Tinder Stricken (16 page)

“I'm sure this is a lot for you. There's
still time to let your thoughts soak.” With one more bite and
swallow, Atarangi finished her meal, and as she rose she gave a
last leaf to Rooftop so he could snap and crunch at it. “When
you're done, let's go to market like we planned.”

Esha nodded; she was suddenly grateful for
that rope to cling to, the fact of humans and their coins.

Maize Plateau's low-caste neighbourhood was
made of bamboo and tin, much like Yam's. House flags proclaimed
labourer bloodlines, and asked for chile peppers, and offered
marriage. Past that realm, the mid-caste homes were a greyer shade
of brick than Yam's; a few still had roofs bowing inward after the
earthquake and the carpenters milled like ants.

And while Esha watched mortar-streaked men
gesturing at a plan sheet, a humming began under her feet. Another
earthquake —
another
one.

“Get down,” she snapped to Atarangi, “kneel
down!” They were in the open street, safer than under a fallible
roof, but Esha's knees weren't bending fast enough and as the
tremors took hold, she pitched over onto her spread hands. Dust
billowed all around, and among everyone fear-faced in the street,
there was Atarangi, kneeling along with them.

This earthquake rose and fell within one
held breath. Stillness came before anyone could grasp it and in the
settling dust, people knelt and watched, and listened.

But it seemed over, and there was nothing to
do but stand and keep on. Esha was pushing her own knee to rise
when Atarangi shadowed her, offering a hand that pulled Esha
mercifully to her feet.

“Your bird was right,” Esha grunted.

“It seems such.”

Around them, voices called: mostly relief
and nerve-stiff jokes, and one plaintive cry that was immediately
swarmed by neighbours. Esha stood outside it all — with Atarangi,
who studied her face like deciding whether Esha needed to be bound
up with gauze just in case.

But all Atarangi did was raise her arm to
the sky and beckon — to the phoenix circling in the lungta-speckled
clouds. He spiralled back down, swooping to a landing on Atarangi's
shoulder.

“Are earthquakes usually this frequent?” she
asked.

“No... No, not at all.”

Guards were filtering through the streets,
searching for damage. There was nothing more to be said; acts of
the gods made patchwork sense to mortals. Esha and Atarangi each
took a strap of the wheeled pack, and they walked together.

The market street was settling from
pandemonium, with people righting awnings and wiping dust off their
wares. A phalanx of guards gathered at the identification check
stall, muttering business to one another — and they snapped to
attention when they laid eyes on Atarangi.

Esha hadn't considered before how much
attention a foreign diplomat with a live phoenix would draw.
Atarangi answered a travel itinerary's worth of questions. The
phoenix Rooftop allowed a guard to grip his neck while inspecting
his tail tag; his stillness was a surreal sight against Esha's
memories of vermin birds more vital than the fires they
started.

Esha was an unremarkable fieldwoman but as
Atarangi's hired guide, she fell under sudden suspicion, too. Her
bundle of bamboo was inspected and Gita's nameplate studied by two
different scribes, before they crossed off one of Gita's allotted
market visits from the records.

“All seems in order. Thank you for your
patience, diplomat,” the lead guard relented.

“I appear to have arrived at a difficult
time,” Atarangi replied. “If I can be of any service, do call on
me. I speak five languages and I have enough herbs in reserve to
extend my reach well beyond that.”

Then, finally, the guard nodded deep and
offered her namaste.

“I've never had such trouble getting in,”
Esha commented, leaving the station behind. Her other comment was
unspoken:
do they always inflict that on you?

Shrugging, a mild motion against her annoyed
eye roll, Atarangi said, “It happens when I'm new to a plateau. I'm
sure I don't have to tell you that I'm a remarkable sight, this far
from the ocean. That, and my dangerous friend, here.” She scratched
her bird's feathers.

“It's still more insult than a law-abiding
woman should have to take.”

Gradually, Atarangi's smile was returning.
“It'll be worth the trouble, I'm sure.”

The two of them agreed to meet at the water
pump, after buying what supplies they could carry. The phoenix
Rooftop sat on Atarangi's wheeled pack and apparently had nothing
to say on the matter; Esha only noticed her lungta tugging in her
thoughts every time the bird peered at her with crests moving.

