The Lord of the Keep

The Capital's most popular inn didn't look the part. It was small, built from the same mud brick as the rest of the city, but its wooden stable was triple the typical size. Plenty of travelers slept on its roof both for the cool breeze and lack of vacancies. It was more than old enough to be well established, with many local stories putting its founding before the Capital's walls. Inside, the mudbrick glowed a gentle amber from the one cooking fire at the center of the room, and the wicks on every table. Patrons rested on the haphazard pillows and tables, all made of varying wood and cloth. There were travelers, merchants, tradesmen, and a single bronze clad warrior.

Though the Capital had many public houses for drinks, Dhanur was more comfortable and familiar with the rancor of a wayward inn.

Tendrils of her clay red hair fell from inside her black hood and emphasized the same undertones in her deep brown skin. Her complexion was a much richer and deeper hue than most other southern patrons and the guards atop the wall, like all Uttaran northerners. There were only three like her at the inn, a single group of traders with the facial markings of their clans while Dhanur had none. Most were the typical sandy southern Daksinian brown, with a few fairer traders from far afield even lighter than those from further south bringing their wares in from the western ports.

An entire tunic of scaled bronze protected Dhanur's torso while the rest of her armor was various findings made of leather shoddily tailored to fit. They were scuffed but shining with oil. She was barely at her twenty–seventh summer, but her resplendent bronze set her apart from the typical adventurers and travelers her age who could only boast similarly scarred leather. No one had any bronze beyond a belt loop or an ax head.

She sat alone at her table. No one dared to be near her since anyone permitted or skilled enough to don such things was best not quarreled with.

Janurana entered, escorted inside by an exiting patron who so kindly held the tarp up for the young woman, then went to calm his bull. She stood straight as a spear, twisting the thick fabric of her parasol as she held it low in front of her. Peeling one hand from her vice like embrace of the parasol, she pushed her hair from her face and surveyed the room. She quickly scanned each patron but eventually landed on the armored figure that stood out. Her eyes widened.

She began to leave, seeing a warrior like the gate captain, but paused as Dhanur drunkenly waved her bow at an unfortunate man who accidentally bumped her. She didn't even look up. Janurana blinked at that. The information obtained from the townsfolk would be safer, but less valuable than that from a warrior.

'A drunk talks easier. She may not even remember talking tomorrow. Okay. I can do this. They might not even look at me,' Janurana thought to herself.

"Excuse me, miss? You're blocking the doorway, miss," the innkeeper called as two men tried to squeeze around Janurana. They did their best to not touch her as they did.

She hadn't noticed. "Sorry. My apologies," she said as she bowed, slipping into the fire's threshold.

As Janurana approached Dhanur's table, she felt the gazes of the men and women around her. Most went back to their conversations as she wasn't too odd compared to the other patrons with their varied skin tones, haphazard armors, or queer foreign garb. But a few lingered, wondering what a higher–class woman was doing in the lower class section of the city. A northerner sneered.

Once at Dhanur's table, Janurana did her best to keep her composure and started to bow, then hesitated, and instead sat softly on the pillow beside the slumped pile of armor and alcohol. Janurana leaned her parasol against the table, symmetrical with Dhanur's bow and quiver, and adjusted her sari so she could sit properly. But Dhanur didn't react. Instead, she mumbled to herself, occasionally twitching or rolling her head.

Janurana sucked her teeth.

"Pardon me!" Janurana raised her hand, calling for the innkeeper with a veil of excitement. "May I have a drink?"

"Yes, of course you can. What kind?" The innkeeper bowed.

Dhanur raised her hand to interject.

"Ahh…" she stammered. "Ya know. This." Dhanur waved her hand as if her actions would summon the words and scoffed at the new woman's ineptitude.

Janurana blushed.

"Yes, right away," he said.

Janurana sighed in relief as he hurried off to remove the lid from an urn of drink. She turned to Dhanur whose arm then fell with a thud. Her table and nearby patrons leapt at the sound.

"Thank you, sir." Janurana bowed.

Dhanur started up, having just noticed Janurana had sat next to her and not at another table. The trill of her 'r's made Dhanur take a moment to process what was said through her inebriation.

