Tinder Stricken (37 page)

“I'm here, Rooftop! Wait for me to come
up.”

“
Am your kin!”

She put on her disguise. Cloak, headwraps,
cowl, socks, footwraps and a checker-textured woven mask:
everything layered over the clothes she was wearing, and Esha
tugged and settled the assortment until it felt unremarkable.
Stifling her horns and goat ears again was an old familiarity, one
that didn't easily move.

“Alright,” she told Sureness. “We can go.
Ah, Fathomless? Gratitude: thank you.”

It was a redundant thing to say and Esha
only noticed as she spoke it. Still, Fathomless gave a bright smile
of fins.
“Assurance: this one wasn't troubled by the concession.
Depths guard you.”

Heavens, depths — Esha didn't care what
guarded her. She simply climbed the laddered ledges Nimble has
earthshifted into the shaft's side. As long as something remembered
that Esha Of The Fields existed, and granted her a pinch of luck
this day, she would be content.

The shaft led up into freezing air, windy
enough to push under the edges of Esha's clothes. She emerged into
a stand of bamboo, a tall and pristine one unmolested by
fuelcutters and probably tended by a groundskeeper in addition to a
ranger. Rooftop and Clamshell perched in the thickest bamboo
leaves: both creaked greeting. The cold was invigorating and Esha's
kin were here, and her nerves drifted away like snowflakes.

“Stay here,” Esha told Sureness. She knelt
beside the climbing shaft, looking down at his fin-framed face,
knowing what chaos would take hold if such a massive serpent were
sighted on High Plateau. “Be ready for temperature-sensitive lungta
plants. And don't give away any Deepling secrets for my sake.”

“
This one pledges it,”
Sureness
clicked.

With a squirming of dappled serpent colours,
Nimble took Sureness's place. Small as he was, he would be an
easier presence to hide — and he had shown cleverness in evading
human sight, besides.

“Alright, Nimble. You recall that kilometre
measurement I told you about?”

He clicked affirmative, eyes alight.

“The Kanakisipt home is— how far, kin?”

Rooftop creaked considering in his throat.
“One and one-half kilometres, north direction.”

“It's one and one-half kilometres, that
way.”

Staring at Esha's pointing finger, Nimble
clacked agreement.
“Determination! This one will wait for the
signal and be prepared for surface access!”

Surface access — what an appealing way to
refer to it. Like Nimble was simply opening a hatch underground and
finding himself in a noble's backyard.

“Good. Well, then close this shaft over —
unless you want a ranger stepping on your nose. Clamshell?”

Esha stood, and held open her cloak. It was
time to, in a manner of speaking, go home.

Clamshell resented being under the cloak,
resented it with tight-pinned crests and a peevish gripping of her
own stringfeathers. But she was intelligent enough to keep her
grumbling within her head. She made fine stuffing, filling out the
cloak like a meatier woman was inside — not someone named Esha Of
The Fields, not at all.

Esha kept her arms loose, her stride steady,
her gaze aimed down through the mask holes as she walked the High
Plateau streets. Lungta flurried down steady, gone immediately into
the glazed tile streets. Embroidered masterpieces passed by on pant
legs and sari hems; gemstone beads and gold trim glinted; footsteps
faltered, silk-socked toes pointing toward Esha before carrying on.
They could stare at the poor, shifting wretch if they damned well
wished; Esha only needed to avoid guards. Which would hopefully be
simple, since it wasn't against the law to walk while looking
elderly, not even in this place.

The Kanakisipt wall rose up ahead. It sang
its owners' praises with pink quartz orchids emblazoning each
section and orchid leaves topping the wall towers. The orchids were
tradition, and Kanakisipt nobles were more interested in tradition
than subtlety.

No one barred Esha. She kept measuring out
slow steps and reached the corner of the Kanakisipt wall, following
it edgeward. Pink quartz blossoms flashed by on one side, groomed
bamboo on the other, and up ahead the wall's back corner crept
closer. There would have to be servants' quarters, or a waste
chute, or glass windows or
something
else Esha could
use.

“Hail, citizen.”

The voice behind her was obsidian-hard; Esha
stopped, and measured herself in turning around. The guard's boots
were worn but well buffed with grease: she didn't want to raise her
sight any higher.

