The Spice Gate, page 42
As for Kalay, there were no tracks Amir could identify. He had neither the skill nor the patience of a hunter or a tracker. He merely followed the map and prayed that they were headed in the right direction. Kalay would not have forgotten.
Gates, the more he thought of her, the more unsettled he felt. A niggle in his stomach. One thing was certain: there would be no pleasantries exchanged between them if they met again. Nothing Amir carried—either in his soul or in his bag—would atone for the shattering of trust.
Wasn’t much to begin with, in your defense.
It didn’t matter if, like Kalay, he wanted her to live too. That she could yet claw out of her shell of an acolyte of the Uyirsena and start to become who she’d once wanted to be.
A rich, abovefolk courtier.
Lastly, he kept craning his neck at the skies for a sign of Kuka.
On the third morning since they left from the settlement, Amir and Karim bhai stumbled upon clove trees beyond the river crossing. Evergreens as high as forty feet, thickly clothed with glossy, aromatic leaves. Karim bhai ran circles around the trees, claiming with delight that this was all he needed to settle down in the Outerlands.
Amir, who couldn’t see the clove itself, was confused. Karim bhai nudged him closer. “The clove grows in clusters colored green through yellow, pink, and finally a deep, russet red. You see those buds? They must be harvested before they are overripe. Clove harvesters in Amarohi—they go to the treetops and beat the cloves from the branches with sticks. They’re then gathered in nets and hardened and blackened in the tropical sun to look like nails.”
They did not stop again until sundown, when Karim bhai’s legs couldn’t carry him any farther, or he was patently excited to eat the meals they had packed from the settlements. Without Kalay, they felt exposed to the evils that lurked in the darkness, and to Kalay herself, who was probably less than half a day ahead. They were working with a proper map, as compared with Kalay’s memory, which—Amir hoped—would give them at least an hour or two on her.
By the fourth morning, the terrain became uneven again, slowing them down. There were two days left until Mahrang’s deadline for releasing the Uyirsena. Amir’s quest for the Poison seemed as if it were from a different life—settling in the Black Coves, sailing as a pirate beside Ilangovan. It was still a life better than the one in the Bowl, but it could never be as whole—nor as much a true life, free from servitude and scorn—as one in the Outerlands.
When he slept that night, that new life came alive. His new sibling running around, Kabir finding new friends and places and surroundings to paint, and Amma rediscovering her purpose, a facet of her life that had shrunk and withered since Appa abandoned them.
Amir dreamed of a shattered Spice Trade seeking new roots—the old impulse to exchange goods set aside in favor of a new longing to explore the Outerlands. He had thought of what Kalay had said, about Amir’s right to destroy the lives of millions of people, and in between his dreams, the weight of those words pulled him down. The dream morphed into a nightmare, ending with him waking up drenched in sweat, Karim bhai watching from the mouth of the cave with worry.
“You shouldn’t think so much, pulla.”
Amir shook his head. “I can’t help it. If you asked me a few days back if I could have imagined anything that happened since the last time I went to Halmora, I would have called it out as a wooden nutmeg.”
Karim bhai smiled. “It’s what people who seek a better life need to get used to. Even the Black Coves were terrifying for some of the bowlers at first. New truths tend to dislocate the habits of the soul.”
“And if we fail?” Amir asked. “Can we live with our failure knowing these new truths and yet not being able to attain them?”
“We won’t fail,” Karim bhai said. “I have faith in you, pulla. In us.”
Amir scoffed. “We’re mere ants in a war among elephants, bhai. One stamp will take us out.”
Karim bhai smiled. “Not if we can sting them in the foot first.”
Amir returned the smile. “If you say so. I won’t deny, part of me is glad you are here with me, though I’d much prefer you remained back in the settlement. These new truths will stay with me, even if nothing else will.”
“You speak like an older man now,” Karim bhai said. “I miss the errant Carrier. The reckless boy sneaking off to meet the rajkumari of Halmora.”
“I’m still the same, bhai. If things truly change, I would still like to chase after the rajkumari of Halmora.”
“Maharani now,” Karim bhai corrected.
