Tinder Stricken (6 page)

Esha had no plans to cut fire fuel — not
this night, anyway. If it was so dangerous here, she might be
fortunate enough to avoid seeing another human soul. Her heartbeat
rattled hard inside her as she walked among the clattering bamboo,
every shadow seeming to dart in the edges of her vision. She only
wanted to set some traps.

She only walked until she found young pine
trees, well away from oak and cloveberry and any other tree
heavenly enough for the ranger caste to keep watch over. As she
walked, she found a rhythm. Bend a tree; attach a snare; pin down
the snare with stakes lodged precariously enough for an animal to
bump loose; place a pinch of cooked yam in the slack loop; hurry
onward. The last trap — the largest loop made of thickest leather,
maybe enough to snare a deer or a wild pig — went to a
ragged-barked pine tree far from Esha's home. Then she was done.
She had only to wait.

Esha limped quick through the shadows, back
home. Her vision smeared with exhaustion but her heart drummed so
loud that it took her an eternity of blanket-wrapped moments to
fall asleep. She was using the Kanakisipt heirloom, the one she was
meant to hide, or ignore, or else quietly sell. She was farming not
just dusty yam fields, but the entire body of knowledge she had
acquired in her slide down Tselaya Mountain's caste ranks. As of
this night, Esha was trying, really trying to snatch something
better for herself — and surely, Gita would have given her a
delighted grin.

She caught nothing after her first night.
But over the next two weeks of bone-sapping late nights, Esha tried
different morsels of her own dinner as bait, and adjusted the
tension on her snare lines, and soon began finding pikas and hares
and pheasants dangling, waiting for her. Bundled into cloth sacks,
they might have been jute fibre or bamboo leaves for all anyone in
the market street could tell. But she didn't waste her allotted
market visits on this.

She thought Ren would introduce her to
another blackflag, but he was perfectly glad to buy the game from
her. Wild game tasted better than any fence-bound animal, he said,
and went on to talk about stuffing these with rice and mustard
greens. He gave Esha rupees, and sometimes a little painkiller herb
for her trouble.

With the extra walking she was asking of her
degrading legs, Esha was tempted, always, to give back all the
rupees and ask Ren for more herb. But that would render her extra
work pointless. Each day, she was adding rupees to her savings
chest. Her plan was working: Esha only needed to endure it.

One night, she found one of her traps
sprung, with an official warning bound in the snare loop.

The owner of this unauthorized trap,
the waxed text said,
must report to a ranger or face a charge of
3 demerits.

Panic filled Esha — before she remembered
she had more demerit points than that, and so did Gita. She
wouldn't be demoted again, not if she made her money before she got
caught three or four times. She wouldn't even need to beg a ranger
for lenience if her plan kept working.

Esha put the summons note back into the
snare loop and left it hanging there. On her limp-blighted legs,
she walked away. This wasn't her trap anymore — not when she had
more traps left to check, more opportunities awaiting her use.

Much as Esha would have liked more sleep,
she tried to appreciate the night. The sky glittered with lungta
and with stars, too. Wind whispered in the bamboo, surely the kind
of voice that a priest might be able to hear heaven's words in. And
among those tall stalks, in their swaying shadows, there was a
shape that demanded Esha's attention.

Esha's breath caught. She lifted a bristly
juniper branch, and there in unfettered moonlight was a kudzu plant
with a spire of a flower, just like the ones in Esha's memory.

Ceremony guests. Gleaming silks and wooden
beads. Honeyed kudzu blossoms held in immaculately clean fingers,
slipped into mouths before more lungta-accompanied discussion.

None of that mattered now. Surely, the
dyemaker would give her good money for this nobles' plant. Esha
used the heirloom khukuri to slice the kudzu off at ground level,
and she set a handful of dead leaves over the remaining stump. The
whole plant went into her satchel, bent and tucked so it fit and
stayed hidden. She kept on.

Esha's second trap was empty. Her third trap
was, too. Maybe last night's game was warded off by whichever
ranger came stomping through this forest, claiming things for the
Empire — or maybe foodbeasts were just more clever than Esha gave
them credit for. She kept walking, dragging up memory of last
night's path and the snares laid along it. Hopefully her trap near
the lake would catch something the dyemaker liked to eat.

