Different Senses (22 page)

“Yes, I know, but I think it’s
wonderful you’re prepared to learn more. Now, my cousin wanted a
word with you before you left.”

“Shardul? Out here?”

“Yes. He’s talking to my
husband. Come with me.”

What the hell was Shardul doing
out here? I only asked him to call, not see me in person.

He was out in the yard,
talking to a tall, heavily-built
banis
man, standing in front of
a
kolija
pen and looking for all the world like a farmer himself in
a Nihani lungi and sleeveless shirt, showing off surprisingly
muscled arms. He looked fantastic, but I doubted he could look
anything but.

He greeted Rupa in Nihani, and
only acknowledged me with a nod. “I take it you’re finished,” he
asked her.

“For now. Quite a fascinating
history there. I’m sure Sri Ythen wants to tell you all about
it.”

“Yes, I’m sure. For some reason
he insists on sharing such things with me.” I screwed my nose up at
him but he ignored it. “Do you mind if I commandeer your yard a
little longer for a chat with him?”

“Go right ahead.” She turned
and offered me her hand. “Nice to meet you, Sri Ythen.”

“‘Javen’, please.”

“Javen. And thank you for
sharing your history. Shardul might pretend to be uninterested but
these are facts which help to weave the tapestry recording our
existence in the Spirit’s world. The Seeker teaches that to learn
the past enlightens the future. I firmly believe that.”

“
Uh...sounds like a good
philosophy.” Behind her, Shardul rolled his eyes. Rupa’s husband
smirked at him and me both. She took her spouse’s arm and led him
away, leaving me with a dangerous beast, and the
kolija
.

“
So you found what you
were looking for,” Shardul said, apparently only interested in
looking at the animals in the pen. “The drop of magical
banis
blood that washes away the sins of your people towards
mine.”

“Could you tell me exactly when
I implied I believe that? Like it or not, your people intermarried
with my family, and that fact has an impact on me. I’m not making a
single claim based on it.”

“You wouldn’t be the first if
you did. What did you learn today?”

“
Tanmay Kly knows exactly
what the
gatha
are, even claims to know what they look like. So
does this Gagan guy. Someone in your community is a chatterbox.
Kly’s also desperate to get his hands on them, even though he says
the shirt is a fake.”

“
It
is
a fake. A very good
one though. Did you think I would give you a picture of the
real
sawret
?”

Of course he wouldn’t. “Then he
was right? But he wanted it. He said there’s an upcoming exhibition
at the museum on fake artefacts.”

“There is.”

I scratched my head,
bewildered. “So...he’s genuine? But why be so fascinated by a fake,
he damn near had a heart attack when I showed him the picture?”

Shardul declined to explain.
“Tell me everything else.”

So I did, including the fact
the man knew my father.

“Is he likely to ask about your
aunt?” he asked.

“Dad and Aunt Tanvi aren’t
close, and he knows she’s barking mad. He’ll put it down to my
eccentricity. If Kly contacts him, I’ll get a call telling me off
for shaming the family but nothing more.”

“
You’re certainly your
family’s
derda
wass
.”

“What?”

“You would say, ‘black
sheep.”

I suspected the phrase was
ruder than that. “Yeah. So I know a little of what it’s like to be
indigenous and discriminated against.”

He rounded on me, eyes
flashing. “You know
nothing
, you pathetic
guko
! You,
with your brown skin, brown eyes, the governor father, the elite
education, the independent income, the good name—you say you know
what it’s like because a few people are suspicious of your empathy?
A gift you can hide and reveal at will, unlike this?” He flicked
his flame-red hair. “Do youngsters in your community paint brown
makeup on their faces so they can be like all the other children at
school? Do they come home weeping in fear and rage because little
Kelon thugs have held them down, torn their braids apart and cut
their hair down to the scalp? Are your women assumed to have
permanently open legs because of their race? Are your people
routinely denied entrance to the private schools which are the path
to power in this country, despite them being technically open to
all? Do you pay more interest on loans to Kelon banks because
you’re assumed to be a bad risk, even if you have a solid job? Tell
me, Ythen, exactly what discrimination do you face?”

“I lost my job and my lover,” I
answered hotly, as angry as him. “And even yesterday the clerk at
the Records office treated me as if I’d contaminated her because I
mentioned my empathy.”

“Something you chose to do. We
don’t have the choice. You can pass through life as pure blood
Kelon as you wish to be.”

“Unless I want to be a cop, or
a civil servant, or a lawyer.”

“Your path is limited in the
most minor way entirely due to your own people’s prejudice against
mine, and yet you complain and whine like a spoiled child. You have
no idea how privileged you are, and you have no idea how insulting
it is to hear claims of discrimination come out of your mouth.” He
actually spat on the ground. “You mock the suffering of my people,
and the limits on their ambitions, health and wealth, placed purely
by bigotry. Poor little rich boy.”

I flushed and turned
away. “Find someone else to find your damn
monuwel
, Shardul. I quit. No
charge either. Pick whatever hell you want and go
there.”

He let me walk almost all the
way back to my car before he drawled, “The Kelon are such
thin-skinned people. Experts at dishing out the constant slights
and hurts, but let not their hides be pricked at all.”

I spun around, still furious.
“Why did you even hire me when you hate me this much?”

“
I don’t
hate
you,
guko
. I’d have to expect better
of you to hate you for being like every other Kelon. I don’t
respect
you, especially now you’ve discovered a minor connection to
the
udawathei
and think that makes you one of us, or special.”
He stood up from leaning on the fence, walked over and got in my
face. “Your people are atheists. You can’t be
udawatha
even if you
are as pure blood as I am, if you do not accept the way of the
Spirit. Your people don’t understand us, what makes us. They have
no interest in learning, and neither do you.”

