The Devourers (19 page)

T
hat morning we reached the mud walls of Shahjahanabad, then still newly built by Shah Jahan to replace Akbar's old capital. I had lived in Akbarabad before, and it is a magnificent city. But this was the first time I had seen its replacement. We arrived at the Akbarabad gate, through which runs the southern road that leads to that city. I was by now accustomed to the extravagant architectures that Shah Jahan raised throughout the empire, especially with Mumtaz Mahal's famous tomb always rising up in the distance from Mumtazabad. Cracked and crude in the dry air of winter, the mud walls that surrounded Shahjahanabad looked most shoddy compared with the mighty stone walls of Akbarabad. But once we were inside (Gévaudan had a strange effect on the soldiers and customs officials at the gate, who didn't seem too perturbed to see such a strange-looking white man with a poor Mughal woman), I couldn't help but be awed by the gleaming red sandstone walls of the scaffolded Qila-Mubarak
^*1
on the horizon, incomplete but towering over the tumult of the town; the broad avenues swollen like rivers with waves of people; the rows of fresh-planted trees sheltering every thoroughfare; the gilded copper domes of new masjids
^*2
rising on all sides to complement the distant edifice of the fortress.

But even as I took in the marvels of this newly built city, something clawed inside me, making me want to leave this glorious settlement, to escape back into the wilderness of the spaces between the cities and towns. I was surprised by how foreign I felt in the midst of all this human life, after just two days outside the walls of civilization with Gévaudan.

I found Gévaudan looking sweaty and out of sorts, and I wondered if he felt the same thing. He had seemed quite at ease being among people in Mumtazabad. As we walked up the wide road that is called Faiz Bazaar, I turned to him. He was silent, inspecting the vaulted arcades of the bazaar rising above the numerous shops on either side of the road.

“Why did you run from him, last night?” I asked gently.

He sniffed sharply as if he'd smelled something bad. “I didn't run. I needed to emanate,” he said. He couldn't look me in the eye. “We have followed him. He will have detected this, he's old enough,” he said, and wiped his damp face. “Your blood and my musk combined in one. It's a message he won't ignore. He is coming to us, trust me.”

“We've found him, then. So why are we here, in the city?”

He bared his teeth, making a guttural exclamation in another language. “Do you do nothing but ask miserable fucking questions? Fenrir might not be very happy to see the two of us together, have you thought of that? He might challenge me in his second self, without preamble, head clouded with what he thinks is love. And I don't know if I can defeat him.”

Me riding on the back of his second self, clutching his hide with my human hands. He hadn't expected that. Not one bit. No more than I had. I looked into his wide eyes, saw the beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. How could I stand up to Fenrir if Gévaudan was afraid to?

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You're right. We need to be careful.” Gévaudan nodded, calming a bit.

“He is more powerful than I. He has lived for many more centuries. I need to talk to him first. He won't challenge me here in these crowds, in the middle of a human city. But he will find us. Very soon.”

“Very well. Then let him find us.” I touched his hand in reassurance, quick so no one would see, but made confident by now that no one would say anything even if they did. He flinched but said nothing. It was a stupid thing, that. I shouldn't have touched his hand. I wanted to tell him not to be afraid, but I knew not to. The long cut on my forearm throbbed.

What he thinks is love.
My stomach churned. I could not smell Fenrir's return like Gévaudan could, but I imagined in that moment that I could feel him in the distance as I had last night, feel him approaching again like a howling monsoon storm. After all, even having been raped by him, I had seen only the calm that came before.

—

If Fenrir was near, he was also keeping himself hidden.

Gévaudan grew more and more agitated, saying little to me. It felt more and more like traveling with a shy and overgrown boy who'd sunk deep into himself. We wandered Shahjahanabad always looking behind us, though I found welcome distraction in the many sights I saw. The imperial elephants circling in their sandy arena between the waters of the Yamuna and the walls of the Qila-Mubarak, their pebbled skins made glossy with black paint, trunks blushed with vermillion, tusks clattering in the late-morning air. The parrot-pole on one street, where the nobles took turns in shooting at the bright-green bird tied to the top (it survived all the attempts we saw, whether blessed or because the nobles were drunk or secretly fond of it I cannot say). The vaulted mansions of nobility, each the center of a thriving mahalla
^*3
filled with the thatched mud-and-brick houses of the people who make the lives of those in the mansions easy. The endless wares under the arcades of bazaars that put Mumtazabad to shame, overflowing with foodstuffs and luxuries from all the corners of the empire and beyond, all overseen by the incessant babbling of merchants—there were bales of finest cotton, perfumes, precious stones; beef and mutton; partridges, ducks, geese, and various other birds raising havoc with their cries as they fluttered among the displayed carcasses of their brethren, as if fanning away the clouds of flies that crawled over their dead; there were raisins and almonds and pistachios in aromatic piles; plantains and pineapples and mangoes and prunes and apricots and Allah only knows what else. I'm beginning to sound like a merchant myself, listing off wares like a fool. Aching all over and stomach hollow with hunger, eager to numb the constant sense of having gone utterly mad in the past two days, I gorged on sweetmeats and fruits and nuts till sick.

