Tinder Stricken (40 page)

Maybe a chile pepper, Esha wondered. “I hope
you didn't steal them.”

She croaked, like scoffing.
“Human
trade-makers don't orange-speak to phoenixes. You know
that.”

“Hey,” Esha told the chick, “you keep your
mother honest.”

In a clear voice like morning, he peeped,
“Alright. Maybe.”

She laid there for further days, an eon
passing within her own skin. Nurses moved her onto new moss and
cleaned the smell of piss off her. Each time she turned over on her
bedroll she found a new soreness in her joints, a new stiffness as
her body refused to move like a human would.

The headache returned. It crept down her
jaw, along her nose, into the roots of her teeth. The goat worked
on her bones and next time Esha rose from her bed, it would be onto
four feet.

“Esha? Oh, great tides!”

Atarangi's voice. And her footfalls on the
stone, and her hands warm on Esha's mess of skin and fur.

“Thought you weren't coming back.”

“I'm sorry,” Atarangi said. She rubbed one
of the goat's ears, a feeling both distressing and blissful. “Oh,
dear friend, I didn't mean to take so long.”

Esha forgave her. She couldn't possibly
grudge.

“The Abyssal's last fit was a powerful one,”
Atarangi told her. “Many properties were damaged, homes destroyed
... Many people moved to Empire-granted shelter. It's a terrible
thing to see. But a tree that survives the storm will give fine
wood. I bought seven property tokens — most of them like yours,
small farmers' homes. It's more steps on my journey, it's more
trade goods to bring me up-mountain.”

After everything, Atarangi still wanted to
walk among the humans of Tselaya Mountain.

“Did you ... talk to anyone's animals?”

“Shh, save your strength.”

Esha's eyes were closed but behind their
lids, she saw Atarangi's thinking smile melting over her wide
lips.

“I mostly translated human troubles, in
fact.”

Esha hummed mild. “I'd like you to do
something for me. Call it part of the khukuri deal, if you'd
like.”

Atarangi scoffed low in her throat. “I think
we're beyond that, friend.”

“Just take this down. My confession. About
all of it — Gita's end, the traps, stealing the orchids,
everything. You're a diplomat — if you bear witness, it'll be as
good as law.”

“Esha, you don't have to—“

“No, I
do
. Someday, someone will cut
a hollowheart and they won't run away, they'll look down into the
darkness and they'll see a serpent in the middle of watering a
damned flower garden. Or a miner will find their tunnels, or
something
. The serpents can't hide forever. Even if you help
them, even if phoenixes help them, they can't hide forever. So ...
they can't take the blame for my crimes against the Empire. I need
to speak the truth. Even if— Even if I can't speak anymore.”

For a long moment, Atarangi was silent.

“Have you got enough paper, and ink? I have
a lot to confess.”

She rustled in her supplies. “I'll make it
fit.”

In Esha's last days, everything she tried to
think about turned slippery. Time escaped her; thoughts were a
labour to string together. She found herself thinking more and more
about gumgrass, the succulent crunch of the stems.

Movement slithered and fluttered and walked
around her. Esha's friends were gathered — and since they were her
friends, they could see her sweat-clumped goat fur, and know her
tale of lies and misdeeds and hard work. In the end, Esha found
that she didn't mind, not at all.

Epilogue

The new diplomat on Rice Plateau was bizarre
even for a Manyori, the whispers said. Wore a mask in public. Kept
a noble's menagerie of pet phoenixes. Some farmers even said they
saw her by the rice paddies at night, kneeling by the water's edge
— like she was talking to something in the mud.

But Atarangi Te Waaka had paid a generous
price for a quake-ruined piece of property, and she was just as
free with her money when someone had a trapped phoenix to trade —
if it was alive. Only if the vermin bird was clearly, thoroughly
alive.

Bhuwan considered cobbling some fuel sticks
together into a cage. Seemed like a prudent idea, but also like a
waste of time. He settled for just tying the phoenix's feet
together with twine and tucking the flapping, screaming thing under
his arm.

