The Fire Seer (28 page)

A smile lit the jackal’s face. “Because of what you did to the banana plants.”

“At Zash’s?”

“In town.”

Once again, she was back to the mystery of the healed banana plants in the farmers’ courtyards. The girl apparently believed that she and Mandir had healed those plants. But they had not. Taya, meanwhile, had assumed it to be the work of the jackal. If neither Taya nor Mandir nor the jackal had healed those plants, who could have done it?

She opened her mouth to voice the question—and then closed it. She had the jackal at close range and speaking freely. She would not jeopardize that, at least not yet. “You changed your mind about us because of the banana plants?”

“I knew you couldn’t be all bad if you were willing to break Coalition law for our benefit,” said the jackal. “I’m hoping you’ll at least listen to me.”

How naive she was. Taya directed the naïf to a chair at her little table. “Of course I’ll listen. Sit down. What’s your name?”

“Amalia.” The jackal sat.

“Not the same Amalia who was murdered? Zash’s sister?”

“Yes, that one. Obviously I’m still alive.”

Taya blinked at her, stunned. If Amalia was still alive, sitting right in front of her, the third murder had never taken place. And everything Zash told them had been a lie. “Did Zash send you?”

“Great Mothers, no,” said Amalia. “He hasn’t seen me in weeks.”

If Amalia was telling the truth, she and Zash were
not
working together. If that was so, how did she know about Mandir being in captivity? Much as Taya wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake out whatever she knew about Mandir and Zash’s underground prison, she was going to have to be patient if she wanted to keep the girl’s trust. Perhaps the story could be coaxed from her in pieces. “Zash said you went mad after the fever.”

“I know he said that, but it’s a lie. The fever never happened, and I’ve never been mad.”

“So what did happen?” Taya smiled encouragingly, trying to look safe and kind and not at all like someone whose job was to burn jackals to death.

“As a young girl, I worked alongside Zash on the plantation. One day I discovered that I could redirect the water in the irrigation canals simply by willing it to move. I knew immediately what that meant: I had the Gift. I demonstrated my talent to my parents so they would send me to the Coalition, but Zash had another idea. He told the family that if I went off to the Coalition, I would benefit personally, but the farm would suffer, and shouldn’t we all benefit from my Gift? If I stayed at home and used my magic on the farm, we would all become wealthy.”

“That’s illegal,” said Taya.

“I know,” said Amalia, “and I refused. But he was determined that I should not leave and deprive the family of my talent. He locked me up and told everyone I’d gone mad. Later, when I tried to escape, he chained me.”

Taya recalled the charred shackles she and Mandir had found in the burned-out house. “His plan would never have worked. You need Coalition training to work complex magics.”

Amalia nodded. “It was all for nothing—we know that now. I had raw power in abundance and could call fire and water, but my manipulations were crude. I thought I would get better over time, but for all I practiced, my skills did not advance. Zash wanted me to cure our banana plants of blight, but I couldn’t do it. He thought I was being stubborn, so he threatened me, and he punished me with poisons and beatings. But it didn’t work, and one day I managed to break free of my chains. I’ve been hiding from him ever since.”

“Amalia.” Taya’s voice grew gentle. “You killed two people.”

She shook her head. “One.”

“Hunabi and Narat,” said Taya.

Amalia shook her head again. “Just Hunabi, and...look, you have to understand why I did it.” She grabbed Taya’s hand and clutched it in her own. “There’s a textile merchant in town named Bodhan isu Kasirum—”

“I know.”

“He loaned money to a number of farming families when the floods didn’t come. But the contracts he made them sign—”

“I know all this too,” said Taya. “The contracts trapped the farmers into producing cotton for him essentially forever, at below-market prices.”

“
Yes
,” said Amalia. “And now they’re starving. A number of these families went to the magistrate for help, since obviously the contracts were unfair and they’d repaid their debt many times over in cheap cotton. But the magistrate and Bodhan are allies—they have a marriage contract in negotiations.”

Taya frowned. Neither she nor Mandir had put that part of the equation together yet. Of course the magistrate had a vested interest in Bodhan’s business success, if he planned for his sons to marry Bodhan’s daughter.

