Ram had only to return from the theater hand-in-hand with a live but battered Darun to be hailed as a greater hero than Temmizan. Tirnun fell on her sister and soaked her with tears the moment she saw her, only to repeat the performance on Ram when she understood what had happened, babbling her endless gratitude.
Mother appeared torn between pride at what he had done and annoyance at who he’d done it for, all wrapped up in fear for what might have been. But she limited herself to a single dignified embrace, as if hoping to show their hostess how these things ought to be done. Ram got the feeling that she didn’t totally disapprove of Tirnun—if nothing else, the lady appreciated her children, and her needlework—but she was tainted by association, and by lack of decorum. Ram had spent almost fifteen full blooms with Mother, and he wasn’t completely sure she really approved of him.
When Zasha finally got home and understood what had happened, he could only say, in ominous tones, that Ram had been reckless. Ram calmly agreed. He was sure he’d just added another five gold to his “debt,” but he was equally sure that Zasha valued peace in his household at fifty, minimum. Between Zasha’s covert glares, his wife’s exuberant affection, three young children, and the smoldering feud between Mother and Darun, Ram was happy to retreat to his room after dinner, claiming exhaustion.
The Temple’s fire was still bright enough to warm him, if he lay flat on the bed with the blinds drawn back. For a man who’d nearly gotten himself killed twice in one day, Ram was remarkably happy. Even if he still didn’t know what was going on, he was beginning to see certain upsides to being indwelt, and he didn’t think Zasha would be able to dispose of his burden now without facing at least a tantrum from his wife. He didn’t think that made him totally safe, or anything like it, but—
Darun pushed her way through the door-curtain, unannounced and uninvited, with a pair of glasses in her hands. “Hey, Ram. What’s up?”
Ram was fully dressed, and decided he’d be a fool to make an issue of it. Darun would only enjoy that. He sat up. “Not much. How’s your face?” The knife-gash had been slathered with ointments, then covered with an enormous bandage; a stranger seeing it might assume she’d been mauled by a dog. Certainly the rest of her looked it. She was all bruises, and limped as she walked.
“Pretty numb, honestly. Not so much the rest of it, but they’ve got plenty of booze in this pyre, so we can fix that too. Here.”
He hesitated before accepting the second glass, but a drink sounded good. He took a sip, and frowned. More of the local wine, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
“More of a beer man, are you?” She sat down next to him on the end of the bed. “I guess Karagi doesn’t grow a lot of grapes, come to think of it. Thanks for the help, by the way.”
She said it so casually that it took him a moment to understand she was thanking him for saving her life. Or whatever she thought they’d been going for. Mugging? Rape? The way she acted, she might be used to being attacked in public. Last he’d heard, nobody was bothering to interrogate the attackers; all four were bonded, and would get a cursory whipping as penalty for making trouble regardless of their reason for it. It wasn’t enough for attacking someone with serious countenance, but anything worse would deprive the pyre of their labor, and nobody cared quite enough to pay compensation.
“No problem,” he replied, taking another sip. It was better than greenbeer, at least. “Thanks for … snapping me out of it at the end. I don’t know what happened there.”
“Eh. We have to do it with Bal, from time to time. I’ve had practice.”
“What do you mean, you have to do it with Bal? What’s up with him, anyway? He was loosening up and acting more normal for a while there. But today, in the mines, he … “ Ram trailed off, abruptly recalling that he’d never mentioned their mine trouble to her, with everything that had happened since. He wasn’t sure if Father had even told Mother, just yet.
Darun lifted an eyebrow. “Today, in the mines, he … what?”
“A bunch of crazy miners went for me. They’d heard about the warrant, and decided I was, I don’t know, some kind of wormhead or something. Said I was working for the bazuu.”
“Oh. Yeah, they do that. It’s really not good for your head to spend all your time underground, you know? Especially living this close to the spooks. They start believing all kinds of demented crap, and there’s no talking them out of it. Anyway, what’d Bal do?”
