Chulayen couldn't remember how he'd reached the fortresslike building at the top of the mountain that housed the Ministry for Loyalty. He must have been running, because his throat burned for breath and his chest was heaving and there was blackness swirling at the edges of his vision, but he could remember nothing of the streets he must have passed through to get here, nor of what he'd been shouting as he ran. The only things clear in his mind were the shattered, empty rooms he'd left behind and the locked gate before him, and the guard who refused to pass him through.
"Dung burner! Ghay fodder! I am Chulayen Vajjadara, son of Minister Vajjadara, and I have urgent business with the Minister for Loyalty!"
The turbanned man behind the gate, smart and secure in the bright red uniform of the Ministry for Loyalty, scratched his nose and studied something on the guardhouse wall, beyond Chulayen's line of vision. "Don't see no Minister Varadajja on this list."
"Vajjadara, you half-wit! And of course you won't see his name on the list. He's dead!"
"Well, then," the guard said with a sly grin, "he won't be issuing no orders to let you in, will he?"
"You must let me in. Please. I must see the Minister for Loyalty at once. It's—" Chulayen groped for words. "It's a matter of national security."
The guard's look of smug certainty faded just a little, giving Chulayen renewed hope. He felt in the inner pocket of his sash and brought out a thousand-tulai note. "To show my appreciation of your understanding?"
The man's hand moved quickly to snatch the note through the bars of the gate, then slowly toward the great keys hanging from his gold-braided sash. Chulayen babbled in his relief. "So kind, yes, you understand, I would not be so importunate, but there has been a terrible mistake, my Anusha and the children, no reason to take them, no reason at all—"
The guard's hand stopped just short of the keys. "The wife and kiddies, is it?" His tone was kindly, but the back of Chulayen's neck prickled with unreasonable fear.
"It's all a mistake. I must see the Minister at once," he repeated, not knowing what else to say.
"That's what they all say," the guard told him.
"All?"
"The families. If there are any left. It's always a mistake, no reason for the Ministry to take their people away." The guard folded his hands over the gold sash and Chulayen's heart sank. "Go home. The Ministry for Loyalty doesn't make mistakes. By rights I ought to call the Arm of the Bashir on you now, for shouting treason in the street, but in view of your gen'rosity I'll let you go this once. Get along now, quick! There's nothing you can do here."
"No!" Chulayen grabbed the wrought-iron grille and shook it. He could feel the mortar crumbling around the ends of the bars. "No, you don't understand, it's a mistake!"
"Ministry for Loyalty doesn't make mistakes," the guard repeated.
"Doesn't make mistakes!" a high mocking voice behind Chulayen repeated. "Doesn't make mistakes! Let's hear it for the Ministry!" A clod of dirt hit Chulayen on the shoulder, crumbled before it hit the ground. He half turned and saw that the street behind him was full of onlookers, mostly low-class street sweepers and water carriers and servants, the scum of the Rohini slums down-mountain. How did they come to be in this part of town? Had they followed him? He shook his head, disoriented, and a rain of clods and small stones went past him. Mostly past him. They were trying to stone the Ministry, but their aim wasn't so good; if he didn't get out of the way something worse than a handful of dirt would hit him soon, they were prying stones out of the rain gutters now.
"Let me in!" He shook the grille again. "I'm not part of that mob. I have business with the Minister!"
"Stand aside," the guard warned. He whistled and more men in red uniforms with gold sashes poured into the courtyard behind him. They were armed only with old-fashioned muskets, but muskets were enough at this range. The guard made a strange throwing motion with one hand; it seemed as though a net of light fell over the crowd. A moment later, the line of muskets came up, leveled; there was a crashing roar and Chulayen's head exploded into darkness.
"He should be told what happens to the 'disappeared,' " Sonchai argued. "As soon as he comes round. It's not right, making him do our work under false pretenses."
