Tinder Stricken (9 page)

Esha knew now why she felt a warning in her
bones. “Gladtar? No!” She never turned down an offered pipe full of
gladtar — but to trade a property token for drugs would be madness.
“I need someone who— There's a phoenix, I don't know what to
do!”

“
Animism
service.”

“Yes!”

Birdnose aimed her spearpoint stare at
Esha's caste sigil. “For your farm? Who sent you?”

“No one sent me. I have a bargain to offer
from my own pockets.”

She lifted a hand and pulled a cord Esha
hadn't noticed hanging against the bamboo wall. Up the chimneys,
barely audible past the wind, a tin bell rang — and a phoenix
swooped down through an unused chimney, to land on another metal
perch.

“Farmwoman don't typically call upon
animists,” Birdnose said, with tight-strung calm. “I wouldn't have
met you this way if I had known.”

“That's fair,” Esha said. She should have
said clear that animism services were what she wanted — but she was
unworthy as a wordsmith, life had long since taught her. “I'm sure
I don't seem like a patron of animism but if you'll take my
payment, I need help from you. Or someone like you. I'm in no
position to refuse anyone.”

Birdnose twisted her broad mouth,
considering. She pushed the lockbox deep under a table, as though
Esha might try to peek at the illicit things she had just been
offered. “You said there's a phoenix causing you trouble?”

“I did.”

“That's why you're offering the property
token ...?”

“That's right.” Esha shook inside but she
held her chin high.

Squinting, Birdnose asked, “That's much too
high a price for a bird bothering a patch of yams. Dare I ask what
you want?”

“The phoenix took something precious from
me, and I want it back. I don't know where the bird went, or if
it'll covet your valuables, too. I ... I just need what's mine. If
that's too far different from telling a phoenix to leave a field,
that's fine — we can take a rock to its skull, or poison it.”

Birdnose raised a hand toward her face, to
the peeling skin on her cheek — and she recoiled as though memory
slapped her hand away.

“Or we can leave it alive,” Esha hurried out
of her mouth, “If you deem that proper.”

“Wait. This isn't right.”

“What? I— Please forgive my—“

Birdnose hesitated again, her hand twitching
toward her face on a taut string of habit. “
Quiet.
Just ...
Know a little peace, Gita Of The Fields. I will return in a moment
— I need to change.” She strode from the room, closing a side door
firm behind her. A lock scraped.

And with that, Esha was alone, but not
forgotten as long as the three phoenixes stared at her. Two on
perches, one sitting in the corner. She kept as still as a new deer
fawn for the first long moment. The phoenixes were trained but Esha
wouldn't know how to command them if they took a liking to the
hearth fire's embers.

She had to move eventually. Breathing
normally, and shifting her stiffening legs. If they noticed, they
didn't react. A few times, she made and broke eye contact with the
beasts — dreading that such staring would offend the phoenixes,
like it did vicious dogs — until after long moments, the phoenixes
all turned away from her. They hopped away with explosively quiet
flutters of wings and clicking of claws, to a dish on a sitting
table where they ate whatever morsels Birdnose had left them. Esha
was left to memorize the bamboo stalks patterning the walls.

The lock scraped again, and the door
revealed the animist — wearing her carved mask, the firelight
letting amber hints of her eye colour through. Amber just like
Birdnose's eyes were, and set in the same tall-framed body, too.
The pointedly ordinary Tselayan clothing was gone, replaced with
tiers of rough plant fibre. Her diplomat caste sigil hung from a
ladder of bone beads. She was tall and curvaceous and layered with
stories: this was the foreigner that Esha had been expecting.

“I greeted you under the wrong name,” the
animist said, her delicate-nailed hand trailing off the door
handle. “With greatest respect, I would like to correct it.”

This was too familiar a voice. Like a
puppet, Esha nodded, while she began to understand.

“If you came seeking tar or weeds, I would
be Birdnose. But to you? No. As long as I practice animism on this
mountain, call me by my truer name: Atarangi.”

“Your sister ... Isn't a sister at all? Just
your other name?”

“Another name and another face. I trust you
won't speak of my dishonesty to any passing guard.”

