Free Tinder Stricken by Heidi C. Vlach

of the higher
plateaus. The homes here were built of clay brick here but still
humble in design, barely within the glow of the Empire-maintained
oil lamps the higher castes enjoyed in their streets. Esha watched
that distant street — set into the mountainside, firelit and hazy
like the gate to another world. No one there saw her except one
guard, who stared brief and then kept his eyes moving.
    As leisurely as she could manage, Esha
peered at the house's patch of yellow flags. One flag had a
lengthly request for lake shellfish but only certain kinds of it —
and below that, a black smudge on its tip. This was the Manyoris'
home.
    Esha circled the right side of the house
and, refreshed with relief once she was out of the guard's line of
sight, searched the shadows until she found a hollow pipe set into
the wall.
    She had brought pebbles in her satchel, like
the dyemaker said. One by one, she dropped seven of them down the
pipe to clatter away into the dark. Then Esha returned to the front
door to wait for answer.
    No light shone through the narrow slashes of
windows, though. No movement showed from within. Esha stood there
conspicuous, without enough eyes to watch all the shadows around
her. She turned back to the door — but movement flickered above
her, on the roof's edge. There sat a phoenix, staring at her with
eyes as bottomless as a lake.
    Esha stared back, her fright gone but her
innards still glowing hot. She had seen more than enough phoenixes
for this lifetime — but if the animist kept phoenixes as pets, she
would need to rally her patience. This bird shifted on its feet and
something flashed on its backside; this was a tagged bird from
earlier and its master had to be nearby.
    “Hail,” Esha called out, her voice ripping
the quiet. She looked again to the shadows around, and the many
building corners that might be hiding a listener. “Is anyone
here?”
    Silence answered her. She waited. Wind
whistled over tin roofs outside and the phoenix blinked calm at
her.
    “Well?” Esha asked it. “Where is your
owner?” She felt immediately foolish, talking to the thing, but
standing around useless was foolish, too.
    It tipped its head, crests moving.
    “I want to see the animist,” Esha said,
enunciated clearly like she would speak an order to a dog. Maybe
trained phoenixes knew commands in human tongues. They were clever
enough to be menaces, so it might surely be possible. After a
heart-gripping hesitation, Esha lowered her voice and added,
“Bird-nose.”
    The phoenix stood. It turned suddenly toward
the peak of the roof, hopping up the incline and over, out of
sight, its two stringfeathers trailing away like knotted lengths of
yarn.
    Esha was alone in the street again. She
grumbled a small oath, and shifted on her aching feet. She resolved
to leave in another five moments and raised fingers to chance
scratching under her headwrap, where her goat pelt always itched
after a day of sweat.
    “What do you want of bird-nose?”
    Esha dropped her hand, heart turning to ice
— at the sight of the tall shape around the house's corner. A tall,
large-nosed figure stood in shadow. Round curves marked her a woman
and her voice was low and accented just like the Manyori
animist's.
    “You—“ Esha spluttered on her confusion. She
couldn't see a caste sigil on this woman, couldn't imagine how to
ask or explain.
    “Out with it,” the animist's sister said.
She spoke Grewian, accent-clipped but without lungta. “What do you
wish of bird-nose?”
    Bird-nose wasn't a pass phrase, Esha
realized. It was a name — surely not a name the Empire had on any
records.
    Rank was moot and Esha was here to ask
someone's favour. She went ahead and pressed her hands together,
offering namaste to this Birdnose. “I'd like to make a deal.
There's a phoenix—“
    “I know. It's fine,” Birdnose said. Her nose
really did command her entire face, like a beak. “Your name?”
    “Gita of the Fields.”
    “Show me your