THE OTHER SIDE OF TOWN,
by B R Sanders
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has "5829" words.
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Asher lumbered down the stairs from his
apartment to the bar below. He came down armed with a lit cigarette in one hand
and a mug of Semadran black tea in the other. It had been a raucous night, and
he hadn't managed to chase out the last few patrons until near dawn. The
problem with raucous nights and lingering patrons was that they drank up all
the stock. Asher slipped into the storeroom and balanced his mug on a tilted
crate near the door. He cranked the clockwork lantern until it whirred to life.
Tinny yellow light flooded the room. He grabbed a notebook and pencil from a
shelf next to the door and took stock. He was nearly out of dark ales. The Qin
wine, as always, sat untouched. He could stand to pick up more Vilahnan whiskey
if he could get a good price.
A knock at the back door broke his concentration. Asher took a long, final drag on his cigarette. He dropped it on the floor, stamped it, and pulled two cigarettes from his pocket. One he held in his mouth, and the other he tucked behind his ear. He drank half his tea with the unlit cigarette clamped between his teeth. The tea tasted like ash and sooty water. He sighed and went to the back door. Liro leaned against the outside wall of the Refuge. He had been one of the lingerers the night before, and he was as bone-deep tired as Asher. Liro smiled when Asher opened the door. "Morning, Asher."
"Morning, Liro. Bar don't open til seven, you know that."
"I know that," Liro said. He kicked at a wayward stone. "Long night, right? Could use some peace and quiet."
Asher held open the door. He noticed a new bruise on Liro's cheek as he passed by. The violent purple stood out against Liro's pale blue skin. "Ro, where did you end up last night?" Liro shrugged. "You got more than the one on your cheek?"
"Yeah." Liro glanced over. He fidgeted under Asher's stare. "Some Qin assholes were hassling Nin. There was a fight. I'm fine; she's fine. Nothing to worry over. Dassah took one look at me and gave me the day off."
Asher lit his cigarette. "If she gives you a day off every time you fight back, you'll hardly ever be working."
"I tried to tell her that. She mostly just glared at me, said her studio was no place for violence." He sat at the bar and fished around in his shirt. "Hey, mind if I sketch you?"
"Depends, do I have to do anything?" Asher asked. He tapped the ash from his cigarette into an empty bottle some drunk changeling had left on the floor the night before.
"Nah. It's best when folks are just doing whatever anyway."
"In that case, sketch away," Asher said, gathering up a few more stray bottles.
"You are a very generous man, Asher."
Asher leaned on the bar and fished out his ledgers. He went down the list of what he needed to purchase and looked through his notes about which sellers gave him what prices. Asher calculated, wrote lists, plucked at his hair, smoked cigarettes, and drank more tea. Liro sketched. Portraits of an irritated Asher, a confused Asher, a focused Asher piled up on the bar. And then, there was a knock on the front door. "Think that's Nin?" Asher asked. He didn't look up from his ledgers.
"Might be," Liro said.
Asher waved at the door, pencil in hand. "Go check."
Liro slipped off the bar stool and opened the door. Asher kept his eyes on the books and only half-listened. "Bar don't open til seven," Liro said. "You lost? Don't look like you're from this side of town."
A man's voice came in the bar. The accent alone snapped Asher to attention. "I may be lost. I am looking for Rama."
Asher froze. He bolted toward the back door, but only made it a handful of steps. Asher whirled around, confused, panicked, and knocked a bottle of wine off the bar. It obstinately refused to shatter and rolled across the floor.
"No one by that name here. I think you're lost," Liro said.
"No, I...this is the right address. I would very much like to speak to Rama."
Asher lurched across the bar and fetched the bottle of wine. He held it close like a shield while Liro tried to shoo the Inalan man at the door away. After a handful of seconds, Asher gently placed the bottle on the bar. "Hey, Ro."
"Yeah, Asher?"
"Let him in."
"What? Really? He's uh..."
"Not from the neighborhood, I know. Let him in anyway. And make yourself scarce."
Liro stared at Asher hard. He pointed at the bruise on his cheek and raised his eyebrows.
"My bar," Asher said. The words came out rough.
Liro raised his hands and backed away from the door. "Your bar," he said. Liro tucked his chin to his chest and scuttled around a corner. He left the front door wide open in his wake.
The early afternoon sunlight poured in. The Inalan in the doorway stood in silhouette: a slab of black, dark as death itself. Asher's heart forgot to beat. "There is no Rama here," Asher said.
The silhouette shifted. "May I come in?"
"Yes," Asher said, but he reached behind the bar and found a switchblade while he said it. He palmed it; ready, waiting.
The Inalan moved through the shadows. One second he was a nightmare, and the next he was Lasha. He stood tall as Uncle Komala. His hair was still the same unruly mop of black curls it had been in childhood. "Lasha?"
Lasha stared at Asher, eyes wide and wet. He blinked three, four times very quickly as if to keep the tears at bay. He nodded, and then, because it was Lasha who'd never been good at holding himself back, he crushed Asher in a tight hug. Asher dropped the switchblade. "Lasha, you're...you're grown," Asher said.
Lasha pulled back and held Asher by the shoulders. He nodded. "I am. You're Inalan is still good." Asher didn't realize he'd been speaking it. "I've missed you Rama, I really have," Lasha said. "You look well. I–I didn't think you'd remember me."
