***
With the sun nearing the eastern mountains, the sky had dimmed, but Janurana didn’t notice. After their argument, she hopped onto Dekha’s saddle bags with a huff and refused to engage with Dhanur or even look up at her. She had been able to silence her mind of terrible thoughts. After so long in the Outside, one had to learn how to control such things to prevent madness. She stared at the sway of her feet being knocked around by Dekha’s laborious yet mechanical gait. Her sari was billowing with their swinging. She added some of her own momentum. It was a reflex. She swung her legs back and forth absentmindedly, meditatively.
Janurana wondered how long it had been since anyone had transported her. There was no carriage or litter, but she’d traveled alone for so long, and yet she was being escorted quite a distance yet again by one who was higher class in all but name. Her tattered and once valuable sari felt even heavier on her shoulders. She fingered a fraying piece, trying to date it, knowing it was certainly over fifty years.
The pair had officially crossed into the Borderlands and were more aware of the plateau’s slope. It descended down into Uttara. When they passed up a hill, they could tell the canyons were shifting north. A powerful gust of wind kicked up the burnt dust that was once the borderland’s softer soil. Dhanur brought up the bottom of her hood until the cloud passed and Janurana did the same with her wide sleeve. Plumes of dust were common immediately following the Scorching, but had subsided in the south to the typical dry season fare and both women winced at one being so far north.
Janurana sniffed as she lowered her collar. The slightly off smell on the breeze still blew from in front of them. Janurana couldn’t discern whether it was from ahead on the path, or from her companion. Dhanur still smelled like Dhanur, cloves and overall earthy scents. But the mystery scent was still concerningly odd.
Dhanur’s eyes barely strayed from the head of the path. In the distance, the lonely mountain grew incrementally, its green peak becoming much more pronounced. Even the green of the northern jungles behind it became more visible as the day progressed. Regardless, she kept her eyes focused on the mount. It was hard not to as it shone like a beacon under the clouds.
She grimaced the entire time she stared ahead, half because of her headache and half at the mountain, then frowned deeper knowing it probably made Janurana think she was still upset. But Dhanur couldn’t blame her companion. Janurana had been Outside for so long and then ripped out of a nice bed after only two days.
“I-I’m sorry. You really didn’t know the gwomoni were in charge of everything?” Dhanur asked.
“No.” Janurana’s tone was soft.
“Sorry to be the one to tell ya.”
Janurana bit her lip. “Mother tried to involve me in her affairs. Perhaps she said so once or twice. I didn’t always listen… Even when I grew older. All I knew was before they attacked us mother stockpiled garlic.”
“Sure you would’ve made a great heir.” Dhanur continued to stare at the mountain.
“Thank you, Dhanur.”
Dhanur nodded. She wasn’t sure if Janurana saw, but she did it anyway. Occasionally, she stole a glance at the pocket forests and scattered shrubs along the road. They were growing thicker as they descended the plateau. Since Dhanur was right next to them she could see just how much more decrepit they were than the thinner vegetation down south. During the war, Dhanur had enjoyed the lusher foliage of the Borderlands. But it had become only wounded trees, blackened rocks, and a few tiny and large skeletons bleaching in the sun, the only things not marked with the black of the Scorching. The land was recovering, but slowly, much slower than the south.
They continued their trek in silence again, the trail snaking between two hills and up another before descending into another small forest and out to a ruined town.
It straddled the forest with the verge between them being scoured with stumps from the town having harvested the trees, like the Capital. Right at the edge was a moat surrounding the town, one that would have held the palisade wall of full jungle tree trunks. The few mudbrick or packed earth buildings were barely standing with the wooden ones completely wasted away. Even among the blasted landscape of the northern Borderlands, the town was given special attention. Referring to it as a charred black husk would have given too much credit to its survival.
Dhanur plopped down on a stump and finished the water in her skin.
