Toads and Diamonds (28 page)

Too-ill, too-ill,
the cuckoos insisted, and for a long time, it was true. Then, one evening, Tana woke with a clear mind. She was lying on a pallet, a light cotton sheet drawn over her naked body. Above the screens, the sky had turned palest pink beyond the entry pavilion's overhanging eaves. Moonbird Month had fled; in the sultry air, Tana tasted the sticky heat of Elephant Month. Tamarind season, mango season, when the only relief from the oppressive stillness was a windstorm that scoured grit into exposed skin and left a veil of dust to stick to eyelids and lips. Tana coughed and sat up, wrapping the sheet across her breasts and under her arms. Twig arms, she noticed. How long since she had eaten more than broth?

"Ah, you're with us. All praise to Payoja-ji," a sweet, familiar voice said. A large woman in a rust-colored dress wrap bent over Tana's pallet. She held out a fruit with greenish-orange skin. "Mango?"

Tana folded her hands in thanks, then took the mango and bit into it greedily. The pulpy flesh stuck in her teeth; juice ran down her chin. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.

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The woman laughed in a kindly fashion. She returned to her seat in the corner of the pavilion and selected another mango from her basket. Slicing the mango, she laid the strips across a drying screen. "A messy business," she said. "Good to do at a well."

Nodding, Tana sucked the last of the fruit off the pit. She licked her fingers and swiped at her chin.

"How about a wash?" the woman asked.

Tana needed help to stand. Slowly, the two of them descended to the well's bathing pool.

"Water hasn't been this low since my grandmother's day," Tana's companion remarked. "Those three little carved frogs against the step? My mother said
her
mother painted the lucky spots on them. Hadn't been seen from that day to this."

Tana brushed the stone frogs with her fingers, stroking the rounded bodies and powerful legs.

"Lucky for you, too." The woman chuckled. "If my husband hadn't been so curious to see them before he went off to the fields that day, it would have been hours more before anyone found you." She, too, patted the frogs. "A little good fortune wouldn't come amiss for the rest of us. Crops withering in the heat, plague in the villages roundabout, not a house naga to be had in Tenth Province for charity or coin. We're hoping the well doesn't dry up before the rains." She settled herself on a ledge above Tana. "But we'll get by somehow. Everyone has his own troubles, isn't that the way of the world?"

Tana sank into the water until only her eyes were showing. She surfaced, snorting and blowing, and shook her head like a dog. Drops flew from her shaggy hair and pattered into the water around her. She grinned with the joy of being alive, and clean.

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"You're a quiet one, eh, Mina?" Tana's benefactor helped dry her shaky limbs. Tana tried not to lean too heavily on the older woman's arm as they climbed back up the stairs. They were both puffing hard by the time they reached the well's entry. Tana sank onto the pallet.

"Will you sleep in the village tonight?" The woman sheathed her knife and set her drying tray across the mango basket. "You're welcome to stay with my family."

Patting her pallet, Tana smiled at the woman.

"Happy here, are you? I suppose. There's a lantern, and some broth in this jar. Care for another mango?"

Tana folded her hands in thanks.

The woman paused at the door. "I'll bring you a dress wrap tomorrow. Good night," she said, and left Tana alone.

Other faces, men and women both, peeked around the screen from time to time to check on her. None spoke, and the visits dwindled as the night deepened. Tana lay on her pallet, watching the shadows from the door lanterns play across the walls. She felt empty, clean, and peaceful. Her thoughts touched lightly on her mother, her sister, Kalyan, and the villagers. She hoped they were well, and not too worried by her disappearance. Even those concerns slid away, unable to penetrate her sense of quiet ease. The moon rose, silvering the leaves overhead and waking the night birds' voices.

What?
an owlet asked.

Tana got up and draped the sheet around herself. She prayed silently at the goddess's shrine, then sat against the door frame, under the diamond-eyed snake, and waited.

