Pyrebound - 7.4
Author: theredsheep

Chapter 7.4 – Pyrebound

They returned to the house to find a war in progress in the sitting-room. A foot-tall ceramic abizu, garishly painted with outstretched wings, was perched atop the table, holding court over a dozen underling bazuu in plain white clay. It was clear to Ram that whoever made them had never actually seen any kind of bazu, and was going off third-hand rumor at best.

On the floor below the bazuu, a horde of black shabti and mounted moonchildren menaced a small clump of militia, handmaidens, and two murrush. The odds appeared poor to Ram, but the outcome was hardly in doubt; at the moment they entered, Tirnun’s five-bloom-old son was guiding a guerrilla force of flamekeepers up over the table’s edge.

The combat was quick and brutal. In short order the abizu was knocked flat on its back by the largest flamekeeper, and all the bazuu were cast over the cliff. It was unclear whether the reshki on the rug at the bottom were there to eat their bodies, or just forgotten leftovers from a previous fight. Given his parentage, the boy was unlikely to ever get any closer to combat, and would still have much the same conception of war when he was twenty.

The boy’s mother had settled on the couch with Ram’s to fuss over baby Zemni; Tirnun’s toddler daughter hovered resentfully at her side, scowling at the interloper. Mother looked up as Ram came in. He’d stopped to change into fresh clothes, but Beshi’s sheath had disintegrated, and he had no replacement. Mother frowned at the bare blade hanging from his side by a loop of cord; Ram shook his head very slightly, and she said nothing. Tirnun was too busy bouncing Zemni on her knee to notice anything.

“Mother,” Ram said, trying to speak calmly, “did Darun say anything about where she was going, when she left this morning?”

“Check the common hall, Ram,” Tirnun suggested, still bouncing his little brother. “White day is theater day, and my sister likes company.”

That was one way of putting it. “You put on shows on white days?”

“Why not? We’ve nothing else to do. The hall’s a quarter mile to the left on the Temple side. How was your mine tour, by the way?”

“Went fine,” Father said from beside him. “Learned a whole lot.” He reached out casually with his arm to block Ram as he turned to leave. “I know you’re pissed, and you got a right,” he said quietly, “but don’t do nothing stupid, eh? That crazy little two-faced bitch is still the only help you got.”

“I know, Father. I won’t.” Father nodded, and dropped his arm. Ram looked to Bal, but found him looking as oblivious as he had in the mines. Whatever humanity he’d found within himself over the past month had seemingly disappeared the moment they were attacked in the mines. He was extremely conspicuous, and for all Ram knew extremely dangerous in his current state. Better to leave him behind.

He made his way down the stairs and across the foyer, pausing again at the door. If Bal was too recognizable, a Teshalun-style flamekeeper’s sword was even worse. And he wasn’t (yet) planning to use it on Darun. Over its furious protests, Ram took Beshi out of its makeshift holder and leaned it against the wall.

“Quit complaining,” he told it. “It’s not like anybody’s going to steal you.” Now he was only a large young man in common clothes.

A quarter mile from the Temple light was close enough to make the walk to the hall more tolerable than it might have been. It had the same half-buried appearance as the Temple and Tegnembassaga; the outdoor portion of the building was mostly tall windows, to let the daylight in. The road actually passed through it, with doors on either side and a shaded porch on the end with mooring points for boats.

To Ram’s surprise, there was nobody at the door charging for entry. There’d been no charge at Urapu, but performances at Urapu were put on by a random selection of five or six men Enbisu the acolyte had strong-armed into acting out, with minimal rehearsal, whatever sacred epic he had a mind to read aloud in his quavering voice that day. Nobody in their right mind would have paid to watch, and the small audiences they did attract only came because they had no better entertainment available.

Dul Karagi had multiple professional and amateur performing troupes, who put on shows at the common hall or at select venues about the pyre. The price at the door was generally quite steep, so Ram had never bothered to tag along with the few militiamen who expressed a fondness for theater. Now, as he stepped into the back of the hall, Ram got a taste of what he’d been missing.

The hall was three hundred feet long and fifty wide, the nearer two-thirds of it presently crammed with standing crowds of miners and their families. From the elevated platform at the far end, a tall man in a flamekeeper’s gear stood and declaimed, “Now where are all the men who swore their swords? What came of noble words and pledged vows? A tetrad past I had ten score in arms, but half have fled, the rest to treachery turned.”