Gévaudan ate nothing. I became concerned that he wasn't just nervous about Fenrir, but physically craving the flesh of a human being. I had no idea how the appetites of a shape-shifter waxed and waned, and the very thought made me shove it from my mind in fear. I regretted eating as much as I did in front of him, in the bazaars.

I was exhausted by the time the sun began to set, more so than when we had been traveling in the countryside. When it became clear Fenrir would not show himself, Gévaudan and I retired to one of the numerous caravanserais in the city. Like Fenrir, he had plenty of money to dispense with, so I didn't have to spend any of my pointless new wealth. Once again I slept on a mattress instead of hard ground, under roof instead of starry sky. I can't deny that I slept well, but it was but half a relief to be back in a serai chamber dozing off to the flickering light of a taper, as if nothing had changed since Mumtazabad. Less than two weeks had passed since I first met Fenrir, but it felt like years to me, lying there thinking about what I had discovered in these days, thinking about the mysteries on the other side of Shahjahanabad's mud walls. I wished my mother were there to guide me through this, that we could discover this new world together, and protect each other from its unfathomable dangers.

*1
The Blessed Fortress, also known as the Red Fort, which still stands in the center of Delhi.

*2
Mosques.

*3
A self-contained district or quarter of a Mughal city.

N
ext morning, I saw Gévaudan talking with an Englishman also at the caravanserai with his retinue. It was strange to see him talk to a fellow white man, because the two standing side by side looked as different as I would standing next to a white woman from France. I recognized the language they spoke as English, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that Gévaudan could speak it, though he sounded most different from the other man.

The Englishman wore the clothes I would expect of a man from a European kingdom, unlike Gévaudan—strange-cut coats and breeches in dull colors, though he sometimes walked around wearing a white shash that looked a little ridiculous wrapped around his puffy pink head, and he also swaddled his shoulders with a cotton dupatta. Always he would carry a sword and dagger at his waist, tucked into a girdle. The man looked like he found Gévaudan's clothes and bearing distasteful. I suppose that shouldn't have surprised me, in that the Englishman shared my own first reaction to my traveling companion and his friends. But the Englishman also seemed very interested in conversing with him, and he often looked at me as if I were an exotic ornament Gévaudan was carrying around, albeit one gilded with poison.

I asked Gévaudan about the Englishman, when we were eating at one of the open-air stalls in the plaza near Akbarabadi-Mahal Masjid. I was basking in the warmth of the smoking iron plates on which the naan baked, taking deep breaths as the stalls filled the air with their comforting burnt-flour smell. We stood by the stall as the bakers handed us the flaps of fresh bread, rubbed with salt and ghee and nestled in pattals, hot against our hands through the leaf. I waved away flies lazily as Gévaudan spoke.

“He is a trader for one of the European trading associations, the British East India Company. His name is Edward Courten,” Gévaudan explained, not bothered by the hot naan in his hand.

“Eid-waad Kow-ten,” I said.

Gévaudan grinned, something he had not done for a while. He tore a bit of naan with his fingers, tossing it into his mouth, though he didn't seem to like the bread very much.

“Do you take only to raw meat, Jevah-dan?” I asked, a little jaunty, as if I were joking. I was actually genuinely curious.

“No. The things khrissals do with their food interest me. Bread is a useless bit of fluff, invented by the grain-obsessed farmers that preceded all of your modern civilizations and weakened you to the frail and small-mouthed creatures you are now. But I've always favored it as a plaything of the palate. This Khorassian bread, not so much. I prefer the loaf the French make, that they call the baguette. It is fuller and better baked, and more interesting to my tongue.”

I noticed how he sometimes talked about humans to me as if I weren't one myself.

“Bah-get.” He grinned again as I repeated the French word. I wondered if I would ever get to taste such a thing, though I don't think any kind of bread can be better than naan. I wondered if the Englishman brought his English food with him to this land.

“Well? What are you talking to him so much for, then?” I asked. Gévaudan stared at me as if he hadn't heard.

“The Englishman. I've barely seen you talk to anyone.”

“He is a curious man. Like a fly in my ear, buzzing. He wants to know where I'm from, what manner of man I am, what religion I follow. He fancies himself an adventurer, I think. He wondered if I am a white man reformed to the ways of some obscure tribe here.”

