The First Binding, page 88
“Leave the kitten alone.” I took a foolish step toward the trio, knowing that the odds were horribly stacked against me.
But as I’ve told you many times, I am nothing if not a fool.
“This is better, yeah?” Qalbi found his voice again and tapped Nitham’s chest with the back of a hand. “Let’s just pound him bloody, here where no one can see. The masters and other rishis won’t have piss for proof and we can’t be brought up for penance and punishment.”
Nitham’s face broke into a smile that showed all his teeth. His eyes practically danced with fire and malice. “Maybe my luck’s turning for the better.”
Thalib still kept half of his attention on the kitten.
My legs tensed and part of my mind went to the candle and the flame. I no longer envisioned a spark of fire, but something burning brighter, larger, and fanning greater by the second. I fed it my anger, the faces of the trio before me, letting the flame consume it all. In that moment I recalled a piece of Ari years earlier. The one who’d practiced Vithum’s swordplay.
My staff was a far cry from a proper sword in length and weight, but I could manage enough. And a part of me could recall some of what I’d learned at Nika’s hands when she taught me to fight.
Thalib lunged, going for the orange kitten.
I screamed, rushing toward the pair that barred the way. My staff stayed tight in grip before me as I closed in.
Qalbi bulled forward, arms wide as if hoping to grab me and take me to the ground.
I brought the stick down in a sharp arc, crashing it into where his collarbone met his left shoulder.
The thick robes softened the impact, but his eyes still shut in pain and his face twisted. His momentum stopped and he broke away from me to address his hurt.
Nitham, to his credit, didn’t engage. His hands stayed opened and close in front of him. He sunk his weight, bending at the knees and keeping to the balls of his feet.
I didn’t know if his newly adopted posture betrayed knowledge of how to fight, or if he had learned it from watching others. How many thrashings could a noble-born boy have gotten into?
Thalib had managed to grab the kitten by the scruff of its neck, hauling it into the air where it let out a weak cry.
The colors of its fur banded my vision in an orange-red hotness and I screamed a string of curses I can’t recall. My cane went up over one shoulder and I brought it down in a diagonal arc, hoping to take Nitham across the side of the skull.
His body sank deeper as he rushed forward. He crashed into me just below the waist, arms wrapping around my lower body and taking me to the ground.
The impact drove my vision to whiteness and most of the air from me. My ribs ached, but my robes and cloak had absorbed much of the blow outside of what the light snow had already cushioned.
His hands scrabbled for better purchase on me and I squirmed, trying to shake free of him. Rishi Bheru had trained him to grapple, and while Nitham was no expert, he had a better grasp of it than I had, even with all my time on the streets of Keshum. I thrashed in Nitham’s hold as one of his hands fell to my throat and squeezed. Pressure built in my neck and felt twice as heavy in my eyes. Panic seized me and I lurched forward on instinct, throwing as much of my weight into the strike as I could. He tried to move out of the way but wasn’t quick enough. My forehead struck short of the mark and I felt wetness, warmth, and a hint of something hard.
We reeled away from each other and I caught sight of him moaning as he pawed his lips.
Crimson splotches peppered the white frosted ground and streaked his fingers. I saw what had happened when Nitham pulled his hands away from his mouth.
My headbutt hadn’t broken his nose like I had wanted. It connected with his lips, splitting them against his teeth like he’d kissed a road of broken glass. He couldn’t even scream for fear of tearing them worse.
But his eyes screwed tight in the silent rage he and I had known so well and built between ourselves. Veins pulsed visibly along the base of his neck and I could almost hear his knuckles cracking.
Qalbi had recovered while Thalib made no move to help his friends, remaining content to hold the quivering kitten firmly in his grip.
“Let it go.” Enough of my breath had returned for me to get the words out through some heaving. My gaze flicked toward my cane and I saw Nitham and Qalbi make the same calculation. It was the one thing coming close to leveling the odds between us, but if they kept me from it, I couldn’t hope to fight the pair of them. And if Thalib joined in, my trouncing wouldn’t be one I could walk away from.
