silver of the moon, a strange and unearthly thing.
“It looks like something that would have come out of Jhandpara,” Pila said. “So much fine artistry, put into this one object.”
I primed the combustion bulb of the balanthast. Neem and bay, and mint and twilight lora flower and a bramble clipping. By torchlight, we dug into the earth, seeking the root bundle. There were many. With leather- gloved hands, I scooped out a bit of earth, bramble’s vessel. Mara’s fertile womb. The necessary ingredient that would contain the alchemical reaction and channel it into the deeply embedded bramble, much as Jiala’s hair had bound the reaction deep into her body. Saltpeter and sulphur and charcoal to drive the concoction home, poured into the belly chamber. I slid closed the combustion bulb, twisted the brass latches tight.
With a target now chosen, I thrust the balanthast’s three newly-constructed nozzles into the earth beside it. Jiala covered her mouth with a tiny hand as I lit the match. I almost smiled. I set the match under the combustion bulb, and the assembled ingredients caught fire. It glowed like a firefly in its glassine chamber. Slowly the flame died. We watched. Breaths held.
And then as if the Three Faces of Mara had inhaled all at once, the entire careful wad disappeared, sucked into the belly chamber. The primed balanthast quivered with power, elements coming together.
The reaction was so sudden that we had no chance to brace. The very earth tossed us from our feet. Yellow acrid smoke billowed over us. A desperate animal shriek filled the air, as if the swine women were amongst the pigs in a sty, wounding and bleeding a great herd and not killing a single one. We gained our feet and ran, coughing and tearing, stumbling over muddy furrows. Jiala was worst taken. Her cough ripped deep into her lungs, making me fear I’d need to use the healing magic on her again before the night was over.
Slowly the smoke dispersed, revealing our work. The balanthast quivered on its tripod, steady still where it had been jammed into the earth, but now, all around it, there was a seething mass of bramble tendrils, all writhing and smoking. The vines hissed and burned, flakes of ash falling like scales from a dragon. Another shudder ran through the earth as deep roots writhed and ripped upward-and then, all at once, the vines collapsed, falling all to soot, leaving clear earth behind.
We approached cautiously. The balanthast had not only killed the root I had chosen, but destroyed horse- lengths of bramble in every direction. It would have taken workers hours to clear so much. I held up my torch, staring. Even at the perimeter of the balanthast’s destruction, the bramble growth hung limp like rags. I stepped forward, cautious. Struck a damaged plant with a gloved hand. Its vines sizzled with escaping sap, and collapsed.
I swung about, staring at the ground. “Do you see any seeds?”
We swept our torches over the earth, straining to make out any of the pods which should have sprung out and burst open in the blaze of fire’s heat.
Jiala squatted in the cold damp earth, turning it over and running it through her little gloved fingers.
“Well? Is there anything?”
Jiala looked up, amazed. “No, Papa.”
“Pila?” I whispered. “Do you see any?”
“No.” Astonishment marked her voice. “There are none. Not a single one.”
Together, we continued our hunt. Nothing. Not a single seed disbursed from a single pod. The bramble vine had died, and left nothing of itself behind to torment us another day.
“It’s magic,” Pila whispered. “True magic.”
I laughed at that. “Better than magic. Alchemy!”
4
The next morning, despite the previous late night, we all woke with the first crowing of roosters. I laughed to find Pila and Jiala already clustered in the workroom, peering out the shutters, waiting for enough sunlight to see the final result.
As soon as the sun cracked the horizon, we were out in the fields again, headed across the muddy furrows to the bramble wall. The first of the bramble crews were already at work, with axes and long chopping knives, wearing leather aprons to protect themselves from the sleeping spines. Smoke from bramble’s burn rose into the air, coiling snakes, black and oily. Dirty children walked in careful lines through the fields with shovels and hoes, uprooting new incursions. In the dawn light, with the levee labor all at the wall, it looked like the scene of some recent battle. The smoke, the hopeless faces. But as we approached the site of my balanthast firing, a small knot of workers huddled.
We slipped close.
“Have you come to see it?” they asked.
“See what?” Pila asked.
“There’s a hole in the bramble.” A woman pointed. “Look how deep it goes.”
Several children squatted in the earth. One of them looked up. “It’s clean, Mama. No seeds at all. It’s like the bramble never came at all.”
I could barely restrain my glee. Pila had to drag me away to keep me from blurting out my part. We rushed back to Khaim, laughing and skipping the whole way.
Back in our home, Pila and Jiala brought out my best clothes. Pila helped me work the double buttons of my finest vest, pursing her lips at the sight of how skinny I had become since I last wore the thing in my wealth and health.
I laughed at her concern.
“Soon I’ll be fat again, and you’ll have your own servants and we’ll be rich and the city will saved.”
Pila smiled. Her face had lost its worry for the first time in years. She looked young again, and I was struck with the memory of how fine she had been in youth, and how now, despite worry and years, she still stood, unbent and unbroken by the many responsibilities she had taken on. She had stuck with our household, even as our means had faltered, even as other, richer families offered a better, more comfortable life.
“It’s very good that you are not mad, after all,” Pila said.
I laughed. “You’re very sure I’m not mad?”
She shrugged. “Well, not about bramble, at least.”
The way to Mayors House must pass around Malvia Hill, through the clay market and then down along the River Sulong, which splits Khaim from Lesser Khaim.
Along the river, the spice market runs into the potato market runs into the copper market. Powdered spices choke the air, along with the calls of spice men with their long black mustaches that they oil and stretch with every child. Their hands are red with chilies and yellow with turmeric, and their lungs give off the scents of clove and oregano. They sit under their archways along the river, with their big hemp bags of spice out front, and the doorways to their storehouses behind, where piled spices reach two stories high. And then on to the women in the potato market, where they used to sell only potatoes, but now sell any number of tubers, and then the copper families, who can beat out a pot or a tube, who fashion brass candlesticks for the rich and cooking pots for the poor.
When I was young, there was only Khaim. At that time, there was still a bit of the old Empire left. The great wonders of the East, and the great capital of Jhandpara were gone, but still, there was Alacan and Turis and Mimastiva. At that time, Khaim was a lesser seat, valued for its place on the river, but still, a far reach from Jhandpara where great majisters had once wielded their power and wore triple diamonds on their sleeves. But with the slow encroachment of the bramble, Khaim grew. And, across from it, Lesser Khaim grew even faster.
When I was a child, I could look across the river and see nothing but lemon trees and casro bushes, heavy with their dense fruits. Now refugees squatted and built mud huts there. Alacaners, who had destroyed their own homes and now insisted on destroying Khaim as well. Turis, of course is nothing but ash. But that wasn’t their fault. Raiders took Turis, but Alacaners had only themselves to blame.
Jiala hurried along the river with me, her hand in mine. Small. So small. But now with a future. Not just a chance at life and wealth, but a chance that she would not run like the Alacaners from her home as bramble swallowed her childhood and history.
