Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (24 page)

“Have you seen a guest-house?” she asked.

“There are none here.” Never mind how he knew that. “We have to press on.”

There was the saghada’s house, painted with a pentacle above its door. Was Judhan still the saghada in Idirja? Would he recognize Navran if he glanced outside as they passed? Navran quickened his pace.

Gocam appeared beside him, matching his pace without any apparent effort. “Navran,” he said quietly. “You cannot outrun it.”

“Outrun what?”

Gocam made a broad gesture that seemed to encompass the village, the clouds, and Mandhi.

I can try,
Navran thought. But the clouds thundered twice. And with a crash, the skies opened.

The rainfall on the packed dirt road made a noise like a tiger’s roar. In a moment they were drenched, and in a moment more the road became a causeway of mud, sucking at their feet and ruining any chance they had of continuing.

Mandhi shouted to be heard over the rain. “Where can we go? Is there anything?”

Navran’s pulse quickened. “There may be.”

“What? Quickly!”

He wiped the rain from his eyes, his heart twitching and fighting itself in his chest. “I may know a place,” he said so quietly he doubted they heard it. “Follow me.”

He ran ahead of them, past a dozen houses with curtains drawn against the rain, then turned right into a side alley. It was there. It had shrunk a little from its size in his memory, and the whole house slumped to the side where the mud-bricks at the base were crumbling. But there was no mistaking it. The curtain over the front door was drawn, and the windows were dark. He walked to the front door and gathered his courage.

Mandhi ran up beside him. “What is this place?”

Navran swallowed the ball rising in his throat. “Mother!” he called out.

The curtain moved. An old woman appeared in the doorway, her skin wrinkled and cracked like sun-dried mud, her gray and silver hair drawn sloppily into an Uluriya bun. “Who are you?” she said. A moment later realization dawned. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open, her tongue lapping against rotten, betel-stained teeth. “Navran!”

She didn’t offer them any word of invitation but stared at Navran dumbly, as if he were a dream. The rain pounded.

“May we come in?” Navran asked.

She said nothing but pulled open the curtain over the door and stepped aside. Navran ducked through the doorway. The smell of the place hit him like a stone to the skull: boiled sheep’s milk, wool, hot rice, betel leaf, charcoal, palm thatch. His father’s beer flask hung from the ceiling pole, dusty and unused. Water leaked through the thatch and dribbled off of it into a puddle on the ground. Unspun wool was heaped in the corner, trailing off into a half-hearted hand spindle. A single reed mat lay on the dirt floor.

Mandhi and Gocam entered behind him. His mother gave them a short, suspicious glance, then walked up to Navran and took his face in her hands. She pulled at his beard for a moment and brushed the hair off of his forehead. “Navran. After ten years. Where have ye been?”

He looked away. Her gaze burned him as much as Gocam’s did. “All over. It’s a long story.”

“And now? Ye be here?”

His heart hammered as loud as the rain. “For a while. We were passing through when the rain started.”

She drew back and hid her hands in her skirt. “I see.” She gave Mandhi a contemptuous glance. “And this be your woman? Who is the old man?”

Mandhi made a noise of disgust. Navran answered before she could. “This is Mandhi. And Gocam, my teacher. Mandhi and I are his students.”

Mandhi’s glance at him was chilly, but she seemed to accept the story. She bowed and spread her hands. “Mandhi daughter of Cauratha. What may I call you?”

“Your teacher?” his mother said, ignoring Mandhi and looking at the rain-soaked, mud-splattered Gocam, water dribbling off of his beard onto the dirt floor. “I wonder what he teaches.” She turned away from them and put a few new sticks on the bed of coals. “You might as well sit down, though. Call me Bhundi. How long do ye stay?”

“Not long,” Navran said. He looked at the crumbling walls and the mildewing wool. His mother was poorer than he had imagined. “You… are you well?”

“Well?” She cackled bitterly. “My husband is dead and my son….” She looked at Navran with a pained expression. “But I can card and spin wool for the khadir, so I haven’t died yet. Ye decide whether I’m well.”

“Do you have other family?” Mandhi asked brightly, as if to lighten the mood. Navran bit his lip, anticipating the response.

Bhundi cackled again. “They’re all dead. The saghada and the other Uluriya do have pity on me sometimes.”