“And what have you been telling him?”

“That I am a Frenchman and a pagan, that I can speak his language and yours with equal ease. It fascinates him that I am not a Christian. And that too with a Moorish wife. We are a most curious pair of heathens in his eyes.”

“A wife?” I raised my eyebrows.

“He has assumed that you are my wife, yes. I didn't deny it. Everyone probably assumes that anyway.”

I shook my head. “I don't care what anyone thinks when they see us, as long as you don't think that I'm your wife.”

He grunted. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Fine. Never mind that. I understand that this Englishman is curious about you, but what about him fascinates you as well? Have you never seen a fellow white man before?”

He grunted. “He may have his uses. This Courten has a qafila
^*1
of many men and animals that he is taking east to Masulipatam, a trading post on the Coromandel Coast. He's willing to let us travel with him in it. I can't stay in this pigsty of a city much longer. Traveling with Courten gives us the option of staying surrounded by people while still moving. Fenrir will not attack in the midst of so many humans, and he will have the opportunity to come forward and intercept us peaceably.”

“Pigsty. This city is one of the finest in the empire, probably in all of Europe and Asia taken together.”

“You know what I mean. All khrissal cities are pigsties.” He looked at me. “To my senses,” he added.

“Are we just going east with this Englishman?”

“For now, we will head in that direction. That's where Makedon, Fenrir, and I were originally headed. I don't intend to go all the way to the trading post with this company man, but for now his route will be convenient. North and east of the coast, in the land that is called Bengal, there is said to be a vast jungle at the mouth of the River Ganges, a land between the river and the sea, where many tribes of our kind dwell in solitude. We wanted to see if we could make peace with them, forge an alliance of some sort instead of ending up fighting them like the djinn tribes in Khorasan.”

“Tribes…like you said before. Like you, but not. Tribes from this land.”

“Yes. From here. Several other packs were headed east when the exodus began, hoping to meet the tribes of the Hindustan and find out their ways, share new hunting grounds here in this empire. I just want somewhere to take refuge, hunt, and live in peace.”

“And what of me, Jevah-dan? I cannot follow you to this place.”

“You will go where you please. No one's stopping you.”

“And Fen-eer?”

“I told you, Cyrah. He's going to find us, damn it.” He quickly lost any hint of good humor. “He's close,” he breathed loud, his eyes darting in his still head.

“All right.”
You have no idea what we're doing,
I didn't say. That dance between two shape-shifters, still going on.

“Courten's qafila leaves tomorrow, and us with it,” he said. “Then perhaps Fenrir will show himself, once we're out of the city. And we can put an end to this.”

An end. The end.

I nodded, chewing on my naan and letting myself drift into the noise of the plaza, the shouts of the bakers, the chatter of their other patrons, the whine of flies, perhaps only to distract myself from the ceaseless thoughts clotting my head. Gévaudan sniffed, squinting at the sunlight pouring into the stall from beyond the domes of the masjid and lighting up the smoke and steam. Flies crawled over his pale face, making it look unhealthy, as if sculpted from damp cheese. The naan in my mouth lost its taste as I fought a sudden panic. When I looked again, my breathing fast and vision dampening with blotches, Gévaudan looked almost like a sweet white boy squinting in the sunlight. I looked away quickly.

—

That evening, Gévaudan and I took a walk to see the new square in the center of the city, which had been given the name Chandni-Chauk.
^*2
It wasn't lost to me that we looked like husband and wife—though severely mismatched in appearance—walking together after the sun had set. To be honest, I'd grown accustomed to being looked upon as such. It gave me a sense of safety, of invisibility—a wife (even that of a strange white man), after all, is not a bazaar-whore without a harem. That's not to say that we weren't noticed; we certainly were. But they noticed the Mughal wife of a barbaric-looking and unapproachable white man. They didn't notice me.

It was my idea to see the Chandni-Chauk, as I'd heard of its beauty. It surprised me when Gévaudan agreed to accompany me there. He looked a little better than yesterday. The square held a large tank that gathered the waters of the River of Paradise, the canal that runs through the city. The pool reflected perfectly the night sky, which was, to my luck, graced with a crisp, waxing moon. We saw its twin glittering in the ripples of the pool, as the architects of the plaza must have wanted. We walked down the broad western road, under the shade of the trees that sifted the moonlight like flour. We saw the great serai that Jahanara Begum, the emperor's eldest daughter, had endowed to the city—the windows in its high two-storied walls winking with the tapers and lamps of only the wealthiest Persian and Uzbek merchants who were allowed beyond its towered boundary, its gates guarded by soldiers. All around us, the flames of the market still danced on the waters of the burbling River of Paradise as the shops and inns began closing down for the night. The distant voice of a muaddin calling out azan from the high minarets of Fatehpuri Masjid gave the air music.