At least three similarly dressed men lay on the stage around him; the backdrop was illuminated with a shining panorama of a pyre by moonlight, as it might look from atop a high building. Ram thought back to the girls in Erimana’s class, painting dancers on the walls. They had been new at the art—Ram was sure he would be able to see individual people walking the streets, if he got a little closer.

Temmizan the Faithful. It hadn’t been nearly so interesting when it was just Enbisu prompting a set of off-duty illiterates with their lines as they stood against a bare brick wall. This would be near the end; the conqueror worm parasite had turned most of Temmizan’s army against him, and now he stood alone on the roof of his palace waiting for his bazu-controlled allies to come and kill him.

He tried to find a way forward through the crowd, as much to get a better view of the stage as to try and spot Darun. There was a bit of space by the left wall, and he made the most of it. As he did, another man came on stage. Rengimenka? Ram thought that was his name. Temm’s cousin and lieutenant, the first to be infected.

“Bold Temmizan, most honorable and wise! Here all is ended, but I will salute you with the honors which your rank demands, and beg that you will learn from what has passed. It was no bazu craft that worked your end—no spirit from beyond forced Telibiz, or Manaram, or many other friends, who often shared your table and your bread, to turn against their master and their race.”

“I saw you die,” Temmizan retorted. “How is it that you speak? Leave off your lies, you bastard spawn of Kur, and let my kinsman rest in sunlit peace.”

Through a judicious use of his elbows and a lot of halfhearted apologies, Ram made his way sideways and forward. He wouldn’t have gotten away with it at the start of the day, but it was getting on in the afternoon. Most of these people had been here a long time, their interest waning. And it was still white day. But he couldn’t find Darun.

“So, you would have me dead? How brotherly. No wonder Telibiz ran from the field before he took a single casualty. And Martu? He was free and uncompelled, when he exchanged your brothers’ lives for gold—“

Temmizan drew his sword and charged. The fight wasn’t very convincing to Ram, but then he had seen (and fought) real ones. Most of these people probably hadn’t. He took advantage of their sudden distraction to shove and sidle his way halfway up the hall. Close enough to see the little flashes of light in the backdrop clearly—handmaidens waging a desperate war against shabti and infected men. A nice touch.

In an alcove on the right side of the room, a handmaiden stood watch over a massive iron cauldron, presumably heating the contents from within. A number of men on that side of the room were casting glances in her direction—the play was near its end. Presumably food would be served at the intermission. Ram hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and wondered how much they charged per bowl. If he was looking for Darun, he might as well start looking in that direction as any other.

He found her—or someone with very similar hair—standing near the stage, close enough to reach out and touch the platform. The crowd was especially tight-packed there, and Ram didn’t care to try pushing through. They would push back, harder. Instead he remained where he was, midway between the center of the hall and the cauldron, to keep one eye on Darun, one on the play, and the better part of his mind on whatever was in the pot. It smelled savory—daybroth?

The play ended roughly as he remembered it, with Temmizan defeating his lieutenant, only to hesitate when the time came for the deathblow. His mercy cost him his life, as a “horde” of six wormhead men swarmed the stage and overwhelmed him. Only when he was dead did his treacherous subordinates lead the counterattack that saved the pyre. Rengimenka, mortally wounded and released from bazu control, gave himself and his cousin a joint eulogy, then died so the chorus of handmaidens could come onstage and sing the epilogue. None of them, Ram noted, were actually indwelt, not that he’d have expected as much.

The bulk of the crowd was already drifting towards the alluring alcove. Ram was inclined to join them, but spared a glance for Darun first. She remained where she was, letting the Misishin flow around her (and probably dipping her hands into the odd pocket). But she wasn’t alone; four men in the crowd around her were also staying put. Four equally-spaced men, he saw, with one on either side and two behind her. All four had pocket-knives. And none of them were paying much attention to the stage.

Plenty of men stared at Darun, but he’d never known them to coordinate it like that. Old foes with a grudge from four blooms back, who happened to be together here today and recognize her? He didn’t think so. Not when he’d had someone offer to pay nicely for her death barely an hour ago.

