The Spice Gate, page 38
Kalay took a deep breath and ignored his taunts as she spoke. “In the beginning, yes, the Spice Trade was the key to my mission. In the caverns of Ilom, we do not just wield talwars and raise war cries and offer prayers. Gates know, enough people in Illindhi believe that. No. We also learn. The Mouth teaches us the lay of the land, the rules of the nine kingdoms, the sacred duty bestowed upon Illindhi, and how things must be structured for a future to be sustained. The priests in whom the Mouth has instilled the scriptures, the thronekeepers and the warriors who maintain order and equity, the merchants who conduct the Spice Trade, and the velayas who perform the menial tasks. And finally, you—whose duty is to traverse the Spice Gates, the child of the Mouth, the one who has been gifted to see the eight kingdoms while the others must remain confined to where they were born.” Amir winced at his implied relationship to the Mouth. Kalay did not notice. “The Mouth deemed these social functions necessary for civilization to flourish. So yes, Amir—the Spice Trade does concern me. But more so than the trade—do you really think there was a world that existed before the Gates? Every part of the realm you see around the nine kingdoms—the balance, the peace, a continuation of life unhindered by corruption—everything is because the Mouth deemed it so. It was creation, and it will be the end. They are life, Amir of Raluha. Our philosophies, our education, our values—they all stem from the Mouth. It is not merely a vehicle to carry our prayers and provide blessings at its will. It has always been more; it is the thread that runs across the tapestry that sprawls through the nine kingdoms.”
How was she evading the truth? Amir did not give in. “When a million people decide those values and philosophies must include my suffering, then I’m sorry, I do not think it is a case of misinterpretation. You saw the Black Coves. You heard the royals in the court of Rani Zariba speak. You saw the city beneath the city of Talashshukh. You heard the ivory traders forbidding me from entering the temple of the Mouth. Do you think they are all misinformed? That eight kingdoms are suffering from some collective delusion?”
Kalay picked up a pebble and stared at its surface. A moment later, she hurled it out of their little cave. It bounced once before rolling beneath a leaf. Her mind seemed washed of the teachings she’d once harbored during the hours she had spent with Madhyra in Illindhi. Here, now, she was purely the acolyte, raised by Mahrang, outsider to the lives of the normal people of the kingdoms.
“Everyone talks about peace, balance, equality,” Amir said. “But you know what? I don’t see any of it. So spare me your twisted theories of how the Spice Gates have maintained balance and avoided war. It’s what the abovefolk like you tell yourself to get a good night’s sleep.”
Kalay clenched her fists. “That doesn’t mean you deny your duty.”
Amir laughed. “I have done nothing but my duty. I have shown up at the Gates every single day, with a sack on my back, and gone where I was asked to and come back with yet another sack on my back. Where is my due? Where is the Bowl’s due? Why does my family get ostracized? Why do we not get the same spices that I work so hard to carry everywhere? Why is my allowance lower than the allowance of a merchant in the bazaar? Why can we not bathe in the public baths? Why are we not allowed to rub shoulders with the abovefolk? Why is our very skin considered polluted? Why must we clean your toilets and wash your shit with our bare hands if we’ve done our duties? Show me where is the equality and balance you claim.”
Kalay looked away and stared into the fire before muttering something incomprehensible. When Amir leaned forward to listen better, she raised her voice to a whisper. “You carry the sins of your previous birth.”
“Ha!” Amir clapped his hands. “I can tell from your voice that even you do not fully believe those words. Gah! Born into the gatecaste if I was a sinner in my previous life. Do you even hear yourself? And if it is indeed true, you just called being a Carrier a gift that you would kill to possess.” He shook his head. “I can’t bring myself to believe in scriptures that are full of such contradictions.”
“Don’t you dare insult the scriptures!” Kalay said, her voice rising. She glared at him from across the fire.
