Free The Fire Seer by Amy Raby Page A

for almost a year,” said Taya. “Everyone looked up to you. The way you treated me set an example. Had you been kind and accepting, they would have been kind and accepting too. Instead you mocked and harassed me. And they joined in.”
    Mandir grimaced. That was true. He’d been the de facto leader of that initiate class, thanks to his name and tattoo, and he’d set the tone. He couldn’t even claim it had been accidental. He’d singled her out on purpose.
    “All those years at the Temple, I had no friends my own age. You made certain that I was alone. And I stayed alone after you left.”
    “That I don’t believe,” said Mandir. “Several of the boys in our class secretly liked you. They wouldn’t have approached you while I was there, but after I left, I’m sure a few of them came sniffing around.”
    “They did,” said Taya. “I sent them away.”
    Mandir spread his arms. “How is that my fault?”
    “Would you want to be friends with someone who used to torment you? I don’t even understand why you did it. How did it profit you to harass me? You were respected and admired without even trying.”
    “I did it because I was in love with you,” said Mandir.
    Taya rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous. Give me a real reason.”
    “That is the real reason,” said Mandir. “Do you remember the day we met, when I showed you how to eat lirry fruit?”
    “I remember.” Her eyes went distant, and she looked sad.
    “I fell in love with you the instant I laid eyes on you,” said Mandir. “But I was horrified by that. You were a farmer! I was a bastard, and I didn’t want that discovered. To throw off suspicion, I associated exclusively with the ruling caste. I pushed you away, publicly and emphatically, determined I should fall out of love with you.”
    “Mandir, you can’t treat someone like that and call it love.”
    “It was...a twisted love. The only excuse I can claim is that I was fifteen years old and stupid, and I grew up in a household that taught me nothing but cruelty.”
    She shook her head. “You made your own choices.”
    “Did you ever like me?” asked Mandir.
    “Never.”
    “Liar,” said Mandir. “The day you met me. You liked me then.”
    Taya sniffed. “All right. I liked you for one day, before I learned what sort of boy you were.”
    “I’m not that boy now. I’ve left that boy behind.”
    Pepper shoved her head over the partition, bumping Taya’s shoulder with her nose and whinnying for attention.
    “Look who’s back,” crooned Taya, stroking the mare’s face. She turned to Mandir. “The onager appears to change its color, but it’s an illusion, nothing more. When it trots back out into the sun, its color changes back.”
    “I am no color-changing onager,” said Mandir. “Tell me how I can prove myself to you.”
    “I don’t think you can,” said Taya.
    “There’s got to be a way.”
    Taya shook her head. “I can’t trust you. If you say something nice, it’s because you’re going to twist it around later. There’s no such thing as sincerity with you. There’s only what you want and what you have to say in order to get it.”
    Mandir smiled sadly.
    “Even you don’t deny it.”
    “I do deny it. But you give me no means of showing you the truth.” Mandir had spent four years teaching this woman he couldn’t be trusted, and unfortunately for him she’d learned the lesson too well.

Chapter 11: Mohenjo Temple, Nine Years Ago
     
    Taya stared at the writing on the clay tablet, willing the beautifully scripted words to make sense. They remained inscrutable. But at least they were inscrutable to all the other students of her class. This tablet, like all the others in this wing of the Mohenjo library, was written in the mother tongue. Some of the tablets were so old they dated from the days before the Atrocity, when the Mothers walked the river valley in human form. This might be one of those tablets.
    With a sigh of longing, Taya ran a hand over the ancient