Yes. A queen. A thronekeeper. He remembered the honeyed sweetness of her lips as she kissed him in the shadow of the Spice Gate in Jhanak, the aroma of sandalwood lurking on her skin, the shikakai in her hair. And above all, her words, her secrets, her tenacious appetite for goodness. She had done what any thronekeeper would have, for the betterment of their people—only she considered her gatecaste just as deserving of a good life as the abovefolk. It was why she had wanted the ships from Rani Zariba. She’d foreseen the end of the Spice Gates and the opening of the Outerlands. The ships meant a head start on trade, of whatever could be traded in the absence of the Spice Gates.
And you had attempted to waylay those plans.
Gates, he loved her. He only hoped the disparate paths they took would one day converge, never again to be parted.
The following day passed in worry and quiet complaints. Deep woods, long stretches on narrow hills, brooks teeming with the kind of fish even the Jhanakari wouldn’t know of. The roar of a wild beast in the distance, then the stuttering, dying moan of a gazelle. With only one day to go, Amir wondered if they were even on the right trail. A map could be wrong. Or perhaps, Hasmin’s compass had stopped working. He’d be a fool to think he’d figured out the Outerlands within this short journey.
What he could do was count the passage of time. Each minute, each hour passed in trepidation. When there was little more than a day left before Mahrang had promised to release the Uyirsena, Amir grew impatient and prodded Karim bhai to increase their pace with a pinch of panic in his voice. The old Carrier, however, was nearing his limits. His initial passion had dwindled. What he overcame with his heart and mind soon slowed the use of his weary limbs.
The mornings and evenings had become colder as they traveled, and a steady mist enveloped them for hours as they skirted a mountain to the east. Every eerie sound in the wilderness sent Amir scurrying for cover. The fear of an Immortal Son lingered with them at each step, and try as he could, he could never shake the image of Kuka swooping down on him as he tumbled down the slope. Nor of Kishkinda, which had descended from the clouds. Nor of the slain serpent. He could sense the Mouth raging. Its anger boiling over. He could afford little deception now, other than to follow in the steps of Kalay and Madhyra.
When night fell, and a full, bulbous moon appeared in the sky, Amir and Karim bhai began to look for a cave in which to stop. Mist coiled around their feet as they plodded through a barren stretch of rocky land. Moonlight bathed their trail, guiding them.
At one point, Karim bhai stopped.
“What is it?” Amir asked, panting. They’d just lumbered up a slope, flanked by boulders on both sides. Karim bhai was leaning against a large rock, his eyes set on the stone.
“This,” he muttered.
Amir thrust his torch to where Karim bhai pointed. The firelight fell on a patch of the boulder shaped like a palm.
Blood.
“Wet,” Karim bhai said, running his fingers across the handprint. “They’re close.”
A few hundred meters ahead, they found blood again, this time a sinuous trail of it on their path, blotches on leaves and imprints on mud. Amir and Karim bhai exchanged weary and anxious glances before trudging on. At one point, Amir unsheathed his shamshir. He heard the sound of gushing water from up ahead, steadily increasing until it devoured the night’s silence. Fog rolled in, dimming their vision until each step was a chore, a perilous step into the unknown.
When the fog thinned, they appeared to have stumbled onto a clearing. Amir gasped.
Water leaped out from the top of a hill and crashed into a deep, narrow ravine far beneath. Dashing through the ravine was a violent river, its foam cresting and roiling against rocks clinging to the walls of the cliffs on either side.
Ahead, the trail suddenly ended, dropping into the ravine. A bridge—several unstable logs, really—lay across the chasm, and farther ahead, nearly fifty feet away, Amir spied the continuation of their trail. The bridge, Amir supposed, had been built by settlers.
Madhyra knelt in the center of that narrow bridge, heaving and panting, the sword earned from Rani Zariba’s ancestry alive in her hand. Her hair was in disarray, and she bled from several parts of her body. A few feet from her, closer to where Amir and Karim bhai stood, Kalay was panting too. She appeared to be in worse shape than her aunt, but there was a fire in her eyes that told Amir that she could go at it all night, and that whatever had to happen, must happen upon this bridge.
Kalay was what stood between Madhyra and her way to Illindhi.