“Hail,” she said, and offered a hunched
namaste. Esha hoped her voice came out convincingly wizened: it
wasn't a sound she had ever tried to make before.

“Your sigil is not visible — you ought to
know better, mother. Kindly produce it.”

Her caste sigil. Realization crashed down on
Esha, knowing that her farmwoman's sigil was buried under the cloak
— but she certainly couldn't present it. She could have forged a
loftier sigil, could have asked the serpents to lend her metal or
wood but Esha simply hadn't
thought
.

“I ...” She patted her clothing, a feeble
mimickry. Clamshell's soft bulk compressed under her palm and she
could feel the feathers contracting, furious. “I-I seem to have ...
dropped it.”

The guard's silence hung. Clamshell's claws
tightened to fist Esha's shirt.

“Then present your nameplate, citizen.”

Already caught,
already
finished.
Esha stood dry-mouthed and hammer-hearted, fisting and unfisted her
hands, and the guard repeated himself in a threat-edged voice but
Esha drowned him out by snapping, “Clamshell, now!”

An explosion of feathers and Clamshell was
out, shrieking, beating her wings at the guard's rage-bent face and
kicking his helmet away. This was Esha's one chance, her one
reserve. Now she was fear-strung and near failure and had nothing
left but to run.

Such a bizarre sensation to spring from one
hoof-tipped foot to another but Esha took it, she ran until the
wind tore tears from her eyes — around one brick-edged corner, then
another, into a recessed crevice deep enough to hide her.

She had never seen gaps like these in manor
walls. It might have been a place for soldiers to fortify, from
blood-darkened times past. A noble child wouldn't know. Whatever it
was, Esha needed to climb in it but there were no metal spires to
grasp, no earthshifted ledges meant for her, nothing but a wall of
bricks. Bricks with prayers' words carved from their faces. In
front of Esha's face was a brick with the
heaven
character
rendered large enough to look like a cliffside fingerledge —
crevices that goats climbed on every day of their lives.

Maybe she should keep running, Esha thought.
Maybe she ought not to trust the goat. But her hands were moving,
pulling off her socks and wraps and stuffing them down her sari,
and she unwound her selfrope and began tucking her stupid, useful
hoof edges into the wall's welcoming niches. Stepping up was
terrifying, feeling nothing underfoot, but the wall's top edge drew
closer.

Something flashed in the sky. Esha looked up
and saw nothing more solid than clouds. Then the flash came again —
rufous feathers, from Clamshell wheeling down to sit on the manor
wall.

“
Red-white danger! The enemy comes! Why
are you here, this place has no escape!”

“I think I can get over this wall,” Esha
gasped in shaking voice. She climbed down before she could fall,
hooves finding toeholds as natural as rain fell. “My rope might
help. Is there something on the other side you could tie the end
onto?”

Her crests spreading surprised, Clamshell
turned. Her dark eyes swept the wall behind her, and then she
leaned toward Esha, beak open and grasping. She caught the thrown
rope and dragged it farther, then reappeared to creak,
“Knot
tied, tight-tugged.”

It didn't tear loose when Esha tugged. She
simply needed to trust her kin. This time with her selfrope to
hold, she again slotted her hooves into carvings and climbed.

She was nearly at the top, just another
arm-length and she might throw fingertips over the wall's edge at
Clamshell's feet — but footfalls thumped around the property's
outer corner. Esha would be caught before she could make it over;
her limbs were leaden with effort already.

Clamshell took wing and dove out of sight.
The guard shouted again, more shocked than before and this time
spiced with cursing.

It was a gift Esha took gladly. Fear blazed
in her blood as she pulled hand over hand to the top, swung one leg
up and levered her own weight up onto the wall. She jumped over —
onto planks too smooth and level to be real — and pulled her
selfrope after, and dropped into a ball.

Her own gasping roared loud as death in her
ears but she made out the sound of boots on dirt down below.
Footsteps scuffed past and away and she still huddled there, still
alive and full of racing blood.

She just needed to catch her breath, Esha
told herself. Moments gathered and gradually, gradually, her
breathing slowed and her pulse stopped feeling like
catastrophe.