"I'm not a man." Dhanur slowly met Janurana's gaze. She furrowed her strong brows, a thick scar cleaving her right one in two. Dhanur's face curled into an offended scowl that accentuated her pointed features, less rounded than most Uttarans.

Janurana pressed her lips together. She bowed once more, her hair falling to block her face. "I'm so sorry. I didn't—"

"It's… Whatever," Dhanur sighed and slumped again. She let her hand slide to the floor, no longer reaching for her bow to shoo the woman off.

"Well. I'm Janurana. May I ask your name?" She gave a soft smile.

"No."

"Oh. Mm." Janurana's face fell. The innkeeper placed Janurana's drink in front of her gently and bowed. She returned the gesture with a smile but then drummed her nails on the ceramic cup, filled with the typical light beer that every inn served.

"'Cause it's not for you to know." Dhanur rolled her head on the table, sighing. "But you can call me Dhanur 'cause, ya know." With considerable effort, she nodded to her Kalia bone bow. "I'm a dhanur."

Janurana was astounded at such a piece of craftsmanship and status, despite its size being closer to that of a child's than a soldier's. It was even more exquisite up close, but before she could reconcile its potential value to the treasures she had known in her youth, Dhanur continued.

"I like my name. It's what I do, use a bow…" she slurred, correcting herself. She furrowed her brows again to think hard about her next words.

"You must have done such work for the Maharaj to earn that bow and armor," Janurana raised her inflection at the end.

Dhanur's eyes shot open. "No. I made this." She didn't slur a single word.

"And the armor?" Janurana pressed, hesitantly.

"What's with these questions?" Dhanur sat up, towering over Janurana. She glared down at the smaller woman, scrutinizing her.

It was similar to how the gate captain examined Janurana, but she buckled. Dhanur's stare contained hints of surprise, curiosity, and distrust.

"Pardon me, madam Dhanur." Janurana rose from her pillow.

"No." Dhanur snatched Janurana's wrist with her gloved hand. "No. No. It's fine. Sorry." She slurred her speech again and let go of Janurana, took a sip of her drink, then put her head back down on the table.

Janurana looked around the inn. There were no other guards around, and all the patrons looked like common folk. Janurana thought about that. She hadn't been taken away by any official she had seen, and the bronze clad woman smelled slightly different from the captain who greeted her and the tax collector who approached her. Dhanur's scent was rather homely, like spiced chai.

Janurana sat back down and the rest of the inn got back to their drinks.

"I must say, you seem quite out of place among these common people," Janurana said.

Sitting up straight had caused Dhanur a surge of headache, so she had laid on the table again and could only roll her head to look over. The mill wheel in her mind gave an almost audible grind as she processed what Janurana might mean. "Wha? I am common people."

Janurana took her turn eying the other woman up and down, then shifted from side to side. "No, you're not." She tilted her head.

"Uh, yeah, I am?" Dhanur drug out her words with condescension, as if her circumstances should be obvious. "They," she paused, stared forward for a second longer, and downed the whole of her drink, "kicked me outta that class after the Uttarans surrendered. Stupid Light lost nobles." She punctuated her cursing with another sip but groaned at her empty cup.

"Really?" Janurana willfully ignored Dhanur's condescending tone. "The nobles."

Dhanur growled at the word.

"What are they like?"

"They're the same 's any others?"

Janurana mumbled incoherently to herself and slipped into her own thoughts. 'Dhanur's still allowed to keep her armor. She's not wrapped up with the nobility… And they're no different. Perhaps the gwomoni left them alone to serve as vassals…'

"Wait." Dhanur blinked at Janurana's sari and parasol, evidently just noticing them and sat up. "Aren't you one of them?" Her eyes narrowed.

Janurana sighed and frowned at her clearly well-worn clothes. "I was."

Dhanur's inebriated mind proceeded at a tortoise's pace as she thought about the situation too. She could tell Janurana was not a noble anymore but was born one, which would mean that she's out of favor. The nobles in the keep only ostracized traitors, if they weren't dead already.

'So, she couldn't be with them,' Dhanur thought.

'You're going in circles,' said a secondary voice in Dhanur's head.

She blurted out the first separate thought that came to mind. "Ya look like people I knew."

"Oh?" Janurana seized on that. "People you liked, I hope?"

