The Fire Seer (23 page)

His eyes slid away from hers. “The jackal did not kill Jaina. I am certain of this. You must find the person who did.”

“We need to inspect your house,” said Mandir. “Jaina may have been poisoned within these walls.”

Navati nodded and gestured for them to proceed.

Taya went first to the cellar, a cramped, below-ground space crowded with clay jars. She lifted the lid off one jar after another. They were empty. A stray grain or two lurked at the bottoms of some, telling her what they had held in better times: wheat, peas, barley. A wooden cask held a few inches of beer. Mandir smelled it and tasted a drop. He shook his head.

They climbed out of the cellar and searched the house itself. There were only two rooms, the common room where the family slept, and a washroom. In the washroom, they found a ewer of water. Again, Mandir smelled and tasted it. “Not poisoned, at least not that I can taste.”

Finally they went out into the courtyard. Like most Hrappan courtyards, it was fully enclosed by other houses and shared with three other families. In the center was a cook pit filled with ashes. Each family had its own personal garden, encircled by a low rock wall.

A spectacular banana plant grew in the garden belonging to Jaina’s family.

“Look,” said Taya, redirecting Mandir’s attention from the cookpit, where he was inspecting the ashes. “It’s not blighted.”

He nodded.

She walked up to the banana plant to examine it more closely. Its stem was thick and straight, its sail-like leaves wide and unblemished. Coolness drifted down from the plant’s canopy, a blessed relief from the hot sun. The plant carried no fruit at all, but when it was ready to produce, she had no doubt it would do so in spectacular fashion.

Across the courtyard, she spotted a second banana plant, also healthy. “That one’s not blighted, either.”

Mandir nodded. “You’re right. Well, I see no evidence of poison here, or anything else.”

“Yes, but the banana plants...” She couldn’t help but feel that this was important. The family they’d visited two days ago had said that all the farmers’ trees were blighted, except for a few on Zash’s plantation. But here were two flawless, healthy plants. How could the blight not have spread to them? They were close in proximity to the blighted ones she’d seen before, and blight was notoriously contagious.

“Their plants haven’t caught the blight yet,” said Mandir.

Taya frowned. Her farmer instincts told her that was unlikely. “I want to take another look at that plant we saw night before last.”

Mandir grunted. “We’ve got more important things to do.”

“It won’t take long. We needn’t even speak to the family; I can look at the plant from outside their courtyard.”

Taya expected Jaina’s family to be relieved when they said they were leaving, but instead she found herself surrounded by adults and children thanking her and touching fingers. Mandir was similarly mobbed. He was gracious, but she could see that the attention of these strangers made him ill at ease. Just inside the door, the mother ran up to them, carrying a necklace of glass beads. “I am sorry we have nothing more to offer,” she said, pressing the necklace into Taya’s hands. “We are grateful for your help.”

The family left them alone once they were outdoors. Puzzled, Taya examined the necklace. It seemed perfectly ordinary and safe. She collected Pepper from where she was ground tied, and mounted. This family was so friendly and the others so resentful. Why the difference? Was it because their daughter had been killed and they hoped Taya and Mandir would bring her justice? Or was there some other reason?

“Let’s go back to the house and talk this over,” said Mandir.

Taya nodded; maybe Mandir had noticed something she hadn’t. “On the way back, I want to look at that other tree.”

“You’ve seen it before,” said Mandir.

Taya ignored him and neck-reined her mare down to the street where the other family lived, the one which had been so rude to her and Mandir when they’d visited. From her vantage point on Pepper’s back, she could just see over the courtyard wall. She fixed her eyes on the banana plant, whose canopy reached well above the wall. The plant was lush and healthy.

She twisted around, excited. “It’s not blighted anymore.”

Mandir squinted at the tree. “It must be, if it was before. Blight doesn’t heal on its own, does it? Maybe you can’t tell from this distance.”

“No, I know a blighted tree when I see one. That plant is no longer blighted, and that means somebody has healed it.” A terrible thought occurred to her. Her heart pounded. “What if it was the jackal who healed it?”

He kicked his horse over to her side, leaned over, and spoke softly in her ear. “Let’s not speak of Coalition business here. People are about, and they are listening.”

“But this changes everything! Do you see?”

