Pyrebound - 13.3
Author: theredsheep

Chapter 13.3 – Pyrebound

Dul Misishi had three exits. The most commonly used was the water-gate, passing out of the harbor and down the Puruar. The common land entrance on the cliffs above was largely irrelevant, a concession to the rare traveler who could neither fly nor bear to ride the river. The third way had not been used in kindlings; it was an underground passage leading from the northeastern fringe of the pyre, through a tangled mess of tunnels whose ore had long run out, and out into the wild mountains beyond the Dominion.

This half-forgotten crack in the earth was guarded by not one but three grated gateways, passing through increasingly long-deserted sections of the pyre. None past the first had been opened for many blooms. The diggings beyond were the remains of an ill-fated attempt to expand the mines—or possibly the original site of Dul Misishi. Nobody remembered which. Either way, they had long since retrenched, and kept the gates locked to give the enemies of mankind the greatest possible encumbrance.

The first grating opened with a little rough persuasion from Dezri and Nishal. The second required a more vigorous effort, plus a generous slather of oil. The third turned out to be made of iron, not bronze, and so corroded and jammed as to be essentially embedded in the surrounding rock.

“You really cocked this one up, you know that?” Imbri told him, as their escort handmaiden set to work burning the recalcitrant doorway loose. “Even by your standards, this is an impressive set of disasters.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ram told her. “So why are you coming?”

“This is something I can help with. I’d rather do something than sit around feeling helpless. Wouldn’t you?” The rusted gate groaned and squealed as the white-hot fire burned through its joints, one by one. The smell was appalling. “Besides, I wanted to get out of here before the situation got any worse. I’ve had enough bad news for now.”

“That you have.” It had taken a full tetrad to escape the pyre, not the mere day he’d anticipated. Zasha wasn’t interested in bargaining with yet another friend of Ram’s, and Piridur had no official powers as a delegate. The result had been a miserable stalemate, as Piridur and his companions hung around the man’s door day in and day out—the Second Sword of Dul Karagi was too distinguished to simply eject without cause, but not so important as to compel real deference. And Ram needed help from Imbri, who refused to assist unless and until they all reached detente.

All the while, fresh and terrible stories kept coming in, by air and water and other, stranger sources. Right after white day, the first alarmed reports confirmed Ram’s story about Dul Atellu, and added a number of colorful details, some of which he knew to be false. By noon on peak day, they heard still wilder tales about Dul Natati, south of Atellu, and Dul Shebnai to its north. That evening, they’d arranged to speak with Shimrun, using Rinti as a mouthpiece, but he could tell them only that Mannagiri had sent off a pair of skybarques on white day, and was selling off the women of High Atellu to moonchildren.

The next day, the waning point of the tetrad, brought reports of riots in Shebnai, an uncontrolled fire in Natati … and, as an afterthought, the little-regarded news that Dul Karagi, far to the south, had deposed its disgraced lugal. At that Piridur had lost all hope for his increasingly pathetic mission, and begged only to be granted passage downriver without delay. This Zasha had willingly granted.

Ram’s situation was much simplified by the flamekeeper’s absence. He had left his two companions behind with strict orders to cleave to Ram and look out for Karagi’s interests, but they had no authority and did not trouble to pretend that they understood the situation. A little coaxing had gotten Zasha to agree to the “loan” of a local handmaiden in exchange for guarantees from the Karagene treasury. Which were worthless, of course; he just wanted to be rid of Ram.

Only those three set out with him and Imbri for their grand bazu embassy. Imbri had judged it inadvisable to take Bal through possible resh territory, and totally refused to even consider bringing Darun. Shazru declined to come, and Ram agreed; there was still plenty of ointment, and Tirnun would buy more if they ran out. The old doctor was doing more good where he was.

The last joint of the ancient grid gave way, and the grate crashed to the tunnel floor. “After you, sir,” said the handmaiden. “The edges will be hot.”

