Tinder Stricken (4 page)

“Gita!
Gita!
Hold on!”

She grunted — but she held fast, her limbs
wound into a knot around the rope and her gaze still fixed on the
damned bird.

Esha looked down past them — only for an
instant, all the way down at the bucking void of green below, the
wilds of the lower plateau. No one could survive a fall like that.
She tore her eyes away and she was cold inside, aware of her
fragile life hammering in her chest, until she looked back to Gita
because Gita was the only one who mattered.

But Gita was throwing herself into her
reach, swinging on the ropes and managing to snatch the phoenix by
its forked tail. The bird screeched, its wings thrown open, beating
at the air and at Gita’s head so she bent, flinching.

Rope creaked against fence bamboo — and
under Esha's feet, rock cracked like a cannon shot. The fence
sagged, a feeling like molten metal in Esha's veins but the tremors
were fading, settling away into the deep earth while the fence
yanked farther over the worldedge. Gita's selfrope had slipped,
settling in the fold of two bent fence rails that crackled under
the strain: Esha gripped the knots and pulled but her pain-stabbed
joints couldn't lift Gita's weight more than a fingerwidth.

“Climb back up,” Esha choked out.
“Hurry!”

The phoenix screeched still; movement hummed
along the taut rope.

“Take the phoenix,” Gita shouted. “Here,
it's on your selfrope— Agh! Wait, wait!”

Esha leaned forward on the sagging fence, an
awful idea that made her guts lurch with terror: down there
dangling, Gita was still fumbling with tangled loops and beating
wings.

“Forget the bird! Just come back up!” Esha
gripped Gita's selfrope again but it was a useless precaution: she
couldn't bear her sister's weight if the fence failed.

“No,” Gita spat, a high cry like desperate
wind, “
no!
I’m not throwing this prize away. You're not
going to be a beast woman stared at in the street. I just need
to—!”

“Gita! Gods’ balls, it’s
just a
bird!
”

The top rail cracked, jerking to a stop
against the bottom rail. Time hung and the bottom rail moved as
well — yielding, bowing toward the abyss.

Gita hesitated. She was bleached with fear,
gripping both lifeline and the stupid, screaming phoenix. “Very
well. Just—“ She reached reaching one-handed for Esha's dangling
rope.

Esha looked again to the bowing fence rail,
to its splintering bamboo and now its iron nails baring like teeth.
“This part is failing — get onto my rope!”

And Gita did, gripping Esha's selfrope
between her feet, letting slack into her own rope. Still weathering
the phoenix's one-winged blows, Gita crept upward. She had to be
exhausted, and more fearful than anyone but Esha could know.

Another fibrous snap — this time a cavernous
sound, ringing out of a hollow-cored pole. The top rail of the
second fence section was failing too, and Esha's tied rope jerked
against the bottom rail, the last one remaining.

Gita looked up at her, a farmer’s worn face
with eyes as wide as a child’s. She hadn’t tightened her headwrap:
her fur-dense hairline showed.

Esha's hands hovered by the snapped
hollowheart rail, wanting to seize her selfrope and her sister's
weight but she was rotted through with terror. These rails
definitely couldn't bear weight but why would they be made into
fences at all?

Gita was climbing, grasping rope and pulling
nearer.

Another snap from the last rail, another
hollowheart pole shattering. Gita fell away, white-eyed, attached
to two slack ropes — until she jerked against the fence shambles
and then those gave, too, ripping from the shredded earth. Esha was
screaming, kicking back against her own balance point and the cliff
beyond it as Gita fell open-mouthed and silent, the phoenix
thrashing in her fist.

Then there was only silence and wind.

Esha stayed crumpled on the worldedge,
gripping nothing at all with her useless fists, her voice fading to
wet grief in her throat. She got up and crept to the torn worldedge
— dreading the sight of sari blue slumped over Betel's worldedge
rails. But Gita wasn't there. Just emptiness, like Esha had come
here alone.

She didn't want to imagine Gita bouncing,
cartwheeling, falling even farther. She could still see the
phoenix’s plumage, burned into her mind as bright as sun-blindness.
For the want of that one vermin bird, Gita was dead. All they
wanted was a little money. All they wanted was to retire at peace,
that wasn’t so much to want. But the earthreaders gave wrong
advisories and the Empire-made fence was made of garbage bamboo —
and it didn't matter, because they were field women, just field
women. Gita Of The Fields was dead and that left Esha even more
alone.