"Nobody's making him do anything," said Madee wearily. "We'll tell him what he needs to know, and ask for his help. That's all." She drew the end of her shalin over her head and huddled within the thin fabric. The cellar was a cold, clammy place for an old woman with old bones to sit; even all the injured people lying on the floor or leaning against the damp walls couldn't warm it up enough for her. She was shaking with fatigue after an hour of working to stop bleeding, set bones in makeshift splints, give whatever rough-and-ready first aid she could to those injured in the riot. The room smelled of blood and madira: every Rohini midwife knew to rinse her hands in the clear, rough hill-distilled liquor, and Madee had a superstitious belief that it was better than water for cleansing most wounds. After all, few Rohini mothers died of the childbed fever—far fewer than the Rudhrani women who could afford the best physicians with the strongest charms.
And most Rohini women learned what they could of healing, because Rohini didn't go to one of the Bashir's "public" hospitals. Especially, Madee thought grimly, especially not Rohini who sported suspicious-looking injuries after a riot in front of the Ministry for Loyalty; might as well walk up to the slightly damaged front grille of the Ministry and ask to be shot then and there.
If you could be so lucky.
She'd even extracted a musket ball from the chest of a boy not much younger than Chulen . . . not that it had done him much good; he'd died coughing out blood. Well, better dead in a Puvaathi cellar than taken prisoner by the Arm of the Bashir; they all knew where those prisoners went. The legendary saint Puran Bhagat, he who was thrown into a deep well after the wicked Emperor Salbahan cut off his hands and feet, had had a better chance than the "disappeared" of Udara.
They knew, but Chulen didn't. And Madee didn't think it was necessary to tell him just yet. He would have enough to assimilate as it was. He'd be no use to them—or to himself—if he couldn't remain calm enough to play his part. Besides, there was nothing they could do for his woman and children—she couldn't do this if she thought of them by name—until the next prison convoy left Puvaathi for the brainfarms. Whether they could do anything then might well depend on whether Chulen was able to get back into the good graces of the Ministers and what he could learn from his official position.
"He'll try harder if he knows there's a chance of saving them," Sonchai argued as if he had read her thoughts.
"He may be too demoralized to try successfully if he knows what he's trying to save them from," Madee said evenly.
"Don't you even care one way or another? Can you really think about it as if you're moving pieces in a game of chaupur? They're your—"
"I know what they are," Madee cut him off. "And I say we do not tell him yet. I have the right." She stared at Sonchai until he dropped his eyes.
"You have the right," he conceded sulkily. "But you are playing with dice made from the bones of the dead, Madee." Every child knew the story of how Rusala played at chaupur with the all-powerful Bashir Sarkap, and won back first his horse, then his armor, and finally his life.
"As Rusala learned," Madee replied, "such is the only way to win against the dice of the Bashir. And if I am Rusala in the story, what are you? The wise horse Bhaunr, who warned Rusala? Or the rat Dhol Raja who upset the pieces whenever Sarkap was losing?"
A groan from the inner room came most opportunely. "Go and see if any of the other wounded need water," she ordered him. Chulen's eyelids were fluttering; it was time to tell him—as much as he must know, for now.
"So many injured to save one man from the Arm of the Bashir," Sonchai grumbled as he left. That was Sonchai, forever arguing about something—if you shut him up about a future decision, he'd go back and argue about a past one. Such a pretty boy he had been, with those full lips and long dark lashes, but he had grown into a perpetually angry and discontented young man. Beauties—of either sex—didn't age well, Madee had noticed. She herself had never been a beauty.
The first thing Chulayen knew for sure was that the back of his head hurt. A lot.
Slowly his consciousness of other aches and pains returned, none of them much to compare with the ongoing explosion behind his right ear. He was stiff, and cold, and lying on damp ground in a darkness sprinkled with flickering lights. But not dead. When he saw the muskets pointing at him—
Then it came back to him in an unbearable rush, his attempt to get into the Ministry for Loyalty, the grille, the guard, the shattered empty rooms down the hill and everybody gone. This must be one of those prison rooms beneath the Ministry. "Anusha? Anusha!" He pushed himself up on one elbow; the small flames swirled about him and became stars, falling stars, the earth turning under him and acid bile coming up in his throat as his stomach also spun and swooped.
"Lie still, Chulen, lie still." A damp rag wiped his mouth, a hand steadied his shoulder. "You will be sick if you try to sit up too fast."
"You don't understand," he whispered. "Anusha—the children?"