The pine forest at the edge of the Farback
was the most burdensome part of Esha's route; no paths broke the
blanket of crackling orange needles, and the trees were mostly the
same size, like stamped copies of one another. There was little
here worth harvesting but Esha held out hope that creatures might
come here to eat the gumgrass, or to just walk unbothered by human
presence.

Useless blessing that would be, though, if
she couldn't find her own trap. She stopped, and pinched between
her eyes so the world darkened and whirled around her.
Concentration. Just a little more concentration, a little more work
and she could go sleep. She might have been getting thirsty, Esha
supposed; it had been hours since her millet dinner and she hadn't
had the sense to drink a cup of water before walking off into the
night. The kudzu leaves might make a fair substitute, green and
succulent as they were. Their bulk at Esha's side was suddenly a
temptation, a fixed point in Esha's hazy thoughts. She couldn't eat
it, she only needed to keep going. Because the night wasn't getting
any longer and she couldn't find the bent treetop that was
hers—

Something circled her ankle. It yanked
Esha’s feet from under her and the world jerked wrongways, her
throat yelping inside her as the braided yankvine resisted and she
bobbed to a stop, dangling from one leg.

Here
was her trap. Here was her
gods-damned trap and she had stepped right into it. Upside down by
her own doing, Esha stared at the forest floor a few inches beyond
her stretching fingers.

Esha grumbled bitter oaths. What a stupid
thing to do. At least no one was here to see it.

The snare dug into her leg, impossible to
wriggle loose from — but animals wouldn't think to cut themselves
free. Esha grabbed at her clothing-layered body until she found her
satchel strap, and followed that to the pouch compartment. Her
fingers pushed aside fabric, and more fabric, and the innumerable
cool leaves of the kudzu — then pain bit her fingers. She recoiled
with a hiss and saw the knife tipping, glinting, falling, and
grabbed only cold air as metal thudded against the forest
floor.

More damnation. Esha craned to look at the
ground below, a rotating mass of dark texture around the bright
shard that was the Kanakisipt khukuri. If she stretched her arm
toward it, she would be precious finger-widths short; she tried
anyway and only managed to swat more air.

So she dangled there for a moment, with the
fact of it soaking in. This was Esha's just portion. This was her
reward for being stupid and not minding her feet, and she swore a
little more before she gathered the satchel into her arms and took
stock of what she had within reach. Three jute sacks; five rupees
to buy her way out of trouble; the kudzu plant, and in the bottom
corner, a cork-dry sliver of betel nut that Esha had forgotten
about. No water. No sharp tools other than the khukuri she had lost
to clumsiness.

The snare was only a slip knot, though.
Animals lacked the presence of mind to loosen it — and Esha was no
animal, not yet. She bent upward, reaching for the leather around
her ankle. Her stomach muscles blazed and her blood swelled inside
her, and her fingers wouldn't reach. She tried again, throwing her
weight upward, slinging her hands toward the goal. Esha could touch
the snare, even grip its knot between her thumb and forefinger, but
that was far different from supporting her weight.

She straightened, letting out a grunt as her
limbs fell like stone weights. The movement set her spinning again,
the world a whirling palette. She dangled there until the spinning
stopped. Esha wasn’t sure if a person could die simply from hanging
upside down: it didn’t seem deadly in the basic fact of it, but her
head was throbbing in time with her pulse. She would definitely die
of thirst in a day or two.

She breathed deep — an unfamiliar motion,
inverted this way — and resolved to wait. Yam Plateau was home to
thousands of people who walked patrols, or cut bamboo, or
worshipped the placid corners of the world. Someone would happen
by. Even if it was someone come to fine Esha, or report her, or
jail her for everything she'd done, she would take that over dying
here, alone.

Sunrise came, with patches of shadow
receding all around and bird chatter rising in the trees. Esha
tried to swallow the gluey itch in her dry mouth, and tried to
ignore the numbness in her trap-bound leg. She straightened a few
times more, as much as her weary torso would allow; that eased the
pressure inside her head for welcome moments.