Ram explained how Bal had heard them coming long in advance, the fight, and Zasha’s ultimatum. He left out the part about him wanting her dead; he had no idea how she’d react, but it could be disastrous, and they didn’t need any more ruckus. She could hear about that on the boat tomorrow.
“Huh.” She looked thoughtful, then gulped back the rest of her drink, set her cup on the floor, and laid herself gently down across the bed. “Bal hasn’t been with us that long, only about a bloom and a half. We got him off some rich guy in Dul Jatu who liked to watch people fight. He kept a whole barracks full of bonded guys, trained them with swords, and had them cut each other to shreds at his dinner parties.”
“So how did Bal wind up with the Damadzus?”
“His owner made us a deal, then ran out of cash to pay with, so we took his best man instead. Of course, Bal was worth way more than the guy owed us, but Ushna pressed him hard. He was a hell of a bargainer, Ushna. Even better than I was, some of the time.”
“I noticed. But why does Bal space out like that?”
“It’s what happens when he kills something, as far as we can tell.”
“Killing upsets him?” That didn’t sound like Bal at al.
“Nah. It’s more like, I don’t know, it puts him in a different headspace. Imbri thought his owner did something to his head to make him fight better.”
“Something magical, you mean.” She’d said that was Imbri’s specialty.
“Probably. I didn’t ask. The important thing is, he seems to get weirder and weirder, the more he fights. Less human. If he goes without it for a bit, he relaxes some. He can get pretty bad if you use him too much, though.”
Use him. “How bad?”
“He starts getting unpredictable and … not exactly mean, I guess, more twitchy. He’ll whip those knives out if somebody looks at him wrong. We had to leave a couple of pyres in a hurry, before we figured it out.”
Not too unlike what had happened to Ram today. But there was no way Bal was indwelt. At least, not with a haranu. Was there something else in there? At any rate, he had a more immediate concern. “So, for the past month, my family and I have been traveling with somebody who’s gone crazy and attacked people before. Were you ever planning on telling me?”
“He hadn’t killed anything for more than a month before the bloom, as far as I know, so he was totally safe.” Ram was not reassured. “Oh, come on!” she laughed, giving him a playful shove. “You need to relax a bit. You’re what, sixteen? Stop acting like an old man all the time.”
This, he realized with sudden weariness, was what he had to look forward to on his trip. Darun wasn’t vicious like Ushna, and he didn’t think she’d betray him. But she’d never take anything seriously, and she’d likely cause trouble or leave him if she got bored, or ran into any really serious obstacle. “Why are you here, Darun?”
“What, you mean the room, or the pyre?”
“Either one. You’ve been helping me for a month now. What are you after? What are you hoping to get out of all this? And don’t foist me off with the usual bullshit. I’m tired, and after today you owe me that much.”
“Oh, I owe you? Did I sign a contract?”
“Darun.”
She smiled; it would have been charming if her face weren’t a mess. “I don’t know. Does it matter? Does everything have to have a reason?”
“It does if I’m going to count on you to help me.”
“Then don’t count on me. Take your chances, same as everybody else. I’m not for sale.”
“I know. You’re not playing that game anymore.”
Her smile only faltered for a moment. “Been listening at doors, have we?”
“Yes. And you probably picked half the pockets in that theater today, so don’t start.”
She snorted. “In a packed room, with nowhere to run if I got caught? What kind of idiot do you think I am?”
“Don’t change the subject. What are you after? You could have lived like this, but instead you spent a couple of blooms wandering around the desert with my lying cousin, a crazy mute, an old man and a girl you seem to hate. That doesn’t sound very smart to me.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The smile was gone for good, now. “If you were listening, you know why I left.”