"They are not here." It was a woman's voice, sad and caring. Not what he would have expected to find in a Ministry prison; was it a trap? "Drink this, it will make you feel better."
Obediently Chulayen sipped from the rough-edged cup held to his lips. Something cold, a little bitter, but it awakened a raging thirst he hadn't been aware of. He tried to gulp down the rest, but the cup was taken away and the hand supporting his shoulders lowered him back down.
"Not too much at once, or you will be sick again."
"Nothing—to be sick with," he managed, remembering more of the long afternoon and evening he'd spent going from office to office. Worrying about some distant crystal caves, while the Arm of the Bashir was taking away Neena and Neeta and the baby. "Fool," he said. "I was a fool."
"You should have taken one of my yai pao when they were hot," said the voice. One of the flickering lamps came closer, and the face of the old pancake vendor swam out of the darkness.
"Old mother! Did they take you too? Were you there? Tell them it was a mistake, you were not part of it—"
"The Ministry for Loyalty does not make mistakes," mocked a voice in the darkness. Chulayen started, then groaned as his head exploded in another shower of throbbing pains.
"Sonchai, don't tease the boy. He is confused," the old woman said sharply. She turned back to Chulayen. "It is all right, Chulen—at least—this much is all right; this is not a Ministry prison."
"But I thought . . . Where are we, then?"
"It does not matter," the woman soothed him. "We are where the Arm of the Bashir will not look for us. Now lie quiet, Chulen! We cannot risk too much noise."
"We have risked too much already for this one, Madee," said the voice that had mocked him before. Its owner came nearer the lamp, and Chulayen saw a young man with full lips and a sulky look on his face. The vending woman kept one hand on his shoulder, as if to urge him to lie still.
"It's true, Sonchai, but we would have done the same for you."
"I would never have been such a fool as to challenge the Ministry for Loyalty before their own gates!"
"I hope not, but then you have the advantage of Chulen: you know who and what you are."
This whole exchange mystified Chulayen so that he was happy enough to lie still, eyes closed against the flickering lights that still tended to whirl in dizzying patterns if he tried to concentrate. So he was not a prisoner of the Ministry for Loyalty. That was good, probably. But it meant he had no chance of finding Anusha and the children in this place. "I have to leave," he told the old woman.
"Not yet," she said sharply.
"I'm well enough." He had to be, for the children, for any chance of saving the children.
"You don't know enough. We have to explain—" She sighed, settled back on her heels and pushed the folds of the faded, threadbare shalin away from her face. "I don't even know where to begin. Chulen, what do you remember of your childhood?"
"Are you holding me prisoner because of my parents? It won't do you any good. They are dead. They can't pay you any ransom—and I doubt their friends would, either. Not now," he said bitterly, remembering the bland, vague responses he'd had all day, and the crushing blow that had ended it. "I am not exactly in favor with the Bashir's present ministers. Or didn't you understand why I was at the Ministry for Loyalty?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "We understood. That was why we were there too."
Chulayen tried to laugh. "What, a bunch of ragged Rohini came to save my Anusha?"
"To save you," she said, "because you are one of us."
Chulayen shook his head. A mistake; the pain woke and sank claws into the back of his skull. "I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, yes, you do," she said urgently. "You were not so young when your parents were taken, you must remember something."
"I don't know what you are talking about. My father died two years since; he was ill with the winter fever, nobody took him anywhere. And my mother has been dead for some years." He sat up in his agitation. Better; his head still hurt, but the dizziness was receding.
"Vajjadara, the Minister for Trade, died two winters ago," the old woman agreed. "But Chulen, do you remember nothing of your first years? Before you played in the Vajjadara gardens?"
Wisps of dreams and nightmares floated through his muzzy brain. "There was a woman, a Rohini woman, who sang to me at night," he said at last. A dim memory of indescribable warmth and comfort, a sense of safety he'd never known since, that he sometimes returned to in dreams. "A nurse?"
"Your mother, Chulen."
"But—she was Rohini!"
"So are you. Your mother and father were brave people, Chulen, the bravest. They spoke out against the Bashir's growing power when Udara was still a small state, when the people still had a voice in the council—all the people, not just the high-born Rudhrani—and they were taken by the Ministry for Loyalty when you were not four years old."