“Thank you, Reppi.” He wasn’t sure that was her name, but she didn’t correct him.

“And you’re sure the nut won’t wonder where you’re off to for all this time?” Imbri asked.

“Shimrun will tell him it’s protracted negotiations or some such. Even if Mannagiri thinks I just ran away, he won’t care.” Once they had all passed through, Ram and Dezri hoisted the grill back up, and Reppi fused it back in place at four points. Just enough to discourage the odd nosy resh from getting closer to the pyre. When it was done, they set out down the tunnel again. It curved downwards, then away to the right. Ram took a Misishin dulsphere—also borrowed—out of his bag, and slung it around his neck. He didn’t know Reppi well enough to feel comfortable trusting her as his sole light source.

“It smells like resh down here,” Dezri said. At least, Ram thought it was Dezri.

“Not strongly,” Imbri said. “One or two might have come snooping tetrads back, found nothing, and left. They won’t stay anywhere without food.”

They moved on in silence. There was no map of these tunnels, but it was generally thought that their exit was lower down. Once they left it, it would presumably be a short trek to the nearest rookery, but once again, nobody knew for sure. Ram led the way, with Imbri’s hand on his shoulder and Beshi drawn in his hand; Busu’s sword was back at the pyre. He’d offered to lend it to one of the flamekeepers, but they kept their cheap iron blades, and kept them drawn.

After forty-five minutes, three dead-ends, and more than a few stumbles and wrong turns, Ram gave up trying to keep a mental map of the convoluted tunnels. Imbri advised following his nose instead, on the grounds that resh-stink would be stronger outside. It paid off; soon enough they caught the pale glimmer of daylight at the bottom of a steep and scree-strewn shaft.

They emerged, blinking, onto a shelf of rock just above a bare streambed. All the world about them was dull and dry, if far from sterile; the far bank of the long-dead stream was covered in catsmoss, much of it black and kurtushi. There was no other life, no sound or movement, not even wind. Grey cliff faces penned in either side of the stream, too steep to climb. Their only choice was to go upstream or down. Ram chose up, to their left.

They marched on in sullen silence, skirting the patches of rotten moss when they could, purging what they couldn’t avoid with short bursts of Reppi’s flames. None of them cared to draw attention to themselves here. By and by the channel grew steeper, punctuated by little shelves that might have once been pretty cataracts, and their pace slowed. When the sun was directly overhead, Ram called a halt to eat, and to consult with Imbri.

She’d brought a trinket very similar to the inductor she’d used to find gates. There was no need to put it in water this time; she only drew it out of her sleeve and hissed at it in Moonchild, and it jerked away up and to their right, to the top of the cliff. For the fiftieth time, Ram tilted back his head, but it was little use—there was nothing to see but sheer rock. He couldn’t tell how far they had to go, the day was wearing on, and he could feel Dezri and Nishal’s eyes on his back.

They’d have three days to get to a rookery and back; even allowing that the return trip downhill would be quicker, he didn’t like to dally. Still the stream ran up, and up, twisting here and there but curving more often than not to the right, wrapping around the side of the mountain. There were no gaps in the cliff, and no path suitable for climbing. Bazuu needed no paths, and reshki did not make them. Not that they saw any reshki—this place was too close to the pyre’s light for them to stay long. All was bare, deserted, and dead.

It was late afternoon when it finally leveled off, and they found themselves on a kind of plateau, a saddle of land between the mountains where the long-dead stream had once had their source in a pond. There was still some fetid water in a little depression at the center, with clumps of weeds around it; all the rest was dust. But Ram didn’t care about the scenery—to the right he finally saw a break in the cliffs, where the mountain’s flanks settled into a steep but broad slope cluttered with rock debris.

And when he craned his neck to look up at the top of that slope, he saw an enormous black cloud hovering over the mountaintop. The sun hadn’t set yet, but Ram could see the twinkle of blue-white lights peeking through it like stars. Nishal and Dezri followed his gaze, and swore in perfect unison.

