The Beast Warrior Read online

  They pressed their bodies against the corpse. Slowly, it began to move, then flipped over to expose its underside. One part gleamed pale white where there were no scales.

  Staring at its belly, the young man exclaimed, “Woah! Wait a minute. It’s a female?”

  He was right. There was no sign of any male reproductive organs, just an opening for laying eggs. Elin probed the area around this hole to make sure no male organs were concealed inside.

  “Let’s turn the others over,” she said, and the two men nodded. They swung themselves over the Kiba’s tail and proceeded toward the next corpse. By the time they finished, they were drenched in sweat, but they had discovered that every Kiba was female.

  “Well, who would have thought?” the young man said, his chest heaving. “I was sure that the Kiba were male.” He looked at Elin. “What’s next? Are you going to dissect them?”

  Elin stared for some time at the row of corpses that now lay belly up, then shook her head. “Let’s leave that for tomorrow. There’s something else I want to check today. Did you bring a Silent Whistle with you?”

  Understanding dawned in the young man’s eyes. He pulled on a string that hung around his neck and drew out a whistle from his robe. “You want to find out the sex of the other Toda, do you?”

  She nodded, impressed by his quickness. “Exactly. I want to check the Toda that are still alive. The fastest way to find out what killed the Kiba is to determine how they differed from healthy Toda.”

  Yohalu’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you plan to examine all the living Toda?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well,” Yohalu said with a wry smile. “The Aluhan picked the wrong man as your escort. If I’d known we’d be doing so much hard labor, I would have suggested he assign someone much younger.”

  The young man grinned, rolling up his sleeves. “If it’s youth you want, you’ve got me. This time, though, we’ll be looking at Toda floating in the water, which will be a lot easier.”

  Yohalu rolled his eyes. “We have to get in the water? Now that’s asking too much.”

  They spoke lightly, but all three knew how dangerous live Toda were. If the paralysis caused by the Silent Whistle wore off while they were still examining them, they would be devoured in no time.

  After planning out the procedure in careful detail, they began checking the Toda in each Chamber. There were more than a hundred, and working in the frigid water for hours on end was draining. When they had finished the fifth Pond, Yohalu said, “Lady Elin, how about leaving the rest for tomorrow?”

  The sound of his voice jerked Elin back to her surroundings. Looking up, she saw that the lips of both men had turned blue, and exhaustion was etched on their faces. “Of course,” she said hastily. “Let’s finish tomorrow.”

  Now that her concentration was broken, the cold overtook her, and she began to shake violently. They could barely haul themselves out of the water and had to help one another onto the ledge. Through chattering teeth, Elin gasped, “It’s cold, isn’t it?”

  The two men glanced at each other and burst out laughing. Clearing his throat, Yohalu said, “I wish you had noticed that a little earlier.” He rubbed the left side of his chest. “I have been worried for quite some time that my heart was turning to ice.”

  The young man laughed and slapped his thigh. “I was worried I’d freeze my bal—” He stopped, blushing furiously.

  Yohalu raised his eyebrows. “Yes, well, I must say I know exactly how you feel. However, that’s really not something to mention in front of a lady.”

  The droll way he said this sent Elin into a fit of laughter. She knelt with her hands on the stone floor, her shoulders shaking. Still quivering with cold, the two men burst out laughing again as they helped each other to their feet.

  The effects of the Silent Whistle wore off, and the Toda began swimming around the enclosure. Elin and her companions sobered as they stood staring at them.

  “The Toda in these five Chambers were all male,” the young man remarked.

  Yohalu rubbed a hand across his frigid lips. “Does that mean the Kiba died because they were female?” he asked.

  “Perhaps,” Elin said. “I won’t know until we’ve checked all the others, though.”

  Yohalu cocked an eyebrow at the young man. “How about getting some of the other young Stewards to check their sex tomorrow?”

  “Good idea,” the young man said. “If I try to keep up with Lady Elin, here, I may never be able to take a wife.” Elin snorted.