“My. I believe I’ve seen a southern city caught in the blaze.” Janurana’s “but this” statement was left unsaid. She spun her parasol and went to Dhanur’s side.
“Think I looted my boots here, during the war,” she scoffed, tried to drink again, but scowled as her skin was empty.
“Oh…” Janurana looked at the boots she was given, wondering if they were the ones Dhanur meant.
“Least I gave their warriors a chance to beat me, fight me like equals.” She spat southwards.
After another fruitless attempt to drink, Dhanur's stomach protested. Surprised, she glanced at her bandage as it wasn’t throbbing. It was fairly red, but had stemmed the bleeding. Dhanur hadn’t felt either of them the entire day, unlike her headache, and had kept down multiple pieces of roti. She checked the sun dipping below the mountains, and sighed.
“Alright, let’s stay.” She tugged Dekha, turning to the forest to gather firewood. “Stay here for the night.”
“In the woods?”
“No. The town.” Dhanur nodded back to the charred remains.
“Are you positive?”
“I’m not saying out past sundown again. I’ll just feel better with some walls around me, broken or not. I’ll get the fire going. You find some… food. Not much, jus’ uh—” Dhanur swallowed as her mouth began to overly salivate. “I don’t…” She snatched hold of Dekha’s horn and gasped, then dry heaved.
Janurana leapt back, covering her mouth, waiting for Dhanur to throw up. “Are you okay? Did you have some more roti?”
“Yeah.” Dekha’s horn gently flaked under his master’s glove, but he stayed rigid. “While you slept. Should’ve given you one.”
“Don’t we still have any?” Janurana asked but didn’t dare step closer to search for herself.
Dhanur gave a desperate wave for her to leave. She slunk to the ground, bracing herself against her knees and then a stump as Janurana made a wide circle around her companion to the forest.
“I-I’ll try to find food!” Janurana fled.
Out of habit, Dhanur went for her drink, but it, again, was empty and she heaved instead of sighing. With herculean effort, she forced herself up and seized Dekha’s horn again for stability. She noticed it was sturdier than normal. As she rummaged through the bags for more roti, she controlled her breathing to ignore her throbbing wound. The tiniest nibble her stomach would allow fell inside her with a thunk. It was something, enough to calm the acrid storm churning closer to her throat and clear the fog for her to focus.
“Come on… You had this… Get used to—” Dhanur wheezed.
With Dekha’s rope in hand, she struggled to the forest edge to gather whatever twigs and brambles she could stuff into his bags as she had done many times before. Dhanur scraped the ground for dry leaves and wilting grass and plucked larger branches the trees seemed willing to part with.
The burned buildings behind her weren’t nearly as tall as the walls of the Capital, but they still felt as looming. The brief glimpses of Hegwous and Gehsek she could remember through a haze of anger and repressed memories appeared behind each dilapidated wall. Hegwous’ glowering figure slowly faced her as she rounded one. When she blinked and growled at seeing things, she saw Gehsek leaping at her with an arrow in his cheek and crashing against a wall of foreign magic erected by a blood soaked Aarushi, magic from a land whose name Dhanur never learned. Dhanur forced herself to a new thought and berated herself for her lack of food, her lack of proper sleep, not preparing for a cumulative hangover, and most of all, for being dull enough to let a random vetala get a lucky hit in. Her arm throbbed again, reminding her of her failure. But night was coming and she had to make a fire.
‘Gotta keep the little creatures at bay, otherwise Dekha’d just alarm all night,’ she thought and Dekha snorted lightly as if to push a fly from his nose.
Her whole body twinged. Dhanur’s mind drifted to the ethereal calm one experiences during battle. She realized it wasn’t just a lack of sleep, or becoming soft. Something was wrong.
‘Fire. Can’t deal with anything until the fire’s up,’ she thought.
She almost ran to the town, knowing that wherever she stopped would be where she slept. Her mind’s calm let her see each building as a potential shelter, rather than a black husk in which some poor northerner wasn’t even given the chance to fight or surrender. She passed the houses without a big enough door for Dekha. She had traveled down a twisting main road for long enough to realize she had made a mistake.