"Of course I remember you, how could I not remember you?" Asher said. He sighed and stepped out of Lasha's grasp. "Why are you here?"
"Mama's...she's sick. Very sick. She's–she's dying and she wanted to see you again. Before she...so, she asked me to find you."
"That's not possible. You know that's not possible."
"Rama, please–"
"My name is Asher," he said in City Qin. "There never was a Rama, remember?"
Lasha reached out, but Asher took another step back. "Rama–"
"Asher."
"Asher." Lasha took a deep breath. He stared out at the street, through the open door, like he was looking for a sign. "Come home, brother. Please. For me."
"Don't call me that, Lasha. I'm not your brother. You shouldn't be here," Asher said. He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. He did it all slowly, deliberately, with shaking hands.
"Ra...Asher, please. You're the oldest, she needs you," Lasha said.
Asher forced himself to look Lasha in the eye. His eyes were exactly the same as they had been when they were both boys: clear amber like his own, but full of hope and sweetness. "They will kill me."
Lasha's eyebrows shot up. He held his hands out. "No! No, I called in favors. A lot of favors. Dye your hair, and everyone will work very hard to not notice you."
Asher let out a sharp, vicious laugh. Lasha winced. Asher took a long drag on his cigarette. "Dye my hair again," he said. "Mama tried that for years. People noticed anyway, Lasha. People always get suspicious. If it's not the hair, it's that I never get sick. If it's not that, it's that I'm too thin. Or I look too young. Lasha, you look older than me. Dye my hair again. White hair was only ever one sign among many. What is this? A trap? He will notice, Lasha, and he will kill me himself."
Lasha was quiet for a few long seconds. "He died three years ago," he said quietly.
"Oh." Asher stared at the floor between them, searching for something to say. Nothing adequate came to mind. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"It's been three years," Lasha said. He took a step towards Asher, fervent, full of purpose. "Rama, she's sick. Come back with me. All she's ever wanted was to see you again; she was never the same after," Lasha said.
Asher savored it, the knowledge that his banishment left scars on her as well as him. That she remembered him, that it haunted her, tasted sweet to him. He wasn't proud of it, but then again, she'd only cared enough to send him off with an extra piece of bread when they banished him. She still let them force him out with nowhere to go, armed with nothing but a handful of Qin words. "If she didn't want the guilt, she should have come with me," he said.
"Rama, you–"
"I told you, my name is Asher."
"No! Your name is Rama! Our mother is on her deathbed, and she needs you. She gave you life, Rama!" Lasha punctuated his words with quick sharp jabs. Lasha's anger brought out a resemblance to his father that made Asher cringe.
Asher walked back around the bar, stopping only to pick up his discarded switchblade. Lasha either did not notice or pretended not to notice. Asher leaned against the back wall, the thick wood of the bar between him and his brother. "Do you have children now?" Asher asked.
"Yes. I have two sons."
"How old are they?"
"Twelve and fifteen."
"Tell me, Lasha, what if your youngest was accused of being a changeling. What if you had to drop him off in the empty badlands. And he'd be blindfolded, and he'd have nothing but the clothes on his back and a skin of water–one skin of water. What if you had to tell him he had to survive out there a month for each person who accused him of being something not quite human."
Lasha flushed bright red. "I never said the test was–"
"And let's just say that your youngest, he had maybe, seven accusers. Like I did when I was thirteen. And let's say he wasn't strong enough to survive out there on his own. Seven months on his own. Maybe a caravan found him and brought him back half-dead. After all that you would abandon him? Banish him? Tell him he had never been born, take his name back? You could do that to your own child?" Lasha's jaw snapped shut. He looked away, and his shame did nothing but stoke Asher's anger higher. "Well, could you? Because that's exactly what she did, Lasha."
"She didn't have a choice!"
"The hell she didn't. She didn't have to fuck that elf all those years ago. She didn't have to raise me up to begin with. But she did, and then when her mistakes got the better of me, she sent me into the badlands to die. She could have taken the banishment with me. She could have made arrangements for me at the very least, found me somewhere to sleep or something. Anything! And now you pop up after twenty-five years and tell me she needs me? No one needs me, Lasha, I'm a changeling. I am not human. I am the lurker in the dunes, the watcher at the well."
Lasha sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the bar. "She won't let Bhishan perform the rites. She refuses to see anyone but you. Don't condemn her for abandoning you then turn around and do the same thing to her. Everyone deserves to die in peace, don't they?"
"Everyone deserves to live in peace, too," Asher said.
"Then live in peace with her, Rama."
"Rama never existed. She is waiting on a figment."
"You're right here!" Lasha said. "Right here, right in front of me. It's just the other side of town, brother. I've made provisions. You will be safe. I would not be here if I wasn't certain you'd be safe."
Asher looked out at the bar. His bar. This place he'd bought on his own, renovated on his own. A place he'd built as a safe haven, a thing he'd created in defiance, as Asher. But when Lasha called him Rama, the old name still fit. They had taken the name back, erased him, but he still had his own memories of the first life he'd led as Rama. As Rama, he'd had joy and laughter. There had been much else, too, and not much of it good, but she was asking for him. He looked over at Lasha. The decision felt like it had been made for him. He felt powerless to stop this thing from happening; he felt trapped. He stared Lasha hard in the eye. "If this gets me killed, I swear I will haunt you. I swear on all the cardinal spirits, each and every one, I will haunt you and turn your luck, Lasha."
