12. The Mouth of the Storm (Gadarien)¶
The Anashi displayed a single moment of uncertainty as she entered the courtyard. After a brief pause that only Gadarien noticed, she marched over to a vacant fire pit in a dark corner. She sat down with her back to the wall, opened her bag, and pulled out a flatbread roughly the size of her torso. For a few moments, she spoke to it as though it were a pet before finally taking a big bite. All around her, groups of young people, mostly Sarmalans and their Cantereian servants, stood around laughing and talking excitedly in the firelight. The Anashi’s eyes were constantly in motion, frequently returning to the exit.
Through the gate, the sun was just sinking below the hazy edge of the Eyewall. Half of the massive wall of clouds glowed a deep red-orange, the other half fading into shadow. Beneath it, a thin, spiraling layer of fog spread out across the city, lit from beneath by countless lanterns. Here and there, arrows of light shot upward through holes in the shifting veil.
To the west, the view was blocked by the Tower of the Tempest, which had supposedly been built using dark Anashic magic. The massive black obelisk rose into the sky like the shinbone of one of the Deucanta, the enormous gods that had sung the world into existence before fucking off to wherever gods went to relax and leaving humanity to rot. Below the tower, the lavish houses of rich Sarmalans spread out across the hill, their courtyards full of flowers and hanging lanterns. The crumbling stone wall of the old city, the Velhade, enclosed the rarefied neighborhood. The Velhade stood as a reminder of the days when Thelenza had been the center of a vast Cantereian network of river trade, before the rise of Sarmala.
Perhaps one day soon it would witness Sarmala’s fall.
The Anashi stiffened as she noticed a group of Sarmalans staring at her. Like her, Gadarien was sitting alone, but the well-dressed youths ignored him, taking him for one of the many Cantereian servants awaiting their masters. The Sarmalans murmured and cast glances at the Anashi, goading each other to approach her.
A lanky, insouciant boy detached himself from the group and swaggered over. The Anashi sat motionless, staring into the fire, as he sat down beside her. Gadarien closed his eyes and focused his hearing, slipping into a trance as he burrowed through the layers of ambient noise and isolated the Sarmalan’s voice.
“...like you could use some company,” the youth was saying, his voice like an oil slick.
The bench creaked as the Anashi tried to inch herself away. “I’m, uh, new in town,” she said. Her accent was surprisingly Dzharian, perhaps from one of the border provinces. And she was hiding something.
The rich boy was, of course, oblivious to such nuance. “Your Sarmalic is excellent,” he said, phony as a salesman. “Almost like a native. My name is Hainzu. Where are you from?”
Even with his eyes closed, Gadarien had no trouble visualizing the Anashi’s stiff smile as she inhaled through her nose. “I grew up in Dzhar.” Again, her harmonics and phrasing made it clear that, while her words were accurate, they weren’t exactly true. Gadarien was intrigued.
“Wonderful,” the Sarmalan said. He had a voice that had slid through life greased with wealth, never once slowed down by adversity. “The kitchens could use someone who knows how to spice things up!”
A long pause from the Anashi. “I’m sorry?”
“The kitchens. Or were you interested in a different position?” His voice took on a false gravitas. “I might know a few other... positions.”
Gadarien heard the Anashi shift again as she drew her legs under herself, pulled herself inward like a scorpion curling its tail. “I’m here to apply to the School,” she said. No lie this time, but a harmonic of menace.
The Sarmalan laughed, clearly having no idea who he was dealing with. Gadarien almost felt sorry for him. “Fantastic! I love the passion. So inspiring, really.” He shifted a little closer and lowered his voice. “I could help you with that too, you know.”
“What do you mean?” the Anashi said, her words stiletto-sharp.
“I know people,” the Sarmalan drawled. “You might have heard of House Dranavan. A word from me, and you won’t just be working the kitchens, you’ll be running them.”
“I said I—”
“Or you could have a more pleasant job,” he continued. “You’d hardly have to work at all.” Gadarien heard the texture of the Anashi’s hair sliding through Hainzu’s fingers. “I’ve never had an Anashi before.”
“Please don’t touch my hair,” the woman said, her voice dangerously calm as she moved her head away.
“Is it true what they say? Do Anashi really prefer to take on several people at once? My friends and I were wondering.” The rich fabric of his clothes rustled as he reached for her again. “Maybe we could all—”
The Sarmalan didn’t get a chance to finish his thought. Gadarien snapped his eyes open just as the Anashi snatched the rich boy’s hand off her thigh and twisted her body, bending his wrist back. Hainzu yelped and fell off the bench, but she held onto his arm, dropping her knee onto his back and driving his face into the dirt.
“Get off me, stain!” he whined, his mouth pressed to the ground. “I’ll have you arrested!”
“Sure, you could go to the guards. But then all your friends over there would know how easily I beat you, wouldn’t they?” She twisted his arm a bit further, and he let out a high-pitched squeal. “So instead, you can tell your friends we were playing. Tell them you asked me to show you an Anashi dance-fighting move. Tell them I came onto you, and you realized how bad I smell. I don’t care. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
Hainzu struggled for a moment longer before finally realizing he was beaten. He nodded stiffly and the Anashi let him go, backing away and remaining coiled for action as he brushed himself off. Two youths from his group were approaching, but he waved them away with an almost-convincing chuckle.
“I do hope I see you again,” he said softly, his smile doing little to mask his fury. “House Dranavan never forgets.”
“I’m Anashi,” she said dismissively, sitting back down. “We’re kind of hard to forget.”
Hainzu allowed his friends to take him back to their fire pit and console him with drinks. The Sarmalan’s humiliation would certainly spell trouble for her at some point, but she had chosen her dark corner well, and the scuffle hadn’t drawn attention from the soldiers near the gate.
The Anashi looked around warily and finally saw Gadarien. She glared at him, daring him to try his luck, but he just nodded respectfully. Then, taking a guess based on her fighting style, he put his fist to his palm and did his best take on a Kravadi bow. He wasn’t trained in the secretive art, but he was familiar with the opening of the forms.
The Anashi’s eyes widened. Gadarien unleashed the full force of his most rakish grin, and she dropped her gaze, returning to some suddenly-urgent business inside her pack. A furious blush turned her pewter cheeks to slate as she started preparing for bed, tucking a dagger under her bedroll and conspicuously avoiding looking in his direction. But, as he knew she would, she eventually glanced his way again. He winked broadly, breaking the awkwardness by making his overture blatant. As she pinched her dark lips together to hold back a smile, he knew the first round was his.
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