  The young man stamped his feet to get the blood circulating. “I’ll run ahead to the baths and tell them you’re coming,” he said. “I’ll drop by my house, too, and get Mother to fix you some dinner. Please stay with us tonight.”

  He turned to go when Yohalu stopped him. “Wait! You haven’t told us your name. Without that, how are we supposed to find your house?”

  The young man blushed. “Forgive my rudeness. I’m Chimulu. The baths are on the west side of the village. You’ll know by the high chimney. Please go on ahead. I’ll meet you there later.”

  “Wonderful!” Yohalu said. “And if you don’t mind, could you also tell our coachman where we’ll be? He stabled the horses at the Chief Steward’s place. That’s where he’ll be staying tonight.”

  The young man bowed, then dashed off. Watching him sprint away, Yohalu sighed. “Youth is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?”

  As they exited the cave, they were wrapped in the soft glow of the setting sun. The heavy rain had lifted, and the bright sky was dotted with a few sunset-colored clouds. The only sound on this mild spring evening was the chirping of the birds returning to their nests.

  The guards bowed, and Yohalu stopped to greet them before setting off with Elin. The two walked silently along the forest path toward the village, avoiding the puddles made by the earlier downpour. Just as Chimulu had said, they saw the bathhouse chimney immediately. Watching a thin thread of smoke rise from it and disperse into the sunset sky, Elin bit her lip.

  How often she had walked with her mother to the bathhouse at this same time of day. Holding hands, they would chat about nothing as they strolled along. Her mother would have spent at least half the day in the icy Ponds, and her hand was always frigid. Although many years had passed since then, Elin could still remember the coldness of her skin.

  “Now I can appreciate why all the Toda villages have such magnificent bathhouses,” Yohalu said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “The water in those pools chills one to the marrow. Your mother must have been quite something to have worked for so many years in that freezing water.”

  Elin nodded shortly. In retrospect, it was surprising that her mother never got sick. As a child, Elin hadn’t given it a thought, but standing chest-deep in water so cold it numbed the body must have been hard on her mother.

  The man in charge of the baths was waiting for them at the entrance. Outsiders were normally not allowed in the bathhouse. Although he looked a little uncertain, the man greeted them kindly and showed them inside. “This is the men’s bath,” he said, “and that’s the women’s. The villagers’re all done, so you can have the place to yourselves. Please take your time. Chimulu told me you were coming, so I cleaned the water. The temperature should be just about perfect.”

  He handed them each a towel. As the man left, Yohalu gazed at the one in his hand. “Where did he get these from? He couldn’t have had time to get towels from someone’s house.”

  Elin smiled. “They always keep extra on hand because children who come on their own are likely to forget theirs.” As the words left her mouth, her son’s face popped into her mind. No matter how much she scolded him, the little rascal often scampered off without his towel on purpose. She wondered what he was doing right now. Probably helping Ialu prepare the evening meal. She could picture him climbing onto his father’s back as he crouched in front of the oven and fed wood into the fire.

  Yohalu draped the towel around his shoulders and cocked an ey
ebrow at Elin. “They think of everything, don’t they? Let’s get warmed up.” He disappeared into the men’s changing area, while she entered the women’s side.

  The warmth of people just out of the hot tub still permeated the room. Elin removed her wet clothing and placed it to one side, then descended the steps to the bath area beside the large tub. She poured a dipper of water over herself. It felt scorching hot against her frozen skin. Recalling how her mother had taught her never to dirty the bath water, even if they were the last ones in, she washed herself thoroughly before sliding into the tub. She shivered with pleasure and let out a long sigh as the warmth spread through her body. Gazing absently at her pale legs floating in the hot water, she let all that she had seen and heard that day flow through and out of her mind.

  I wonder why only the Kiba were female …

  This point bothered her. The Stewards couldn’t have deliberately selected females for the Kiba because they never checked their sex. If so, then why were they all female while the rest were male, almost as if they’d been handpicked? And what made a Toda into a Kiba in the first place? Did any of the wild Toda grow so large?