Lasha raised a hand to ward off the curse, but he paused. After a second, he dropped it and nodded. "If this gets you killed, I will deserve such a fate. Thank you, brother."
Asher curled in on himself, his shoulder arched away from Lasha, his chin tucked into his chest. "Meet me here tomorrow. In the afternoon. Bring dye. I have to tie up loose ends here, but I'll be ready."
"Thank you, Rama."
Every word of gratitude burned. Lasha's smile, his palpable relief cut Asher to ribbons. "Remember the dye," Asher said.
Asher stared down at his forgotten ledgers, but they were nothing but blurred black marks on white paper. There was no sense to anything. It was like the world had shuddered to a halt and suddenly, inexplicably started to spin the wrong way. His mind reeled, wordless, terrified. Feelings he had long locked away came roaring again to the surface.
"Hey. Asher." Liro poked his head around the corner of the corridor that led to the back door. Asher frowned and crossed his arms tight across his chest. "Tell me what to do to help. I know I'm not a bartender, but I've got to be able to help somehow."
Asher swallowed. He took a deep breath. He waved Liro over, and he forced himself to plan. "Amran can run things while I'm gone. He knows this place as well as I do. He can run it, but he'll need some help. He'll need help at the bar after ten or so when things pick up. And...and I got to restock. The list is there. Amran knows who to buy from, but when he gives them the order someone will have to be here during the day when they drop it all off. Can you stay here? You take my place upstairs. Here's my key." Liro nodded and took the key. "If you or Amran need anything, send word to Vish Lasha, alright? Vish Lasha. Don't come for me yourself. Don't risk it."
"Vish Lasha, I got it," Liro said. He came close and laid a hand on Asher's arm. Liro studied him and bit his lip, teetering on the verge of asking something. Asher wanted him out. Asher wanted him there. Liro plunged ahead. "Fuck, Asher, are you alright?"
Asher plastered his free hand over his face. The tears leaked out anyway. He felt so lucky someone asked. Liro wrapped his arms around Asher, and Asher drank in the comfort.
⚜
Lasha brought Asher to the same old house on the same narrow street in the Inalan Quarter under the cover of night. It was high summer, the desert nights warm and the days sweltering hot, but Asher walked across the City in a hooded coat despite the heat. Hanks of dyed black hair fell in his eyes. Lasha led him right through the heart of the Quarter. Asher watched the paving stones of the street go from smooth, orderly, seamlessly fitted together to broken and jagged where the Inalans had dug up the water pipes. The shadow of the Broken Wall fell over the old adobe house. It was a bright night-full moon, burning stars-but this guides' house nestled against the crumbling stone of the City's walls was always bathed in shadows.
Lasha cast a glance over his shoulder as he opened the door. The street was empty; nothing broke the pristine darkness but the occasional flicker of an oil lamp behind a curtain. He ushered Asher into the house and lit a oil lamp himself. The adobe house had always seemed like magic to Asher when he was a child; the way it kept the air cool in the heat of the day and the rooms warm in the chill of the night mystified him. Lasha pointed to a cot in the corner of the room. "Will this be alright for you?" Lasha asked. Asher nodded. "Do you want to see her?"
"Yes," Asher said. His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. "Where are Bhishan and Potha?"
"They'll be here in the morning," Lasha said. A door opened and closed deeper within the house. Lasha looked over at Asher. "There is something you should know-"
A young man, not quite full grown, stepped into the room. He had yet the hungry thinness of youth. His hands and feet seemed too large for his body. He wore a confused expression, which turned desolate when he saw Asher. "Lasha, you brought a priest?"
"No, Aram. He's not a priest."
The boy, Aram, let out a relieved sigh. "She had a good day today." He frowned slightly and stared down at his feet. "A better day."
The way the boy moved, the expression on his face, the shape of his nose were damning. "Does he know, Lasha?" Asher asked. "Does he know about me?"
Aram's head jerked up. "Who is this, Lasha?"
Lasha sighed. He swallowed and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He tinkered with the oil lamp. Aram asked again who Asher was. "He is and is not our brother, Aram," Lasha said finally.
Aram laughed. Asher saw fragments of his own smile in the boy's face when Aram laughed. Aram shook his finger at Lasha. "You and your riddles."
"You never told him," Asher said.
Aram turned to Asher, the ghost of a smile still on his lips. "Told me what?"
"Bhishan is not first born. I am. I was banished," Asher said. "I'm a changeling."
The boy blinked. He studied Asher, a quick flick of his eyes up and down. He stood very still. "Lasha..."
"This was Rama. He was eldest. Mama keeps asking for him."
The boy's eyebrows drew together. He took two, three steps back. "You said that was the fever talking."
"It was, and it wasn't," Lasha said.
"You said she was delirious."
"She wasn't."
Aram pointed at Asher. "A changeling? There's a Vish changeling? I..." The words died on his lips. "That...I thought that was just gossip."
"It wasn't," Asher said. Aram stared at him when he spoke, half in fear, half in fascination.
Lasha sighed again. "Aram, Rama will sleep here. Unless you would rather him sleep elsewhere."
Asher's head whipped to face his brother. "Do you think I'm dangerous, Lasha?"
Lasha held up his hands. He refused to look Asher in the eye. "You were my brother, Rama, and you always will be, but you are a changeling."
