Tinder Stricken (38 page)

When it was over, the dust hung and slowly
settled, with glints of lungta among it. The Kanakisipt home still
stood but it was cracked across every expensive wall. Smoke rose
from the home; shouting rang from the far side.

Esha gasped oaths, gasped them like
lifelines. She hadn't imagined this of her former home and wasn't
sure if she should have, if her mind would ever draw such a
sight.

“
Precious One,”
Clamshell snapped,
wheeling back down from the sky,
“house-enemies are
white-running again. We must go — north by stone, the
purple-song-flower is this way.”

“One moment — Nimble? Nimble, are you
alright?”

His underground shaft still stood, a spire
in the middle of the pool. But Nimble wasn't inside: Esha couldn't
find him until she looked closer at the algaes. Nimble drifted in a
tight-wound ball, nose and tendrils barely breaking the water's
surface.

“
Statement:“
he chattered meek,
“This one is unharmed.”

“Stay there,” Esha said. No one will come
here: this isn't the most important place to protect.”

“
Statement: this one should stay here,
regardless. If a serpent attempts to earthshift a path and is
overwhelmed by an after-quake, that serpent is crushed.”

“Oh,
gods
.” It was a valid point but
an awful fate to imagine. “No, don't get crushed. I'll come back
with the orchids. Be ready to escape.”

He flicked affirmative fins, and kept
floating like a mere decoration.

“Clamshell? Now I really don't know what I'm
doing.”

“
No one knows,”
she croaked.
“Just
go. Search. Rooftop is orange-distracting the house-enemies; I am
his kin.”

Esha nearly followed her remembered paths
through the house. But those were nobles' paths, she remembered
with a jolt. She might encounter guards — or someone she knew.
Death would be sweeter.

That was a sharp spur pushing her to
movement, to run along the outside wall of the home, to raise a
sleeve to her mouth against the still-thick dust and stumble over
the broken decorative bricks now in shambles.

She knew loosely where the orchid hothouse
was. Leftward from the algae pond, through a pattern of halls but
that pattern was useless from the house's outside. She kept
stumbling, through rubble and through passageway cracks in
walls.

The hothouse was the most important part of
the home, people had told her, people with family's titles and
warm-seeming hands. The hothouse was their greatest treasure, the
source of their wealth and the reason they could afford so many
negotiation efforts. Here on Tselaya's wintery crown peak, with
lungta winging around them like glittering birds, the Kanakisipts
were noble and true.

Esha didn't remember the precise words of
it: she had been small at the time, held high against someone's
chest so she could see. She remembered a haze of warmth and
moisture, billowing like a curtain against her face as they
entered. She remembered serving caste hurrying around doing
important-looking things, and scuttling out of the way when the
Kanakisipts entered. At some point, Esha Kanakisipt had touched an
orchid, touched the delicate blossom with the most careful of
touches, held a sheening green leaf between her small hands and
watched how light danced on it.

It was the most important part of
Kanakisipt. Even in this confusion, Esha's gut relished the thought
of touching those orchids again — and getting her farm-dirt
fingerprints all over them.

She clambered over a ruined wall, placing
her hands careful on jagged faces of stone, snagging her pants and
jolting against it until she found the restraint and yanked it
loose. She coughed against the dust — and saw guards' helmets
moving beyond the ruins so she dropped low and breathed into her
sleeve, heart pounding.

“Over here,” one guard was shouting, “he's
over here! Hurry!”

Footsteps receded again. Esha was an insect
amid all this panic: she only needed to stay unnoticed. She peeked
over the wall, saw no imperial red, and hurried her pulse-pounding
limbs to movement again. The ruins included broken glass now,
denser and denser blankets of it.

Above her, Clamshell wheeled, a bright
orange pinpoint against the smoke-streaked sky. She was circling
over a spot that felt familiar — the hothouse, Esha felt the
glowing remnants of her memory map and knew it to be true. She
hurried, around an intact wall, to a place of tilted wooden
beams.