Too-ill,
the cuckoo said.

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"No," Tana contradicted softly, a test. Oh, she had missed this, tiny miracles popping into life a breath away from her skin. With the word, a toad dropped. Mottled and moist-looking, it hopped into the night. Perhaps a snake would follow, and be welcome. House nagas weren't to be had here
for charity or coin,
the woman had said.

But through sorrow and suffering? In love and humility? The fever that had shrunk the flesh on her bones had also burned rebellion and distrust from Tana's heart. She felt older than the anguished girl who had shaken her fist at the goddess, not wanting her strange gift. The desire of her soul had been to protect her family, and Naghali-ji had given Tana the means. She just hadn't been paying attention.

Finally, the fever dreams had shown her. The pattern was obvious when you strung the threads together properly. Rats. Plague. Snakes.

Out of superstition, Alwar and his officials had tried to destroy Tenth Province's snakes. But snakes ate rats and other pests. Without the snakes to keep their numbers down, a few diseased rats could multiply into a widespread threat.

Snakes ate rats. What could be simpler? Tana had even noticed that house nagas came the most frequently of all "her" creatures. She had been irritated that people seemed to prefer the ratters to her. How silly that seemed now. Naghali-ji had made Diribani a jewel mine, Tana a snake girl, and sent them both into the world. That was the point--wherever they traveled, they could share the goddess's blessing.

Starting here.

In thinking about Diribani, Tana remembered her sister's

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favorite song. The width of an empire and the nature of their tasks might have separated them, but Tana could be with her sister in spirit. Taking a deep breath, she added her low, disused voice to the birds' chorus.

"Tonight, beloved,

I light the lamp
to guide my moonbird home.

"

Diamond eyes twinkled above her head as the serpents--ratters and boas, tree snakes and vipers and whip snakes and even a majestic cobra--flowed into the night. Lean and hungry, they hunted.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Diribani

ARRIVING
on the heels of the Mina Bazaar, the dry season's final caravan brought more than trade goods from Tenth Province to Fanjandibad, though neither party profited from the exchange.

Within days, the putrid fever had spread through the fort. In the female guards' barracks, the few servants still able to carry a bucket were kept busy cleaning the spaces between the rows of pallets. Diribani tried to keep out of their way; in return, they ignored her. The sick didn't notice what she wore, or ask whom she worshiped, if she could bring them some relief. During the heat of midday, the stench of illness was unbearable. Diribani could only come in the flush of dawn or the barely cooler hours of twilight, to help tend the ailing. When a woman died, she was buried in her bedding. The empty slots filled quickly. In the fort's close quarters, disease spread with an arrow's speed and the same deadly results.

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Nissa had protested Diribani's efforts, but then the maid had gotten sick. She lay listlessly on her pallet under Diribani's window, where a breeze might find her. They had lost Mahan; Zeen was weak, but expected to recover. The minute she could walk, she had staggered to her post at Diribani's door.

Their concern for her touched Diribani in the small part of her heart she could spare from silent prayer. She gave endless thanks to the twelve that Ma Hiral and Tana hadn't accompanied her to Fanjandibad. Thoughts of her family, who should be comfortably housed next to the sacred well by now, were all that kept her from despair.

For Zahid, too, was ill. Ruqayya and her ladies tended him in the princess's rooms.

Every face Diribani bathed with cool water wore his features; every small act of kindness, she did for his sake. He would never know, but that wasn't important, as long as Sister Payoja accepted Diribani's service.

As the days passed, each hotter and more stifling than the one before, Zeen ate more heartily, and her skeletal face resumed its familiar dour contours. Nissa began to complain about her enforced inactivity. Diribani took both for good signs. On her twice-daily barracks visits, she found fewer patients filling the spaces vacated by the dead and, now, the recovering.

The prince did not improve.