She knelt there wet-faced, for how long she
couldn’t have said. She wiped her cheeks dry and felt every
wrinkle. With numb hands, Esha touched the empty sensation around
her torso where her selfrope ought to be.

And she found her gaze resting on Gita’s
shoes and her satchel, laid on the gumgrass like a rainstorm’s
leavings. Maybe there ought to be a funeral, Esha thought. A
pittance of a ceremony. Gita Of The Fields had no family who
acknowledged her blood ties: she had been disavowed just like Esha.
It would only take moments to fetch some field sisters and honour
Gita's life, while showing them the tragedy brought by poor
official work.

Or Esha could simply acknowledge Gita’s life
right this moment, alone. Quietly. Gita had returned to the sky now
— likely not to the gardens of heaven, knowing her irreverence and
her schemes, but it felt good to believe otherwise. Gita had died a
human: some tribute needed to be made.

Turning Gita’s shoes over, finding them worn
but still sturdy, Esha wondered what to throw over the cliffside.
What defined a human being, other than their very body, however
long that lasted?

Gita had hooves and hair encroaching on her
body, just like Esha did. If Esha died and left a friend behind
watching, she wouldn’t want her effects thrown away. Funerals were
about honour, about singing hymns for the sky to hear. What was
honour to disavowed field worker, to a grinning woman who had never
cared for honour in her entire life?

Nobles would look down on this choice.
Nobles hadn’t done Esha any favours in recent years. If Esha Of The
Fields had been the one to fall, she wouldn’t want perfectly
valuable things to be thrown after her. Let material goods serve
the living. Let some field sister actually know comfort.

Esha opened her own satchel and stuffed
Gita’s shoes inside. They would fit well enough when she wore her
current sandals through— if her feet stayed human long enough for
that.

Horror roiled in her stomach again as she
opened Gita’s satchel to take the sundry goods inside. One extra
throwing stone; a knuckle-sized piece of pine pitch; a
paper-wrapped stick of jerky; one lone rupee coin, probably for
bribing soldiers. And in a small inner pocket, Esha found a metal
piece that flashed white in the setting sun: Gita’s nameplate. Her
simple name, the same familiar
Of The Fields
strokes that
she had signed on the clerk's dry paper.

Gita never had believed in wearing her
nameplate in her clothing like most of the others did, like Esha
did.
I don’t want Of The Fields stamped into my hide if I trip
and fall
, she said.

Esha had always thought it foolish. Gita had
always
been
a little foolish, for all her cleverness. But
here Esha sat with Gita Of The Fields's imperial identification,
the only true piece of Gita that remained. What a paradox, that if
Gita had kept her nameplate on a pendant cord to keep it safe, it
would have been lost. Instead, Esha held it, real and cold.

If one fieldwoman used another’s nameplate
for a few trifling things, who would ever know?

With a stone weight in her gut, Esha slipped
Gita’s nameplate into her own satchel. Gita had tied a leather
thong onto it, to string her official property token together with
her name. This made Esha the owner of two meagre farming shacks,
for all anyone knew or cared.

Then she turned to the worldedge and threw
Gita’s empty pouch, so it soared away on the wind. And that was
all. No one would know where Gita went or how to find her, and that
cunning fact could help Esha now. If only their roles really could
be reversed.

Evening approached. Esha ought to return to
the farm and make her report. Her field pay would be scrawnier than
usual as it was — the same worry as always, Esha thought with a
tired body and valuable burden in her pouch.

She stood — and that was when she saw guards
approaching, three armoured figures glinting with gilt, polearms
silhouetted on their backs. Panic filled Esha, cold.

“Hail, subject,” a hard voice called.

“Graciously met,” Esha replied. She signed
namaste to them with arms that didn't feel like her own.

She held the gesture, frozen, while the
soldiers approached — two men and a woman, strong and frowning
examples of middle caste. Under the crimson mesh of their helms,
their foreheads showed, smooth and respectable. They returned
namaste, then slashed gaze over Esha and the broken fence.