"One of 'em I did. Used to…" She sank to the table.

"Hey!" The northerner who sneered when Janurana entered stormed towards the two with eyes fixed on Janurana. He bore the tan and white t–shaped tattoos across his forehead, around under his cheekbones drawn down to the sides of his chin marking him as Clan Macaque. His two compatriots struggled to stay in front of him, trying to push him back to their table and begging him in the Uttaran tongue to sit down. One had the brandings of Clan Fish with the red gills on their neck but the other had no such markings, labeling them as a clanless porter.

"Good evening," Janurana said. She glanced back at Dhanur, the only acquaintance she'd made.

"Go away." Dhanur's words fell out of her with a tired rumble. She sighed and turned her back to the situation, rolling her eyes. "Light lost northerner."

"Traitor!" The northern man flinched. Rage boiled behind his glare, but he dared not even look Dhanur in the back of the head. He waited until she had stopped moving before ordering his friends between her and Janurana with a nod.

"Sorry, sorry," the Clan Fish muttered in the Daksinian language, still cowering and pleading with the Clan Macaque to leave. The other was willing himself to disappear into thin air as every southerner in the inn was watching them.

Janurana could pick up that the aggressor's name was Ilanlan just before he glared both of his friends down and they shakily became his shield.

"Stiff," Ilanlan curled his nose as he looked Janurana over. He struggled to parse the Daksinian words he knew through his inebriation and Uttaran accent, making some of his consonants too soft and combining some vowels. "Showiest. So what? Dance in, looking better than us. Daksin burned the Borderlands, now gotta remind our place?" Ilanlan thumped his large chest, as if inviting the much smaller Janurana to hit it. "We will give you fruit for cowries and gems, but not enough?!"

"I'm sorry? I wasn't da—"

"Spirits haunt you!" He spat at her and every southerner present either shifted on their pillow, put down their drink, or reached for whatever weapon they had.

"Bunch'a people died in raids before we fought. Don't make the war special. Nobody cares who died anymore. Quit being an asshole," Dhanur groaned, gritting her teeth. She tried to reach for her bow but gave up when she didn't touch it immediately.

Ilanlan's friends jumped as she spoke and again as she moved. They warily watched the southerners on all sides and slipped back to their muscled companion. Ilanlan was too enraged to notice.

"Daksin forgot the war?! Not special?! Your lands burn too and you forget?! No normal war! No honor war! Fires! Iranra was a brave man! He died better you all! You all were stuck in mud to carry ladders, he did not die so– so," he didn't know the southern word. "My brother died, but he fought and killed, your warriors fell to him, not your forced soldiers. Southerners forced to fight," he scoffed. "But he would still pick fruit today! You all invaded!" Ilanlan had occasionally addressed Dhanur in his rage, but instead screamed full tilt at Janurana. "You gwomoni start the fires!"

Janurana wiped a fleck of spit from her cheek with a revolted flick that blocked the word gwomoni from hitting her ears.

Seeing her flinch at all, Ilanlan smirked "Ha! Gwomoni hate spit, no wonder we do so!" he said to his friends who were trying to placate the ring of southerners closing in on them with every hand gesture and sympathetic frown they could make.

Janurana could only stammer, dumbfounded at the disrespect, but the word gwomoni settled into her and her stammering stopped.

Dhanur groaned loudly, slamming her hands into the table with more force than she realized. The northerners jumped in unison as she stumbled to her feet and shakily grabbed her bow, hoping to wave the annoyances away.

Both of Ilanlan's compatriots threw their arms out, rushing past Janurana and yelling "sorry" to both her and the entire inn. The second they touched her, however, Dhanur's eyes instantly shifted from a drunken glaze to a sharp focus. She leapt back and knocked into her table, but did not stumble. She easily leapt onto it instead. Before they realized she wasn't in front of them anymore, Dhanur struck. The spiked notch on her bow sliced into the flesh of their legs as she swept it under their outstretched arms. She leapt over them as they screamed and struck again as she did, thrusting the spike into her nearest enemy's shoulder, and pushed them both back. They slumped over her table and knocked over the cups.

Dhanur slowly released the breath she had been methodically inhaling as she moved. But the focus faded from her eyes. She grimaced at her fallen foes who were apprehensive to begin with, then shook her head at the pang of headache, and drunkenly drew an arrow to aim at Ilanlan.