"You begged me to come here!"
"You are a changeling," Lasha said again, very quietly.
"Lasha, you spineless–"
Aram stepped forward between them. He pointed down the hallway from which he'd emerged. "She is asleep," he said softly. "Let's let her stay that way. If Mama wants him here I'm not going to throw him out. I'll be fine. We'll be fine. Go home to your boys, Lasha."
Asher and Aram watched Lasha leave. Asher swallowed down the dark knot of anger as best he could, but everything in the house touched a raw nerve, poured salt into some old half-healed wound. That was the chair his mother held him in when he was scared. That was the cabinet he'd hidden in when the neighbors' suspicions whipped his father into a rage. Everything in the room was horrifically familiar except for the boy standing next to him. Asher turned his attentions to Aram. It seemed to him somehow cruel that he had a brother he'd never known existed. It seemed to him that he should have known somehow, should have been able to feel it. Life had gone on without him in this house.
Aram gestured at the cot. "Will it be alright?"
"Yes, it's fine," Asher said. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen," Aram said. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-eight."
Aram narrowed his eyes. He made calculations, he realized, and he looked away. Had his father still been alive, their parents' marriage would only be thirty-seven years old. "Are you hungry?" the boy asked.
"No. I'm just tired."
"Do you want to see her?"
"If she's sleeping, let her sleep," said Asher.
⚜
When Asher woke the next morning, Aram was already awake. He'd built up a fire in the old black stove in the corner and was heating water for tea. "Oh, I didn't mean to wake you," Aram said.
"It's alright. Do you need help?"
Aram peered at him over his shoulder for a long moment. He shook his head and went back to watching the water struggle to raise a boil. "You don't look thirty-eight."
"I know."
"You look younger than Lasha. He's thirty-one."
"I know how old Lasha is," Asher said. He felt in his pockets for a cigarette, which he lit with the stove's fire.
Aram watched him smoke. "My father used to smoke those," he said.
"I know. Where do you think I picked up the habit?" Aram frowned to himself. "Lasha says she's sick."
"She is," Aram said. "She has been for a long time. He thinks she's dying. They all think she's dying, but I...she's strong."
"What does she have?"
Aram stared into the pot of water. "No one's sure. It's hard for her to breathe sometimes. Sometimes she coughs blood."
It was tuberculosis. It was common in the Quarter, and unseen anywhere else in the City. "And you? Do you have trouble breathing?"
"No."
Asher sighed. He looked around this house, which as a child had seemed so large. The entire house was the size of his attic apartment where he lived alone. He'd lived there with three siblings, two parents, an unmarried uncle, and an ailing grandmother. All in this cramped house. People lived on top of each other in the Quarter. They split food meant for four people between eight and risked well water rather than drink from the same pipes as the rest of the City. "Tell me, do they say she's caught the long death from her bad luck?"
Aram stood very tall and looked at Asher over his shoulder. His eyes were wide, terrified. "How would you know they say that?"
"Because whenever a family falls to this stupid disease the neighbors blame a changeling. Even if the family hasn't pushed one out, they look for one. Changelings, you know, they steal food, and life, and give nothing in return." Asher sighed and leaned against the wall. "The Qin have powders you can take to slow the disease. Had I known I would have brought some."
"No." Aram's voice was loud, harsh. "They are just like you: changelings. A changeling cure for a changeling disease is madness."
Asher took a long drag on his cigarette. He smiled. "Tell me about the family. Who is the guide?"
"Potha."
"Potha?" Aram nodded. Asher laughed. "When she was a girl it was pulling teeth to get her to go past this street. And she's the guide. What about you?"
"What about me what?"
"What are you going to do? Who is taking you under their wing?"
Aram poured the tea. "I'm taking care of her."
"Who is taking care of you?"
Aram cut his eyes at Asher. "What do you do out there? What is the rest of the City like?"
"I run a bar. The City is big. There's space for anything and everything in it. Good things, bad things, all of it. Is she awake?"
"She might be," said Aram. He turned down the fire at the stove and led Asher to the sleeping room. Aram hesitated slightly at the door. He edged it open slowly, carefully. "Mama?"
She coughed in response. "Rama is here."
The blankets on the bed shifted. It was the same sprawling bed she'd slept in when he was a boy, the same one Lasha and Bhishan and Potha had been born in. And probably Aram, too. Aram drew the curtains and opened the shutters. Asher's mother lay in a shock of red morning light. She methodically, patiently worked herself upright and searched the room for him. Her face was skeletal; her hair was thin and brittle. Her throat rattled when she drew breath. But her eyes-the red dawn light turned her amber eyes a flaming orange. The force of her remained in her eyes even as her body wasted away. "Rama," she said.
Aram handed Asher the cup of tea, and slunk to the back wall. Asher gave his mother the tea. She took it in hands fragile as dead leaves. Her hands shook with every hard-won beat of her heart. "You dyed your hair."
"Lasha dyed it."
"I knew you were alive," she said. Her face contorted and she fell into a coughing fit. Aram leaped across the room. In half a second, he had the cup out of her hand before the tea could spill. He leaned her upright and held a rag to her mouth while she coughed. It was a terrible racking sound, like some desert demon was trying to claw its way out of her through her lungs. It took some time before the fit subsided. "Mama, you shouldn't talk so much," Aram said.