“By gods' eyes, I promise.” No one would
believe that a farmwoman hadn't come looking for Birdnose's goods,
anyway.

“And call me only by Atarangi, while I show
this face.”

“I will, good diplomat. Will you hear my
request now?”

“Tell me. I will make tea.”

Against everything else that had happened,
it was strange to see Atarangi the diplomat stoking an ordinary
cooking fire, squatting and shoving sticks of bamboo into the coals
like anyone else would.

To begin the story, Esha gave small,
stumbling truths. She was farming caste, she said. Grown into a
woman on the fields of Janjuman Farms, with yellowmeat yams in her
hands. She wasn't always farming caste, and her retirement was now
bearing down upon her.

“Your troubles sound heavy,” Atarangi
said.

“We've all got troubles.”

Atarangi thought on that. Then she asked,
“About your place in the world, you said you weren't always farming
caste. Did you marry away?”

“No,” Esha said, with practiced calm. She
longed for a hot cup in her hands but Atarangi was just now placing
a kettle on the coals.

“Mm,” Atarangi said. She snatched a glance
at Esha, before fussing with some tea leaves.

With her mask in the way, it was impossible
to read her face. She was impossible enough to read before, as
Birdnose; her brows hardly needed a mask over them. Esha felt her
own horns and ears bulked under her headwrap; she tasted the old
terror-bile of turning away from the mountaintop; she considered
giving Gita's story of disavowment, instead, because Esha knew that
story as well as her own but it hurt a little less.

“This isn't what I came here to tell you,”
Esha said. “I'm here to have a phoenix captured.”

“It took something precious to you,”
Atarangi repeated.

“A khukuri. It bears the Kanakisipt name,
which is valuable enough. There's a resin jewel in the hilt with a
preserved speaking orchid in it, for those who don't trade in
names.”

Atarangi glowed with interest. “I have heard
of the Kanakisipt family's history in diplomacy. Haven't been
graced with a chance to speak with them yet, or sample their
variety of orchid. Maybe someday.”

“Are you being received well on Tselaya,
good Atarangi?”

Her smile twisted wry. “I have been granted
a caste rank and allowed to set foot on the mountain. Such is all
the beginning I need.”

“We have many rules to learn.”

“Ah, but that is true anywhere. You are
Grewian, yes? Butter in your tea?”

“I'd like that.” Esha was beginning to
realize how little she had eaten today, a trouble that buttered tea
could balm.

“So you have lost a Kanakisipt heirloom ...
You are Of The Fields, though.”

The silent question was a needle through
Esha's heart. Strange, after all this time, that she hadn't built a
thick enough callus.

“I've met them,” she said, “when I was a
child. They're talented, but they keep their warmth to
themselves.”

Picking up the teapot, refilling Esha's cup
with golden liquid, Atarangi offered, “I've always wondered about
that — the lineages of higher climes being so reluctant to share
their warmth with a neighbour. Doesn't seem like it would make a
community strong.”

“That's what the lungta diplomacy is
for.”

“You've negotiated with a Kankasipt?”

“I don't have that kind of skill.” Esha had
no more to say than that.

“Done them a service, then?” Atarangi asked.
Her gaze was level behind the mask, harvesting her thoughts far
from where Esha could see them.

“It's a
family
khukuri,” Esha said
again. “How I got it truly isn't the point, Atarangi. Please.”

“Apologies.”

Esha swallowed, and went on. “It's a fine
tool on its own, worth thousands even to a cheapskate. But if a
person wished to smash the resin jewel and extract the flower, the
lungta could do far more valuable work than that. You're a diplomat
— you must know more about it than I would.”

“I do. And phoenixes have a taste for
lungta, too. Tell me more about how you lost this khukuri, Gita — I
think I should meet this phoenix.”

Perfect, Esha thought. And in a steady
voice, Esha told Atarangi of the night she went trapping and caught
only herself.

During the story, one phoenix left on a
rattling of feathers, up through the ceiling vent; the others
stayed and watched Esha with their head tipped curious. Esha tried
to ignore their presence and focus only on Atarangi's masked
face.

“You spoke with a phoenix on your first
attempt?” she wondered. “You're no animist, are you?”