He threw up his hands as if to swat away the arrow. As he stepped back, he didn't even glance at his fallen allies. His eyes darted to and fro, trying to find something for a shield, only to bump into a southerner who smashed a cup over his head. Ilanlan barely flinched, unable to look away from Dhanur's eyes. They were heavy again and her sharp focus was fading back into a drunk dullness, but he didn't dare say or do anything to provoke that look again.

"We've got him!" two southern brickmakers yelled, grabbing one of his arms.

As a southern mercenary went to bury his ax into Ilanlan's leg, the northerner snatched it mid-swipe and wrenched it from the mercenary's grasp without a second thought. He slashed at the brickmakers, who both leapt aside just in time, one taking the smallest cut on his hand.

"Just go already! You wanna die here?" Dhanur groaned, her head still throbbing. She struggled to keep her arrow drawn.

Until the Clan Fish northerner groaned particularly loud. Dhanur flinched in surprise and accidentally loosed her arrow right into Ilanlan's leg. He collapsed, shouting a myriad of curses. The rest of the inn didn't make a noise, half expecting him to rip the arrow out and use it as another weapon. Dhanur curled her expression into a pained wince and sighed, then jogged over. She was about to kneel and help Ilanlan up, but he swatted at her with the ax.

"Go to a temple, get Light to heal." She stepped back, grimacing at the arrow lodged in his leg, which she'd rather lose than an arm.

"Your Light. It burned … Borderlands." Ilanlan spat at her.

Dhanur's eyes flared. "That was not—" she stopped herself.

"Spirits… provide…" Ilanlan tried to get on his feet, but his leg refused to move.

"Ugh. Fine." Dhanur nodded to the other Uttarans who were about to be seized by other patrons. "Let them go."

"What?" scoffed a woman with a larger right arm than her left, marking her for a dhanur as well. "Are you dowsing crazy?!"

"I said let 'em go… They're just… Drunk. Angry." Dhanur couldn't say another word. Her head pounded again, less than before but still too much.

Janurana had leapt away right when the fighting started, gripping her parasol while she focused on the maimed people at her feet, and more specifically, the blood. It leaked between the bricks, oozing slowly towards the carpets. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't take her eyes off it.

The clanking of bronze on bronze rattled through the windows as the city guards rushed to the commotion.

"Sorry," Dhanur said to the northerners who were failing to peel themselves off the floor. She took hold of Janurana's arm and dragged her towards the exit, stopping only to dig a small fistful of cowrie shells and precious jewels from her belt's satchel to toss them to the cowering innkeeper.

As the pair fled the inn, a pair of bronze capped city guards rushed past to apprehend the ones who'd caused the disturbance. They did their best to stem the bleeding and wipe up any spilled blood before dragging Ilanlan and his compatriots away. Dhanur pulled the silent Janurana by the upper arm, leading her down the maze of side streets to the main way, dust kicking up behind them.

"How long do you think it'll take them to clean that up?" Janurana asked. She still fixed her gaze in the inn's direction and what would be staining the floor inside.

They stopped right at the edge of the paved road.

"I don'—Well—That's your first question?" Dhanur sighed and went to rub her head, only to clonk her bow into it. Frustrated at her own clumsiness, she squeezed its grip for a quick moment, the throb in her head subsiding. "Since you were at the inn, I guess ya need someplace to sleep? If ya want, you can stay at my house."

Janurana wormed her fingers into Dhanur's, who still held her arm. She let out an awkward chuckle and hissed lightly through her teeth, not knowing for sure if she had fallen into the fire from the pan. She, again, caressed her parasol, keeping it close and low to her person. "I thought you and people like me weren't on the best of terms."

"You're not one anymore, right?" Dhanur pinched her nose.

"Obv—No." Janurana awkwardly stiffened.

"Then, it's fine then," she sighed. "I maimed three people who're definitely gonna, ya know, and I think…" Dhanur put one foot on the main way and tapped it, the sound of her heavy boot echoing through the city.

Janurana smiled, even if the loud noise made her flinch almost instinctively. "You've showcased your gallantry?"