Mandhi’s face flushed with embarrassment. “That’s good, I suppose.”

“If you call it good,” Bhundi said flatly.

They shared the damp roti from their packs with her. Navran could not bring himself to eat. The roof leaked on them. His mother asked them nothing but folded her knees against her chest and watched Navran. Her wrists and ankles were skeletal. She didn’t say anything to Navran, didn’t ask again where he had been or why he had gone, said nothing about the money he had taken and the family he had abandoned. Her gaunt face and ruined hovel was accusation enough, and he felt it like a stone in his ribs. The evening passed in miserable, awkward conversation until they slept.

Only Gocam did not sleep. He took up the Lotus position and meditated in silence, as he did every night. Except that tonight his eyes were open, and he watched Navran and Mandhi with a pained, paternal gaze.

In the morning they ate lightly. The rain had paused, though the churning gray skies promised more soon. As soon as a paltry meal was finished, Navran said to his mother, “You should come with us. We can take care of you in Virnas.”

“Wait—” Mandhi said, but Navran waved her aside.

“We’re going to Jaitha first. Traveling whenever the rain lets up. You’ll be fine.”

Bhundi folded her hands together and shook her head. “I cannot come. It’s too late for a woman my age to move to Virnas.”

“And Navran,” Mandhi said, “we have to move quickly. We haven’t the food or the time to bring a woman of her age with us.”

“We have to,” Navran said. “You see how she lives. I’m amazed she’s not dead already.” Bhundi listened to this with no apparent reaction.

Mandhi shook her head. “You have greater responsibilities, now. You can save her later, if Ruyam doesn’t destroy us all first.”

“I can’t leave her again.”

“And where was this scruple when you left her for the first time?”

He clenched his mouth shut and took a step back. He glanced at his mother, who watched them with a guileless, indifferent expression. What Mandhi said was true, after all. I will stay here with her, he wanted to say, but that would be death for all of them. “Then we leave her what we can of our food. She might starve otherwise. We can make it to Virnas begging for Thikram’s blessing if we have to.”

Mandhi made a noise of disgust. “You’ll get me used to begging soon.”

“There are worse things.”

“Well, I admire your loyalty, but don’t forget that your true debt is to our father Cauratha in Virnas. You can come back for her when this is over. She’s not your real mother anyway.”

“What?” Bhundi said.

Mandhi bowed to Bhundi. “I do not mean to disparage your generosity, Bhundi. You did a good thing, taking Navran in when your husband found him, and I intend to honor you for it. But he is my brother, and right now he has other duties.”

Bhundi looked from Mandhi to Navran, then burst out laughing. “What has this woman told ye?”

The hair on Navran’s arms stood up. The room began to tilt around him.

Mandhi stepped forward. Her voice warbled in a note of panic. “Navran is the son of Cauratha. You raised him as a foundling. Isn’t that the case?”

“I birthed that boy on my knees as sure as any mother. Why think ye any other?”

Mandhi whirled and seized Navran’s hand, tearing the iron ring off of it and shoving it into his mother’s face. “
This
. This is the sign of the children of Cauratha. Where did Navran get it?”

“Oh, that thing. His pa brought it back from Virnas. He was selling thread then got trapped there when that wicked thikratta came out of Majasravi. He said he bought it. But I did not believe him, ye ken? He told me the truth in the end. A dead child, killed in the fighting with his mother, had it on him. He stole it and brought it back. It’s an ugly thing, aye, but finely etched. Pity it weren’t gold.” She looked at Navran with mild regret. “I never told ye. Never thought it could cause trouble.”

Navran felt as if he were drunk. The floor rocked, and his legs were water. He collapsed against the brick and felt Gocam’s hand on his shoulder. Mandhi stood before him, the ring still held aloft. Her knuckles were white where she clenched it. “Is that the truth?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Do you swear that’s the truth?”

“Aye, it be true.” Bhundi’s gaze skittered from Mandhi to Navran and back, unable to understand what she had said to provoke such a reaction.

Mandhi seized Navran by the collar of his kurta and heaved him to his feet. “Liar!” she screamed. “Pretender! Usurper!”

Before Navran could regain his balance, Mandhi dragged him to the door and hurled him through the curtain. He landed face-down in the flooded street, and before he could wipe the mud from his eyes Mandhi was on top of him, clawing at his neck and beating his head with her fists.