"Go," she croaked. "Aram, go."
"Mama-"
"Go."
Aram slunk out of the room. Asher felt trapped without him there. "I knew you were alive," his mother said again.
Asher fought an urge to light a cigarette. His fingers twitched for it. "Lasha said you won't let Bhi perform the rites."
"He is second-born," she said.
Asher pulled a chair to the edge of the bed. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his face turned away. His head hung down, and the dyed strands of his hair mocked him. "I am not Inalan."
"You are my son." Her hand roamed the edge of the bed searching for his, but the search was in vain.
"What would you have done if I had died?"
"I knew you were alive."
"No, you didn't."
"I would have felt it, Rama."
Asher dropped his face into his hands. He felt split apart, felt cracked open. "There is no Rama."
Silence hung heavy between them. The light turned red to gold. His mother wheezed, his mother coughed, and then his mother spoke again. "I thought he was you," she said. "Aram. I thought he was you, Rama. I thought you had died, and you had come back to me. I thought that's why I became pregnant again after so long," she said. "He is very like you."
"He is not me."
"I know. That's how I knew you were alive." She coughed again. Asher winced to hear it but made no offer of help. "I'm not sure who Aram is."
"Maybe he is me, Mama. Maybe he's the part of me that died in the wilds." Asher stared out the window. The Quarter lived in its own rhythms. He could not be sure, but some of the faces that passed by the window looked familiar. "When do you want the rites performed?"
"Not yet," she said.
Asher sat with her the next day, too, from dawn until dusk. Aram lurked around the house, bringing food, bringing clean rags. His sister, Potha, came to the house. She pretended not to see Asher there. It did not bother him. He was used to being invisible. There was a safety in invisibility, a comfort in it. Asher only left his mother's room when she fell into a fitful, ragged sleep. He slipped out the back door and lit a cigarette. He watched half-naked children draw water from the neighborhood well and struggle to get the bucket down the street. He had a few bare minutes of peace, and then Aram came out and sat next to him. "Should you be out here?"
"No."
"Are you really a changeling?"
Asher sighed and tapped the ash of his cigarette on the broken street. "I didn't pass the test."
Aram sat hunched, his lanky arms wrapped around his long legs. His chin rested on his forearms, and he stared out at the well thoughtfully. "Was there relief when you failed the test?"
Asher stared at him, this boy he did not know, this brother he never knew he had. "What kind of relief could there be in that? I was banished. I nearly died out there."
Aram plucked at his hair, shielding his face from view. "I just meant...I thought it might be a relief to know for sure you don't fit. Did you wonder before the test? Or did you know?"
"Why are you asking this?"
"You're my brother. I want to get to know you."
Asher stabbed out his half-smoked cigarette. "I am a changeling. I'm not someone you should get to know." He went back into his mother's room. It smelled of medicinal herbs, of blood, and of her. When she woke, he asked again if she wanted the rites, and again she refused.
⚜
Asher sat next to his mother's bed while another day came and went. She sounded worse. She could no longer sit up. She could no longer keep down food or water, and her skin was dull and dry. When she coughed, he had to help her onto her side lest she drown in her own blood. "Mama, the rites."
"No."
"You are dying."
"No," she said. Her voice sputtered over phlegm and blood.
"Why not, Mama?"
Her hand flung out to the side of the bed, desperate and panicked. He took her hand, and she held his firm with shocking strength. She pulled him towards her. Her eyes were fevered, searching. "I am sorry I was foolish when I was young. I am sorry you paid the price for it instead of me. I am so very sorry for that."
Asher wanted to pull his hand back. He felt his skin prickle, grow hot. His heart beat too loud and too fast. "Mama, the rites-"
"Do you forgive me, Rama?" she asked. Her wretched voice carried in it a power, a force, a demand.
Asher held her hand tight. "No. I don't. I don't forgive you. But I will give you the death you want." The fire in his mother's eyes went out like a snuffed candle.
He sent Aram to gather the rest of her children, but just the children. The priest, her sisters, Uncle Komala, they would all have to wait until Asher was out of the Quarter. Lasha, Potha, and Bhishan stood along the wall opposite their mother's bed. Lasha could not bear to look at his mother. Potha could not bear to look at Asher. Bhishan shook in rage any time Asher spoke. Aram stood next to Asher and prompted him through the rites. Aram held his mother's hand, and wept, and was the shadow of her firstborn. Asher stumbled through the ritual words. With each response, a little more of his mother's will to live slipped away. "May you pass to the hands of the cardinal spirits in comfort," Asher said. He kissed her forehead. "Tell your children what you need to pass to the spirits."
She coughed. Aram helped her, soother her. His tears mingled with her blood. It took her some time to catch her breath, to marshal the strength to speak again. "What I need cannot be given," she said. She squeezed Asher's hand. "I would have privacy."
"Mama, no," Lasha said.
"Please," she said.
"I will come if you need anything," Aram said.
Asher pulled his hand from hers and led his siblings out of the room. "The rites are done," Asher said. "I'll leave in the morning."
Lasha laid a hand on Asher's shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you for bringing her peace."
"I don't know that I did."
"I am sure you did. Thank you." Bhishan and Potha said nothing. They waited for Lasha to leave and followed him out.
Aram sat curled up on the floor. Asher made the boy a cup of tea and sat down next to him. Aram took the cup and held it, stared down into it like a soothsayer. "Thank you."