This alone was a stunning tragedy. A wooden
beam older than Esha, more precious than salt and gold because it
was made of lungta-steeped applewood, laid splintered apart like a
common maize stalk. Destroyed in the blink of an eye. Esha was
stunned for a few heartbeats — but she wasn't the one who would
have to pay for it. And she couldn't carry it. And applewood was
lungta-rich but impossible to chew. She ducked under it and kept
on.

Around the corner was the hothouse — or it
should have been there, but there was only a field of shattered
glass spread like cobblestone. Pots stood against the larger pieces
of jagged glass. Orchids bent under the weight, and the steam-warm
air was pierced by every gust of wind.

One servant was there already, lifting a
wooden beam. He looked sharp to Esha. Their eyes locked and the
moment was set in stone.

“Oh,” Esha said, grasping for the words
buried deep inside her. Nobles' attendants never did swear; nobles'
attendants were not permissed to curse the gods aloud. She raised
hands to her mouth. “Oh, my! The orchids!”

“Help me,” the servant called. He was a
groundskeeper, judging by his dun-coloured clothing and clay caste
sigil. Esha hesitated for only one heartbeat, before she was
hurrying across the field of broken glass to put her hands under
the broken beam.

“If this stays on the heat rocks,” the
groundskeeper grunted, “it'll catch fire. The orchids need heat but
not like that.”

“We can lift it,” Esha said. It was a
strange feeling to lend hands while searching for things to snatch
— but not a bad feeling. It salved the panic well enough.

“When I say,” the servant said. He watched
her wide-eyed; his Grewier face was pale and streaked with soot.
“Ready ... lift!”

Esha was lifting, both of them were, and the
twisted beam lifted off the heat rock with an acrid gust of smoke.
They shoved and dragged, and found a direction the wreckage would
move. The beam thumped to the ground, barely missing Esha's
sandalled toes.

“Whew,” she said. “We need to protect the
orchids sprouts, though — won't they freeze?”

More voices called out in the distant house;
the groundskeeper drifted for a moment, hooked by the sound, then
locked his skeweringly honest eyes with Esha again. “Yes — we need
to cover them against the wind. Use anything, anything at all.”

For the next few minutes, the two of them
worked moving plants. Gathering the clay pots into their arms like
the precious burdens they were, and hurrying to the heat rock
corner. The singed ceiling beam made a partial wall against wind
and cold. The groundskeeper left at one point, leaving Esha hefting
pots alone and her mind screaming at her to just flee; a
fire-bright phoenix passed overhead like a warning.

“Kin,” Esha cried, a half-strangled shout.
She waved Rooftop closer and he came to land on a crumbling wall
edge.

“
Precious One, you should be running.
Seize greens and fly!”

“No, not yet — I'm lying that I belong here
and it's working! Just take some herb while he's gone — hurry!
There's small pots over there.”

His crests lifting with surprise, Rooftop
understood in that moment. He leaped to his wings and glided across
the glass-glittering ruins, to a wooden table buckling under
ceiling weight but still supporting meal-bowl-sized pots with
seedlings inside.

Esha didn't know how many of them were
orchids. The Kanakisipt home had no shortage of herbs and spices
and treats. But Rooftop didn't bother folding his wings, simply
walked mincing over glass shards and picked a pot to sink his beak
and claws into.

Esha turned back to the orchid pot she was
moving, just for a moment. The plant was already curling at its
delicate edges, shrivelling at the air's cooling touch. She was
setting that one pot down in the heat rock's radiant aura when
someone shouted,
“Phoenix!”

The groundskeeper had returned, arms full of
canvas — which he dropped as he charged at Rooftop. “Yaah!
Yaah!
Get away!”

With a strangled squawk, beak full of stalks
and feet locked awkward around the pot's edge, Rooftop flapped
laborious. He lifted past the groundskeeper's clawing grasp, away
and over the broken walls.

They were caught. But they weren't yet, Esha
knew as the groundskeeper looked at her; her lies had worked so far
and Rooftop was surely huffing his fright but unhurt.

“It— It was right behind me. Oh, Rama
preserve us!”

“There are thieves about,” the groundskeeper
growled. He glowered at the sky but knew he could never overtake a
fleeing bird, so he gathered his canvas findings: they looked like
curtains from a shack like Esha's. “Stay alert. Here, we can cover
the orchids with these.”