“The magistrate had two sons,” continued Amalia. “Kalbi, the elder, is a decent boy, but Hunabi was a wastrel and a womanizer. He learned which of the affected farming families had a young, virginal daughter among their children. He went to each of those families and told them that if they let him sleep with the daughter, he would make sure that the case was decided in their favor. Some of the families agreed to this. Hunabi slept with the girls, but the magistrate ruled against the farmers anyway.

“So yes, I killed him.” Amalia’s head bobbed self-consciously. “The magistrate wasn’t going to punish his own son for what he did to those girls, and he wasn’t going to rule against Bodhan either. The farmers needed help, so I helped them. I sent a tablet to the magistrate saying I had killed Hunabi and I would kill Kalbi as well if he did not reverse the decision on all the farmers’ court cases.”

“Really?” Taya blinked in astonishment. “Does he still have that tablet?” It was important evidence. Why had the magistrate withheld it from her, when it clearly identified who the jackal was, as well as her motive for killing Hunabi, and information about her next intended victim? Clearly he did not want her or Mandir to know about his involvement in the dirty contracts.

“I have no idea if he still has it,” said Amalia.

“Did he reply?”

“In a way. He summoned you and your partner.”

Now Taya understood. The farmers had accused her of doing the magistrate’s dirty work, and at the time she had been indignant. She was not here to do anyone’s dirty work except the Coalition’s. But the farmers had been right. The magistrate was trying to use the Coalition to rid Hrappa of the one person who stood in the way of his alliance with Bodhan.

The villains here, as far as she could see, were the magistrate and Bodhan, not to mention Zash. But this did not alter the fact that Amalia had committed two crimes, the first in using magic illegally, and the second in killing Hunabi. “What of Bodhan’s daughter Narat? If you didn’t kill her, what happened?”

“Are you sure she’s even dead?”

Taya blinked. “Isn’t she?”

Amalia shrugged. “Bodhan says she died in a flood. I didn’t summon a flood.”

“Could a flood have risen naturally?” Or perhaps there was a second jackal in Hrappa. It didn’t seem likely, since jackals were rare, but somebody had healed those banana plants in town. Maybe it was the same person who had raised the flood.

“Not at that time of year,” said Amalia. “I think Narat just ran away. It was well known that she was not in harmony with her father.”

“Why were they not in harmony?”

“Because she was in love with the baker’s son,” said Amalia. “Bodhan didn’t approve of the match. The baker’s son disappeared the same day Narat did, but nobody’s saying he died in a flood. Nobody says anything about him. It’s like he never existed.”

She remembered the baker woman’s evasions when she’d asked about that boy’s whereabouts. No wonder she and Mandir had gotten nowhere on this case. They’d been lied to by everybody in Hrappa, from farmers and bakers to textile merchants and magistrates. “But you
did
summon the flood that nearly drowned me.”

Amalia lowered her head. “I’m sorry for that. It was a mistake.”

“Why did you come to my guesthouse? What do you expect me to do about all this?” Clearly the girl hoped for mercy or understanding. The understanding Taya could provide, but there was no such thing as mercy from the Coalition.

“I know where your partner is,” said Amalia. “I’ll help you get him out—if you promise to help me in return.”

“Help you in what way?”

“Force Bodhan to forgive the farmers’ debts,” said Amalia. “And grant me absolution for my crimes. I want what my brother denied me years ago. I want to join the Coalition.”

Taya swallowed. What an ambitious list of demands that was. The first part, forcing Bodhan to forgive the farmers’ debts, was something Zash had demanded as well, but she had no idea how to accomplish it. Yes, she could walk into his house and threaten to kill him if he didn’t forgive the debts, but that was against Coalition law. As for granting Amalia absolution, it was impossible. The Coalition would never forgive her crimes, and they certainly wouldn’t let her join the organization.

She could not do what Amalia asked. Perhaps she could negotiate a more reasonable set of demands. Or would it be better just to play along and cooperate with the girl long enough to rescue Mandir? Getting her partner out of Zash’s clutches was her first priority. If she could convince Amalia to help her with that, she’d deal with the other problems later. “Where is Zash hiding Mandir?”

Amalia set her jaw. “I’ll tell you, but only
after
you fulfill your part of the bargain.”

