s blessing,” Padna said, though without the least hint of piety in his voice. “I have a room which you can use for the night. You’re going back to Jaitha?”

“Yes.”

“I can give you roti which will last you most of the way there.”

“Padna-kha, you impress us with your hospitality.”

“Thikram’s blessing,” he said again. “Chaludi! Come and help these three into the guest room.” The little girl who had met them when they entered reappeared and approached Mandhi with her hands held timidly behind her back.

“You really should try to catch up with the Red Men,” Padna said as they left. “Much safer on the roads that way. I’m surprised you haven’t run into bandits already.”

“Not Jaitha,” Navran said. “The other way. Any other way.” He paced back and forth along the south wall of the little guest room. The lamp hanging from a chain on the far side of the room cast his shadow on the wall in shifting, titanic proportions.

“We have to go through Jaitha,” Mandhi said, crossing her arms and leaning against a cushion. “We cannot reach Virnas before the monsoon, but we might reach Jaitha. And how else will we cross the Amsadhu?”

“Red Men are in Jaitha. I am not going there. We go south until we meet the river. Boats cross it every day.”

“Not once the monsoon starts.”

Navran spoke in a low, even voice, attempting to hide the panic in his gut. “Then we get there before the monsoon.”

“And after that? Where will we stay? There are many Uluriya in Jaitha—”

“Children,” Gocam said, “both of you are right. We must go to Jaitha, but we must not approach it from the north. We will cross the Amsadhu, and then go east until we reach Jaitha.”

Both of them gaped at Gocam for a moment. Mandhi’s tongue came untied first. “Why?” she asked.

“Ruyam is following us, and we must meet him in Jaitha. Would you have him follow us all the way to Virnas?”

The scar on Navran’s chest burned. He scratched at it then put his hand aside before Mandhi saw. “I don’t want to meet him at all,” he said.

“Yet he follows us and will not cease to follow us. So in Jaitha, I will confront him.”

A deeper and longer silence followed. Navran stopped pacing. His whole body felt cold, except for the scar on his chest.

“What are you talking about?” Mandhi asked.

“We must come from the south,” Gocam went on. “The Emperor’s Bridge crosses the boundary of Ulaur’s chosen, but does not erase it. When the empire is broken, that will be its first fracture. Am must be chastened. But it can only be done if I stand on the southern shore.”

“I don’t understand,” Mandhi said. “What are you planning on doing in Jaitha?”

Gocam looked at her with a mixture of pity and exasperation. “Do you understand so little of the Powers, child? At least you understand that the Red Men who were in Ghatmi are now marching to Jaitha. And on the way from Daijasthi to here, we saw no scrap of red.”

“We didn’t,” Mandhi said.

“So Ruyam’s plan is clear. He has given up looking for us in the mountain villages and is withdrawing the Red Men to Jaitha. He expects to capture us when we try to reach the city.”

“Then why go?” Navran spat. His arms were folded into his armpits, but he couldn’t keep them from trembling. “We cross the Amsadhu, we go straight to Virnas. Or anywhere.”

“The rains will catch us on the road,” Mandhi muttered.

“We can walk in the rain,” Gocam said. “But the fault line is in Jaitha. What I must do, I must do there. And you, Navran, you know that Ruyam will chase you. Will you have him chase you to Virnas? Or Patakshar?”

“I don’t want to be found.”

“You cannot be free while you run. We are going to Jaitha.”

It was so very hard to argue with Gocam. Even when he made no sense.
Especially
when he made no sense.

“Gocam,” Mandhi began again, “what is going to happen in Jaitha?”

“I don’t know. But I must meet Ruyam somewhere, and there is no better place in Amur. The Amsadhu is the fault line which breaks Amur in two, and the Emperor’s Bridge is the stitch which holds it together. Do you understand?”

Mandhi shook her head and sighed. “Let’s go to bed. In the morning we can make our obeisances to Padna-kha and be on the road.”

Padna left them with enough roti and sheep cheese to get to Jaitha—if they were going to Jaitha. They certainly weren’t going by the direct road. At the first opportunity, they turned due south and began to race the monsoon to the river.

The road, at least, was easier than the struggle through the foothills. The roads here were broad, flat, and dry, shooting like arrows through dry rice paddies that waited for the rain. The villagers they spoke to were listless and indifferent. The sun was a tyrant in the day, and the dry air was its guard. Navran kept an eye on the east, hoping and dreading to see the first shadows of the approaching rains. Hope, because it would destroy the heat, and dread, because once the rains began they could barely travel at all, and only in the greatest discomfort. He often saw Mandhi looking to the east with the same face of fear and longing.

Gocam, as usual, was immune to hope or dread, though there did seem to be a change in him. He stayed up late at night meditating, repeating mantras in a voice no louder than his breath. Sometimes when he walked to Navran’s right, the sunlight seemed to shine through him as if he were no more than mist. Sometimes Navran would look for him and wouldn’t see him at all, until a moment later when he looked again and he was there, appearing never to have moved.

And then they reached the Amsadhu.

A little village clung to the tops of the bluffs at the edge of the valley, overlooking a mosaic of gray and yellow paddies drying in the heat. Two miles off, the little brown stripe of the river wormed through the middle of the valley, waiting for the monsoon’s blessing to burst its banks, drown the paddies, and bring them back to life. Mandhi cried out in relief when she saw it, and she set off at a run down the slope that descended to the valley floor. Navran cursed and followed after her.

“Don’t run,” he snapped when he reached the bottom of the slope. “The river’s not going to flood in the next hour.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Beyond that river is something like home. Not Virnas, but at least the same land.”