"Are you alright?"
"No." He sighed. "She really is going to die."
"I'm sorry, Aram."
"She's going to die, and then what? What do I do?"
"You live."
Aram wrenched his gaze from the tea. He stared at Asher with that same ferocity his mother's eyes had carried. "When you go in the morning, can I go with you?" Aram asked.
Asher blinked in surprise. "Why?"
"Maybe you're not the only changeling in the Vish family."
"You are distraught. You are Inalan."
Aram sunk his face deep into his arms. "Everything here is so pointless. You got out, Rama."
"I was forced out."
"Would you have stayed? If you'd passed the test, would you have stayed here?"
"I never would have passed the test. I'm not human enough to pass it." Asher sighed. He stared at Aram, this boy who'd nursed his dying mother for months, maybe years. A boy who was lost, but a boy who had a place. "You are Inalan, Aram. Lasha and the rest, they'll take care of you. It will be hard when she goes, but they'll be there to catch you."
Aram sat up. He stared at the door to the sleeping room for a long time. "You're really leaving?"
"Yes."
"Will you come back?"
"If I did I'd be killed."
Aram stared down at his hands. "But we're brothers."
"We aren't," Asher said. "I'm glad I met you, but we're not brothers in any way that counts. You stay on your side of town, Aram, and I'll stay on mine.”
A knock at the back door broke his concentration. Asher took a long, final drag on his cigarette. He dropped it on the floor, stamped it, and pulled two cigarettes from his pocket. One he held in his mouth, and the other he tucked behind his ear. He drank half his tea with the unlit cigarette clamped between his teeth. The tea tasted like ash and sooty water. He sighed and went to the back door. Liro leaned against the outside wall of the Refuge. He had been one of the lingerers the night before, and he was as bone-deep tired as Asher. Liro smiled when Asher opened the door. "Morning, Asher."
"Morning, Liro. Bar don't open til seven, you know that."
"I know that," Liro said. He kicked at a wayward stone. "Long night, right? Could use some peace and quiet."
Asher held open the door. He noticed a new bruise on Liro's cheek as he passed by. The violent purple stood out against Liro's pale blue skin. "Ro, where did you end up last night?" Liro shrugged. "You got more than the one on your cheek?"
"Yeah." Liro glanced over. He fidgeted under Asher's stare. "Some Qin assholes were hassling Nin. There was a fight. I'm fine; she's fine. Nothing to worry over. Dassah took one look at me and gave me the day off."
Asher lit his cigarette. "If she gives you a day off every time you fight back, you'll hardly ever be working."
"I tried to tell her that. She mostly just glared at me, said her studio was no place for violence." He sat at the bar and fished around in his shirt. "Hey, mind if I sketch you?"
"Depends, do I have to do anything?" Asher asked. He tapped the ash from his cigarette into an empty bottle some drunk changeling had left on the floor the night before.
"Nah. It's best when folks are just doing whatever anyway."
"In that case, sketch away," Asher said, gathering up a few more stray bottles.
"You are a very generous man, Asher."
Asher leaned on the bar and fished out his ledgers. He went down the list of what he needed to purchase and looked through his notes about which sellers gave him what prices. Asher calculated, wrote lists, plucked at his hair, smoked cigarettes, and drank more tea. Liro sketched. Portraits of an irritated Asher, a confused Asher, a focused Asher piled up on the bar. And then, there was a knock on the front door. "Think that's Nin?" Asher asked. He didn't look up from his ledgers.
"Might be," Liro said.
Asher waved at the door, pencil in hand. "Go check."
Liro slipped off the bar stool and opened the door. Asher kept his eyes on the books and only half-listened. "Bar don't open til seven," Liro said. "You lost? Don't look like you're from this side of town."
A man's voice came in the bar. The accent alone snapped Asher to attention. "I may be lost. I am looking for Rama."
Asher froze. He bolted toward the back door, but only made it a handful of steps. Asher whirled around, confused, panicked, and knocked a bottle of wine off the bar. It obstinately refused to shatter and rolled across the floor.
"No one by that name here. I think you're lost," Liro said.
"No, I...this is the right address. I would very much like to speak to Rama."
Asher lurched across the bar and fetched the bottle of wine. He held it close like a shield while Liro tried to shoo the Inalan man at the door away. After a handful of seconds, Asher gently placed the bottle on the bar. "Hey, Ro."
"Yeah, Asher?"
"Let him in."
"What? Really? He's uh..."
"Not from the neighborhood, I know. Let him in anyway. And make yourself scarce."
Liro stared at Asher hard. He pointed at the bruise on his cheek and raised his eyebrows.
"My bar," Asher said. The words came out rough.
Liro raised his hands and backed away from the door. "Your bar," he said. Liro tucked his chin to his chest and scuttled around a corner. He left the front door wide open in his wake.
The early afternoon sunlight poured in. The Inalan in the doorway stood in silhouette: a slab of black, dark as death itself. Asher's heart forgot to beat. "There is no Rama here," Asher said.
The silhouette shifted. "May I come in?"
"Yes," Asher said, but he reached behind the bar and found a switchblade while he said it. He palmed it; ready, waiting.
The Inalan moved through the shadows. One second he was a nightmare, and the next he was Lasha. He stood tall as Uncle Komala. His hair was still the same unruly mop of black curls it had been in childhood. "Lasha?"