  Maybe they tell them apart when they’re in the egg. Perhaps when they stole them from the nests, they picked ones of a certain size for Kiba and those were all female.

  She got that far in her reasoning and then muttered to herself, “No. That’s impossible.” From what the Chief Steward had said, it sounded like he had seen wild Toda mating. This made sense because collecting Toda eggs from the wild would have been an important task for the Stewards. They couldn’t steal any eggs unless they kept their eye on where the Toda lived and knew where they laid them.

  If they had seen Toda mate, then they should know if there were any features that identified sex, such as one sex being larger than the other. In that case, however, they should have responded immediately that the Kiba were female when she’d asked. Yet not only the Chief Steward, who strictly adhered to the laws governing their care, but Chimulu as well had assumed that the Kiba were males. This could only mean that there was no obvious trait that distinguished males from females in the wild.

  The last rays of sunlight shone through the ventilation window, casting a rosy glow on the white wall of the bath.

  Besides, if the Kiba were always females and sex had anything to do with their deaths, mass Kiba die-offs should have occurred more frequently.

  The deaths had been sudden. Those that had died must have shared some unique characteristic not found in the other Kiba.

  Elin sighed and rubbed her face with her palm. No matter what line of reasoning she followed, she simply did not have enough knowledge. She would have to learn as much she could from the Stewards. That would be her starting point.

  Her arms glowed white in the shimmering water. She missed holding her son, Jesse, on her lap. He was always on her mind. The littlest thing would remind her of his face and the softness of his skin. Had she always been on her mother’s thoughts like this?

  She could almost see her mother’s arms wrapped around her, the way they had when she’d sat on her mother’s lap. Her mother had left this world with so much still locked away inside her. Yet, even so, each thing that Elin discovered about the Toda might teach her what her mother had left unsaid.

  She wiped a hand over her face once more, then rose and stepped from the bath.

  3

  CHIMULU’S HOUSE

  “Oh, I do apologize. Our house is really not suitable for people like you. It’s such a mess. So cramped and noisy.” Chimulu’s mother ducked her head repeatedly as she pushed her children aside and beckoned Elin and Yohalu into the house.

  The homes of Toda Stewards were all of similar structure: a large dirt-floored space with a sink and a clay oven that led straight into a raised wooden-floored room with a hearth. A corridor alongside this led to other rooms in the back. Elin had lived in a similar house with her mother. But she remembered it as being more spacious than this, perhaps because it had only housed the two of them.

  Chimulu’s family was large, and six children were staring wide-eyed at Elin and Yohalu, fingers in their mouths. “I’ve got seven brothers and sisters,” Chimulu said. “But these ones will stay at my grandparents’ tonight.”

  He turned and shooed them out. “Off you go now. Stop making such a racket!” But even when he gave them a swat on the bottom, they didn’t budge, remaining rooted in the entranceway, chattering excitedly as they stared at the visitors.

  Chimulu’s mother finally spread her arms and swept the children out of the house. The door snapped shut, and everything grew quiet. “Phew!” She sighed as she faced her guests. “Sorry for all that noise. I meant to send them off before you arrived, but I wanted to feed them first, and then it got too late.”

  Like Chimulu, she was short with a bright, energetic disposition. Although talkative, she never stopped working. Having heard from Chimulu that they had come to save her eldest son, she showered them with hospitality.

  “My husband passed away,” she said. “During that malaria epidemic a few years back, if you remember. So my eldest son took his place as a Steward. He was always a smart boy, and earnest, too. That’s why he was chosen to help care for the Kiba.”

  While she talked, she filled their bowls with steaming-hot rice. Her eldest son supported the household now, she told them, and he worked hard, despite his youth. At this she choked up, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Yohalu glanced at Elin and then turned to Chimulu’s mother. “Unless he was clearly negligent in his duties, your son won’t be accused of any crime. There’s no need for you to worry so much. You must be patient and wait a little longer.”