Taya blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m not sure how much of that bargain I have the ability to fulfill.”

“If you don’t help me, your partner will die,” said Amalia. “Zash will never let him live. He’ll kill anyone who stands in his way. He killed our parents.”

“Your parents? Why?”

“They wanted to send me to the Coalition, and he wanted to keep me at home. He poisoned them and told everyone they died of fever.”

Taya sighed. She felt sorry for this girl, but she simply didn’t have the power to right all these wrongs. “What you ask is impossible. I cannot negotiate with the Coalition on your behalf because the nearest temple is five days’ ride from here, and I’ll be dead before then. Your only hope is to get Mandir out. Perhaps he can help you, if Zash doesn’t kill him first.”

Amalia’s brow wrinkled. “Why will you be dead before then?”

She fetched the tablet that Zash had given her yesterday in the banana fields, and handed it to Amalia. “Read this.”

Amalia’s lips moved as she read. When she reached the bottom of the tablet, she began to laugh.

Taya snatched the tablet out of her hand. “There’s nothing funny in there.”

“But it’s a lie,” said Amalia. “There’s no such thing as a three-day poison.”

“I was very sick last night,” said Taya.

“And how do you feel this morning?”

“Better,” Taya admitted. “I think it comes and goes.”

“You were sick last night because he drugged you with
shydra
. That’s his favorite drug; it’s fast-acting and it makes people unconscious. After it wears off, you throw up for a while. He used it on me many times before I escaped him.”

Taya hardly dared hope this could be true. “You don’t know for certain there’s no three-day poison.”

“Yes, I do,” said Amalia. “Zash made it up to scare you. He does that.”

Taya wanted very much to believe her, and she had to admit the idea of a poison that took three days to work seemed implausible. But what did she know? She’d spent her entire life on a farm and in a Coalition temple. “There’s another problem. I can’t walk into Bodhan’s house and demand he forgive the debts.”

“You’re Coalition,” said Amalia. “Of course you can.”

“I
can’t
,” said Taya. “My authority as a Coalition representative is limited to a few very specific areas. Remember the Accords of Let? Your ruling caste has dominion over the cities and their people, while the Coalition holds a monopoly on magic and all laws relating to magic. We have no authority whatsoever over nonmagical crimes.”

“All you have to do is walk in there and threaten to burn him.”

Taya shook her head. “I’d be breaking the law myself.”

“You’ve broken it before.”

She hadn’t, but she couldn’t tell Amalia that. “No one can prove that my partner and I healed any banana plants, but if I march into Bodhan’s house and threaten him with magic, the Coalition will hear about it. They’ll punish me, and once I’m gone, Bodhan and the magistrate will just reinstate the loans.”

Amalia winced. “There must be a way.”

“I’ll do what I can for you,” said Taya. “But first you’ve got to help me get my partner out.”

A muscle bulged along Amalia’s jawline. “Not until you do as I asked.”

“Look, I
just explained
—”

“So don’t do it the way I suggested,” said Amalia. “Find another way.”

Taya clenched her fists in her lap. What other way? She could not use force, and she could not apply legal pressure on Bodhan, because that was the magistrate’s bailiwick. As a Coalition representative, she could only enforce crimes related to magic.

Had Bodhan committed any sort of crime related to magic? He didn’t possess any magic, so that seemed unlikely.

Did it count that he had blamed his daughter’s disappearance on an illegally summoned flood? Taya considered. That was a possibility. “Who reported to the authorities that Narat was killed by a magically-raised flood? Was it Bodhan?”

“I think so,” said Amalia.

“He must have just made that story up. If his daughter was still alive and had simply run away, surely he knew about that. So why
did
he lie? What did it gain him to blame her disappearance on a jackal?”

“Well, he and the magistrate were allies,” said Amalia. “The magistrate needed the Coalition to come out here and find me. Two deaths by a jackal would be more likely to bring a team of investigators than just one.”

“That could be it,” said Taya. “He made a false accusation in order to draw out the Coalition. By Coalition law, that
is
a crime.” Not as serious as the ones Amalia had committed, but perhaps enough that she could frighten the man. “We need evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” asked Amalia.