“No,” Esha spat. “I just— I was scared, I
did it to save my life.” It wasn't her first attempt speaking with
a beast, but her second. She held that in confidence and hoped it
wouldn't matter.

Atarangi sipped her tea. “The phoenix
clearly wanted the knife?”

“It did.”

“And the knife was more valuable than
anything you were hoping to catch.”

“I shouldn't have brought it — I was
foolish. But I was only thinking of human thieves.”

Atarangi waited — perhaps for Esha to go on,
perhaps just to consider what Esha was saying. Her gaze had
sharpened again, prying for answers. Esha drank deep of her tea,
and watched a phoenix nearby eating some morsel from a tin plate.
There were several plates of plant trimmings in the room, now that
Esha noticed them — betel shavings, bamboo sprouts and juniper
berries laid out pleasingly with gumgrass garnish, but apparently
meant for the birds to eat. It must have kept them mild-mannered,
having food whenever they wished.

“Regardless of where it came from,” Atarangi
said like she hid a valuable coin in her mouth, “the orchid-tipped
khukuri was something the phoenix decided she wanted.”

Esha pushed old heartsores out of her
thoughts; this was business. “I couldn't understand everything the
bird said. I'm no animist.”

One of the phoenixes chirped, a sudden and
shrill sound in the small, warm space. It chirped a repeating note
and then trilled, long and warbling; Atarangi glanced sharp to it
but didn't reprimand the bird. She inclined her head and considered
Esha again.

“Tell me again what the phoenix said.
Everything you can remember, as much as you understood.”

Esha was pierced already by all the
questions, full of holes and sick of answering. But she waved a
frustrated hand and repeated it again. “I wish I could recall what
it was babbling about colours. Crawling-something-yellow. And
something-purple-song ... I don't know.”

Atarangi lit behind her mask. “Purple-song?
You're sure you don't remember the meaning that came before
that?”

Esha sighed. “I'm surprised I remember that
much.”

Setting down her tea cup, folding her
knuckles together and examining the shadows between, Atarangi said,
“That's an interesting development, Gita Of The Fields. When
phoenixes speak of purple-song, they're usually referring to
flowers from much higher up Tselaya, the sort rich in speaking
lungta. If a phoenix is finding purple-song blooms this far down,
I'd be remiss to guess where.”

Esha nodded. Any valuable flowers that
showed themselves on the lower plateaus were whisked into hidden,
stone-walled hothouses. Only the higher, prestigious plateaus kept
their blooms under glass for all to see.

“If this phoenix you met is able to
recognize a high-mountain orchid, and name it a purple-song flower
... Well, it must be flying between plateaus. Not unusual on its
own — they'll travel if they're looking for food for their chicks,
or new seeds to plant in their home territory. But a phoenix that
confident in identifying an orchid as song-food, coming down to Yam
Plateau, speaking with a strange human and snatching her metal tool
... That's definitely unusual.”

“It's a valuable phoenix, then?”

“It spoke with you. Outside its comfortable
territory, it met a strange human and in a matter of moments,
agreed to do what you asked.”

“What of it?”

“That's not what phoenixes
do
, my
good yam digger. They have their own rules and for some reason,
this phoenix broke the rules for you. I can't say why this one did
it. But you might be the only human he or she is willing to speak
to, regarding this traded object. I might need you to come
journeying with me.”

Mouth filling with bitterness, Esha looked
away. “I'm not young enough to travel. My legs are ...”

“Beginning to change?”

Esha took another deep gulp of her tea. The
animist's gaze pried at her, no doubt thinking that Esha didn't
look old enough to be shifting so dramatically. She had the
wind-worn face of a field worker but she was certainly no greying
elder.

“Your joints? Really?” Atarangi's eyes were
curious as bright stars.

“The real issue here,” Esha said firm, “is
that I'm in no condition to travel. But I need the travelling done.
That's why I need the khukuri back, that's why I'm offering you
good property.”

With a considering hum, Atarangi shelved her
curiosity and returned to dignified grace, raising teacup to her
mouth. “A phoenix from higher up the mountain ... I'll need to know
where he or she came from, any information you can grant me. Which
direction did this phoenix fly?”