‘Bulls don’t get stored this far into town,’ Dhanur thought and turned around.
Even more quickly she got back to what would have been the wall and followed the empty indentations to a larger mudbrick building with a larger open entrance. Dhanur paused to catch her breath before rushing in.
Practically collapsing, Dhanur desperately scraped away at the floor with the strongest branch she held, haphazardly piled her kindling into the pit, pitched the branches over it, and fumbled with her flint. The flash of fire singed her gloves as the tinder caught alight with no fanning. She happily focused the anger of her idiotic mistake to distract from the barely subsiding discomfort.
***
In the thick of the trees, what little remained of the once lush undergrowth, Janurana fared little better. At first she was more than happy to escape watching Dhanur be sick. She rolled her eyes at her escort’s overindulgent drinking, but her mind soon drifted to their previous conversation.
‘Dhanur fought the gwomoni. She hates them but seems okay with me, if she even noticed I am one by now. She doesn’t seem like one to keep up an act. Or smart enough. No wonder she’s friend with that brain dead Mah—”
She shook her head, chastising herself.
“They’ve conquered the south,” Janurana thought out loud then changed the subject. “But they didn’t seem to care enough to scrub me from the records until I arrived. They forgot about me. It was such a long time ago. Stupid. Stupid. They probably thought I was dead, now they know I’m alive.”
Regardless of her efforts, the thoughts continued to trickle in as she processed what she heard Dhanur say. Even if, in the end, she escaped or banished her mother, there really was nowhere to return to. It was a thought she never sought confirmation on.
Janurana was truly homeless, no family, no wealth left, no distant cousin to take her in, even if she escaped her mother. She was stuck forever sleeping in the dirt. Alone.
‘No,’ she thought. ‘Right now. Right now we’re stopping to get food for my escort. Whom mother will probably kill, like the others. We’re stopping again, earlier at night… And what does mother even matter now?’
Janurana kicked some dust off her new boots. They were feeling much better since she was getting used to them.
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‘Even if mother was banished, I’ll be no better off, still in the dirt,’ Janurana thought.
“They’ll have to die,” she said aloud.
Janurana had no idea how to begin going about that. But she knew it was the only viable option, killing the ones in the Capitol to start. If they had forgotten she existed or thought she died, then the other governors or city rulers wouldn’t know about her either.
‘Until they send out messengers and form search parties. Unless they remember mother,’ Janurana thought.
But she shut that thought away before she got lost in logical circles. The ones in the Capital had learned she was alive, so they would have to die.
“They have a whole burned Outside to secure. And they just fought a war. Remember. You saw the patrols go out. They’re busy. If they wanted to kill you they would have killed you at the Capital,” Janurana said, tapping her head, then sneered. “At least if mother is finally put to rest I could rest in peace in the dirt.”
The image of her family’s manor popped into her mind, but rather than its former glory commanding the hill over the small village of hangers on, a garden at the front entrance, mudbrick painted with the white bull of House Malihabar, it was as ruined as the town at which she and Dhanur had stopped.
‘I suppose a ruin is better than a cave. If it still stands somewhere, wherever it is.’ Janurana had forgotten the family home’s location and as the years dragged on with the landscape and villages changing, she had given up hope of finding it again. She knew it would have been burned to the ground or taken as a seat of power. Taking the last thought, she had tried to remember what was around the family home, but all that brought up was its failed defense. But if the gwomoni and her mother were vanquished, Janurana pondered reclaiming the memory.
‘Perhaps father’s house in the western swamps, wherever those are now,’ she thought. Janurana had forgotten that as well, and was sure she would have found her father’s manor when she trudged through the swamps. For all the tarnish her sari endured, gharials she put in their place, mud she rolled in to keep the bugs away, she never found her father or a remnant of his line. ‘No one from father’s house is going to swoop in and save you after all this time. It’s fallen too. Of course. If I escape Mother, I’ll have something worse to deal with.’