The sound of the waterfall crashing into the river drowned out any sounds the two of them made. Karim bhai caught up to Amir. “Ho, couldn’t they find a less perilous place to fight?”
Amri shook his head, and, biting his lip, began to trudge forward, one step at a time.
“Kalay,” he called out.
Kalay wheeled around, eyes widening at the sight of Amir and Karim bhai. “You!” she shrieked, but there was also a tinge of surprise, and perhaps, if Amir dissected its timbre more closely, an undercurrent of relief.
She’s glad to see you alive, in a way.
“Stay away from this,” she said.
Madhyra’s head rose and she regarded him. She was just as surprised, but there was a realization dawning on her face that seemed to calm her, even if for an instant. Her shoulders fell ever so slightly.
Your presence is appreciated.
“Pulla, be careful,” Karim bhai warned.
Amir reached the edge of the bridge. It was less than five feet wide, great logs lain across and tied using thick ropes at frequent intervals. The buttresses beneath the logs were likewise nailed into the sides of the ravine, but Amir did not trust them. The railing was patchy and torn, leaving little room for Amir to rely on holding on to anything. A great fog rose from the river below, wrapping him in a wet embrace as he stepped onto the bridge.
The acolyte of the Mouth was less than ten feet away, nursing a twisted knee, when she glared at him, raised her talwar, and screamed, “I said, stay away!”
Amir shook his head. Here was the world once more, telling him he ought to wield a blade when he hated it more than anything else. Coercing him, pushing him beyond his limits, where lay a darkness he couldn’t comprehend. His skin fused with the hilt of Mahrang’s shamshir. “I-I can’t, Kalay. I’m sorry. Madhyra needs to keep going.”
Kalay threw him a stunned expression. Blood streaked her elbow and knees, and her breath was ragged. “You fool, don’t you realize what you’re doing?”
“You know what you saw back there in the Outerlands. You saw the settlement.” Amir said, his hands shaking as he clasped his shamshir. “That is my future.”
Kalay grunted, struggling to stand. “You’re an incorrigible idiot, Amir of Raluha. And it pains me severely to see you dead. But I must do what I must do.”
She stood, moaning in pain, and raised her talwar. Beyond her, Madhyra continued to kneel, her energy all but sapped. Kalay took one step toward Amir, whose hands continued to twitch around his shamshir’s hilt.
“You’re not even holding it right.” She chuckled.
Amir’s heart galloped as Kalay neared him. Gates, he’d wanted her to live, to survive the Outerlands. And here he was, doubting whether he himself would. And yet, what choice did he have? He had to hold this bridge if Madhyra were to continue her journey. He would be to Madhyra what Karim bhai had been to him.
He remembered that evening by the river when Kalay had taught him to use his shamshir. Everything about it already lay blurred and fragmented in his memory. Within him, the spirit of Ilangovan opened its eyes. He tried to push it back in, urging it to melt, to disappear.
Amir raised his shamshir when Kalay was less than five feet away. Her determined eyes bore into him as she closed the gap. Visions of her fighting on the pirate galley, and later in the marshland of Mesht, flashed in front of him.
“I-I can’t do this, Kalay,” Amir stuttered. He poked the blade forward into nothing, as if in warning.
“Then head back,” she replied calmly, her breathing still slow and heavy. “I have already forgiven you for trying to apprehend me by the lake. Just leave, and we’re even.”
Amir scrambled to take a step back instead, widening the distance between him and Kalay. When Kalay suddenly thrust her sword at Amir, he yelped and leaped aside, raising his own shamshir in panic.
The blades met. Amir’s eyes widened as his grip on the shamshir slackened. Kalay gave him an expression of mock surprise.
He spared a glace for Karim bhai beyond the bridge, and Madhyra ahead of him. He thought of Kabir in those fragile moments as his life lay at the mercy of another, thought of everything he’d hoped to give his brother, first in the Black Coves and now in the Outerlands. He imagined what Velli looked like. A replica of Amma, he hoped.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t know how to fight. All he had to do was not look down. Just don’t look down.