Gocam descended leisurely behind them. “Is there a ferry?” he asked.

Navran grunted. “Should be someone with a raft. If not, we just follow the river until we find one.”

They followed a crooked farmer’s path between the patchwork paddies towards the river. At the river’s edge, they found a little lean-to of sticks and palm leaves shading an old man with a raft pulled up on shore and a long oar lying on the ground. “You cross?” Navran called out.

“Aye, I cross,” the man said. His accent sang in Navran’s ears.

“We’ve got no money,” Mandhi said. “Can we pay you in roti?”

The man groaned and looked at Mandhi with suspicion. “Roti but no coin? Strange way to travel.”

Navran affected the strongest valley accent he could muster, dredging up words and vowels he hadn’t used in a decade. “We’ve been on a queer walk. Thieves took our money; we’ve been getting by on pity. Thikram’s blessing, as ye say. Ye ken?”

“Aye, Thikram’s blessing.” The man looked at Navran with a curious twinkle in his eye, comparing Mandhi’s Virnas accent to Navran’s, then lumbered to his feet. “Give me what have ye. I’ll cross and ye be on the way. Ye go downriver?”

“Aye, to Jaitha. Hurrying to get there before the rain.”

The man looked to the east, as if he could already see the monsoon gathering. “Ye need a spot of luck for that. ’Tis true far before you get to Jaitha.”

“We’re hurrying.”

Satisfied, the man pushed the raft into the slow-moving, muddy water and helped Mandhi and Gocam aboard. Navran hopped onto the planking with practiced effort, and with a single lazy stroke the oarsman pushed them into the current.

Navran pointed to the south bank. “When we land, where be we? Ye knows the villages on the far shore?”

“Kadhimi where we land. After that, it’s Ravagana, then Usthan.”

He tried to hide the way his breath stuttered when the oarsman said this. None of these were names he knew, and he remembered every village between Idirja and Jaitha, and many of the ones upriver from Idirja. The fact that he knew none of these meant that they were farther upriver than he thought… and farther from Jaitha.

He glanced at Mandhi, who crouched at the edge of the raft watching the opaque waters swirl. She gave no sign of having noticed. Did she even know the name of his village?

“Ye hear of Idirja?” he asked quietly. “What know ye of it?”

The man shrugged. “I heard of it, way downriver. I stay in Kadhimi. Never gone that far downriver.”

The temptation to ask further questions was nearly irresistible. But the oarsman would know nothing. And Mandhi would grow suspicious, or worse, would want to meet them. Because now that he thought of it, he had no desire to return to Idirja. He had left with a purse full of stolen money and a bad reputation. He was returning with less than that and a heavy secret besides. Returning to Idirja would only stir up the bones of the dead.

Please, for Manjur and the stars, let them reach Jaitha ahead of the rain.

They disembarked on the other shore and left the oarsman with a day’s worth of roti. “I didn’t know you were from this region,” Mandhi said as they followed the footpath between the paddies up to the village on the far side of the valley. Navran nodded as if indifferent. “Is your village nearby?”

Navran swallowed. “No,” he said. “Farther upriver. We won’t pass through it.”

They traveled ten more days before the signs of rain appeared. The setting sun lit the crowns of clouds ablaze in the east. In the morning, the air was murky with hot mist, and towers of rainclouds had begun to march across the plains. The feet of the clouds were gray with rain. A muggy wind stirred the branches of the trees.

Mandhi watched the horizon with despair written on her face. “We won’t make it. Not to Jaitha.”

Gocam shrugged. “It will rain when it rains. We go.”

“And hurry,” Navran said. They had a chance to get past Idirja, at least, and avoid disturbing his ghosts.

Their steps along the road that day had an urgency they had lacked over the past few weeks. The heat was vicious, using the growing humidity as its last weapon before it would surrender to the rain. The baked dirt beneath their feet was hot to the touch. The muggy air stuffed their nostrils with the reek of rot and choked the pleasure from their breath. But they walked quickly, and every time they paused to eat roti or take a drink from a village well, Mandhi stood with her arms crossed and urged them onwards.

The rain clouds advanced. And with it, a sense of dread, because Navran had begun to recognize the land. His birthplace was near, and every step brought them closer.

An hour before sundown, the vanguard of the monsoon overtook them. Low, heavy clouds boiled up over their heads and swallowed the sky, transforming the afternoon into a gray, misty twilight. It did not rain yet, but the air was pregnant with the downpour. Villagers gathered in the doors of their homes to watch the sky and wait for the clouds to break.

“We should stop here,” Navran said. “Who knows when the rain will start?”

Mandhi shook her head. “A little farther. What’s the next village?”

Navran’s tongue grew dry as he tried to say the name. “Idirja.”

“Is it far?”

“It isn’t too far,” Gocam said. “None of the villages here are far from each other. It will rain when it rains.”

Navran couldn’t argue about the distance to Idirja. The villages of the Amsadhu were barely distinguished at all, linked together in a nearly-continuous line on the bluffs, with boundaries determined mostly by convention. “Then we should hurry,” he said. “Get as far as we can.” There was still a chance they could get
beyond
Idirja.

“I’ve been saying that all day,” Mandhi grumbled. “Let’s go.”

The clouds grumbled overhead. They hurried.

The sun went down. Navran’s gut tightened into a ball. Here was a house he recognized, painted but otherwise unchanged. There was the temple to Chaludra. The air grew cooler.
A little farther. A little farther.
But even Mandhi was looking up at the clouds.