Janurana then said aloud, “I should have known. If mother of all people was cut down then I should have seen that would be the end of it. She was the last pillar they needed to topple. Don’t be stupid, Janurana. She was the only pillar. Of course the other governors would either support them against mother or accept their rule.”
The times her mother would shut down a governor played in Janurana’s head. She was young and didn’t always listen, but it wasn’t hard to know when someone was mad. Janurana couldn’t remember about what, but she did vividly remember the night an assassin almost killed her mother, and how a bit of blood got in her eye when she ran inside, past the guards hauling his body away, over his own blade Janelsa had torn from his hand, and slammed into her mother’s embrace.
“No governor is going to take you in and pretend you’re some distant relation. They all hated her anyways…” Janurana rubbed her parasol. “You already knew this. Don’t be stupid, you would have tried that with one of them by now.”
A massive squirrel burst from a nearby tree, skittering to a halt upon seeing Janurana. They locked eyes, and her stomach spoke first. Her energy was drained by the river crossing, so the recent feedings were rendered pointless.
Before it could flee, Janurana closed her parasol in a flash and slammed it into the creature’s head, knocking it unconscious.
“Sorry, cute one.” Janurana then twisted the squirrel’s neck to ensure the rodent passed peacefully, if it hadn’t already, and to make sure she saw no blood.
***
A scream reverberated through the night. It shattered the silence that still followed the pair. Both Dhanur and Janurana leapt to their feet, Dhanur drawing her knife and Janurana jumping back. But nothing appeared in the doorway of their shelter, nor the windows. Dekha wasn’t alarming and Dhanur put away her knife.
“Guess not everyone is used to the Outside yet, huh?” Dhanur plopped back down and checked the fire to keep its barrier strong.
Janurana didn’t reply. She was lost in hearing the bloody crunches and squelching of a man being eaten. Her more powerful ears heard it as faintly as Dhanur heard the scream. She couldn’t tell if it was a southern scout or a northerner who wasn’t used to the Borderlands being more dangerous after the Scorching. But in the end it didn’t matter to the creatures enjoying their feast.
“Nothing’s here. Dekha will let us know. Sit down. It’s okay.” Dhanur pointed to where Janurana was sitting.
“I… Suppose.” Janurana struggled to look away from the door, sitting before she could force herself to do so.
“He’s the only reason I let you walk a bit more before sundown.”
“Did you have some roti before this?” Janurana watched the squirrel’s meat sear and bubble in the fire, not as attracted to it as human flesh.
Dhanur nodded as she stared into the blaze and Janurana looked toward the sky through the open roof. She sighed, trying to take her mind off the food and how the distant feast had already concluded. She didn’t look out the door into the intangible night again. The threshold was so ruined that both her and Dekha didn’t need permission to enter, being more a pile of mudbricks than anything else. Janurana then caught that Dhanur’s breathing was ever so slightly labored. She thought it might have just been from gathering firewood with only one arm at full strength.
The interior of their shelter looked somehow blacker with the fire burning within it. Shadows danced behind the barely noticeable stubs of wood defiantly jutting from the ground. Multiple windows on every wall gave a panoramic view of the other buildings and letting in moths who danced around the fire and Dekha’s reflective eyes. The odd scent from the path had faded, so Janurana could enjoy the homely smell of a traveler’s fire as she watched the sky and bugs.
When the barely discernible folds of dark clouds above or the moths grew boring, Janurana scooted forward and snatched one of the seared chunks of meat on a stick.
Dhanur grunted, her eyes coming back to focus from her daze and reached for one herself. After an absentminded bite, she gagged.
“Ugh. Wait, give it back. They’re not done.” She held out her hand but was batted away.
“No, no. It’s too dry for my taste otherwise.” Janurana smiled nervously.