In moments, the women would wrap up their ponderous dirge, the play would be over, and the audience would transfer the last of their attention to the chow line. And then? The four men had her surrounded, but there was no sign that she’d noticed them. There’d be plenty of ambient noise, as men and women who’d been silent for hours took the opportunity to talk.

Whatever the men were planning, it would happen quickly. And it would be … what was the word Zasha had used? “Plausible.” Very plausible. She had to have made enemies here, before she left, and besides, who cared what happened to a blackband girl? They conducted their sordid business at their own risk. All four men would be long gone before anyone found out who her sister was.

Damn her, anyway. He had no weapons, no help, no time. He was on orders to stay out of trouble, and to let her die, from a man who held his whole family hostage. He didn’t like her, and now less than ever, but Father was right; he couldn’t do anything without her. She was a reckless, crazy, troublemaking bitch, but she was all he had. And if Ram’s situation was her fault for bringing them here, her being here was his fault for asking for help. They were even now, sort of.

It didn’t matter, anyway. Ram didn’t know what kind of pathetic excuse for a man would take money to kill a woman, but he rated only slightly lower than the kind of man who stood by and let it happen. And the spirit inside him agreed.

He made himself move closer to the thug on the left behind her. It wasn’t easy to kill a man outright with bare hands, or pocket knives, and Zasha’d said his spirit would heal any lesser injury. But that was little comfort. It meant there was no practical limit to how long the four men could hurt him.All four of them were big, with the kind of build you’d expect on a lifelong miner. All but one were bigger than Ram.

With the amount of jostling and shoving going on, the man in front of him had no reason to pay attention when one more hand brushed against his side. He was too focused on Darun to even notice when his knife slid out of its sheath. Ram was gone an instant later, following the natural drift of the crowd to likewise rob the man on the right. It was his first time stealing, but it was hard to travel with Darun for a month and not get some feel for how it was done.

Now they were halfway through the final stanza, starting the descant. No more time. He bulled through the crowd straight for Darun, and threw an arm around her waist. “Hey!” he said, far louder than necessary. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” Startled, she turned to say something, her lips parting. So he kissed her.

These men plainly wanted to avoid attention, and there were few better ways of attracting eyes than necking with a pretty, barefaced girl in a black sash. He didn’t enjoy it too much to reach down, grab her hand, and press one of the knives into it. “You’re in trouble,” he murmured as he broke away. “Four—“

“I know,” she breathed back, leaning in for quick second kiss.

Not so oblivious after all. “Come on,” he bellowed, “let’s get some food!” And he virtually dragged her off towards the cauldron, where the crowd was thickest, and there was less room to swing a knife or a fist. Away from the four men. But first they had to get past the brute to Darun’s right, who’d planted himself in their path. “Excuse us there, friend!”

He didn’t say anything, only shoved Ram back. Ram made to swerve around him; he sidestepped to block them again. Darun broke free, and tried to scamper past his right flank instead. He lunged for her, leaving Ram free to slip around his left and very deliberately snap-kick him in the knee. His boots were scorched, but they were still the same iron-fitted gear that had done for Kamenrag months earlier, and the man roared as he let Darun go.

“Get your kurtushi hands off my woman!” Ram yelled over him. Behind them, two of his friends were only now missing their knives, while the third struggled to catch up. They couldn’t afford delays. Ram grabbed Darun’s free hand and stomped off in exaggerated dudgeon, and the Misishin obligingly got out of his way.

Except for two of them—a pair of men with militia badges on their chests, headed straight in their direction from the cauldron alcove. No doubt to detain him for assault. Ram hesitated; pyre officials might protect them, and Zasha might be forced to smooth over a mere sprained knee to please his wife. But the troopers also might just tie him up in an argument, and look the other way while the other three men did their job.

He’d just decided to bolt for the back of the room when one of the thugs caught up, tore Darun from his grasp, and threw her to the floor. Ram rushed him, knocking him sideways into his friend, but dropped his stolen knife in the process. Darun only got halfway up before the fourth man arrived, knocking her back down and straddling her as he drew his own blade. Ram’s boot crashed into his tailbone, and he yelped—but then Ram hit the floor under more than two hundred pounds of miner muscle.