“We have a handmaiden,” Ram tried, feebly. The flamekeepers—and Reppi—replied with a contemptuous look.

“What is it?” Imbri said.

“Shabti, it looks like. Too many to count, up in the air above the mountain’s peak.”

“What did you expect?” Imbri said. “We’re in bazu country.” She got out her inductor, and it yanked her arm straight up the slope. “It’s there, right? They were bound to keep protection on hand.”

“Protection!” They hadn’t come all that far from Misishi yet; they could still see the pillar of golden fire over the top of the far peak. It was still too far to be any assurance against the darkness.

“It’s a war zone,” she said. “Is there a way up, or do we need to keep going?”

Ram eyed the slope; there was a little meandering channel cut into it, cut by the rains coming down to replenish the foul waters of the pond. “There’s a way, but it’ll be rough.”

“Not a fucking chance,” growled Nishal. “I’m not running up against a fucking army of shabti with just one handmaiden and a moonchild witch. They’ll shred us.” Dezri nodded emphatically.

“Well, I’m going,” Ram said. “I don’t care if you stay here.”

“I don’t think they’ll attack,” said Imbri. “Not in a wave, anyway. We don’t seem like much of a threat, do we?”

“You can’t even see where the damn things are,” Dezri said. “What do you know?”

“More than you do,” Imbri said coolly. “Ready when you are, Ram. I don’t imagine you care to climb up there when night falls. It’s all the same to me, of course.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ram considered; they might have another hour of daylight, or two if they were lucky. There’d be nowhere to camp on that slope. “I think we’d better rest here for the evening.”

“There’s no clean water,” Dezri said.

“I doubt you’ll find any, wherever we camp.” Unless they found actual running water, which didn’t seem likely. “You’re welcome to my share from the stores. That sludge won’t hurt me, or Reppi.” Reppi shot him a dubious look, and pointedly swigged from her own bottle. It was all one to her if all these outsiders dried up and died.

In the end, the grumbling flamekeepers got out their bedrolls. Ram put his next to Imbri’s, so they could talk. “How’d you and the Damadzus get around places like this?” was the first thing he said, when he was sure the others couldn’t hear.

“Our rookeries expected us, or moonchildren, and kept the way clear. This is hostile territory, they won’t bother with all that.”

“Right.” He paused, wondering if he dared, then decided he did: “Did you grow up in one of those? The friendly rookeries?” He’d contained his curiosity five whole days, after all.

Imbri sighed. “I have no idea, Ram. I got booted out when I was seven or eight.”

“There was a coup. The abizu who made me got displaced, and the new master liquidated all its old projects. Mom and I got foisted off on another rookery, then sold. I don’t remember a lot of the details.”

“Made you? You’re not human?”

“Of course I’m human, asshole. I just said I had a mother. They didn’t do anything to change that. They only worked on my eyes, ears, and throat.”

“Oh.” He knew he shouldn’t ask, but … “Why?”

Imbri growled, deep in her throat. “For lots of reasons. Want to hear a few? Because ordinary humans, even moonchildren, can’t speak bazu right, and my abizu felt like changing that. Because my ears would work better without eyesight to distract me. Because it had killed plenty of adults trying, and now it had a pregnant woman to start from scratch with.”

“Because Mom was young and stupid, and got left behind when a raid went bad. Because a captured moonchild woman’s only good for one thing around a hearth. Because moonchildren don’t like their women bearing the Dominion’s bastards, willingly or not. Because—”

“All right! All right. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Yes, and I didn’t tell you. Which should have been your clue that I didn’t want to tell you. But you asked, and here we are.”

“But … why are we here? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have you along. There’s no way I could get this done alone, and I know it. Thank you. But what are you hoping to get out of it?”

“I need something to do, Ram. And there’s only one thing I’m good at.”

