The Fire Seer by Amy Raby Read Free Book Online

her old farming village had implied a truly shared bed for polyandrous families; it had never occurred to her that those jokes weren’t based on reality. “Well, it’s unlikely I’d be in love with even one of them, let alone both. But it’s said that the more fathers, the stronger the seed, and the stronger the child.”
    “See, it’s complicated,” said Mandir. “It could be the daughter was in love with one brother and not the other, and murdered the one she didn’t like. But she’d be taking an enormous risk in doing so, and would she really sacrifice the well-being of her future children?”
    Taya shrugged. “There are some women who care about nothing but their own happiness. Never mind the children, or anyone else who gets in the way.”
    “And we cannot speculate, knowing nothing about this particular woman,” said Mandir. “Let’s go to Bodhan’s household and have a look. You saw both the jackal and the witness in your vision. Would you recognize them if you saw them in the flesh?”
    “Yes,” said Taya. Then she hesitated. “Well...the witness, definitely. I saw her up close and I remember a lot of details. The jackal, probably, but she was farther away.”
    “We need a signaling system,” said Mandir. “When we see Bodhan’s daughter, I want you to sketch a ‘W’ on the palm of my hand if you recognize her as the witness, a ‘J’ if you recognize her as the jackal.”
    “Or we could use code words,” said Taya.
    “Code words are too obvious, especially if we end up using them repeatedly.”
    So much for Taya’s plan of having no physical contact with Mandir. “All right, signals then. What if I see her and I’m not certain if she’s either?”
    “In that case, make a single slash mark across my palm. If you know for sure she’s neither the jackal nor the witness, make two crossing slash marks. Show me.” He laid his palm on the table and closed his eyes. “Make each symbol for me.”
    Reluctantly, Taya took Mandir’s hand. It was warm and dry. She sketched each symbol on his palm, one at a time, and Mandir named them without looking.
    “If you’ll excuse me,” said Taya, “I have tablet work I have to do now.”
    Mandir’s eyebrows rose. “Tablet work?”
    Taya nodded. “All visions from Isatis must be documented.”
    “Can it wait? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
    Whatever Mandir wanted to discuss—something personal and uncomfortable, no doubt, knowing him—Taya wanted no part of it. She shook her head. “I have to do it before the memory fades.”
    “We’ll talk later, then.” Mandir took his plate and departed through the courtyard door.
     
    ∞
     
    Taya fetched several tablets and a stylus from her saddlebags and, relieved to be alone, settled down to her task. She hated having an audience for this sort of work. Despite nine years of concentrated effort at the temple, writing remained slow and difficult for her. Mandir had teased her about it incessantly when she was younger, and to her shame, she had never overcome the fault. She’d been afraid the Coalition wouldn’t qualify her as an ilittum at all, but her unusual fluency in speaking the mother tongue and in the practical use of magic had made up for her deficiencies in literacy, and she’d scraped through.
    She sprinkled water on the tablets to wet the clay, picked up her stylus, and began. First she committed to the tablet the setting: the time of day, the dry weather, the weedy patch of ground where she’d summoned Isatis and been granted her vision. She then launched into physical descriptions of the man and women in the vision, including every detail about their size, coloration, and clothes. Then the sequence of events. She toiled over the work for an hour, and then another. She sighed, shaking out cramped fingers. She had almost reached the point where Hunabi had burst into flame when her mind refused to focus anymore, and she flung the stylus down in exasperation.
    Why