That was when Esha heard voices behind her,
echoed across a vast and stony space.

“All I mean,” said a woman speaking smoothly
native Grewian, “is that we won't have time for both. The
wheel-cart has to be back there in, ah, a little less than an hour
— Nugah needs it, remember?”

“Yes, yes.” Another female voice, heavy and
awkward with a Sherbu accent. “Let me lift it. Let me.”

They were calm-voiced servants and surely,
they hadn't managed to see Esha. She kept still, still as one of
the wall bricks except for her incessantly hammering heart, and she
listened.

There was muted movement. The liquid sound
of someone sliding into water. Splashing. The Sherbu woman
grunting, more splashing and then a rock clunking, rolling,
settling onto a cart. More splashing and talking in colleague
voices, and the cart wheels blessedly clacked away. Door hinges
like a phoenix's voice.

The wheels stopped short — and booted feet
clunked muffled, as soldiers hurried, somewhere in the building's
depths. The servants wondered in half whispers and through Esha's
thundering heartbeat, their sounds faded into the Kanakisipt
mansion.

It was safe, but Esha still shook as she
straightened and looked at her surroundings. The algae pond was the
same masterpiece as she remembered: a round pool edged with
intricately carved blue slate, dark as night next to the light
dazzling off the pool's surface. A dark streak marked the white
tiles — where the servants had dragged a heating stone out of the
water, to bring back to wherever it was they warmed stones to
algae-nurturing temperature. Esha didn't know which coal stoves
were large enough for that; her family had never thought it
important for her to know the servants' ways.

The platform Esha laid on was made of
rough-hewn pine wood, a utility space no one but mansion staff
would ever use. Its railing was supported by nailed boards no wider
than Esha's arm. One sideways glance from the servants and Esha
would have been discovered. This was a blessing: she had to keep
moving.

As she placed her shaking legs on one
descending stair, then another, Clamshell swooped back to alight on
the wall's edge.

“
The house-enemies, they search for you.
Too stupid to catch me, though.”

“People are coming back here, to this open
space,” Esha murmured. “Stay out of sight. Rooftop, too.”

With a muttered agreement, Clamshell winged
out of sight.

No time for quivering nerves. Time only for
calling her allies. Esha hurried to the algae pong and sank to her
knees — still marvelling at their new vigor — to thrust her
faithful broken khukuri blade into the water. Strike it against
anything, Nimble had told her, but best to choose something that
vibrated.

The heating rock installations looked right.
Esha hit her blade's flat against the steel bars and felt trembling
dissipate into the earth. She waited and struck again. Impatience
grew no grain, but they didn't have long to waste.

Esha kept striking,
clang clang clang
to call downward. Vibrations faded again — and then, from a
trembling in the earth, came back to answer Esha.

She was shaking her arm dry and getting to
her feet when Nimble came. Stone shifted at the bottom of the algae
pool and his frilled head emerged — while the water level of the
pool slid steadily downward. He squirmed, and soon spires of rock
rose to break the water, spires that spread into rough-hewn walls
of a kind of deepearth chimney. The remaining water was preserved.
Nimble emerged from the top, grinning even while he flinched at the
daybright.

“
Astonishment! This one didn't expect
such architecture! Query: Is this construction solely for housing
valuable lungta plants?”

“You might say that. Stay out of sight,
Nimble — there are guards are searching for us, the kind of humans
who use weapons. We'll come back with the orchids — just be ready
to earthshift that hole closed behind me.”

“Query: may this one take a ( )-floating
algae?”

“Yaah, if you want to? As long as you're not
caught.”

Nimble was chittering a reply, and Esha was
resettling her footwraps around her furred ankles. Then a trembling
came — familiar for a few heartbeats.

“Nimble? Is that your—“

The earth roared then, and lurched under her
with a screaming of stone and structures.

“Not now,” she hissed, “not now!”

But the Abyssal couldn't be stopped and the
earthquake jerked Esha's balance away, so she tottered on the
goat's sure little feet. The Abyssal's energies shot through the
slate floor, ripping through it like wrenched paper while the walls
broke apart. Esha dropped, gripped the ground with spread hands,
and prayed she wouldn't die while thieving.