“Why not? What do I have to lose? My life? You’d take that anyway. Besides, I don’t even know why you’ve kept me alive these last three days in the Outerlands. I got you out of Mesht; you ought to have just disposed of me once we passed the fences of Amarohi. Even now, knowing the Mouth is sending its Immortal Sons after us, you have not yet killed me. Because I can see how this has all been very bothersome for you. Don’t tell me it’s gratitude. In the face of the Spice Gates being brought to rubble, what’s my little act of rowing a gondola to give you a vial of the Poison? No, Kalay, your hypocrisy is glaring.”
She looked at him, agape at his venom.
He was breathing hard, he realized. Softening his tone, he asked, “Do you think we bowlers have not been discriminated against because we’re gatecaste?”
Kalay was clearly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was heading. Cautiously, she delivered each word like they were conceived during the act of speaking, “No, that is not what I think. But breaking the Spice Gates cannot be the solution. You are jeopardizing the lives of millions of people. Millions. This is not about you or me, or our beliefs and our problems and our castes. The Mouth reigns over nine kingdoms and all its peoples. Tell me how the Raluhans will react when they wake up one morning and discover that they are never going to get ginger in their tea again.”
“Sounds like a regular day in the Bowl,” Amir muttered.
“I was giving an example.” Kalay grew steadily impatient. “It’s more than just ginger, though, isn’t it? Lives are dependent on the Spice Trade. And when you deny a livelihood to people, they will rise to rebel. They will crumble as a civilization.”
“You don’t know that,” said Amir. “Besides, what is the solution? What can you say or do that will promise us the life we bowlers deserve to live? None of them were clearly happy with the idea of the Black Coves.”
“I-I don’t know.”
Amir pointed a finger at her. “That’s right—you don’t. Nobody does, or even wants to find out. Things are just perfect the way they are. Carriers trudge through the trail, bringing you your heart’s desires. There’s never going to be a solution unless we snatch it out from where they cannot be otherwise found. The thronekeepers and their ministers have the perfect story—that there is no life outside the fences and the kingdoms. The Outerlands cannot be entered or crossed. For there is death. There are the Immortal Sons that prowl the wilderness, and there is a Whorl around the sea of Jhanak, impenetrable marshland around Mesht, and deep, black bogs beyond Kalanadi.”
“They’re not wrong,” Kalay protested.
Amir inhaled sharply. “No, they are not, but that is precisely more evidence that the Mouth wants things to be the way they have always been. By placing the Immortal Sons in the Outerlands, it has ensured its so-called children will always remain ostracized in the eight kingdoms. To me, the Mouth is no different from the abovefolk.
“However, it has failed to account for one thing—our ability to imagine a new life. My father did it. He crossed the fences into the Outerlands and became a part of a community. He was not the first. He won’t be the last. He proved the thronekeepers wrong. And if that is not example enough, you can always look closer to home.”
Kalay ignored the last part. “So that’s why you’re here. You wish to find your father.”
Amir chuckled, surprised at how quickly the pain of knowing his father’s story had diminished, to be replaced by something purer, something that he could hold on to for the rest of his life. “My father died trying to get Madhyra through the Outerlands. And you know what? It was probably his bravest act in life.”
Here was, Amir imagined, something he shared with Kalay. Two people, wandering the Outerlands, carrying the faint whispers of their fathers. He had restrained himself from building a mound for his father beside Fylan’s. He had to know. Kalay looked apologetic, as though she had not expected this commonality.
She dropped her talwar, clutched the sides of her head, and shut her eyes. “I am sorry about your father, but you must realize that this is the consequence of this madness that has consumed you, as it has consumed my aunt.”
“I am here because the Mouth has forced me to chase after Madhyra and stop her. Even here, in the place I imagine my people could live freely, I am enslaved to your god.”
“Gates, you’re impossible,” cried Kalay. “At one point, I hoped you would see how not stopping her would bring the Uyirsena down upon your people. I had hoped you had rescued me from Mesht for that reason. Now . . .” She sounded exasperated, and yet, so close to following through on the threat hanging from her lips. “I don’t know why I let you come with me.”
Amir saw her eye the talwar. She would pick it up, and nothing he could do or say would dissuade her. Perhaps he ought to have created a mound for himself beside Fylan’s.