“Maybe I do.” He didn’t really, but something in her face warned him not to push it. “But I don’t think you couldn’t have set yourself up with a comfortable life somewhere else. You like nice dresses, good food, and all that. The way you look, you could have got yourself any husband—“
“I don’t want a husband.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To live.” She sat up again. “The way I want to, when I want to, where I want to, as long as I want to. That’s all I’m asking for, and that’s what I’m going to get.”
“Okay.” That pretty much left ‘blackband’ as her only choice. Other women without husbands were handmaidens, widows, bonded, or whores.
“You should try it,” she said, leaning in to rest her head on his shoulder. “I hate to break it to you, Ram, but what you’re doing isn’t exactly safe. Maybe you should see if you can live a little before you get yourself killed. You’d never even had wine before last night, had you? What else were you missing out on, in that crappy little hearth?” She laid a hand on his thigh.
It didn’t make him nearly as nervous or excited as it would have before he knew her. “Darun. You’re all beat up, and you don’t like me.”
“Not really, no. You’re kind of boring, and your mom seems to have a title on your balls. But I wasn’t offering. Just saying, hey, are you planning to spend your whole life running flat-out?”
“I run because people are chasing me. What are you running from?”
“Back to the same old subject, eh? If we’re talking in circles now, I’m going to bed.” She got up with a shake of her head. “You don’t know how lucky you are, Ram, that you don’t have a home left to go back to.” She kissed him on the cheek, and sashayed out the door. It was amazing how she could flounce about, in the shape she was in.
“Then why’d you bring us here?” he said, too quietly for her to hear. She’d left her empty glass on the floor. It was a very Darun thing to do, and there was no hope of ever teaching her any better. He finished off his wine, set his cup next to hers, and lay back down on the bed to sleep.
Jezrimin woke him early the next morning, so they could shove down breakfast before Zasha escorted them down to the docks. The pyre’s reservoir spilled into a subterranean pool in the base of the rocky rampart they’d passed through two days ago; there it was met by twin streams from the mines on either side before pouring out to start the Puruar. The facility wasn’t especially large—this pyre had nothing to sell but metal, and few visitors. It was still as impressive as any other feat of Misishin engineering, and noisy with the rush of water and the banging of men heaping packed ingots onto their barge.
“Not much left to tell you, boy,” Father shouted from feet away as they stood along the quay, “that I ain’t said already. Watch your back, keep your eyes sharp, and don’t be a fool, you hear? You do what you’ve got to. If that means helping the yellow god, I ain’t in no place to complain. But afore you do anything else, you’d best find out what he’s asking. We clear?”
“Yes, Father.” And he surrendered to a cumbersome one-armed hug.
Mother was more subdued. Father had filled her in on their situation sometime yesterday, before Zasha could. It was a measure of Zasha’s spitefulness that she now stood unveiled, in public, for the barge-drivers to gawk at. Tirnun had been thrilled at having such a graceful, wise, and able-handed woman to help her around the house, but as her husband pointed out, only free women covered their faces, and the presence of a veiled servant would draw unacceptable attention.
Mother stood as stern and proud as ever. Ram would have expected nothing else. But her eyes were fixed on her baby’s face, or on the floor, to avoid meeting a man’s. Somehow the sight of it cut Ram deeper than the desolation of Urapu. He held her close for a long time, to be heard without shouting, and to give her face a momentary shield from the stares. “Mother, I’m so sorry it came to this.”
“We have all been brought low, Rammash, but we still live. Have you forgotten what your father has told you so often? I am no man, but I will not let them have my pride. Will you?”
“No, Mother.”
“And do you have any notion of where you are going?”
“Yes, Mother. Dul Pilupura, to meet her friend Imbri. We might stop along the way; I have an idea how we can make some money for you. Or the start of an idea, anyway.”
“So long as it is honorably earned.”
“Of course, Mother. I’m not going to pick pockets, or anything.”
She pursed her lips. “I hope that you will not give your companions your complete trust. Or anything else?”
“Mother?”