"But my father, my mother—" Chulayen struggled for words to describe the parents he had been taught to honor above all else. "They never spoke of this. Why should I believe you?"
"The Minister for Trade and his wife had prayed for years for a son," Madee told him. "You were too young to have a part in what they called your parents' treason, and in those days the Ministry for Loyalty had not learned what profitable use it could make of prisoners. After your true parents were taken away, Minister Vajjadara's wife asked for you."
"No! My mother—"
"Was Sunanda Talap, a brave Rohini woman who died in a Ministry prison, Chulen." There were tears in Madee's eyes.
"Why would Minister Vajjadara agree to raise a Rohini boy as his own son?"
"It is said that he loved his wife very much. And her heart yearned for a child."
That much, at least, Chulayen knew was true.
"Those among the Bashir's servants who knew of your origins agreed not to speak of them. He said that he would raise you as Rudhrani and that you would uphold the high principles of his people."
"If no one spoke of it," Chulayen cried, "how do you know so much?"
"Sunanda was my daughter," Madee said. She stopped, struggling with her tears.
"Then why did you not raise me?"
"Idiot!" Sonchai snarled. "Do you know so little of what goes on beneath those fine buildings of your Rudhrani friends? If anyone had known Madee was Sunanda's mother, she would have been taken and killed also. Usually the children of the 'disappeared' are left to starve on the street. She waited for you, she prayed, she feared you had been killed with your parents . . . and she asked. Vajjadara had Rohini servants, and they talk to other Rohini."
"I have known for years where you were, grandson," Madee took up the tale again with forced calm. "But what could I do? Do you think that a Rohini pancake vendor could go to Minister Vajjadara and say, 'That boy you are calling yours is my grandson, give him back'? We watched over you, we saw you were growing up safe and healthy, they were good to you."
"They—were—my parents."
"And did you never wonder why you did not grow tall like the Minister, why your skin is so much darker than his and his wife's? Did no one ever say anything that made you doubt your position, even for a moment?"
"No! I—" Chulayen fell silent, remembering when his marriage with Anusha had been arranged. He had not been overeager to marry the tall, plain Rudhrani girl with her outspoken manner, but his mother had been so pleased by the alliance. "A girl of good Rudhrani blood, that's the most important thing," she had said over and over, and once, "especially for you, Chulayen." But she would not explain why it was so much more important for him than for any of his schoolmates to marry into an unblemished Rudhrani lineage, and when pressed, she'd denied she had said any such thing, claimed he must have misunderstood her.
And there'd been other things, nothing blatant, nothing he couldn't ignore at the time. Odd looks and comments from his father's friends: "So this is Chulayen! Well, well, he does seem to be growing up to be a proper Vajjadara," as if this were mildly surprising. Teasing from his schoolmates about his skin that tanned so dark when he played games in the brief mountain summer, teasing that was cut off promptly by the teachers—he had thought they were protecting him because he was a Vajjadara; perhaps, he thought now, they had been protecting him against the knowledge that he wasn't a Vajjadara.
Wasn't even Rudhrani.
He put the pain of that thought away for now. It would be impolite to acknowledge before this poor Rohini woman—he still could not, would not think of her as his grandmother—how shamed he felt at the idea that he might be a Rohini. One of the class that all educated people agreed was only fit for service, not for leadership. No Rudhrani gentleman was ever discourteous. He might not be Rudhrani, but he could still be a gentleman.
Besides, he might need the help of these people if he was ever to rescue Anusha and the children.
"At first they took Sunanda and Pra, left you in the empty rooms. We meant to get you after nightfall, but they came back for you first." Madee rocked back and forth, drawing the end of the shalin over her face and chanting as if to herself. "Thora thora, beta, tun disin, aur bahoti disi dhur; Purt jinan de tur chale, aur mawan chikna chur." It was part of the Song of Rusala, the mother's lament for her son's departure: "The mother whose son goes away becomes as dust."
