Heir of Iron (The Powers of Amur Book 1) (27 page)

Navran sat by the window and watched the moonlight on the murky water. The floodwaters of the Amsadhu gurgled and sloshed against the posts holding up the guest-house. Dung smoke and the murmur of distant gossip drifted through the window. Everyone in the guest-house slept except for him. And all he could think was:
What am I going to do now?

He was supposed to be free. Gocam had given him one task, and when it was done he meant to leave behind every memory of the Heirs and their children. Ulaur forgive him, but he had failed at even being a faithful Uluriya sheep-tender. And now—“The
Heir of star-damned Manjur
,” he whispered to himself.

The curse tasted bitter on his tongue. The Heir of Manjur shouldn’t curse by his namesake. But there were a lot of things the Heirs of Manjur weren’t supposed to do. Like drink a third bowl of rice beer. After Mandhi had left the kitchen he had given in, and Sumi had given him two then admitted that Mandhi had commanded her not to him give any more. Which was a perfectly reasonable thing for Mandhi to do. Because she knew she couldn’t let Navran drink all he would want to. Not now. Not ever again.

And then a new thought: what was he going to do about his mother? He was supposed to return and help her. Be a son, a true son. Ulaur help him, he wanted to do it. That seemed like a goal within his reach, a chance to do something he might succeed at.

The starlight was like dust in the foam of the water. The thought occurred to him: this was still a chance. He had failed his duties as a son, but he had the chance not to fail in his duties as a son of Manjur. Odds were that he wouldn’t amount to anything. But he might try.

And then he saw the first streak of fire fall from the sky.

At first he thought he imagined it. Then he saw another, like a ball of pitch trailing a tail of flames. Where it landed a flare of hungry fire burst. Shouts echoed across the flooded canals. More streaks fell. Then a sound like thunder and a blast of heat threw him aside.

A red light flared through the window of Paidacha’s house, and the sudden roar of flame swallowed the other sound. He went to the window again. One of the meteors had hit, not the guest-house itself, but the building adjacent. That home was already a ruin, timbers and thatch blasted apart and drifting in the water, still afire. The flames bloomed outward. They stroked the eaves of Paidacha’s guest-house, then leapt the gap.

Navran screamed, “Fire! Awake, everyone!”

He clambered over sleeping bodies, pounded the floorboards, and continued shouting, “Fire!” Those sleeping in the common room began to stir. He pushed past them into the room where Mandhi slept, where he found her already rising. The fire licked the frame of the window of her room, and embers glowed in the thatch overhead.

“I heard you,” Mandhi shouted over the crackle of flames. She shoved the polished box that held the star-iron rings into her traveling bag, along with a few changes of clothes and other items strewn about the room. A heartbeat later she was at the door.

In the seconds they had spent in Mandhi’s room the common area had emptied. Paidacha crouched at the entrance of the guest-house and shouted for them. “Come, quickly! You two are the last!”

At the door Navran hesitated. “Are we leaving the house? Can’t we fight the fire?”

“Are you insane?” Mandhi said, pushing past him and leaping down the ladder into the reed boat that waited below. Paidacha had evidently pulled it from its moorings beneath the guest-house and packed it with dark shapes that Navran couldn’t make out.

“We just let it burn?”

Paidacha gave him a mournful look. “When you awoke us, it was already too late. Look.”

He glanced around. The north half of the guest-house’s thatch was already crowned with fire, and the flames licked down the boards and across the posts. All around them he saw flames rising from places where fireballs had fallen. Most of the guests he saw fleeing along the plank walkways to the south. He realized what the shapes in the boat were: small children huddled together, handed over by their parents in the hope they would arrive at the earthen moorings along the south wall sooner than those jostling along the walkways. And he realized what he should do.

“You go. I’ll follow the rest of the guests. Let Mandhi and the children get out safely.”

Mandhi reached up from the boat, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him down. “You will
not
try to follow the guests. Don’t you realize you have responsibilities?”

“I do. That’s why—”

“Your responsibilities include
not dying
while fleeing the fire.” She gave him a withering, cruel glare. His face flushed with shame. “Try to understand what you have to do.”