“Give it to me,” she said. “Give it to me!”

“Give what?”

Mandhi kicked him in the side until he rolled onto his back. A moment later she knelt on his chest, scrabbling at the cord around his neck that held the pouch with the other rings. Navran grabbed her wrists and pushed her off. She struck back, raked her fingernails across his face, and grabbed at the cord.

“Liar,” she screamed. “He died to get you back.”

“Mandhi,” Navran gasped. “Please.” He pushed her aside and tried to sit upright. The mud under his knees slipped and sent him pitching forward.

“I’ll have you cast out,” she said. She slapped at him and lunged. “I should have left you with Ruyam.”

Perhaps you should have,
he thought. A wave of sickness passed over him, and he fell into the mud. Mandhi lunged at him, and he grabbed her wrists.

Then a voice like a thunderclap stopped them both. “Enough.”

Gocam stood over them. His eyes were storm clouds, his expression sharp enough to cut wool. “Get up, Mandhi.”

Navran let go of her wrists. She rose and stared at Gocam with the furious, defiant look of a scolded child.

“The rings are not his,” she said. “He is not my brother. He defiles them by touching them.”

“Are you the Heir?” Gocam asked.

“No.”

“The rings belong to the Heir, and the thikratta of Ternas kept them in trust. I have given them to Navran until the Heir can claim them. They are not yours.”

“Fine,” she spat. “But the ring he wears—”

“The ring was a gift from his father, just as yours was a gift from your father. On what grounds will you take it from him?”

“It belongs to the children of the Heir!” Her chest heaved with the fury of her accusation.

“And when we reach the Heir, we’ll ask him what his judgement is.”

“But Taleg!” And suddenly she began to sob, great fat tears running down her face like monsoon floods. “We went to Majasravi for him, for this slob, this drunkard, this thief. For
nothing
!”

Gocam stepped forward and put his hands on her checks. “My child,” he said quietly. He kissed her forehead. “We should be alone. Navran, wait for us here.”

He took her by the hand and led her behind the house into the shade of a dripping banyan. Bhundi stood in the door of the house, her eyes wide, watching Gocam and Mandhi leave. Navran staggered up and wiped the mud from his clothes.

“The Heir?” Bhundi asked. “What does that woman talk about?”

“I can’t explain,” Navran said. “Mandhi should do it, when they get back.” His knees were shaking, and his thoughts churned like floodwaters.

For the first time the cold bitterness of her face seemed to melt a little. “My boy,” she said, “ye done a hard time, too, it seems. Come inside.”

Mandhi’s eyes were harrowed with tears when she and Gocam returned. She glanced once at Navran, then closed her eyes and sat on the mat near the wall. She hung her head between her knees and did not look up. Navran swallowed the shame in his throat. A trickle of pity for her ran down his chest.

“We have things to tell you,” Gocam said to Bhundi as he sat on the reed mat by the door. “Whether by design or by chance, you and Navran are caught up in this now. I will be honest but brief.”

And so he was, beginning with Cauratha the Heir of Manjur, Navran’s adoption into the house at Virnas, the kidnapping in Jaitha, his captivity with Ruyam, and their flight from Ternas. Sometime during the story the rain resumed. His mother seemed at first to disbelieve, with her brows furrowed and lips pursed. But as the story went on her eyes widened, and her jaw relaxed. When Gocam finished her face held only amazement.

“But,” Gocam said at the end, “you say he’s the child of your flesh.”

Bhundi nodded. “As sure as I live. I’m sorry ye didn’t ken, if it caused so much trouble.”

“Do not apologize. No one sought to ask you, and you owe us nothing. But I will speak to Navran now.”

Navran raised his head. “What else can I ruin?”

Gocam silenced him with his upraised palm. “You said that you wanted to be free. To be free of the obligations and debts of the Heir-to-be.”

His blood thundered in his chest. “Yes.”

“Then hear the conditions of your freedom. You will go to Jaitha with us then return to Virnas as planned. As far as the old city you are responsible for the Heir’s inheritance, the Heir’s rings, and the Heir’s daughter.”

“Mandhi? She would do better without me.”

“Doubtlessly. She is your charge not because she needs it, but because you owe it. With your last breath you will ensure that she arrives safely in Virnas, where you will make obeisance to Cauratha and return what is his. And then you will be released.”