I lunged, arm outstretched, hoping to close my fingers around the cane.
Qalbi charged, Nitham right behind him.
The two boys met me first, crashing hard into my midsection and legs, throwing all three of us into the snow again.
We flailed, tangled, someone’s fist struck just under my eye and I felt the hurt shake deeper into the bones of my face. My elbow hit someone, glancing off something hard and curved. Maybe a piece of one of their skulls. Nitham grabbed my collar and hauled, pulling it as one of his clenched hands slammed into my eye.
The ridge of my eyebrow took the brunt of it and I had a fleeting moment of wondering if he’d broken the bone. White-hot spots danced across part of my vision and the world tilted.
Whatever I had learned from Nika and Vithum faded and I returned to the feral boy from when two other street urchins had set upon me my first day as a sparrow. My fingers flexed and I raked the air, hoping to catch one of the pair.
My nails bit into soft flesh and I pulled.
One of them screamed and I realized it had been Qalbi.
Thin beads of blood covered my fingers and I clawed at the other, grabbing hold of Nitham’s robes as he’d done mine. My other hand shot out and the open palm connected with the boy’s already mangled lips.
He yowled and fell back into the snow, scooping some up and pressing it to his mouth. His body convulsed from the sudden cold, but it had to have helped numb the worst of the hot pain flooding his face.
Thalib hurled the kitten.
I scrambled halfway to my feet and jumped best I could, hoping to catch the critter. Its weight fell against my arms and I tried to clutch it tight to me in an effort to protect it.
I failed.
Thalib had already crossed the distance and drove a heavy foot into my gut. Acid flooded up my throat. Saliva and a breakfast I hadn’t had still managed to fill my mouth and slop onto the ground after he kicked me again.
Nitham and Qalbi had finally gotten to their feet, but I never saw them approach as Thalib’s boot connected with my skull, rocking my head back and taking my sight for a moment.
“What’s happening here, ah?”
The beating stopped but I couldn’t make out the trio’s words.
Feet shuffled by, all lacking proper balance, like they were being driven back by force. I saw the hem of someone’s robes not in the dreary colors most students were given by the Ashram. Something crossed my vision, streaking wide at one of the boys.
I heard a sound like someone beating a heavy sack. Then again.
“Leave off doing that sort of thing around here or I’ll have your mothers skin your asses! Go!” A woman’s voice, hard and flushed with anger.
I saw the three boys break into a run and leave the way they’d come.
My body ached in too many places for me to count, so it’s better to say the whole of me had developed into a single mass of uniform agony.
The kitten mewled again, and I tried to bring it closer to my chest.
“What’s that there?” The woman came toward me and I couldn’t make her out.
My mouth couldn’t form words properly, but I tried. “N-n-n-no.” Both arms shook harder than I could control, and I failed to keep the kitten out of sight.
“Is that what all this was about, then?”
I couldn’t clear the daze from my head, but I tried to right myself regardless.
“Sit still, stubborn man, I swear. If the stupidity of young boys doesn’t kill you, stubbornness does eventually.”
I couldn’t have argued if I had wanted to. Besides, I’d have only proved her right.
She slipped an arm under mine and helped me to my feet. The woman had the build of someone’s well-fed grandmother. Short, sturdy, wide, and solid. She hadn’t seemed to have yet reached her thirties. Strong enough to get me up without any effort on her part, and just stressing the seams of her clothing. Soft faced and matronly in look.
I felt better already having her by my side.
“You from the Ashram?” The edge hadn’t left her voice yet.
I nodded.
“They don’t teach you boys any better than that?”
I opened my mouth to protest but she went on over me.
“Fighting in the streets. You’re lucky I found you rather than the kuthri. They’d have strung the lot of you up for a public lashing, asses in the cold, bare as the day you were all born.”