Paidacha pushed them away from the walkway and into the middle of the flooded street. The prow of their boat immediately smacked into the side of another boat, prompting a snarl from a man piloting his own family to safety. The canal ahead of them was crowded with people seeking refuge on the water, but it was still safer than the chaotic violence on the planks a few yards away. People pushed and screamed and shoved each other into the water or towards the flames.

“Forward,” Mandhi shouted.

Paidacha shoved them forward with his pole.

“Where are we going?” Navran asked.

“Tashya’s house,” Paidacha shouted. “In the outer city. I told everyone in the guest-house where to go. Ulaur help us, we’ll get there alive.”

Dawn came as a bulge of light in the east, muddling the outlines of the storm clouds, and revealing the greasy stain of smoke rising from the inner city of Jaitha. The refugees from Paidacha’s huddled in a modest courtyard, those who could sleep lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the packed dirt, with their bedrolls and clothing stacked against the walls like refuse thrown up by the flood.

Navran hadn’t slept. He stood in the doorway of the courtyard and watched the north. Until daylight broke, an orange glow had smoldered in the inner city and covered the stars with smoke. It was Ruyam’s doing.

No one had said Ruyam’s name, but Navran was sure no one doubted it. Revenge on the city that had not let him cross sooner or a way to burn out the Heir that had escaped him. The smell of smoke burned like fear in his nostrils. They were doomed.

The day brightened slowly. Mandhi and Paidacha emerged from the house along with the modest merchant who had given his courtyard to the refugees—Tashya, if Navran recalled correctly. They carried baskets full of roti and handed it out, working their way through the crowd towards the door.

When she reached the doorway of the courtyard she handed a piece of roti to Navran. “Eat,” she said.

“Where is this from?” Navran asked.

“Some of what Paidacha brought from the guest-house and some of what Tashya had.”

He handed it back to her. “Give it to someone else.”

“You need to eat.”

“Gocam went days without eating.”

Mandhi put the roti back and glared at Navran, though perhaps with less bile than usual. “So you’ve taken it into your head to become a thikratta, now? Another first for the Heirs.”

Navran shrugged and looked back to the north. “Others are hungrier than me.” What he really wanted was a fat bowl of rice beer, but he wouldn’t say that, nor would he give in and try to find one. Grumbling just loud enough for Navran to hear, Mandhi moved on.

Navran watched her. The next woman who took roti from Mandhi clasped her hand and asked, “Where are we going to go?”

“What do you mean?”

“We came from Krdnas, after the Red Men purged the place. Paidacha was supposed to help us find refuge. And now?”

Mandhi shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ll talk about it with Paidacha.”

“When?” shouted a man sitting a few feet away. “Will the Red Men chase us forever? And if Ruyam did this—”

“It wasn’t Ruyam,” Mandhi said.

“It was Ruyam,” Navran said, but Mandhi didn’t hear.

“Well, whoever, but what are we going to do?”

And the thought came into Navran head again:
this is a chance to do your duty
.

That was madness, of course. What was he supposed to do? The last time he had tried to do his duty, Mandhi had scolded him.

But your duty is not just to Mandhi.

The complaints of the forlorn refugees were rising into a hubbub. Before his tiny flicker of courage could die, he raised his voice and said, “You will all come to Virnas.”

“And what will we do in Virnas?” the woman nearest to Navran asked.

“You’ll stay in the estate of Veshta the merchant, where the Heir of Manjur will keep you under his care.”

“The Heir!” the woman said with a snort of derision. “As if you could speak for him. Where is the Heir, anyway? Holed up somewhere in Virnas in secret?”

A surge of defiance rose up in him, refusing to give in to that dismissal. The words spilled from his mouth with a vehemence that surprised even him as he said:

“I am the Heir.”

Silence swallowed up every noise in the courtyard. The woman nearest him held her mouth open, her words drying on her tongue. Mandhi’s eyes were wide, her lips twitching. And he thought,
what have I done?

“Pure light of Ulaur,” whispered someone. “Is he lying? Would someone lie about that?”

But it was too late to retreat, now. That swell of unbidden courage had pushed him into the flood waters, and now he would have to swim. He raised his hand and showed them the iron ring, then pulled it from his finger. His voice cracked as he spoke. “This ring bears Manjur’s seal. The household of the Heir wears them. Right, Mandhi?”