Dhanur looked her companion up and down, mildly shocked at Janurana’s powerful slap then rolled her eyes at the petulance. She put her meat back on the fire, wincing as her head throbbed again. Focused on enduring her pain she ignored Janurana, who took the opportunity to feed.
She was much more restrained than before. When feeding on Ilanlan and his companions, she had nearly passed out from pleasure with the tiniest hints of sugar flavor lacing their blood. But the bits of animal blood still untainted by the fire were much less pleasing. It was tasteless, empty energy that simply made her full. She sighed, feeling the vapid blood flow into her fangs.
When Dhanur looked up, Janurana let her piece fall, complaining like she dropped it, bending over to slowly collect it so its transformation from meat to a blackened crisp went unnoticed. Once she finished, Janurana tossed the chip into the fire, then cocked her head at it. She didn’t need permission to enter the new campfire either and never quite understood why that was the case. Whenever she camped with anyone, they only needed to invite her once and then every fire they made would be passable.
‘Perhaps fire remembers who had made it last,’ she thought. ‘But Dhanur did say she had to pull Dekha through each time.’ Janurana couldn’t think of a good answer and shrugged.
Despite the lackluster feed, Janurana sighed contentedly, looking a little red from her meal and the light of the fire. It didn’t burn and instead made her flesh tingle if she sat by it all night. By the time she finished eating, Dhanur had taken a crisp, wet bite of her dinner and let out a deeply satisfied moan. She let her head hang back with the meat bringing her back to life and sanity. Her pointed but full lips were accentuated from the bit of glistening fat on her piece coating them, something Janurana couldn’t help but notice.
“Thank you. So much. That was… That helped,” Dhanur said.
Janurana pulled her legs in, laid her cheek on her knees, and smiled. “I hope so.” She looked over at Dekha, motionless among the moths until they got too bold and he shook his head. “You’ve helped me so much so far. It truly is the very least I can do.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. It’s what I should do. Wonder if there wasn’t the Scorching if one or two of the warriors from here woulda become spirits.” Dhanur chuckled, then looked at Dekha. “Wonder if they’d remember me.”
“I wonder as well. I have not seen a spirit in quite a time.”
“Yeah, think I saw,” Dhanur stretched her arms, ignoring the pain, “maybe two down past the Capital ever? Most were up here near the Capital. Nowhere near as many as home though.”
“The temple, correct?”
“Yeah. Abbaji used to take me up to Vatram sometimes. There were a bunch’a them there. Like the rest of Uttara. In the Borderlands too.”
Dhanur took another bite and they fell silent again. It was a much more comfortable silence for Dhanur than their day’s travel. Still, she couldn’t keep up a smile seeing the ground under their fire and under them being almost identical. She shook her head.
The silence hit Janurana much worse.
It was night and she wasn’t moving. Though Dekha was there and he did drive her mother back, it was only moments before she would have finished the job. He didn’t even respond until after Dhanur was flung back. She couldn’t place all her trust in him, and the tiniest doubt made her back tense. Especially since every wall had a window or was low enough they could see over it.
But while she could see adequately in the dark, she couldn’t hear a thing. It was silent except for the crackling of their fire. As it died down, but not enough for a new log, Dhanur gazed hard into the bottom coals and Janurana sighed.
“Shouldn’t we have him Outside?” Janurana shuffled in place.
“And leave him out there?” Dhanur’s face wrinkled in offense. Janurana recoiled in nearly as much. “He’ll do better in here. Can’t watch all the walls if he’s outside. Here he can see out all the windows.” She finished her meat and plucked another piece, handing it to Janurana. “Here.”
“Oh, no no. It’s quite alright. You appear to be in much more need than I.”
“Alright then.” Dhanur sighed. “I—”
“My—” Janurana started.
“Oh, go ahead.”
“No, please. My apologies.”