Esha took the corner he thrust into her
hands. It took some adjusting and experimenting, stretching the
fabric and pinning it down with brick hunks, but they made a tent
for the delicate flowers.

“There,” Esha said, “that was a good idea.
This'll keep them warm and ward off thieves.”

With a sigh, and two fingers dug under his
headwrap to scratch whatever traits hid there, the groundskeeper
nodded. “The plants won't all fit, though.”

“Let me move some,” Esha said. She nearly
grinned at her own idea, meshed so well into the plan. “I work in
the kitchens. We've got warm space beside the ovens.”

“Ah, I was wondering why we'd never met.”
The groundskeeper smiled wan. “That's another good plan, sister. Do
you need help lifting them?”

“No,” Esha lied, “I'll just make trips.
Someone needs to stay here, in case that phoenix should come
back.”

He was nodding as Esha bolted across the
room, lifting her knees high over broken beams. She had been
working at this for more moments than she could say: the
groundskeeper didn't deserve this but her friends depended on her
return.

The smaller pots held seedlings and
cuttings, new growth that usually got one gardener's entire amount
of attention. But here was Kanakisipt's new generation, open for
Esha's taking: she only had to choose what she could carry. Esha
took a sprouting tube of peony seedlings under her arm, and four
pots full of orchid blooms that she balanced against one another,
and she hurried for the sagging door.

“Be careful,” the groundskeeper called after
her.

The guilt returned, a stabbing sense of how
dishonourable Esha was. But this fellow low-caste would be found
standing over some of the house's orchids, guarding what he could.
It would have to do.

“You be careful, too,” she said, and ran
before any more words could catch her.

There were more soldiers in the ruined
halls. A group came around a corner, matched all in their
dust-caked armour: their gazes landed arrow-sharp on Esha and her
armfuls of precious plants.

“The hothouse!” she blurted. “The glass is
all smashed and there's a phoenix trying to steal from it. We need
help!”

Their stares changed tone immediately. The
lead soldier barked to the others and two soldiers broke away from
the group, hurrying away on clunking boots. Esha kept on; no one
stopped her.

Rounding a hallway corner and leaving the
building, coming out into the algae pond terrace she remembered the
location of now, Esha was filled weak and glorious with disbelief.
The lies had worked, and she was more shameful than ever but the
serpents would have orchids.

Nimble watched over the edge of his escape
shaft.
“Revelation: Precious One!”

“Get these underground,” she called, pushing
her fading legs for more and faster strides. “They need to be warm
— it's too draughty here.”

Slithering halfway over the edge, Nimble
reached all his barbels out toward her, to loop around each and
every pot.

“Where is Rooftop?”

“
Statement: gone by wings.”

“And Clamshell?”

“
Statement: same.”

“Good,” Esha wheezed, “good.”

Each breath ripped at her insides now; she
folded to lean on her knees. As Nimble's nervous, staccato
chattering came back up the shaft, she added, “I can't— I can't run
any farther, Nimble.”

“
Oblivion, oblivion — no, only challenge!
Statement: hold fast, Precious One.”

She watched earthshifting spread rock in
front of her, over the water to make a bridge, another path to
follow. Esha stepped toward it and remembered nothing after that,
except barbels winding around her to take her weight.

Chapter 24

Sureness carried her in a hammock of strong
barbels, back through Fathomless's domain and down winding tunnels.
Nimble followed, clay pots jostling like dull-toned bells. Time
meant nothing; Esha wanted to sleep but fear still had hooks in her
— unless something else was hurting her guts. Hunger, maybe.
Grief.

The hooks only dug deeper when they reached
the Community common districts and Bravery was there, holding a
metal leaf with her noted message.

“
Statement: when the earth shook, Water
Light queried how extensive the damage was liable to be on the
mountain's surface. This community sustained severe damage: surface
constructs are flimsier and presumably fared worse. Water Light
stated that she had business to attend to. That one gave a variety
of desiccated, lungta-rich plants to the Community, and requested
protection for the landholder phoenix's offspring. Update: the
human Water Light has not been in contact since.”