“We’ll discuss it at the guesthouse.”

She nodded, but she could hardly contain her excitement, let alone her fear, at this new discovery. The jackal had healed the plants, and that couldn’t be done without a thorough understanding of the mother tongue. She and Mandir were not dealing with an untrained magic user at all. They were dealing with someone far more dangerous, a mage who’d had Coalition training.

“Come on,” she said to Mandir, and clucked to her horse.

Chapter 30: Hrappa

To Taya’s annoyance, Mandir would not go straight home but insisted upon their stopping at the baths first. In the excitement of the morning’s happenings, she had forgotten about bathing. Though she still smelled of smoke and incense from the party, it didn’t bother her as much as it had earlier this morning. This new development in the case, however unfortunate for the young woman and her family, had provided Taya with a distraction from the awkwardness of last night. But now was the best time to bathe, while the pools were fresh and available. When the farmers came in from the fields, there would be hardly room in the baths to move.

When they returned to the guesthouse, clean and sweet-smelling, Taya invited Mandir inside.

“Those banana trees,” she began, just as the door closed. “They were healed by someone with Coalition training.”

“You’re assuming they were,” said Mandir. “But maybe they were never blighted in the first place.”

“No, I didn’t make a mistake. Someone healed the blight, and that’s not something a jackal can do. It requires knowledge of the mother tongue. Our jackal is far more powerful than we thought.”

Mandir said nothing.

“Do you not see? The jackal must have had Coalition training. Either that or knowledge of the mother tongue has leaked out of the Coalition. One way or another, this is a serious problem. We have to notify the elders. Let’s send them a message. I’ll dictate if you’ll write.” She headed for her shelves, where she kept her tablets and stylus—and then remembered that the tablets had been stolen.

“Taya.” Mandir seized her arm. “You don’t want to notify the Coalition elders.”

“We have to tell them.”

“We haven’t found the jackal yet. All the Coalition will know is that someone healed some blighted trees without authorization or payment—and whom do you suppose suspicion will fall upon?”

She blinked. “The jackal.”

“No,” he said. “You and me.”

“They won’t think that.”

“Won’t they?” said Mandir. “Who’s to say the Coalition won’t believe that one or both of us did it? They might go easy on you, but they’ll never go easy on me. I’ve had a Year of Penance already.”

“If we notify them right away, suspicion will be less likely to fall on us.”

Mandir raised an eyebrow. “How naive you are to think that.”

Her cheeks flushed. She hated when he called her naive; it reminded her of all the times she’d been ashamed of her farming family and her lack of education before Mohenjo Temple. She yanked her arm out of his grip. “No matter what, we have to write up that vision Isatis gave me. We can do that now and discuss the other thing later. And I’ll need to borrow one of your tablets.”

Mandir left through the courtyard door and returned with several tablets and a stylus. “You dictate, and I’ll write.”

Taya took a seat at the table. She’d deal with the problem of the mysteriously healed banana plants later, perhaps when Mandir had thought about it a little more and realized how important it was. She hadn’t expected him to be so skittish about the Coalition authorities. “What are we going to do about the missing mission tablets?”

Mandir’s brow wrinkled as he sat across from her. “I don’t know. Maybe rewrite everything.”

Taya made a face.

“You have a better idea?”

“Let’s not rewrite it all just yet,” she said. “I’m not sure that I remember all the details. Let’s just hope that when we find the jackal, we’ll find the missing tablets along with her.”

Mandir smoothed some water over the clay to moisten it, etched the introductory words at the top of the tablet and looked at Taya expectantly. “All right, your vision. Begin.”

She recounted the vision to him in as much detail as she could remember. This one was less involved than the first, and thus easier. She finished her dictation in twenty minutes, and Mandir needed only one tablet to write it down.

As he etched the final words into the clay and picked up the tablet to scan for errors, someone knocked at the door.

It was Rasik, carrying two trays of food. He shoved one of them at Taya. “Lunch.”

Taya did not take the tray. Instead, she glanced back guiltily at the breakfast tray a servant had delivered earlier, which she had moved to a shelf and ignored. She inhaled the rich scents of peas and onions and roasted lamb from lunch, and her stomach rumbled.

Mandir rose from the table. “Sorry,” he told Rasik. “We don’t want you to bring food anymore.”