“Kay.” Dhanur took off her gloves and pushed her hood back, raking her hand through her red hair as she did. “Sorry, if I’ve been kinda, snappin’ at you and all. Figure if we’re out here together we should be open and honest and all that with each other. Dunno why I’ve been kind of whatever. Just, sorry if you’re annoyed.”
“Well, thank you. I’m sure this has been a stressful ordeal. But, thank you for apologizing. I’ve obviously been a bit stressed as well. I feel I am the one who’s been the most obstinate.” She paused. “Stubborn and Annoying.”
“Guess this has been pretty harsh for you, finding out about the gwomoni and getting kicked right out of the city. Especially after what they did and all. Again, sorry to be the one to tell you all that.” Dhanur looked out the door.
Janurana did the same, but like a frightened peacock. However, Dhanur was only looking, not seeing anything. She sighed. “I’m a little worried about… my mother.” Janurana scoffed, biting her lip and watching the stumps she could make out.
“Really? Why’s that?” Dhanur cracked a smile at her joke, but she was cowed at Janurana’s cocked brow.
Janurana rolled her eyes. “To be honest, I’m less than pleased about stopping again for the night, but we did get away last time.”
‘Even if Dekha was almost too late,’ she finished the sentence in her head, staring at the fire.
“So, I’m trying to be calm about it,” Janurana continued.
There was a light shuffling and Janurana looked up to see Dhanur wiggling toward her and placed an awkward hand on her companion’s shoulder. She had taken off her wrist guard as well, exposing her skin. Janurana was surprised the warrior felt safe enough to take off any of her armor at night.
They caught eyes and froze in place until Janurana giggled. Dhanur let her arm drop, then rubbed her neck with a smile.
“Anyway,” Dhanur said. “You’re fine. Dekha’s here, nothing gets past him. Not even squirrels. Heh. And I’m pretty quick too, so don’t worry. He’ll let us know.” Dhanur looked at him, slowly nodding.
“That’s true. Thank you. But you were just sick… And your arm. Are you sure you’re well?”
“Yeah. Just was dumb, not enough sleep, food, being in the Outside again.”
Janurana cocked her head and thought back. Dekha was not only there, but he’d had a physical effect on her mother's spirit. He did more than stop her in her tracks, instead forcing her back and away. However, he had alarmed before they had even noticed the vetalas. Dhanur had said she hadn’t seen his light do that before. She wondered if he had simply never seen a spirit and didn’t know what to do at first. “Still, I can’t make you do all the work, can I?”
Janurana hopped up and brushed herself off. The ax needed tending to. Pulling it from Dekha’s burden bags she examined the jagged edge of the blade, sticking out her tongue a little in exaggerated concentration. Dhanur looked over Dekha’s nonreaction to Janurana.
“You’re fine,” she said and went back to watching the fire.
Janurana noticed the distant tone in Dhanur’s voice, as if she was speaking to herself. Regardless, she let it go and sat on what was once a packed earth table rising from the ground, crossing her legs daintily. It juxtaposed the massive ax she was set to sharpen, and even further contrasted against the rage with which she’d fought their foes last night.
Dhanur blushed at the sight.
Janurana began humming quietly to herself as she looked around for a rock to sharpen the ax with.
The tune was familiar to Dhanur, as though she’d heard it before on the Capital streets but Janurana had stylized it somehow. It was nice, and Dhanur soon felt her eyes closing. She thanked her luck that her companion had started humming, giving her something soothing to focus on since her body lodged another three fronts of complaints; stomach, head, and arm. But before she could drift off to sleep, quiet broken thoughts interrupted the fragile peace, trying to meet the advancing forces of her complaints and hold the three attackers off until the reinforcements of sleep could arrive.
‘Stay in the now.’
‘Simple mission.’
‘Another chance at the gwomoni.’
‘Aarushi will be fine until you can rescue her.’
‘Noble or not, Janurana’s their enemy.’
‘It doesn’t matter what Janurana is.’
They came and went more like feelings than words as she drifted past twilight into sleep.