  The woman nodded. Chimulu chimed in, “He’s going to be all right, Mum. I’m sure of it. I know how carefully he took care of the Kiba. If these people investigate thoroughly, I’m sure they’ll be able to prove that it wasn’t his fault.” He looked at Elin and Yohalu with a defiant light in his eyes. “I’m so relieved you’ve come. My biggest fear was that the inspector might accuse him to avoid being blamed himself.”

  To voice any doubts about the inspector was to question the Aluhan’s ability to rule, but the challenge in Chimulu’s eyes made it clear that he knew this and had said it anyway.

  Yohalu expressed neither sympathy nor rebuke, but simply picked up his chopsticks and ran his eyes over the food on the table. His face brightened. “What a feast! Shall we dig in?”

  The table was laden with dishes typical of mountain villages. Slices of grilled pheasant basted with miso and minced tsushi, tenderly stewed bamboo shoots, and sweet-and-sour pickled oolika fruit. When grilled, the slightly bitter tsushi-miso had an aromatic fragrance that made normally gamey meat rich and savory and the fatty layer under the skin succulent and delicious.

  Elin took a mouthful of rice. Tears welled suddenly in her eyes, and her nose stung. The food brought back her childhood. Since the day she had washed ashore in Yojeh territory, she had eaten only fahko, an unleavened bread made of mixed grains—never rice and rarely any miso.

  “Don’t you like it?” Chimulu’s mother asked.

  Startled, Elin looked up and said, “Oh, of course I do! It’s delicious.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t keep the quiver from her voice. She drew a deep breath and tried again. “I’m sorry. It’s just that this food tastes so familiar. It really is delicious.”

  “Ah. I forgot,” Chimulu’s mother said. “You’re from Akeh.”

  “Is this what they eat in Akeh, too?” Chimulu interjected.

  Elin nodded. “Yes. We ate tsushi-miso often at this time of year. I used to go down to the stream in the spring with my friends to dig up the shoots. My mother was always delighted when I came back with an armful.”

  Chimulu laughed. “Really? When I was a kid, I hated them. I never went tsushi picking, even when my friends asked me to go along. They’re so bitter, you see. I only found out how good tsushi-miso tastes recently. After I was old enough to drink. That
’s when I realized it’s really quite delicious. Weird.”

  As he talked, he leaned over and poured them wine. They chatted about different seasonal dishes for some time. Toward the end of the meal, Elin said, “Memories from my childhood have been coming back ever since I arrived here, but they’re mostly insignificant little details. Even though my mother was a Steward, I don’t know anything about the Toda.” She looked Chimulu in the eye as she spoke. “There’s so much I need to learn. Would you be willing to teach me? About the work of the Stewards?”

  Chimulu’s face shone. “Of course! I’d be glad to tell you everything I know.” He paused and laughed, looking a little embarrassed. “But I’m just a novice. If it were my older brother, now, he could tell you everything.”

  His mother piped up. “You’re right, there. You don’t have any experience, and you tend to be a bit careless. Unlike your brother who—”

  “Hold on now!” Chimulu said hastily, raising his hand for her to stop. “No need to go on so much about my brother.” He turned to Elin. “Pardon me. What is it you wish to know? Ask me anything. I will be only too glad to answer. I was being modest, but to tell you the truth, I know at least as much as my brother.”

  Elin couldn’t help laughing. “All right. I won’t hold back, then. First, tell me about the Kiba. How are they chosen? Can you tell the difference between them and the other Toda when they’re still in the egg?”

  Chimulu slapped his thigh. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about this whole time! You know what surprised me most? That all the Kiba were female. The strange thing is, the eggs they hatch from are no different from those of the other Toda. It’s impossible to tell which are female and which are male. The ones that will be raised as Kiba aren’t chosen for any characteristic of their eggs. We simply raise all the Toda hatched every five years as Kiba.”

  Elin raised her eyebrows. “Every five years?”