They left you in the empty rooms. Chulayen's recurring nightmare came back to him with such force that for a moment he thought himself dreaming indeed: an empty house, doors and window shutters shattered by rifle butts, empty rooms greeting him with the memory of screams. It had not been foreknowledge, then, but memory. Now he saw that in the nightmare he was looking up at high windows, at bloody smears on the walls above his head. A child's view. And the thin high wailing voice that accompanied the dream was his own crying.
"How did they die?"
Madee wrapped the shalin tightly around herself, shrinking down into herself, becoming a cloth-covered bundle.
"Don't ask," Sonchai said harshly. "No one taken by the Arm of the Bashir dies well."
"My children!" Terror lanced through Chulayen. Caught up in Madee's story, he had for a moment been able to forget the fear that had paralyzed his brain ever since he came home to that broken house. "They're not dead? Why would they kill babies? Why take babies?" A wild thought struck him and he cackled with hysterical laughter. "Let me guess, another of the Bashir's High Ministers has a barren wife who is just dying to take on a half-Rohini baby boy and a pair of hellion twin girls." It was better than believing them dead already. If they had been "adopted" he might still be able to get them back.
And Anusha . . . He had never loved Anusha properly. He had treated her with the deference a Rudhrani gentleman owed to his wife, he had given the proper gifts on the births of the twins and far more extravagant gifts when she bore his son, Vashi, but he had always felt that she looked down on him and resented their marriage. Maybe she did—maybe even she had known the secret that had been kept, it seemed, from him alone. Maybe her parents had forced her to agree to this marriage with arguments that still hurt her: "What do you expect, you who are too tall, too bony, too loud? Have old mothers been knocking at our door with flattering offers? He may be Rohini, but no one knows about it, and the family is good. Your younger sisters are settled, it's time you were married while anybody will still have you." Oh yes, he could imagine how they would have dealt with Anusha to drive her, stiff and resentful, to the marriage canopy. Two strangers marrying to satisfy their families; no wonder they'd never become true companions, small wonder that she'd turned in her loneliness to the crazy creed of the Inner Light Way. All that would change, Chulayen vowed, if—no, when—he got her and the children back.
"Oh, the Arm of the Bashir doesn't kill prisoners anymore," Sonchai said. "That would be wasteful. They'll be kept until the next convoy goes out."
"Goes where?"
"We might be able to free them when the convoy goes," Madee said without answering his question. "It's hard to find out when they leave; usually at night, always without warning. We had someone in the Ministry who could let us know when extra travel rations for prisoners were ordered, that always meant a convoy leaving soon, but I think they found out about him."
"Then what can we do?"
"Not very much," Madee admitted. "We've saved a few, helped them to slip away from the convoys by night, but not enough; most of the 'disappeared' go straight to the . . ."
"To the caves," Sonchai said harshly.
"Caves?" Maybe they were using prisoners to mine the saltpeter from places like the Jurgan Caves. Maybe that was why nobody had seemed to care how hard it was to carry the stuff back; the object was punishment, not profits. Chulayen was thinking furiously. "They must give them long sentences, else some would come back and there'd be more talk about the caves here in the city."
"No one comes back," Sonchai said.
"Ever? Surely there must be an occasional escape—"
Sonchai's laugh was harsh. "The Ministry for Loyalty does not leave its prisoners in condition to escape."
"But you get some free before they ever reach the caves."
"Some." Sonchai stared at him with a challenging look. "We could do more if we had more help on the inside. There's only so much that sweepers and bearers and personal servants can pick up. And in case it has escaped your attention, there are not a great many Rohini in the civil service."
"You could help us, Chulayen, if you would," Madee said quietly. "We meant all along to ask for your help, one day."
"You picked a good day for it," Chulayen said. "I'm hardly in a position to refuse now, am I?"
Madee plucked at the folds of her shalin with nervous fingers. "We did not expect this. We thought that some day I would come to you, would explain—but you seemed so perfectly Rudhrani, so content, so sure of your life, there was never a good time. We did not intend to put this pressure on you, Chulayen, I swear it! Would I put my own grandson's children at risk?"
"How do I know what you would do? Only tell me how I can help them now." Whether these Rohini had planned the disaster that had consumed his family, or were merely taking advantage of it, made no difference now; they were his only hope.