Lasha stared at Asher, eyes wide and wet. He blinked three, four times very quickly as if to keep the tears at bay. He nodded, and then, because it was Lasha who'd never been good at holding himself back, he crushed Asher in a tight hug. Asher dropped the switchblade. "Lasha, you're...you're grown," Asher said.
Lasha pulled back and held Asher by the shoulders. He nodded. "I am. You're Inalan is still good." Asher didn't realize he'd been speaking it. "I've missed you Rama, I really have," Lasha said. "You look well. I–I didn't think you'd remember me."
"Of course I remember you, how could I not remember you?" Asher said. He sighed and stepped out of Lasha's grasp. "Why are you here?"
"Mama's...she's sick. Very sick. She's–she's dying and she wanted to see you again. Before she...so, she asked me to find you."
"That's not possible. You know that's not possible."
"Rama, please–"
"My name is Asher," he said in City Qin. "There never was a Rama, remember?"
Lasha reached out, but Asher took another step back. "Rama–"
"Asher."
"Asher." Lasha took a deep breath. He stared out at the street, through the open door, like he was looking for a sign. "Come home, brother. Please. For me."
"Don't call me that, Lasha. I'm not your brother. You shouldn't be here," Asher said. He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. He did it all slowly, deliberately, with shaking hands.
"Ra...Asher, please. You're the oldest, she needs you," Lasha said.
Asher forced himself to look Lasha in the eye. His eyes were exactly the same as they had been when they were both boys: clear amber like his own, but full of hope and sweetness. "They will kill me."
Lasha's eyebrows shot up. He held his hands out. "No! No, I called in favors. A lot of favors. Dye your hair, and everyone will work very hard to not notice you."
Asher let out a sharp, vicious laugh. Lasha winced. Asher took a long drag on his cigarette. "Dye my hair again," he said. "Mama tried that for years. People noticed anyway, Lasha. People always get suspicious. If it's not the hair, it's that I never get sick. If it's not that, it's that I'm too thin. Or I look too young. Lasha, you look older than me. Dye my hair again. White hair was only ever one sign among many. What is this? A trap? He will notice, Lasha, and he will kill me himself."
Lasha was quiet for a few long seconds. "He died three years ago," he said quietly.
"Oh." Asher stared at the floor between them, searching for something to say. Nothing adequate came to mind. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"It's been three years," Lasha said. He took a step towards Asher, fervent, full of purpose. "Rama, she's sick. Come back with me. All she's ever wanted was to see you again; she was never the same after," Lasha said.
Asher savored it, the knowledge that his banishment left scars on her as well as him. That she remembered him, that it haunted her, tasted sweet to him. He wasn't proud of it, but then again, she'd only cared enough to send him off with an extra piece of bread when they banished him. She still let them force him out with nowhere to go, armed with nothing but a handful of Qin words. "If she didn't want the guilt, she should have come with me," he said.
"Rama, you–"
"I told you, my name is Asher."
"No! Your name is Rama! Our mother is on her deathbed, and she needs you. She gave you life, Rama!" Lasha punctuated his words with quick sharp jabs. Lasha's anger brought out a resemblance to his father that made Asher cringe.
Asher walked back around the bar, stopping only to pick up his discarded switchblade. Lasha either did not notice or pretended not to notice. Asher leaned against the back wall, the thick wood of the bar between him and his brother. "Do you have children now?" Asher asked.
"Yes. I have two sons."
"How old are they?"
"Twelve and fifteen."
"Tell me, Lasha, what if your youngest was accused of being a changeling. What if you had to drop him off in the empty badlands. And he'd be blindfolded, and he'd have nothing but the clothes on his back and a skin of water–one skin of water. What if you had to tell him he had to survive out there a month for each person who accused him of being something not quite human."
Lasha flushed bright red. "I never said the test was–"
"And let's just say that your youngest, he had maybe, seven accusers. Like I did when I was thirteen. And let's say he wasn't strong enough to survive out there on his own. Seven months on his own. Maybe a caravan found him and brought him back half-dead. After all that you would abandon him? Banish him? Tell him he had never been born, take his name back? You could do that to your own child?" Lasha's jaw snapped shut. He looked away, and his shame did nothing but stoke Asher's anger higher. "Well, could you? Because that's exactly what she did, Lasha."
"She didn't have a choice!"
"The hell she didn't. She didn't have to fuck that elf all those years ago. She didn't have to raise me up to begin with. But she did, and then when her mistakes got the better of me, she sent me into the badlands to die. She could have taken the banishment with me. She could have made arrangements for me at the very least, found me somewhere to sleep or something. Anything! And now you pop up after twenty-five years and tell me she needs me? No one needs me, Lasha, I'm a changeling. I am not human. I am the lurker in the dunes, the watcher at the well."
Lasha sighed. He closed his eyes and leaned heavily against the bar. "She won't let Bhishan perform the rites. She refuses to see anyone but you. Don't condemn her for abandoning you then turn around and do the same thing to her. Everyone deserves to die in peace, don't they?"
"Everyone deserves to live in peace, too," Asher said.
"Then live in peace with her, Rama."
"Rama never existed. She is waiting on a figment."
"You're right here!" Lasha said. "Right here, right in front of me. It's just the other side of town, brother. I've made provisions. You will be safe. I would not be here if I wasn't certain you'd be safe."