“Then teach me.”

“Sorry, better things to
do.”

“All the books about your
people are in Kelon, by Kelons.”

“No they’re not, and even so
there are plenty of history texts in your language you can read.
Scan them without your prejudiced filters and you can learn. There
are Nihani-Kelon dictionaries, so you could teach yourself the
language. Our temples and libraries are full of books written about
our beliefs, our history.” He looked me up and down. “But it’s so
much easier to be spoon-fed, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never been good at
languages.”

“
You know enough to
insult me,
beto
. You can surely pick up
enough to read a children’s introduction to the Spirit’s
teachings.”

“I guess.”

I turned away again,
needing a respite from my emotions and his, and to keep a physical
distance from him
.
My head felt like the top was about to blow off.
I hated being an empath.

“You think me rude and
arrogant, don’t you?” he said. “Tell me. When you were a policeman,
how did you treat our people? Be honest.”

I clenched my fists, willing
myself not to let them fly. “Maybe sometimes we weren’t always
completely fair.”

“
Sometimes
. In my experience, it’s
one hundred percent of the time, and that’s even with me having the
professional status to make the police behave. A status paid for by
my entire family, who scraped together the funds to send me to
university. No scholarships for the indigenous because that would
be
discriminatory
. You don’t live in
my world, and you don’t see things as I do. Don’t ever pretend to
me that you can.”

“I’m sorry...for making that
comparison. It was stupid of me. I apologise.”

He lifted an eyebrow as I faced
him. “Well, at least you didn’t say ‘if I was offended’. I accept,
but I’ll expect more of the same. You can’t help it. You don’t even
know what you don’t know about us.”

“Do you want me to keep working
on this or not? I’ll offend you again. You said it yourself.”

“Yes, you will. You’re sure Kly
is seriously ill?”

“I’m no doctor but that’s what
it looked like to me. What difference does it make?”

“
It might be why he wants
the
gatha
. Describe the assistant with him?”

“Young, slim. Very beautiful,
at least to me. Sullen but attentive.”

“Hair braided in what
manner?”

I did my best to describe it.
He grunted. “Induma. His mistress.”

“Really? He treated her like a
maid.”

“Yes.”

“And she hates him.”

“
Yes.” I felt a wave of
sorrow from him. “She made poor choices. But I can’t believe she
would betray our people’s trust by telling him about the
gatha
.”

“
Would she help retrieve
the
monuwel
?”

“I don’t know. I need to
contact her, and investigate this Gagan. You should continue your
enquiries.”

I took it I was rehired. “And
if he suddenly wants all these artefacts?”

“
If he’s the thief, we
need to use the fake
sawret
as a bait. So keep him
dangling but interested.”

“
Have you given any
thought to how you’ll extract the
monuwel
from whoever it is? These
guys take security seriously, and I do
not
do burglary. We should
take any evidence to the police, once we confirm where the object
is.”

He sniffed. “Your faith in your
former comrades is touching, but quite misplaced. We will deal with
retrieval once we know where it is and who has it. And why.”

“Don’t trust me?”

“
Don’t
need
you.
Not the same thing. Does it bother you that we’re not without
resources of our own, Ythen?”

“
Why would it? If I
wanted to care for something helpless and stupid, I’d own a
gulen
.”

“
I’m much prettier than
a
gulen
.”

“Yeah, but if you were too much
bother, I couldn’t take you to the vet and have you put down.”

He laughed. “But you’d try.
Good day, Ythen.”

“Javen.”

“No. We’re not friends. Keep me
up to date.”

And with that, he walked
back inside the house, leaving me with the
kolija
and the urge to kick
something small that went
squeak
.

~~~~~~~~

My cousin on Kelon received a
message from Kly expressing what he’d said in the meeting. She
replied with a stiffly formal note saying I was her agent here and
she’d appreciate all communications going through me. However, she
would give his offer due consideration, after receiving my advice.
That, hopefully, would keep him interested and well behaved.

Shardul went quiet. I
continued to contact dealers, made three more meetings with people
from Shardul’s list, getting the same reaction as I have from
Duadi. None reacted as strongly as Kly had to my hints about the
shirt. I was more and more convinced we’d found our thief, or at
least, the thief’s customer, but I had nothing I could take to a
cop. I needed someone reliable prepared to swear they’d seen
the
monuwel
in Kly’s possession, at the very least. Even
then, the force wouldn’t tangle with someone of Kly’s reputation
and status on the word of a
banis
. Ideally,
I
needed
to see the thing in his possession. But his collection of artefacts
weren’t on show, at least in the part of the house I’d
visited.

Rupa was quiet too, although
she sent me the preliminary report as promised and said she was
digging. “Enjoying herself,” were her exact words. I called
Granddad and told him what I’d found. He was thrilled, and said
he’d pay any of my costs, which of course I dismissed. I was glad I
hadn’t waited longer to visit him, or to chase down Grandma’s
history. And I kept the pressure up on Yashi until he made firm
plans to visit at the next school break. The only people I didn’t
contact were my parents. After Shardul’s stinging slapdown I didn’t
have the courage to face another excoriation. I hadn’t fully
recovered from the last hissy fit my mother had thrown over my
empathy and the entire ‘racial contamination’ thing.

A week after my meeting
with Rupa and then Shardul, he sent me a message asking me to
come,
incognito
, to his aunt’s house
late at night. Clearly he didn’t want any of his people seeing me
nosing around, or anyone who might be watching the community. I
figured I would kill the time until the meeting at the library and
catch supper in town. Since business was still slow, I’d been using
the free time to read the available books on indigenous history and
culture. I’d tried to do what Shardul demanded, and set aside my
Kelon blinkers, looking at the narratives as if I was indigenous,
not Kelon.