“I mean that you have enough to concern yourself with as it is, Rammash, without becoming unduly involved in their affairs. Nor forming any permanent attachment to them.”
“No, Mother.” She really meant that she didn’t want someone like Darun bearing her grandchildren. He didn’t feel any need to explain how little danger there was of that.
There was no chance of getting away without one last word from Zasha, either. At least he kept it brief. “I am not a vengeful man, Ram,” he said. “If you feel some kind of loyalty to the hunzempu, it’s more than she deserves, but I don’t much care provided I see my losses made good. Twenty-five gold. Sooner, not later, or there will be consequences. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes, sir.” It was a hefty sum, but just the thought of getting back to the Dul Karagi area made him feel more hopeful. It was too cold, up in the mountains.
This load was being shipped off a day early, only three-quarters full of iron bars. He would have liked to have more space, but there was room enough for three bedrolls next to one gunwale. The three boatmen would be sleeping on the far side, and by the looks on their faces didn’t think it nearly far enough from Ram.
Bal was already waiting in the boat when he climbed aboard; Darun took longer just saying goodbye to her sister than Ram had to part with both his parents and Zasha. At last she broke away, with a damp shoulder and a scowl on her face. But she stood beside Ram at the back of the barge all the same, dutifully waving goodbye as they drifted out the gate and down the Puruar.
“Are you sure you’re not going to miss her a little bit?”
He’d been trying to needle her, but she seemed to give the question serious thought. “Almost,” she decided at last. “It’s weird. I mean, she’s still a phony whore, and I’m glad I left, but … I don’t know. I’m kind of glad I came too, you know?”
“Not really. It didn’t look like you were having much fun with her.”
“Hell no. We haven’t had fun together since I was five, when it all fell apart.” The pyre’s gate was lost in the distance now, and they watched the sunlight glitter off the water. “Anyway, I didn’t exactly come back for her. I came back for the pyre.”
“You said it was a dump!”
“And it is. Every damn bit of it. This place did its best to eat us alive, Ram, for a whole kindling. You don’t even know what it was like. Digging through trash, dodging pimps, sucking off those delver shits for a snip of copper? And you thought Urapu was bad.” She spat in the river. “Poor broken-hearted big sis. Why can’t I be more grateful, when we have all those happy memories together?”
Slowly, gently, Ram put an arm around her shoulders, because it seemed the thing to do. She didn’t seem to notice.
“But now? All that doesn’t matter now. This place sent me running, once. Scared out of my wits, with nowhere to go, because I couldn’t take it anymore. Now I can say I came back. I walked in, right through the front fucking door, and what did I see? A stupid fat bitch chewing her cud like a cow, and a saggy-faced old man wasting his life on meetings. All crawling around like lice in the ass-crack of the earth.” She laughed. “What was I scared of? I’ve outgrown this place. Now I’m leaving. Not because it scares me, but because there’s nothing here. And I’m bored. So fuck it.”
She threw her head back, tossing her hair, and the smile on her face was as big as he’d ever seen it. Not entirely convincing, no, but certainly big. “So, if you don’t like the way she treats your mom, you just let me know, okay, Ram? I’ll tear the heart right out of her chest and stomp on it. Because, really, that chubby heifer owes me for her precious high-society lady life. She won’t ever admit it, but she owes me, Ram.”
“And we owe him,” he reminded her. It would probably be best not to tell her who’d paid those four men, after all.
“Pfft. Money. Why’s everybody so impressed with money? It’s metal. They dig it out of the ground. If Zasha doesn’t have enough, that’s his own damn fault for digging in the wrong spot. And with all that help? Pathetic.”
It was a lame joke, but her smile was catching. He turned to look down the Puruar, and sat down on the deck to enjoy the sun. After a moment, Darun joined him, turning her back on Dul Misishi. Only Bal remained where he was, staring dead-eyed into some hidden and terrible world only he could see.