“Are you hurt, citizen?” the lead soldier
asked.

“No, ah— No, I'm still whole. The earthquake
...”

“It was unexpected, but be at ease. Early
reports say that no one was killed on Yam Plateau.”

That was so wrong that Esha wanted to spit;
she sobbed instead, one hot knife of a cry bursting out of her.

“It was a frightening event, to be sure,”
the woman soldier said in a voice like cotton-padded steel. She
came a step closer, a solid blur through the tears Esha hurried to
wipe away. “What are you doing here alone, citizen?”

“I— I—“ She needed to lie, and Gita's last
few moments kept overtaking her mind like an avalanche but Gita
herself had given her a story to use. “The fields. I saw a phoenix,
a-and I came to try catching it. To safeguard our fields.” With a
scrambling in her satchel, Esha produced her permission form for
the woman soldier to take and examine close.

“You shouldn’t be near the worldedge alone,”
the lead soldier said. “Where is your overseer?”

“I'm not alone.” Esha gulped, and wiped her
tears again; she took one last second to pray she had enough
courage for this lie. “My field sister, she's searching, too. We
just— We split ways to cover more ground and I haven't seen her
this hour. I just thought of her now — I don't know where she
is!”

“As I said, there haven't been any deaths
reported. Your colleague is fine, wherever she is.”

“I'm sure,” Esha choked. “P-Please forgive
my foolishness. I praise the gods you’re here.”

Her hurts were cauterized now, numb from the
lying; she chanced a look up at the lead soldier and found him
nodding to the quiet soldier, who was now documenting this
encounter with logbook and ink stick.

“This fence is ruined,” called the woman
soldier, from near the awful cliffside. “One post missing, four
rails broken, six posts in need of reinforcement.”

“Tch. There won't be money for that, with
the road in such bad shape.”

“Try to log it as Betel Plateau's
problem?”

The leader snorted. “Good fortune to you.
No, it'll just take some time.”

More and more tithes the Empire asked for,
higher taxes every year on the ramshackle homes they gave to
farming caste — but they couldn’t even keep their safety promises
to the people of the mountain. Couldn’t even bother to use decent
bamboo on the worldedges, when one or two good poles might have
saved a woman's life this day. Here Esha stood, puffy-eyed and
fearing for her future in front of soldiers who might even prompt
her for a bribe of rupees she couldn't afford. She turned her gaze
to her sandalled feet. She was just a low-caste. She trembled
inside, full of catching flames.

“We’ll make a report of this broken fence,”
the leader went on. “The Empire will provide.”

No, they wouldn’t. Esha nodded.

“Your identification, citizen.”

Calm now, her heart like chile pickles in a
tight-lidded jar, Esha reached into her satchel and produced Gita’s
nameplate. The leader took it in a gloved hand and scrutinized it,
between glances at Esha’s field-worn face.

“Gita Of The Fields,” he agreed. “Unless
you'd rather not be named in the report.”

“You may use my name. Heaven will
judge.”

He nodded, face souring. “At ease, subject.
Keep your wits about you from now on.” The other two soldiers took
their positions behind him in standard wedge formation. They
marched away, continuing along their token route.

It simple to speak a dirty lie and send the
Emperor’s dogs on their way. That simple to steal Gita's name and
avoid fines, or demerits, or a damp-walled jail cell or whatever
Esha's punishment for her circumstances might have been. For want
of some coin and some better-grade bamboo, Esha stood here with
forty-eight years of darkness finally rising, finally swallowing
her heart.

She wasn't worried about honour anymore. And
now, with Gita's nameplate cold in her hand, she knew what to do
about her retirement.

Esha walked her sore-kneed self back the way
she came. Dirt-caked and conspicuous, she stood under the farm
clerk's stare.

They saw a phoenix, Esha heard stumbling out
of her own mouth. They split up to chase it but the bird escaped.
Then the second earthquake caught Esha off-guard, and now Esha
couldn't find her coworker.

“How long has it been since you saw
her?”

Esha gauged time past her racing heart. Two
hours, she said. Maybe three.

With a grim mouth, the clerk shook his head.
“Do you believe that she would desert her station?”