Ahead, our troops trudge through a village. Our catapult is one of the last to pass through the roadways lined with ramshackle huts. Yatin was raised not far from this area. His widowed mother and two eldest sisters worked long days in the fields while he and his other siblings kept house.
Women and children watch us roll through from their worn doorways. About a hundred strides in front of us, Manas, riding on horseback, stops at a hut. He and another soldier speak to the woman. All four members of my unit conceal our faces as we march toward them.
“Where’s your husband?” Manas demands.
The middle-aged woman props a child on her hip, an older boy beside them. “The gods took him to the Beyond three years past.” Her burr is rich and throaty, much like Yatin’s accent.
“Any older children?”
“A fifteen-year-old son. He’s in the rice fields.”
“Send your son here to fetch him,” Manas says and then calls to the other women shying away from the soldiers in their huts. “Rajah Tarek requires all able-bodied men ages fourteen and older to take up arms and join us.”
Though Manas states no punishment for noncompliance, his talwar hangs off his hip. Most women shut their doors. Widows are common in the empire, and the life span of field workers is short. The young son of the woman Manas first addressed starts out for the fields, but Manas bends down from his saddle and snags him by the back of his tunic.
“How old are you?” Manas asks as we steadily march nearer.
“Twelve,” he squeaks.
“I served the rajah as his boot-shine boy at your age. Fetch your older brother and return here to bid your mother good-bye. You’ll work as a water servant.”
My lip curls and I fist my sword.
The woman yanks her son from Manas’s hold. “Please. I need my sons. Someone has to work in the fields and earn our keep.”
We come up to them, the wagon nearly in line with Manas’s horse. Every other door on the road is closed.
Manas regards the woman without a single yarn of compassion. “Send them both.” He posts the soldier with him to stay and enforce his orders and then rides to the next road.
The woman sets her younger child down, a girl, and grabs her son to her chest in a double-arm hug. Her daughter cries at her knees. The sight of them, the mother and her two children, throws my mind back to my mother, brother, and me. The nursemaids had to drag us away from her after our weekly visiting hour in the courtesans’ wing. Each time Mother had to return to entertaining the rajah or his men of court, our hearts were crushed. Brac took our partings especially hard. Afterward, I would hold him on our double cot in the nursery bunk room while he cried himself to sleep.
We roll up to a family’s run-down hut. Our wagon is the only one in sight on the road. The soldier Manas left works to pry the mother and son apart, but the woman will not forfeit her child. The more the soldier wrenches, the more hysterical and desperate she becomes. Finally, he draws back and strikes her. She cries out and falls against the doorjamb.
The scene around me gives way to another.
Mother’s hour with Brac and me has come to an end. She dallies for one last hug, surrounding us in the softest silk and sweetest jasmine. A man barges in and tells her he’s tired of waiting. I stand between them, but he shoves me to the floor and hauls her off by the hair. Brac’s hands start to glow in fury. I shield him from their view. His fingers singe my sleeve and nearly burn my skin. I hold him close, but I cannot cover both his eyes and my ears, which echo with Mother’s fading scream.
The soldier scuffles with the twelve-year-old. I step away from the slow-moving catapult and pull my khanda. “Leave them be.”
The soldier turns on me, and his eyes bulge. I recognize him as well. He and I were in the military encampment together in Iresh. He forgets the boy and draws his sword on me.
“General Manas!” he calls.
Manas has strolled around the bend in the road, out of sight. No other soldiers are near. I can scarcely hear my quick breaths over the woman’s wailing.
The soldier shouts louder. “General! Cap—”
“Afternoon, soldier,” Natesa purrs, pulling off her turban. Her dark-brown hair falls around her dirt-smudged face.
The soldier is so stunned by the sight of a woman—and a beautiful one at that—he does not see Yatin throw his haladie until it is too late. The blade sinks deep into the soldier’s chest, and he collapses before the family. The woman abruptly stops crying and picks up her young child. I shuffle forward to examine the fallen soldier. He is dead, or will be soon.
Yatin speaks from near the wagon. “Rohan, stay here and redirect all sound. Warn us when the general is coming. Natesa, put your turban back on.”
Rohan kicks up a subtle wind, concentrating on Manas’s whereabouts. One would not detect the mood in the skies unless already suspicious. Natesa quickly ties on her turban. Yatin strides past her to the family’s hut. Adrenaline takes over, overriding my shock, and I help him lug the body inside.
Yatin retrieves his haladie and kicks dirt over the trail of blood on the ground. “Hide and don’t come out until the army is gone,” he tells the woman, who nods avidly. “Don’t speak of this, and you’ll be left alone.”
She ushers her children inside, closes their door partway, then pauses. “Thank you, Yatin. Your sisters and mother will be overjoyed to know you’re well.”
I startle at his given name. She shuts the door, and Yatin and I hustle back to the wagon, into Rohan’s winds. Two minutes, maybe three, have passed since Manas rode off. Natesa’s turban again covers her hair. We lead the horses onward, and the next wagon comes around the bend. Rohan weakens his gusts, and we march on.
My heart beats two times faster than my feet.
“He’s coming,” says Rohan.
Manas rides nearer to us. At my prompt, Natesa tucks a loose strand of her hair down the collar of her jacket. Manas’s horse canters past our wagon and slows. He looks back at the woman’s door.
He remembers he left a soldier there.
Farther up the line, a commander calls for the general. Manas circles his mount and rides onward into the troops ahead. I release a quick breath, my heart flailing against my rib cage, and pray that no one pursues the disappearance of one soldier in this vast army.
Once we are clear of the village, I address Yatin. “Who was that woman?”
“A friend of my mother’s. We can trust her.”
We are not near Yatin’s village; that was his village. “Where is your family’s home?”
“Not far from here.”
His sadness hushes me. Though this is the closest he has been to his family in many moons, he cannot stop to visit them. Had I been paying better attention, I would have suggested he and Natesa meet his mother and sisters and rejoin us later. If Natesa had not distracted the guard long enough for Yatin to throw his haladie, we would be finished.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You did the right thing.”