People would be stirring from their beds
now. And what if someone did happen by, sang the hope in Esha's
chest? She would gladly pay some soldier's bribe. Even if someone
came who didn't speak Grewian, Esha's obvious helplessness and fear
would be enough to explain.

What if they weren't, though? The hopesong
changed key — and now Esha acted out tragedies behind her eyes,
where her saviour vanished back into the bushes because they spoke
Sherbese or Malkesh or something rarer than that, so that Esha's
Grewian pleadings didn't form sense.

She was thinking nonsense; she knew that
while panic welled in her chest and tears crept warm tracks along
the outside of her aching head. And crying was not only useless, it
was a waste of what precious little water she had left in her.

Focus, Esha growled at herself. She plucked
a leaf from her kudzu plant — wilted now — and chewed. There had to
be another way to escape this fate.

Through the ragged pattern of her breathing,
a cadence formed in her memory.

If we need to make a plea

The memory echoed twice more before Esha
recognized it: this was a rhyme from her childhood. From the time
fogged over with powder snow, when she was a child learning the
broadest customs of Kanakisipt family diplomacy. She remembered
sitting on a stool made of snow leopard fur, petting it with
restless fingers while watching the tutor's approving face. And she
remembered letting new-learned melody out of her throat.

If we need to make a plea

Speak with grace and mindfulness

With heaven's gifts we pave the way

Each path a mesh of tasteful words

Better spoken than the rest

How it hurt to recall those words. Esha
hadn't liked the dry, endless lessons but she had liked songs, and
sang them with a full heart. She had potential, the tutor had said.
She had Kanakisipt talent, as ripe as Accord Plateau's summer
plums.

Dangling, farm-bruised Esha wondered whether
that tutor had spoken truth to her. Whether he was flattering his
superiors' child, or whether Esha Kanakisipt had heavenly talent
and simply a lack of worthy flesh to put it in. It was a
meaningless distinction, she decided. Neither yes nor no would
light a fire she could warm herself over.

But hanging there waiting, hoping, Esha kept
hearing the rhyme in her head. She gradually, stumblingly recalled
all the verses detailing the eighteen races of Tselaya Mountain,
their many languages and customs and oddities. Diplomats could
forge compromises with any of Tselaya's people; they considered
that a point of pride.

Esha tightened her grip on her pouch and the
kudzu inside. She already had a little lungta gathered in her
mouth, from the one leaf she had eaten. If she saw someone in the
bushes, she surely could call to them.

Dawn's light became morning. Esha turned in
the wind, spinning long and slow. She strained again toward her
feet, toward sweet relief but her strength was gone. Childhood
verses bound her memory tight and one verse in particular was
gaining strength:

With lungta in our mouths and minds

We move ideas, share what's known

Then even beasts can hear our words

But glory spills upon them

Like the rain upon a stone

Extending lungta to an animal was called
animism, they told her. It was disgraceful. No honourable person
could condone wasting heaven's herbs to speak with an unthinking
beast.

Could she talk to a dog, the child Esha had
asked? There was a court dog she liked, a silky thoroughbred that
smiled open-mouthed when it saw her.

No, the tutor snapped. She could not talk to
a dog.

That wasn't what Esha had meant; she kept
her mouth locked shut for the rest of the lesson.

It was a matter of honour, like everything
nobles did. Of course, nobles thought that because they didn't need
to bother themselves with the details of animal husbandry. Esha
felt shock the first time she saw a diplomat walking Yam Plateau's
streets with a phoenix perched on his shoulder like a mantled
demon. She had wondered how that man could live with himself,
sullied as he was. But that spring, he talked a wild phoenix out of
Janjuman's yam fields and then, to top himself, he figured out why
one of the plough yaks was limping. Esha couldn't grudge anyone as
useful as that.

Animists could speak to animals. They could
persuade a meddlesome phoenix to leave and never return. Listening
to the bird cries all around, Esha formed a new hope: maybe she
could make her plea heard even if no people could hear it.