They parted ways and Esha felt the absence
already, as Atarangi's stately form parted the crowd and the
phoenix watched behind.

The civilian trading corner had ramshackle
tin tables, just like back home. Gwara demons rolled along the
tables' bases, seeking spilled coins. Esha shooed the gwaras from a
table and sat until her bamboo sticks were all sold. With her
pocket full of rupees, she went to the merchant caste section of
the market and burdened herself with maize, millet and lentils.

And after agonizing thought, Esha spent one
rupee on a street vendor's fried potato patty. Much as it pained
her to let the coin out of her hand, the patty was crisp and oily
enough to taste like bliss. There were many reasons to stay among
humans as long as possible, and fried food was one of them.

When Esha returned to the water plaza, under
noonday sun, she combed the crowd with her eyes and could only see
Grewier, Sherbu and Thakari people, not Atarangi nor her bird. Esha
got a cup of well water and relished it despite the taste of mud.
Then, she waited.

A goat breeder led his flock past —
thoroughbred tahr goats with imperial inspection seals shaved into
their magnificent fur. They were certified for their lack of turned
human ancestry — only goats born as goats — for all the expensive
difference that didn't make. After Esha's humanity was gone, she
would likely be meat killed and called dinner: she couldn't manage
to care what or who would do it.

But as the goats' every movement dragged
Esha's attention across the crowded square, Atarangi caught her eye
— not standing out bizarre from a crowd, but tucked under an
awning's shade. She sat on an overturned bucket before a Sherbu
man, who held a kneeling yak by its rope collar.

As Esha came closer through the drifting
crowds, she saw more of the truth. Atarangi spoke with
gentle-frowning lips and paused to listen, as the yak grumbled and
bleated. The phoenix Rooftop sat on her shoulder, also intent.

Animism, the sullied art. Animism, the waste
of herbs. It looked as heartfelt as any other lungta-aided
conversation.

Esha waited by the water pump, safely
distant.

Once Atarangi accepted a furtive handful of
payment, she rejoined Esha and took the heavy food onto her wheeled
pack. With the phoenix Rooftop watching the trail behind, they set
out toward the mountainside, toward the spire pass that would bring
them to Rice Plateau.

“Whose yak was that?” Esha asked, in the
clamorous.

“No friend I know. He saw me with Rooftop
and asked about my diplomacy services.”

“People just ask you that, in the
street?”

“I don't mind.” Atarangi paused. “As long as
they don't seem to want Birdnose.”

“Oh, I look like a drug addict, do I?”

“No, no, you're right,” Atarangi said,
smiling at her own expense. “I shouldn't think such things about
fieldwomen. So far, you're only a name thief.”

It was good to say such blunt-clawed things
to a friend again; Esha hadn't realized how much she missed it.

“I can't cane you for telling the truth.
Tell me, though — what was wrong with the yak?”

“Aah, the poor creature is sick. Liver
fluke, I think, or else something more serious than even that.”

“You can tell?”

“She told me where she hurt.” Atarangi's
mouth betrayed her shifting feelings. “I wish I could help more
than I did, but at least now her owner knows to seek some
medicine.”

Esha's memories were rising again. “It
shouldn't have been allowed to graze in wet places,” she said.
“They get flukes when they eat from marshy ground — I'm no yakherd
and even I know that.”

“You're familiar with them?” Atarangi asked.
“Yes, you plough with yaks — isn't that true?”

“It is. And I had a yak, in a way, when I
used to be married.”

“You did?”

Esha hummed.

The yak was one of her husband's fine
possession at first. Then a coarse-furred comfort to pet. Then one
drunken night he was a listening ear for her rambling troubles —
and eventually, he was part of the divorce chattel, just another
shard in Esha's broken potential.

“He was a good beast to talk to,” she told
Atarangi.

“Talking can mend plenty. I'm sure you know
that.”

Heaving a breath for strength, Esha nodded.
And she accepted the handful of plant morsels that Atarangi gave
her.

Chapter 9

The road led north-west toward the
mountainside, through archways of whipgrass, boxthorn and
sparse-needled pines. Lungta swooped across the path, each mote
glinting brilliant before it buried itself in the earth. Starlings
flew overhead in a chittering wave.