Ram tried to roll as he fell, and throw the man off. It didn’t quite work, but they wound up in a tangle on their sides. The miner grabbed at his hair, and yanked him in for a clinch; Ram gasped with the pain, but kneed the man in the stomach. The miner let go—just in time for his friend to rush in and kick Ram in the face. Something in Ram’s skull cracked, and he fell over on his back in a daze. Then there were two men on top of him, free to stomp and kick as they pleased, while Ram could only throw up his arms to shield his head. After a few kicks, he couldn’t even do that, only twist and cringe under the blows until they abruptly stopped.

He looked up through the haze in his head to see Darun hanging off the arms of two women from the crowd, both her eyes black, a fresh cut oozing red from temple to chin. But alive, conscious even. Probably feeling a good deal better than Ram. And not just two, but five or six men with badges stood watch over the whole scene, rebuking people he couldn’t quite see with words he couldn’t quite hear.

Now, he hoped, came another miracle, another burst of heat to make him right. But the time passed, long and slow, to the throbbing drumbeat of his pulse through his skull, before he felt the faintest trickle of warmth in his chest. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Like a frightened mouse venturing out from a hole in the wall, the power took a few tenuous steps away from his heart, easing the pain ever so slightly before retreating and disappearing.

In its wake it left a sudden and far stronger shock of cold, a deep hungry void in his chest that forced him up to his knees in spite of every ache and bruise. It was the tail end of summer in a crowded room, but he shivered—shivered—with the terrible frigid emptiness inside him.

He was in no shape to think matters through clearly. But he remembered now with longing the time he had spent next to the murrush in the tunnel, and the heat of the handmaiden’s fire rushing through him. The haranu had done all it could, in an alien land far from the nourishment of the fire that bore it; now it was hungry. And there was only one source of food here for either of them. He could hear it calling him from the side of the room.

How many people were going to stand in his way? He staggered and stumbled past them, shrugging off helping hands and slapping arms aside, until he stood before the cauldron. Everything else—the room, the people, even the sparkling light in the handmaiden’s heart—was grey and indistinct beside the radiant heat that churned inside it. Ram reached out with both hands to grab the rim, found himself falling forward to catch himself on it as he did.

It burned, but only for a second, and his need was stronger than the pain. He held on, ignoring a chorus of shouts and screams, gripping tight with his hands half submerged in boiling broth so they couldn’t drag him away, and the heat poured into his veins with a blessed fury. He arched his back and hissed with mingled pain and bliss as it worked its way through him, restoring order to his outraged flesh in an instant.

When it was done and he was whole, he held on a second longer, blinking and looking around to recover his bearings. He felt as if he had taken a very long sleep, and noticed with some distaste that his hands were clutching cold iron. He let go at once, and paid no mind to the blithering handmaiden—didn’t she have better things to do? She’d let the soup go cold.

The masses parted neatly for him as he made his way back, giving him twice the space he needed. The spirit laughed inside him. It was right, it seemed to say, for them to be afraid. Ram was a dreadful creature now, with the strength to break them and the courage to do it without hesitation. His eyes darted about as he walked, looking for anyone brave or stupid enough to meet his gaze. But he found none.

The blackband girl was waiting for him, still battered and bleeding, but looking less fearful than the women supporting her. The trembling militiamen fell back in silence. Most timid of all were the four men they were guarding. They’d been worked over already, from the looks of them, by soldiers’ clubs. Now they were in for far worse; he knew one blow to the chest would crush their hearts inside them.

The girl shook off her minders, took a few limping steps forward, laid a hand flat against his chest. Was she trying to stop him? He had half a mind to beat her down—but no, said the spirit inside him. It was wrong to strike women. Against purpose. Better to step past her (she hardly had the speed or the power to stop him) and destroy the threat. The challengers, who thought they could beat him and walk away.

“Ram,” Darun said softly. “Your family is waiting.”

His family. The fire in his heart did not subside, exactly, but something in the phrase awoke his memory, and moved his mind from his most immediate and brutal needs. He told the spirit to stop, and it was not willing, but it knew he was master, at least for now. And he, the master, said they were done here. He took her hand off his chest, and held it in both of his for a long moment. Then he turned, and led her out of the hall unhindered. It was time to go home.