Dhanur sighed, her more opaque skin keeping her blush in check. "You need somewhere to go and I'd be a dowsin' terrible person if I left you there so, y' know."

Janurana responded with a giggle and bow. "Then I suppose I owe you my gratitude, madam warrior."

"S'what I should do. Couldn't sleep otherwise. Just… Come on. Sleep in my guest room. It's safe and soft, um, Clean. Yeah." Turning again to lead the way, she paused, raised her arm behind Janurana to motion her forward, and give a semblance of protection.

From atop the charred husk of a tree, still tall even as its last few leaves fell away, a translucent, silvery blue figure watched the pair. Between flickers from the wall's bonfires, it vanished again as quickly as it appeared.

***

Janurana let out a comforted sigh as they passed the first building with a second floor. Dhanur led her off the main road, worming through the haphazard alleys up the city's incline. Janurana enjoyed the increasingly ostentatious houses. Some had dyed cotton curtains or plush pillows on their rooftops just for lounging rather than sleeping. Others painted the walls with family histories or extravagant flourishes of color for its own sake. The communal gardens of the lower sections transitioned to personal oases of flowers and fruiting bushes. She tried to focus on the sights as she heard the northerners being taken up the main way. Dhanur either didn't hear or didn't care.

To Janurana's surprise, they slipped by quite a few two-story homes, a couple with covered porches, before reaching Dhanur's. It was two floors as well, the second smaller than the first, bone white cotton curtains fluttering through the windows, and a door embossed with bronze and a clay red painting of a bow to indicate whose home it was.

Dhanur fumbled with the peg that kept it closed. But once she succeeded she stumbled forward, forgetting that the door would no longer support her weight when opened.

Janurana tried to reach for her but balked as Dhanur recovered.

"I'm fine. C'mon in," Dhanur bade her entry.

Her home wasn't the typical sty one would expect of a staggering drunk. Dhanur's dwelling was well organized and practical with few things out of place on the table near the hearth or around the support pillars for the second floor. Beyond the utilitarian were shelves of dusted clay tablets, flowering shrubs in painted ceramic pots bearing bright red fruit, and trinkets, both exotic and ornate, which showcased the eclectic interests of an apparently well–traveled woman. Uttaran spear heads inlaid with gem-like swirls of color, withered branches from far off forests, a mountain goat horn, a ring embossed with five rubies, a statuette with a lion's head, a simple broken cup and brick, all had a place of display.

Janurana followed close behind but called Dhanur to a halt by placing her hand on her back.

"Ah, do you need to extinguish those embers?" she muttered.

The embers of a once proud fire were twinkling away in Dhanur's hearth. She flickered her weary gaze to Janurana, then back at the fire. All she could do was groan, finally realizing what it was she had forgotten when she left the house. Something new stood between her and her bed. She put down her bow, stomped forward, preparing herself, then turned her stomps to the ashes. Janurana watched her frustration as the ashes spread. With concern stifling any humor, she doused them with a splash from the jug of water next to the hearth.

"The house is, ya know, brick. It wasn't gonna… fire." Dhanur took off her spackled boot.

"You still should have—"

"So, here're the stairs."

Dhanur nearly crawled to the second floor, encouraged to show Janurana the guest room before falling asleep right there.

It was smaller and homier than the first. A skylight illuminated the sitting area that made up almost the entire second floor in the moon's purple light. A cedar wood table practically melted into the cotton tarp below it with a small potted plant in the center and a pillow on the side, slightly askew showing use. The few goblets set on the trunk made it clear the rest were inside. Along the walls were tarps of paintings of Light miracles, an embroidered pattern of countless geometric shapes blending together to create a soaring eagle, multiple road signs to prove where she had been, and a single large window, leading out to the roof with a ladder up to the second floor's roof.

"Alrigh', so guest." Dhanur motioned to the left, then advanced to the other doorway. "Me."

"Understood. Thank you so much for letting me rest here," Janurana said, bowing deeply with her hands together.

Dhanur remembered her manners and bowed with two fists pressed together instead and walked backwards through the tarp leading to her bedroom without rising.

Allowed to drop her rigid decorum, Janurana giggled before taking a single long breath. She tilted her head up and her eyes fluttered closed. Even under her boots she could feel the plush tarp of brushed cotton covering the floor. She opened her eyes slowly, taking in the violet rays from the sky light bouncing off the walls, removed her boots, and let out a ragged sigh when her toes met the rug. Such a treasure was as wonderful as she remembered.