The following moment, however, she sighed, crawled out of their hole, and stormed away.
“Where are you going?” Amir called out.
“I need some air,” Kalay shouted back. “Good riddance to you if the Immortal Sons take me out.”
Amir rested against a branch that wound like a vein within the mound. His head hurt. He missed Amma. While in any of the eight kingdoms on duty, Amir knew he was always a sprinkle of spice and a leap into the veil away from returning home. But here, in the Outerlands, he was suddenly farther from home than he’d ever been. He felt younger. Unprepared. Alone. Karim bhai had crossed the Whorl and into an unknown realm; Kabir was on the spice trail, carrying crates of perfumes; and Amma, back in Raluha, was about to nurse a newborn. From an unknown father. How would she take it if she knew Appa had tried to return but couldn’t? That he had died only a fortnight ago at the hands of a beast like the one that circled the skies?
Gates, his head hurt.
And the more the pain seeped in, the more determined he was. The Mouth be cursed, the Bowl had had enough. At one point, he admitted, he did think about what Kalay had said. Destroying the Spice Gates would mean stopping forever the flow of goods from one kingdom to another. The Spice Trade would collapse. There would be no spices except those that were produced in their own respective kingdoms. Was that even fair? Until then, he had thought of nobody but himself and the Bowl all this while. But then he had realized with a stab in his heart—that not all the abovefolk deserved what Madhyra would be imposing on them. Not all of them were like Hasmin, even if a lot of them were. There were folks like Harini, people who strove to build a better life for the bowlers but had always been outmatched, outmaneuvered by those who swore by the scriptures.
By merely standing by and letting Madhyra go, Amir would be snatching the turmeric out of people’s milk, cloves from their teeth, ginger from their teas, and pepper from their salves. He imagined a plate of biryani without nutmeg and mace, and even the mere thought of it had sent a rush of bile up his throat. Disgusting! He had to think beyond food, but he hadn’t been able to, not then.
The thought now gleamed around him like spilled milk. Harini had been ready. She was prepared to break the world. Worry about the consequences later.
Perhaps Amir could too. In his own way. By resisting the Mouth. By not moving forward after Madhyra but returning to the eight kingdoms. Madhyra would succeed; he had to believe in it. And if—when—she did, nothing else would matter. Not the Mouth, not the Immortal Sons. Not the Uyirsena setting off for their sacred cleansing.
Your bones wish for you to wait. Gates, he was exhausted.
He didn’t realize when he fell asleep. The fear of the Immortal Sons—Kishkinda and Kuka—seeped into his flesh, weakening him.
When he woke up, the cold gnawed at his skin. He couldn’t say for how long he’d slept, but the edges of the first light crept beneath the treetops. He’d slept through the night. Of Kalay, there was no sign. Had she been away all night?
A good time to leave.
He scrambled to pack up his belongings. The fire had died out. He picked up Mahrang’s shamshir and crawled out of the hole.
No sooner had he stepped out than Kalay returned. Frantic. Terrified. A gust of air followed in her wake, leaves billowing in the wind, clinging to her like she were a pillar on which ivy grew.
“We need to move,” she said as she broke into the mound. She kicked the last embers of the fire and placed a roof of leaves to tunnel the smoke. “We made a mistake with the fire. Kishkinda smelled it. It knows we’re camped here.”
“But how will it—”
The answer came to Amir almost immediately. Following the harsh blowing of the wind, as Amir got to his feet, all at once, a hundred birds shot out of the forest, bursting through the treetops in a cacophonous tumble. They circled the sky over the canopy before swirling around and flying away in the direction of the river.
“Come on,” Kalay urged. “We need to get to the river.”
Amir wanted to turn around. Leave.
“What? That doesn’t make sense. We should stay hidden.”
Kalay shook her head, sounding fearful for the first time. “Not unless you wish to be burned to death. We need to be in the open, preferably closer to water.”