Mandhi nodded silently and raised her own hand to show them the matching ring. Her gaze didn’t shift from watching Navran with horror and fear.

The nearest woman crept forward and examined the ring in Navran’s hand. The pentacle stamped onto the outside, and Manjur’s seal on the inside. She placed the ring back into Navran’s palm, then knelt and kissed it. “My lord and chosen of Ulaur, bless us.”

His hand was suddenly wet with sweat, and his heart thundered in his chest.

“Say it,” Mandhi whispered.

“Say what?”

“
I bow
….”

Of course. He was the Heir; when the woman said “bless us” it was an invitation, not just a mantra. Everyone in the courtyard was watching him with nervousness over his evident uncertainty. The terror that he would forget the words bubbled up into his throat—but no. His upbringing hadn’t been
that
defective.

He put his hand on the woman’s head and said, “I bow—I mean, we bow—We bow our heads to Ulaur, the light unborn, the word unspoken, the fire of ages, who overthrew the serpent, who drives off the unclean powers, who keeps Manjur and his children in purity and the good.” And he sketched the pentacle above her head.

Oh no. They were all coming now, crowding around him and bowing down and asking for more blessings. Mandhi watched him, still motionless, with an expression that seemed to observe his discomfort with
You asked for it
. But by successfully completing the prayer he seemed to have dispelled the others’ doubts, and now there was nothing to do except say the prayer over and over again and keep sketching the pentacle and wonder what in the world he had gotten himself into.

Tashya had invited him inside, with fervent apologies that he had let the Heir sleep outside the night before, and given him his own bedroom. At least it was solitude. He sighed and leaned out the window, then collapsed against the frame.

Someone entered the room behind him. He didn’t look up. After a long moment of silence Mandhi asked, “Do you want to tell me what came over you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just—it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“The Heirs keep their identities secret for a reason, Navran. The Emperors have hunted them, and the king of Virnas will be none too happy if the Heir of Manjur is openly walking his streets. And we have other enemies to hide from.”

He shrugged. “Too late for that. Ruyam knows me.”

“Ruyam doesn’t know that my father named you the Heir. At least, I hope he doesn’t.”

Navran shook his head. “No more hiding. It didn’t work in the first Purge. And Gocam destroyed the bridge.”

“What does Gocam destroying the bridge have to do with anything?”

At least she wasn’t still insisting that Ruyam was dead. “The bridge held together North and South Amur. The temple claimed it for Am.”

“You think that matters? You think that allows you to break the oldest rule of the Heirs?”

Navran got to his feet, trembling. “I don’t know, Mandhi. I’m not Gocam. I don’t have foresight or a thikratta’s discipline. But Gocam spoke of the bridge as a stitch holding the empire together, and now the stitch is torn. What comes next won’t be what was before. The Heirs won’t go back to hiding. The Emperor won’t remain in Majasravi. And I am trying to do my duty.”

“Your duty.” She sneered at him. “Well, now every Uluriya in Jaitha is camped outside of Tashya’s, it seems. Word spreads fast, and they all want your blessing, and they all want to go back to Virnas with us. And I don’t know what we’ll do with them when we get there. Veshta can’t possibly take everyone. I’ll have to canvas the saghada of the city—”

“Thank you.”

She stopped. “For what?”

“For thinking of these things. I don’t know how to do half of it.”

Mandhi snorted. “You’ve got that right.”

“I don’t know how to be Heir. You have to teach me.”

“I was never Heir, either, in case you forgot.”

“But you know your father’s example.” He tried not to sound too desperate.

She was quiet for a while. “We’ll see.”

“We have to leave tomorrow.”

“What? We couldn’t possibly be ready that quickly.”

“Ruyam will cross the river with the Red Men at the first opportunity. We have to get to Virnas ahead of them.”

“Did Gocam tell you that, too?”

“No. But it’s plain sense.”

“Maybe the day after tomorrow—”

“No.” He clenched his fist and slammed it against the window sill. “I said tomorrow. I’ll be leaving, and any Uluriya who stays in Jaitha after that will have his blood on his own head.”