“Yes. You see. And that’s what makes all the difference. You can do a lot of things, even though you’re just some shit-kicker hearth kid nobody wants around. I have a job I’ve been doing for five blooms, and I do it well, and I’m smarter than just about anyone else who does it, but I’m useless at everything else. I’m baggage. And I don’t like being baggage. Baggage has a way of getting thrown away, whether it’s humans or bazuu who do the throwing.

“I can’t afford to fight for desperate causes, when I can barely cross the street without help. You’ve screwed my life up, and you’ve screwed up everything else, but I can’t afford to be insulted, either. I have to take the offers as they come, without the luxury of pride. I’m lucky; hearth-kids like me wind up in the gien.”

“What for, though? Didn’t you have some kind of long-term goal you were working towards, all that time you were raking in money?” She struck him as far too sensible to be running about aimlessly like Darun.

“Not since I was fifteen. A little after Dad bought me, I had this great idea where I could save up money and buy a house somewhere, so I could be a well-to-do lady with an herb garden and lots of servants to do all the things she couldn’t. Then I realized no pyre in the Dominion would accept me. I had other plans, and they all died too. So I stopped planning.”

“Then, you expected to keep running around making deals to … keep running around making deals? Until you were an old lady and couldn’t even do that?”

“Shazru did the same thing. The alternative was suicide, which sounded awfully painful. And, believe it or not, a blind girl’s life is worth living.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.” Imbri looked doubtful, but didn’t answer. It struck him, as he looked at that face, that she wasn’t really ugly—only weird-looking. She was probably smarter than he was. And if she wasn’t exactly kind, she was at least more honest than most anyone else he’d met since he left home. Ram felt a sudden, desperate, guilty, ridiculous yearning for a totally different world, where he could have made her happy. “Do you want your eyes back? I know it sounds silly, but we could make it happen.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it, Ram. But no, thank you. I don’t want to be indwelt.”

“Why not? I know there are drawbacks, but it would give you all the security you want, and people would respect you. Think it over.”

“Oh, I have. I have. I’m not too vain to switch being dependent one way for being dependent another way, or to pretend that it wouldn’t be an improvement. But in the end … no. I couldn’t.”

“Can you understand that I’m a moonchild? I’m a bastard, and they threw me out twice, but I’m still a moonchild if I’m anyone at all. I know blackbands aren’t supposed to have a conscience, and I know I said I couldn’t afford pride. But I do try to have principles. And one of mine is that I don’t live in the firelight. No pyre would have me, and I wouldn’t have them either. Not at the price of living their way.”

Now Ram felt more annoyed than anything else. “Principles, huh? When you were trading with the Damadzus, did you know what Lashantu was doing with all the stuff he bought from you?”

“Yes, I did. It made me glad I wasn’t hearthless. You should be glad too. Every day, hundreds or thousands of people die worse deaths than you will, with worse lives beforehand, and without nearly as many people caring. I can’t save them all, and I won’t lose sleep trying. I can only live my own life, my own way.” She yawned. “Speaking of sleep! I’m done for the day, Ram. That was one hell of a walk we took today, and I’m out of shape. Good night.”

She was sleeping peacefully a moment later, butRam sat up in bed for a long time, keeping watchfor monsters by the dim light of his dulsphere. The black cloud of shabti still sparkled with malicious blue light at the crest of the mountain. He should have expected to see it here; he’d been warned.

When war came to Misishi, just such a black cloud would roll over the mountains, raining down shapeless shadows at the edge of the pyrelight. Then the forces of Kur would storm the tunnels, to cause as much damage as they could before murrush, fire and sword could destroy them. There were no campaigns across this border, no fixed seasons for bloodshed, only a constant vigil for the telltale murk on the horizon. Assaults were rare but brutal, and came in no consistent pattern. It was the price humanity had to pay for iron.

Everybody did what they had to.