That was how he walked to the animist's
house. Leaning heavy on his walking stick, ignoring the phoenix's
sidelong attempts to peck him, hoping for a high enough price to
buy some greens for his family's dinner. Maybe new sandals for his
youngest. Maybe even a visit to the physician for himself: his
quake-crushed leg was healing but so damned
slowly
. He
didn't want to get his hopes strung too high — but this phoenix was
worth a few extra rupees.

There was no mistaking the diplomat
Atarangi's home, even before the house flags came into sight.
Tagged phoenixes flocked on the shingled roof like crows on a
carcass — and with arrow-sharp gaze, one bird spotted him. It
opened its wings and took flight, swooping straight at Bhuwan.

His arms flinched upward but he couldn't
drop his captured phoenix, didn't have time to change grip and so
he merely hunched and braced for claws tearing at him. None came.
No pain and no wing-wind — just a trilling song from in front of
him.

Bhuwan lowered his guard. The phoenix stood,
head tilted, regarding him. It was a handsome animal, as orange as
sunset with red streaks lining its crests.

Suddenly, it jerked its head — an eerily
human movement, an echo of someone saying
this way.
And it
walked away.

Some people said that phoenixes were demon
birds, cousins to windsickles. Reasonable people knew that
phoenixes were animals — if thieving, nuisance animals.

Whatever its nature, the phoenix was
disappearing around the house's corner. Pushing through unease,
Bhuwan moved his feet, and followed the dragging stringfeathers and
the shine of the diplomat's ownership tag.

The diplomat had purchased a property near
the worst-broken edge of Rice, perched fifteen long strides from
the precipice. The thought of living near such fresh devastation
made most folk nervous. But when Bhuwan first laid eyes on her, she
looked nothing but serene.

She knelt at the cliff's edge beside a
markhor doe — stroking its mane, speaking soundless words to it.
She ran her dark fingers over the goat's fur, and untied the scrap
of gold-stitched fabric that passed for a collar. Then she stepped
back. And she waited.

The goat stood there, warily frozen. It
turned its spiral-horned head and gazed up at the green-tufted
crevices lining the mountain's face. It kept standing there until
some urge seized it: it put one hoof in front of the other and
left. Left the animist, left to climb the cliffsides as goats
naturally did.

The animist stood there, still as a temple
pond, watching the cliffside air where the goat had long since
ceased to be. Whoever the goat had been, it was someone precious to
Atarangi: Bhuwan didn't need to be told as much.

“Hail, animist,” he stammered. With arms
lopsided around the phoenix, he formed namaste. “I've come at a bad
time ... I'm sorry for your loss.”

She turned — and her face was a horrifying
wedge shape, a bird's yellow beak sprawled across her human
features.

But that wasn't her actual flesh, Bhuwan
realized. It was a beak-shaped mask covering the diplomat's nose
and cheekbones, its black, bold outlines mimicked by the Manyori
tattoos on her chin.

Young-looking skin showed around it. She was
either cursed with early-onset traits, or as free-spirited as
everyone said.

“Hail,” she told Bhuwan, returning namaste,
“and thank you. But this isn't a mourning day. I give thanks
because my sister is free.”

Bhuwan had felt like that before. He nodded,
mute.

“And I think this friend would like to be
free,” she said, looking at the phoenix like it was some lap pet
with mange. She approached, speaking with a rush of lungta like
wind through a garden's leaves:

“Please, orange-kin, be calm. I will arrange
your freedom.”

Inexplicably, the phoenix's struggling
stopped. It became just a warm bundle under Bhuwan's arm.

“Yaah ... It must like you,” he
breathed.

She didn't answer: she only smiled. There
was something peculiar about this Atarangi, some mystery hidden
piecemeal under her tongue and in her crinkle-edged eyes.

“You collect phoenixes,” Bhuwan said, “that
is correct? I would like to make a bargain.”

“We can certainly try.”

About the author

Heidi C. Vlach is a resident of northern
Ontario, Canada. She is a chef training graduate and an
overqualified waitress. Video games were her gateway to the fantasy
genre — since her first Nintendo console at age 6 — and she still
enjoys a story-rich video game as much as a good book.

For more information about Heidi and her
books, visit www.heidicvlach.com.