Rasik’s mouth opened. “But it’s already prepared.”

“We meant to say something earlier,” said Mandir. “Please give it to someone else. And don’t send us any more.”

Rasik bristled. “Is something wrong with it?”

“Nothing at all,” said Mandir.

Rasik paused, as if waiting for Mandir to say something more. When he didn’t, Rasik sniffed in exasperation, turned, and left. Mandir closed the door behind him. He picked up the tablet and waved it in the air to help dry the clay. “Where should I put this?”

Taya took the tablet and went to her saddlebags to pack it away, not that placing it in the saddlebags was any guarantee it wouldn’t be stolen the way the rest of the tablets had been. Inwardly, she lamented the loss of a tasty-looking lunch. “You said you would tell me sometime why Rasik was angry all the time.”

“Oh. Are you aware he’s the magistrate’s son?” Mandir sauntered to her water pitcher and reached to pour himself a glass. Then he caught himself and put the pitcher down. He seized an empty cup, examined it inside and out, and began to swirl it as he called water from the air.

“His
son
? Surely not.” Thirsty now herself, she picked up a cup of her own and began calling water too.

“Ah, so you didn’t know.”

She blinked. “Rasik is a brother to Kalbi and Hunabi?” That didn’t seem possible.

“Half-brother,” said Mandir. “He’s a bastard, like me.”

“How do you know this?”

Mandir shrugged. “It’s a ruling-caste thing. Have you wondered yet what caste Rasik is? He’s a servant, and yet he’s educated.”

Now that she thought about it, she had no idea. If forced to guess, she would opt for artisan caste. But he wasn’t obsequious around his ruling-caste betters. “All right, what is he?”

“He has no caste—or, rather, he has a half-caste, which amounts to little. Ruling-caste bastards are raised as high-class family servants. That’s what Rasik is. And that’s what I was meant to be, a servant in the royal palace.”

Mandir as a servant—that was an image she couldn’t visualize. “
Meant to be.
So what happened?”

“Tufan happened,” said Mandir. “He rebelled against the family and set up a separate household, which he peopled with his bastards. I wouldn’t say he regarded us as servants, exactly. We were more like...entertainment.”

Taya wrinkled her brow. “Why the ruling-caste tattoo, if you’re only half-caste?”

“Tufan again. Bastards aren’t supposed to have it, but Tufan gave it to us to spite his brothers.”

“He sounds like a zebu’s ass.”

Mandir snorted. “He is a herd of zebu’s asses crammed into one man.”

“You’re an improvement on him,” said Taya, realizing as she said it that she was admitting out loud that Mandir had some good qualities. Well, he did have good qualities; her hatred had subsided enough for her to acknowledge that. Unfortunately he had a lot of bad ones to go along with them.

“I should hope I am,” said Mandir. “But to improve on Tufan is to hop over a pebble. One needn’t exert oneself much.”

Taya looked into her cup and frowned. She’d managed to call only an inch of water so far.

Mandir smiled and poured the small amount of water he had summoned into her cup.

She felt a little guilty at this gesture, since he had to be thirsty too, but it was poor manners to decline a gift. She lifted the cup and drank. “So Rasik is angry...why, exactly?”

“He resents the whole situation,” said Mandir, swirling his cup again. “He’s the magistrate’s son, just like Kalbi and Hunabi, but instead of receiving respect and an inheritance, he has to fetch and carry and obey their orders. Shall we go to the market? I’m hungry.”

“Wait,” said Taya. “If Rasik is so angry, could he be a murder suspect?”

“As far as I’m concerned, everyone in this town is a murder suspect.”

“No, listen to this. If Kalbi and Hunabi both die, what happens to Rasik? Does he then become his father’s heir?”

“Possibly,” said Mandir. “If the magistrate designates him so.”

“The magistrate is ill,” said Taya. “He’ll be dead inside of the season. So if Rasik wants to supplant his brothers, he has to act quickly. Could he have killed one and be plotting to kill the other?”

“Maybe.”

She cocked her head. “You don’t think it likely?”

Mandir shrugged. “I don’t think Rasik is a murderer. His anger is on the surface and honest. If he were plotting something, I think he’d be more circumspect.”