“Not likely. One of those boys is noble born. Some king’s second son.” I couldn’t remember where Nitham hailed from but I recalled that I also didn’t care.
My comment gave the woman pause. “He’s trouble then.” Most of the anger fled her face and she adopted a frown. “Noble boys are problems you can’t really think too much on. Easy-to-bruise egos and too full of themselves. He might try to get back at me and mine for the beating he got.”
That brought a different pain to me that had nothing to do with my injuries. The woman had come to my aid and her reward would be suffering under all the mayhem a wealthy noble could bring. While Nitham may not have been of a royal family in Ghal, he had the connections and money to have magistrates and government officials kowtow to his will if he wanted. Whatever the bad blood between him and his father was, he could still be a nuisance.
I didn’t want that coming back to this lady. “Or he might keep it quiet if he’s threatened with word of this getting out. I don’t think he’s the sort who wants it known an old woman knocked—”
“Old?” Her face had lost all expression, but I knew enough of her carefully measured tone of voice to know she’d bitten back some sharpness.
I raised one hand in a gesture of surrender, making sure to keep the kitten close to me with my other. “Sorry, maem. Young woman knocking him as he deserved.”
She looked mollified by that and then bustled away to retrieve my cane. “Looks like you’ll be needing this.”
I murmured a thanks.
“Let’s get you inside then, and your cat.”
“Oh, no, it’s not—”
She didn’t have ears for my complaints. She grabbed me by the sleeve, pulling me along with more force than I had the strength to resist. The woman led me through the back of The Fireside and sat me down on the kitchen floor. “We’ve not much room or place for even ourselves to eat here, so you’ll have to make do. I’ll get Semi to see to your face and hands while I set about getting some food.”
“It’s not my blood.” I waggled my fingers to see if they still worked after the cold had numbed them, rather than try to accentuate my point with the blood.
She ignored me. “You have coin?”
“Yes.”
With that, she began barking orders to a woman I couldn’t see behind her bulk. “I’m not in the mood to hear what you might want to eat. You’ll get what I’m making, ji-ah?”
“Ji.”
I lost track of the time that passed until she brought me a pair of wooden bowls. Warm cubed potatoes, yellowed from turmeric and spiced, filled much of the containers. She brought a broth with shredded red meat that I didn’t bother to ask about, just happy for something warm. Flatbread, most of its weight seeming to be in the butter generously coating it and dripping off the edges. Its surface had been burned to a dark and crispy char that I personally preferred. Lastly, a small tin dish only as large as my palm filled with cooked spinach and a crumbly dry cheese.
“Eat.” Her tone left no room for argument.
Both I and the kitten set to it with more energy than I thought either of us had left. Once we were filled, the woman returned with a young girl, no older than me, and close enough in features she could have been the lady’s daughter. “Semi will tend to you.”
I nodded, too tired to speak and nursing a good deal of shame for having put myself in a place to inconvenience these two.
Semi had brought a thin skin, stuffed with snow, and pressed it to my face wherever I showed signs of a bruise to come. The coolness brought out a few sharp gasps from me before the pain grew distanced and I acclimated. “Your cat’s half-starved, and you look the same.”
Estra had made similar comments.
“I guess we’re quite the fitting pair then.” My voice held enough acid and glass to scrub any surface raw. But if my words stung Semi, she didn’t show it. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—”
She pushed the cold skin against my mouth, silencing me. “You’re not the first to talk rudely to me, and you won’t be the last.”
I apologized again regardless, speaking around the obstruction held to my face. “I was hurt, and I’m angry, and I didn’t mean to be a bother to you. I’m sorry.”
Semi stopped and looked me over before nodding in quiet acceptance. “I didn’t know they let students keep pets at the Ashram.”
“They don’t.”
She blinked. “How are you hiding him?”
“I’m not. He’s not mine. I just found him.”
“You went through that beating for a stray kitten?”