Amir did not understand what she meant. He glanced back—at the way they had come—but if she was right, then the river was a better option than being charred to death. A double-back could be done later. Quietly, he followed her, engulfed in the rage of the storm. Each moment, the cold deepened, and the leaves continued to billow in the wind, and soon the air was full—an endless swirl of dust, and pebble, and leaf, all of it ensconced in a breeze that smelled starkly of saffron.
Home.
When they breached the tree line and emerged onto the banks, Amir was at first glad to not see any sign of the Immortal Son. There was no sign of daylight, yet he knew that if this had been a normal day, the sun would have risen by now. His eyes were glued to the skies. Far upriver, where the forest was still an infant and the mountains to the east were a scratch mark on the horizon, the skies had turned a shocking gray. They bordered on black, boils of lightning cracking within, sending slivers of white scars across the clouds.
The storm approached with a frightening pace the part of the river where Amir and Kalay had emerged. And within that storm, the Immortal Son, Kishkinda, was cocooned.
The forest and riverbank became a shade darker in a matter of seconds, as though dawn had decided to sleep a while longer and return night to its post. It began to drizzle.
At the same time, a hollow, eerie wind blew toward the river—an echo of a soundless kill or the silent scream of the dead—and it was carrying in its wake a cloud of mud and dust and all the detritus of dropped leaves and scrunched twigs and pebbles that scarred the face and bit the eyes.
The wind blasted against Amir and Kalay. Amir lost his footing. He found the instinct to dig his feet into the wet riverbank and covered his eyes with his wrist. Kalay was already employing a similar strategy. It felt like standing on the edge of the mountain of Illindhi. Such was the wind’s ferocity that, before long, Amir was being pushed back toward the river.
From the corner of his eye, Amir glimpsed a great cyclone upon the river, approaching from the east, so close now he could taste the acidic wetness of it, the jolting embrace of the air as it attempted to lift him up into its vortex of cloud and rain and pungent air and the stoppage of time.
Kalay, behind him, was shouting, but Amir barely heard her. Words had lost meaning. How long ago was their training duel? His bag began to slip off his shoulder. He tried to pull it back up over his arm. It slipped again. He gritted his teeth and closed his fist over the strap and held on.
A hand fell on his shoulder. Soft, pebbled, and sandy. Kalay. She grabbed a fistful of his tunic.
The next second he was yanked back. The forest detached from his vision.
His feet left the banks. The Immortal Son swooping down from the east joined with the storm. Amir found himself blown into the river. When he hit the water, the coldness of it crushed him numb. It clogged every pore of his body and froze his muscles. Surely, death was but a few breaths away. But the constant movement, the tumbling underwater, the scrapes and cracks as he brushed against the riverbed as he was being drawn farther down the current kept him from focusing on any one sensation.
When he resurfaced, it was for half a second, and he faced not the river current churning downhill but the wall of lightning-cracked storm that had caught up to them from uphill. He was moving downriver at a blistering pace, the forest falling behind as though he were riding on the back of a very fast wagon. The sky had all but blackened, and Amir’s vision beheld nothing but the dazzling spire of wind and dust and death, with those sinewy scars of white light that broke the sky every few seconds. He frantically pulled himself up, but the river was neither letting him drown nor giving him the weight he needed to float. He flailed, submerged, rose up again. The river meandered and fell, and from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Kalay’s bobbing head drifting farther away from him downriver.
The Immortal Son was upon him now, and the darkness was absolute. Through the lightning-embattled storm, the two wings jutted out, streaks of crimson slashed across a tormented sky. Scaly, with gleaming ruby cabochons embedded in its flesh that pulsated with each breath of the storm. If the creature had a head, it was within the embroidered wall of the typhoon, and when Kishkinda roared, its voice broke out of the storm in a vibrating crescendo, casting the river into a tumult.
Amir wanted to control the direction in which he sailed, but the pull of the current was too strong. Water crushed him each time it nudged him toward the banks. Overhead, he saw into the eye of the winged storm, a canvas of treacherous beauty, shades of black scratched on the sky, torn and wrinkled, and air swirling beneath it in a tempest of dust.
The Immortal Son smelled of ash and leaf and saffron.
“Watch out!” he heard Kalay yell before her voice was garbled underwater.
