The Sabha was a large restaurant, a lunch hall really. You ate what they gave you, there was no choice. Wasting food was met with harsh stares by the matron and servers alike. neither alcohol nor meat was on offer. You went there for a cheap, piping hot, no-frills meal. The food was good most of the time, but there had been the odd occasion when Santhi felt ready to face all the disapproval.

Santhi followed Harivel past the understated doorway. Payment was upfront, the matron sat cross-legged at a counter, judging all who entered and left. She took Santhi's money and gave her a small blue stone, the sign that she had paid. The stone was whisked out of her hands almost immediately by a server boy, who ushered them to a group of waving hands.

"We gave the boy a little extra to save a space for you two," One of them said. Maanu was a thin man with a strict business-like mustache. He sat next to Kavi, a large woman with bangles up to her elbows. They were both Harivel's cousins and worked with him at a sweet shop in town. "I see you found her!" Kavi said. She turned to Santhi, eyes sparkling, and smile filled with mischief. "He was worried you had gone and got yourself caught!" She wagged her finger at Santhi and giggled.

"What? I never said anything like that!" Harivel said.

"You didn't need to!" Kavi said. "You had something on your mind in the morning, your batch of sweets was a mess! You also left without speaking to anyone. What else could it be?"

Maanu nodded in agreement. He had a lazy smile and droopy eyes that made him seem a little aloof. "Anyway, now that you are here, we can finally get some food. Kavi?"

Kavi tapped the table with her finger. As if he had been waiting for Kavi's signal, a man arrived and placed four damp banana leaves in front of them.

What followed was a barrage of food. Another man came and smacked down dollops of rice onto their banana leaves. More men arrived, carrying vessels with all sorts of curries and soups, assaulted their leaves. A third man carried a copper vessel and a ceramic urn, like sacred objects. The copper one held ghee and the ceramic one held a mango pickle. They served with a certain controlled violence as if serving customers was somehow beneath them. In the end, a man came bearing a yellow mush, the halwa. Santhi was not certain she'd be able to stomach anymore but saying no to dessert in front of people who worked in a sweet shop was surely a crime. She gobbled it down and then sat back, rubbing the sweat on her forehead with the pallu of her sari. "That," she said. "Was like running."

"Running, except better!" Maanu said. He paused for a moment, finger in the air and back upright. Then, all four of them took a collective breath. Maanu relaxed and turned drowsy eyes towards Santhi. "What is it that you have been up to that has Hari here so worried?"

All three of her companions looked at her. Their eyelids were heavy, yet they listened eagerly. "Nothing special," Santhi said.

"She plans to go into the cave," Harivel said in his monotonous drawl. Santhi's jaw dropped. It was just like the lumbering oaf to blurt something out. The matter-of-fact delivery of the words only served as the salt that made it burn even more. She stared at Harivel as he pulled at his beard.

Maanu and Kavi sat with their mouths open. "The cave!" they said together. The restaurant went quiet. Servers stopped in their tracks. The matron stood up and stared, thick fists on her hips. "We should probably discuss this somewhere else," Maanu said, dropping to a breathy whisper. "The shop," Kavi said. "It'll be empty till Pratheshji is back, and he won't be back till tomorrow."

"Two hours before the sun, as always," Maanu said shaking his head.

They made a quick exit from the restaurant, trying to avoid the matron’s scowl. Santhi followed the rest to the sweet shop. They took a path through smaller roads and back alleys. Santhi had come to Anthula a year ago, searching for a place where she could start afresh. Somewhere where people wouldn't avoid her when they saw her. She thought she had found that place, but these streets were still unfamiliar to her.

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Anthula was one of the larger market towns on the road from Pradhanpula in the east to Utara in the west. The streets were filled with a lot of merchants who plied their trade between the two cities. A lot of money flowed through this town. A lot of opportunity for a young thief if she was smart.

Santhi followed her friends past more buildings which turned from small houses to larger warehouses and then shops. The din of the crowd grew louder as they got closer to the market street.

The sweet shop was a single-storied building. It had a large front porch covered by a sloping roof. Every morning, Hari's employer sold sweets from this porch. Inside was the large kitchen and storage areas. Harivel and his cousins spent most of their day here making sweets. She pitied them somewhat, locked up from before sunrise till midday working for someone else. That is why she didn’t want a proper job, not that Harivel would understand. He liked the safety. He liked that as long as he showed up every morning, he would get paid. A skill should be used to earn a living after all. Harivel wouldn’t understand what people like her wanted.

Most people thought thieves were a result of circumstance. They thought it was people who struggled through poverty and lack of opportunity who looked to crime as a way to a better lot. That might have been true in most of Asir, but she was from Silanagar. Thieves there were an institution. The city wouldn't function without the services they rendered.

The shop stood on a busy street off the main market street. The crowd added to the feeling of suffocation that the heat brought with it. Maanu ushered them to the back and unlocked a small door to let them in. Inside it was much cooler. The shop smelled of sweets. Milk and sugar along with other things that she couldn’t recognize. It was a rich smell that threatened to overwhelm Santhi.

"So, the cave," Maanu said. They walked over to a back room and sat on some pillows. "Why, by the burning web, would you want to go into the cave?" Santhi didn't say anything. She didn't need to answer anyone. "She thinks there's gold inside," Hari said. She gave him a glare for answering for her but still refused to speak.

"Well, that is true," Kavi said. "There must be gold, right? Those walking corpses that they send in there are always carrying it."

"Do you know why we send people into the cave, Santhi?" Maanu asked. He thought of himself as some kind of amateur scholar. Someone had to pull him down a few rungs on that ladder of his. She decided to make sure to do it someday, but today she would not get pulled into a discussion about her decisions. "I don't know," Santhi admitted. “But I don’t think it matters.”

"It should!” Maanu said. “The fort up there on the hill, it's very old. Older than anything else in Anthula. Some people say it goes back to the days of the Sur. If not the very structure that's up there right now, then there was another fort on that very spot before that. When the Sur sacrificed their physical forms for humanity's sake, they didn't do it all at once. A Sur who lived in the fort died defending it from the Yaksh. As the Sur died, it gave up its physical form, killing the Yaksh in the process. That is what corrupted the web. The corruption stems from the cave at the base of the hill. We offer the cave people and gold to slow the effects of that corruption.” Maanu blinked as if he had lost himself. He did that often. She had sat through a few lectures on arcane histories.

"That’s a nice story," Santhi said. "But aren't you the one who says to always ask for evidence? So, what evidence do we have of the web's corruption? Or that any of that story is true?"

"Santhi!" Kavi said. "That story is what the temple teaches us! If they are not aware of the web, then who is?"

"She does have a point though. There is no real proof," Maanu admitted. "There are those people who say that the people in the fort made up the story and steal the gold. They share it with the Temple, of course, to keep the scam going."

"That's a very small amount for the fort to care about," Harivel said. “And a very long-running scam.”

"Right, as usual, Hari," Maanu said. "Well, what we do know is that nobody has come out of the cave. Nobody alive knows what the cave looks like from the inside. Do you want to risk it for some gold? Why not go for another one of these merchants?"

Santhi shook her head. "I'm not going to defend my decision. You can't convince me to change it. When I come out with pockets full of gold, you guys will be licking my boots."

“You don’t wear boots, Santhi.”

“And once I’m back, we can deal with the priests at the Temple.”

"I told you she wouldn't listen," Harivel said, shaking his head.