I inclined my head.
“You’re not very smart, are you?”
My eyes went wide, and I almost dredged up that sharper side of my tongue, but her laughter pulled me from the thought.
“But you’re sweet.” She reached out to scratch the kitten’s head, which it enjoyed. “What are you going to do with him?”
I didn’t know and decided not to answer. Once we’d been tended to, I settled the debt, feeling a whole silver dole equal measure to my life and their kind treatment.
You might think this much, but what price would you weigh your existence against? If I had a hand of gold, I would have given her that, but as I didn’t have that, and only brought a few pieces of silver with me for the day, it would have to do.
Semi and the woman who had saved me tried to assure me that I didn’t need to pay them that much, but I took a page from their book and suddenly developed a deafness to their complaints.
I left the way I’d come, through the back side of The Fireside, stray kitten held within my arms, and under the comfort of my robes and cloak.
The cat didn’t put up any fuss as I carried it through the streets of Ghal, much to my relief, as I didn’t need anything else fighting me today. I searched the trader’s circle I’d seen when I’d first arrived in the kingdom off the back of a wagon.
No sign of the tinker still.
My heart sank further as I talked to some of the stall merchants and learned no tinker had passed through. I had all but given up until I sulked back toward the way to the Ashram’s stairs.
A voice echoed after me. “Oi, boy!”
I recognized the call and turned to spot the tinker easing the oxen to a stop not too far from me. The morning’s beating had been worth it. Even the time spent in the cold now felt a distant bother. I hobbled over to him, not wanting to chance even a light jog should it aggravate the tightness building along my ribs. Nothing had been broken, or so I hoped, but the kicks I’d received had left me a rigid knot of dull pain.
“Oi, Tinker, what news?” I managed a weak and unsteady smile.
He returned a brighter one back to me. “Oh, all sorts. The kinds of things a young boy like you would love to hear about, and just so much in way of treasure. Would you like a peek at my packs? Or do you want to trade gossip and hearsay first?”
I almost answered him, but the brass fittings and other metals fixed along his wagon-home caught my eyes again. Not for the bands of light they caught—no, something was off with them, but I couldn’t figure it out. I walked by the bulls, stretching out with one hand to brush along Bathum’s flank. The closest ox made no protest as I touched him.
“What’s gotten into you, boy?” The tinker pulled out a small pot, its surface riddled with bumpy protrusions. A long stem jutted out from it that separated along with the lid as he lifted it to drop in a powder match he’d struck. Smoke soon filtered through the stem once he’d replaced it. The man took a deep puff before blowing most of the substance back out through his nostrils. “One look at you says you took a good beating today. You get into trouble up at the Ashram?”
I waggled my hand, only half-paying attention to the peddler. “More like it followed me down here. Or, I followed it, I suppose.” My gaze fell on the knobs and short flat strips running along the wood, trying to make sense of the varied patterns.
It is a pattern, isn’t it? Something in the back of my mind clawed at me, treating the fixed pieces almost like a story. My fingertips brushed along them.
“What’s got you in a—oh, caught that, have you? Not many outside the traveling folk and the family notice them as any more than fanciful knickknacks tacked to our homes.”
“They’re different.” I looked at the arrangement, swearing they had been in another configuration the first time we’d met. But what that may have been, I couldn’t fathom now.
“That they are.” He took another puff, then exhaled.
I smelled something like cherries, a spice that tickled my nose, and a scent like freshly turned earth after warm rains.
“It’s a language older than the Trader’s Tongue, something we folk cobbled up all ourselves.” He sounded proud. “The Travelers’ Tongue came about as we set out on our wagons to see the wider world and deal in it and its stories. But we had to have a way to send messages to others of our family, no? And how to do that without others hearing what we want to tell? With one look, any other of the family can read where you’ve been, if you’ve had a good trade, or … bad reception.” Something in his tone told me the traveling folk didn’t get that often.