Esha and Atarangi walked, shoes crunching in
tandem, with the wheeled pack creaking under the weight of their
supplies. It took Esha long moments to chew the dried plant morsels
enough to swallow them: they were root pieces and that was all Esha
could discern. Whatever they were, the faintly leafy flavour
pleased Esha in a way she didn't care to think about.

“What is this?” she asked. “This root
...?”

“Pachak thistle,” Atarangi said. “You'll
find it full of speaking lungta, but it's not the same as betel —
it's much more inclined to listening than speaking.”

Judging by the tingling in Esha's ear
canals, Atarangi was right.

“I hope that's enough to— Hold on.”

The wheels and hooves sounding in the
distance had become a yak-drawn cart, piled with coal and wreathed
with dust: Esha and Atarangi waited until it passed them by in a
gritty cloud. Esha spat, and she had hardly eased her eyelashes
back open when Atarangi laughed a sonorous note.

“What's funny about that?” Esha asked. She
looked around in the dust-hung air and saw only Atarangi beaming,
and the phoenix settling his wings.

“Aah, you didn't see it,” Atarangi said.
“Show Esha?”

The phoenix Rooftop unfolded his wings and
curled them together, then ducked his long neck underneath — under
an umbrella made of his own plumage.

“Cleverer than most human beings,” Atarangi
said, “yes?”

“I wouldn't have thought of it,” Esha
admitted.

“You've eaten, haven't you?”

You should converse with the animal
again,
she meant; Esha didn't need to extend lungta to figure
that out. Rooftop sat on the staff, straightened up attentive as
any student.

“I ate it all,” Esha said. “Thistle, you
said? It's not expensive, is it?”

“Not enough to worry about.”

Which didn't soothe Esha, coming from a
high-caste's mouth, but she still found herself trusting
Atarangi.

“Rooftop?” Atarangi tapping her shoulder,
“Try again, if you wish.”

He landed on his master's shoulder before
her mouth had closed, buffeting her gentle with wing-wind and
shuffling his feet into place. And now the phoenix Rooftop blocked
Atarangi from sight, this clever creature still staring at Esha in
a way too intense to stand.

He trilled.
Hail,
Esha understood. Or
perhaps he said
pardon me
, or something else; the sound had
a solid core of requesting attention.

“I'm,” Esha said, “I'm listening.”

She made herself look at the phoenix. His
beaked face showed no emotion, his eyes as glimmering as they
always were — but his neck was a tight, tall curl, his middle
feather crest flared higher than the two side crests. Lungta
overlaid it all with understanding: he was pleased. And surprised,
and hopeful.

He creaked a melody.
“Dawn
yellow!”

“Yaah ... Hello,” Esha murmured. “Atarangi,
have I eaten enough? He's talking about dawn ...?”

“Phoenixes arrange their ideas differently
than any human tongue I've ever known.” Her smile sounded in her
voice. “Dawn means a beginning, or a greeting. Like the sun
beginning the day, you see?”

“Dear gods. I don't know if I'll
understand.”

“I'm sure you'll manage.”

Rooftop still stared.

“You're ... giving me a greeting?” Esha
tried.

“
Yes, yes,”
he croaked.
“Human
tongues might say ... Roof-top is happy to be meeting you.”

He spoke as awkward as a foreigner — because
he was a Tselayan creature but he
was
foreign, in a way. He
was a race Esha had never considered speaking with until one
individual stood before her, extending his lungta.

That struck Esha like a thrown stone: this
phoenix, who had a name truly his, was extending his ideas to her.
And Esha was seeing — truly
seeing
now — the shifting of his
crests and the angles of his postured body. Rooftop's feathers were
nearly as plain as a human's expressive face.

“I am ... pleased to make a new friend,”
Esha pushed from her mouth. She was too stunned to feel, too
windburned by the truth — but she had never regretted a friend
before.

Rooftop sang, a chittering that meant a
buttery shade of yellow and also delight.
“You own a selfname?
Will you share with me?”

“You know my—“ Esha suddenly knew that she
had never met eyes with Rooftop and introduced herself, because of
course she hadn't. “I— My name is Esha.”