“Do you still think human cities are pigsties?” I asked Gévaudan as we walked along the canal. A light mist hovered over the water, making the moonbeams under the trees glow.

“You can no more convince me otherwise than I could show you a swine's mud-heap and expect you to be impressed. Here I assume you wouldn't be impressed by a swine's mud-heap. Never know with you all,” he says.

I prevented myself from smiling, not even sure if he was jesting.

“Surely this makes some impression on you—the endeavors of men and women, who've created such refuges in the wilderness of this world.”

“It is a pretty thing, yes, like a bird's nest, or an anthill, or the sugared palaces bees build their queens. I've seen many cities; Paris and London and Constantinople may look different from this place, but they are the same, when you come down to it. Perhaps without the flocks of khrissals wandering their streets such cities would be worth some admiration, as monuments to futility,” he says.

“I know you'll say these things. And yet I ask, again and again.”

“Then stop asking,” he said. I smiled, this time.

“Fenrir is the one who's enamored with such things. He talks like one of your poets when he starts on about the works of your civilizations,” he said.

“Again you bring him into it. I have no interest in his opinion on anything.”

“You confound me like no human before you. You seek Fenrir like a hound, like no human I've known has ever sought one of our kind, or should. And yet you won't even talk about the one you seek,” he said and looked away, his breath heavy, making that awful noise he made when he gritted his teeth.

“What is it, Jevah-dan? What do you want to tell me about Fen-eer? Does it bother you that I hate your friend? Is that it? Have you forgotten what he's done to me? Or is there something else?”

He looked out over the water, shaking his head.

“I know why you stay with me despite everything that tells you not to. What you want from me,” he said.

“Ah.” I laughed, the back of my throat salty. “I suppose you're going to tell me what it is that I want. Men have a habit of doing that,” I said, wiping my nose. “I know, you're not a man,” I whispered.

He took a deep breath. “I can't kill him, Cyrah,” he said.

I can't be sure, but it was probably that moment when I knew he felt for Fenrir something stronger than friendship, if friendship as humans define it even existed among their kind. I understood why he was following Fenrir.

“I don't want you to,” I said. This was, I realized right there and then, not quite true. Maybe this
was
why I was still seeking Fenrir like a hound, as Gévaudan had it. What better chance for vengeance could I ever get than to try to befriend a being powerful enough to destroy the one who had wronged me? It was with a heavy heart that I continued talking.

“After he raped me, Fenrir left me with a vision. A memory, it felt like, or many memories, of him watching mothers with their children. It felt real. My rapist dared, he dared put me in
his
head, watching women with their young, to teach me a lesson. To make me want this child. I don't think you can imagine what that felt like.”

Gévaudan said nothing.

“I will not meet a djinn from Europe, with such magic that we feeble humans can only dream of, only to be slighted by him in the manner of every other vulgar, common
man
I've had to contend with in my life. To let him fade into the night is to become his victim—I will see him again. I will have my reckoning, whatever that may be.”

“All well told, and in some universe admirable. But you'd be wise to remain afraid of him. I shouldn't be traveling with you. You are khrissal. It compromises me. I don't know how he'll react.”

“Then I am sorry, Jevah-dan, for putting you in this position.”

“I've made my own choices, and you yours. You needn't be sorry.”

“You are in no way indentured to me, nor I to you. If you want, you can part ways with me at any time.”

I heard a guttural sound deep down in his throat, and his body trembled, as if stifling a spasm. I stepped away from him. “You don't tell me that. I know that. I know that,” he said through clenched teeth, his eyes turned away from me. The bone trinkets jittery. I tried to calm my fear.

“I just thought that you should hear that from me. I expect nothing,” I said, swallowing against a quickening heart.

His throat grated with great gulping breaths. I saw his ear twitch, as if listening to the distant muaddin's lyrical recitations drifting in the air.

He managed a small nod.

“I'm grateful to you for trusting me. For what you've shown me.”

“I've shown you nothing. You are still blind, little khrissal.”

“Less blind than any other human you've met, I'm sure. I'm still grateful.”

“How well you argue for your own demise, Cyrah,” he whispered. “I'll admit. I'll admit it. I don't know what I'm doing. Fenrir has exiled himself by fucking you. And yet I run after an exile, a powerful, bitter one, with none other than the khrissal he transgressed with.”

“I won't question why you're doing that. But you've been kind, in your own fashion. I thank you for that. I don't stand a chance against you, should you want to kill me and devour me. You are a hunter, after all, like Fen-eer is. A hunter of my kind. But I will fight back, in whatever way I can, should you try.”