The softness of it transported her to childhood when she would lay on a not so different rug, while her mother carved message after important message into clay slabs. The night wind would blow through the gem–colored curtains and Janurana would play with her small jade figurines while her mother worked. The fire would crackle, making the only sound in the room with her toys softly padding across the cotton. It was joined with the periodical rustling of her mother's skirt as she moved to and from the fireplace to set the tablets to harden. Mother would pat her head before she sat back down and Janurana would wait and wait, watching the tablets dry, playing on a rug just like the one in Dhanur's home.

Suddenly, Janurana's back seized. A flash of pale blue took over her vision. She spun, prepared to spring out the window and sprint off into the night, but Janurana saw the staircase. There was no pale blue sliver flickering in the distance.

She shoved the memory aside, she would not allow it to become tainted like the others.

Janurana remembered there was a whole guest room open for her. The plain cotton curtains were so different from the colorful ones in her childhood home and the bed was half the size she had been accustomed to, but that was a far memory. Any bed was a luxury.

She surveyed the guest room, with a more objective eye, noting the placement of furniture. Dhanur's eye for decorations showed even more with trinkets on the shelves and walls. One was a woodblock carving of a sleeping woman and another a sign that read in the pointed Daksinian script "cotton fields". The bed rested in the embrace of moonlight against the wall. Without missing a beat Janurana strode over and fell face first into it, shuttering at the scent of cleanliness. Janurana hadn't sunk into anything so soft since the mud she slept in last rainy season. She frowned at how the blanket wasn't as quality as the rug. Janurana wondered if Dhanur was keeping a nice one for herself, then chastised herself for such a rude thought towards her host.

She noticed flakes of dirt coming off her sari, hopped off the bed, dusting it clean, and searched for sleepwear. She looked through the trunk at its base gently, so as not to seem like she was rummaging even though no one was around to judge.

Janurana began her routine, half amazed she remembered it after all the nights in the Outside. She undressed, folded her clothes, slipped on a nightgown, and closed the curtains as tightly as she could. She nearly walked out of the room before pausing, thinking she should probably ask permission to use her host's tub.

There was a small saucer of water in the room's corner. It wasn't much, but Janurana took to it like a starving wolf. She spent what felt to her like an eternity rinsing off her face, relishing in the feeling as well, running her fingers down her unblemished cheeks, trying to remember what pimples felt like. Once she finished, she sat on the bed, then collapsed back onto it. Her massive plume of hair acted like a second cushion. It wasn't washed and that fact kept her from instantly passing out. She hoped there would be time to wash it later.

Taking all excess pillows, Janurana made a wall on the bed facing the window and wrapped herself tightly in the blanket before laying her head on the last pillow. Her night should have been restless with Dhanur arguing with her armor in the other room. She hadn't taken it off before flopping into her bed and would jerk awake, loudly complaining before passing out again.

But Janurana found sound rest hard to come by for another reason entirely. She could still catch Ilanlan's scent wafting through the city. She moved to the window, focusing on him. It was almost as easy to hear him yelling as it was to smell him despite being beyond the web of houses and Ilanlan off in the main way. She could parcel out the smell of fruits and sugar, typical to every northerner as was the concoction of scents she could never place, having never made it past the Borderlands between Daksin and Uttara. His combative voice polluted the sweet, sleepy sounds of the city. Ilanlan was easier to hear as Janurana honed in on his scent. He railed in Uttaran about Dhanur and his wound. Janurana heard him shout "traitor" in Daksinian over and over. The clanless northerner meekly said "rest" a few times to the guards dragging them but Ilanlan pushed them aside. He demanded his friends go free, since he was the one who started the fight. It was hard enough to drag the mountain of a northern man, let alone two hangers on, so the guards relented. Ilanlan meekly said "sorry" to his friends before he was taken away.

Janurana drummed her nails on the window. She wasn't hungry, but her appetite was growing. And it was doubtful the smaller northerners would survive long in the Daksinian Capital with their wounds, let alone stagger across the borderlands home.

She sighed deeply and slipped back into her sari.