Diribani stopped sleeping at night. As if her lonely vigils could prevent death from slipping past her and into the prince's quarters, she paced the rooftop terrace, singing quietly into her hands. Emeralds and poppies, lilies and diamonds---at dawn, Diribani

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filled the iron box with jewels and annotated the ledger as scrupulously as Mahan had done. It comforted her to see the lights in distant valleys and know the builders were working on the wells. In all but the furnace heat of midday, teams of laborers were erecting dams to hold the rainwater to come.

Then, one night, Diribani encountered a woman huddled against the baluster, weeping. Moonlight betrayed her, outlining a riot of dark curls over the white coat.

Zahid! Was he--no.

At the woman's sobs, the question died in Diribani's throat. Love broke her, where loneliness had not. She felt it like a bodily separation, a desolate wind blowing faith from her heart. What good were Naghali's gems when they couldn't buy one man's health? Diribani had gone through the days convincing herself she cared whether some mine workers she didn't know would have water conveniently at hand. She painted flowers as if a lifeless record could preserve their scented loveliness. All along, her pulse had beat to one name only. If Zahid was gone, how could her eyes continue to see beauty in the world? Clearly, the goddess had mocked her with riches, since Diribani hadn't had the wisdom to wish for protection for her dear ones.

What had Tana asked for? Something worthy, no doubt. For the first time in her life, Diribani felt a bone-deep envy of her sister. The smell of lilies filled her with disgust. She stepped to the railing and opened her hands, casting jewels and flowers into the sultry air.

Ruqayya sprang to her feet. "Flower girl, is that you?"

"My lady." Diribani bowed her head.

"Then you shall be the first to hear the news. Praise to Almighty God, my brother is getting better!"

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"What?" Diribani squawked like a crow. Marigolds dotted the terrace, their peppery scent as distinctive as a voice.

"Is it not marvelous?" The usually self-contained princess embraced her, tears glinting on her cheeks. "We hoped, yesterday, but dared not say anything, in case it was a false recovery. But he knew me just now. He told me I was all eyes and teeth, like a fruit bat, and that I should rest before I frightened the court." Ruqayya almost danced to the stairwell. "I can sleep, finally. I just needed a moment to myself first."

Diribani sat down where she was, leaning against a tall flower urn for support. "I am so pleased to hear it," she said. Small stones plinked around her.

The princess paused at the door. "Yes, I thought you might be," she said with a touch of her usual asperity. "Get some sleep yourself, eh?"

Diribani didn't know how to answer Ruqayya's retreating back. She was more relieved than she could express. At the same time, she felt cheated by her own weakness. Her faith must have been a fragile bloom indeed, to wither in one arid moment.

Naghali's bounty continued to flow; the marigolds and jewels told her that. But how could Diribani rejoice in the gift, having rejected the giver?

Zahid lived. The cup of joy had been filled, and Diribani would never drink from it. The difficult truth must be faced. He would never belong to her. It didn't matter what connection she had felt between them the night of the Mina Bazaar. The prince had never offered her more than respect, friendship, and a shared purpose in the construction project. Her dreams were a costly illusion.

From a distance, she would watch him build a new wing on the

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palace for his own family. They might exchange pleasantries, discuss commerce or construction, but nothing more personal. He would marry a noblewoman his sister approved. They'd have children and weigh them on their birthdays, and Diribani would add a handful of jewels to the scales, to be distributed to the poor at the feast.

And it would all be hollow, her efforts at modesty and goodness and charity, because she no longer believed. Not in her gift, but in her wisdom to use it. She had been so mistaken about Ruqayya's weeping--what else had she misapprehended? The well project? Had that, too, been a prideful gesture? Perhaps Diribani had imagined that she held the answer to those women's prayers because
she
wasn't so good at carrying big jars of water on her head. Maybe they would rather have had new clothing or better houses or their own mine leases. Diribani hadn't asked; she'd assumed she knew best.

Sunk in self-recrimination, she didn't look up at the approaching tread.