Moonlight drenched him, and the cold gripped his bones. He took a step forward this time, and swung his shamshir blindly at Kalay. She ducked, and Amir stumbled. She raised her head and sliced at his knees, but his stumble allowed him to drop his shamshir to meet Kalay’s thrust. The momentum carried Amir forward more and he rolled beyond Kalay, stopping just short of falling over the edge of the bridge.
His heart beat violently as he gulped a lungful of wet air. He snapped up to see Kalay leap past him with her talwar gleaming against the moonlight.
Any moment now, any moment now.
Impulse dragged Amir sideways as he rolled onto the bridge, yelping as Kalay’s blade hacked past his hair by the minutest width.
He scrambled up, groaning in pain, and slashed wildly behind him.
The blade caught flesh.
Amir dropped his shamshir, as if he had not caught Kalay but had buried the blade into his own palm. He stared dumbfounded.
Shit, shit, shit!
Kalay’s attempt to stab him on the bridge had trapped her sword between the logs, and in the time she took to pry it free, Amir’s wild backward swing had caught her by sheer luck.
Kalay, however, was alive, even though she let out a weak growl, clutching her thigh.
“I-I’m sorry!” Amir stammered. Part of him wanted to rush to her, to see if she was okay. But the other part of him remained rooted, fully aware of what an acolyte of the Uyirsena was capable of until their last breath. He stared at the blood on the shamshir he’d dropped like it were some poison that had been sucked out of him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“No, you’re not.” Kalay smiled, spitting blood into the waterfall and turning to gaze at him with renewed interest. “You’re a fool, but you’re certainly not sorry.”
She suddenly went down on one knee, planting her talwar on the wooden bridge, panting. Behind him, Madhyra was getting to her feet.
“You don’t give up,” she said hoarsely, eyeing Amir, her voice barely overpowering the rush of water to reach him. Her knife hand was firm on her hip as she bore the pain of her own battle with Kalay. “It’s admirable.”
He stood again between aunt and niece. The paleness returned to his face. The corridor of Halmora returned to his mind. The stench, the rain, the blood, the clouds of spices engulfing the palace in a riot of color and flavor. Gates, he’d give anything to end this right now.
Amir turned to Madhyra. “Go on. You must get to Illindhi.”
“I cannot go anywhere, Amir,” Madhyra said, her voice faltering.
Kalay wiped the perspiration off her forehead. She took three deep breaths and gazed up at the moon. “It’s a beautiful night to die.”
“Kalay, please—”
She charged at him. A rush of blood to his head propelled him downward as he picked up the shamshir and raised it in time to parry her blow. The first two strikes clanged in front of his face. When he expected a third blow to fall, she instead kicked his knee. Amir buckled, the shamshir slipping from his hands once more.
Kalay knocked the air out of him with a shove. He fell onto the bridge; it shook only just slightly, but in the next moment Kalay towered over him. She raised her talwar as she’d raised it not long ago on the ship to kill Madhyra. There was no malice in her eyes. No hint of violence. She was doing her duty, and duty compelled her to finish Amir like he was a task that couldn’t be postponed anymore.
The blade fell. Amir squeezed his eyes shut, but he felt no pain. Instead, as he opened his eyes a tenth of a second later, he found Madhyra’s hand in front of his, his reflection in the flat of her blade, her feet inches behind his head.
She’d leaped over him on the narrow bridge, forcing Kalay back with a grunt. Kalay staggered, screaming in pain as she swerved to land on her knees. Madhyra clutched her hip once more. Amir spied a dark blotch underneath her hand. She was bleeding profusely.
Tears streamed down Kalay’s face. “Why did you do this to me?”
She cut a solemn figure on the bridge. Kneeling, her head buried in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. There was a sadness Amir saw in her that fought to overcome her duty, and also anger that came with failure. Amir had never thought Kalay could be this strong and yet look so vulnerable.
Madhyra was calm in response. “As long as the Spice Gates remain standing, there will be no emancipation of those who live outside the walls. Now, come on, cheche. Don’t be angry. You know every piece of fiction is rooted in some truth. The settlers have always existed on the edges of our world. Our ancestors have always known it. The thronekeepers have known it. I was a thronekeeper, and yet I was ignorant of it. That was my biggest failure. As a woman to lead her people to better lives, my ignorance was equal to the worst of crimes. All until I met Sukalyan.”