Asher looked out at the bar. His bar. This place he'd bought on his own, renovated on his own. A place he'd built as a safe haven, a thing he'd created in defiance, as Asher. But when Lasha called him Rama, the old name still fit. They had taken the name back, erased him, but he still had his own memories of the first life he'd led as Rama. As Rama, he'd had joy and laughter. There had been much else, too, and not much of it good, but she was asking for him. He looked over at Lasha. The decision felt like it had been made for him. He felt powerless to stop this thing from happening; he felt trapped. He stared Lasha hard in the eye. "If this gets me killed, I swear I will haunt you. I swear on all the cardinal spirits, each and every one, I will haunt you and turn your luck, Lasha."
Lasha raised a hand to ward off the curse, but he paused. After a second, he dropped it and nodded. "If this gets you killed, I will deserve such a fate. Thank you, brother."
Asher curled in on himself, his shoulder arched away from Lasha, his chin tucked into his chest. "Meet me here tomorrow. In the afternoon. Bring dye. I have to tie up loose ends here, but I'll be ready."
"Thank you, Rama."
Every word of gratitude burned. Lasha's smile, his palpable relief cut Asher to ribbons. "Remember the dye," Asher said.
Asher stared down at his forgotten ledgers, but they were nothing but blurred black marks on white paper. There was no sense to anything. It was like the world had shuddered to a halt and suddenly, inexplicably started to spin the wrong way. His mind reeled, wordless, terrified. Feelings he had long locked away came roaring again to the surface.
"Hey. Asher." Liro poked his head around the corner of the corridor that led to the back door. Asher frowned and crossed his arms tight across his chest. "Tell me what to do to help. I know I'm not a bartender, but I've got to be able to help somehow."
Asher swallowed. He took a deep breath. He waved Liro over, and he forced himself to plan. "Amran can run things while I'm gone. He knows this place as well as I do. He can run it, but he'll need some help. He'll need help at the bar after ten or so when things pick up. And...and I got to restock. The list is there. Amran knows who to buy from, but when he gives them the order someone will have to be here during the day when they drop it all off. Can you stay here? You take my place upstairs. Here's my key." Liro nodded and took the key. "If you or Amran need anything, send word to Vish Lasha, alright? Vish Lasha. Don't come for me yourself. Don't risk it."
"Vish Lasha, I got it," Liro said. He came close and laid a hand on Asher's arm. Liro studied him and bit his lip, teetering on the verge of asking something. Asher wanted him out. Asher wanted him there. Liro plunged ahead. "Fuck, Asher, are you alright?"
Asher plastered his free hand over his face. The tears leaked out anyway. He felt so lucky someone asked. Liro wrapped his arms around Asher, and Asher drank in the comfort.
⚜
Lasha brought Asher to the same old house on the same narrow street in the Inalan Quarter under the cover of night. It was high summer, the desert nights warm and the days sweltering hot, but Asher walked across the City in a hooded coat despite the heat. Hanks of dyed black hair fell in his eyes. Lasha led him right through the heart of the Quarter. Asher watched the paving stones of the street go from smooth, orderly, seamlessly fitted together to broken and jagged where the Inalans had dug up the water pipes. The shadow of the Broken Wall fell over the old adobe house. It was a bright night-full moon, burning stars-but this guides' house nestled against the crumbling stone of the City's walls was always bathed in shadows.
Lasha cast a glance over his shoulder as he opened the door. The street was empty; nothing broke the pristine darkness but the occasional flicker of an oil lamp behind a curtain. He ushered Asher into the house and lit a oil lamp himself. The adobe house had always seemed like magic to Asher when he was a child; the way it kept the air cool in the heat of the day and the rooms warm in the chill of the night mystified him. Lasha pointed to a cot in the corner of the room. "Will this be alright for you?" Lasha asked. Asher nodded. "Do you want to see her?"
"Yes," Asher said. His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. "Where are Bhishan and Potha?"
"They'll be here in the morning," Lasha said. A door opened and closed deeper within the house. Lasha looked over at Asher. "There is something you should know-"
A young man, not quite full grown, stepped into the room. He had yet the hungry thinness of youth. His hands and feet seemed too large for his body. He wore a confused expression, which turned desolate when he saw Asher. "Lasha, you brought a priest?"
"No, Aram. He's not a priest."
The boy, Aram, let out a relieved sigh. "She had a good day today." He frowned slightly and stared down at his feet. "A better day."
The way the boy moved, the expression on his face, the shape of his nose were damning. "Does he know, Lasha?" Asher asked. "Does he know about me?"
Aram's head jerked up. "Who is this, Lasha?"
Lasha sighed. He swallowed and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He tinkered with the oil lamp. Aram asked again who Asher was. "He is and is not our brother, Aram," Lasha said finally.
Aram laughed. Asher saw fragments of his own smile in the boy's face when Aram laughed. Aram shook his finger at Lasha. "You and your riddles."
"You never told him," Asher said.
Aram turned to Asher, the ghost of a smile still on his lips. "Told me what?"
"Bhishan is not first born. I am. I was banished," Asher said. "I'm a changeling."
The boy blinked. He studied Asher, a quick flick of his eyes up and down. He stood very still. "Lasha..."
"This was Rama. He was eldest. Mama keeps asking for him."
The boy's eyebrows drew together. He took two, three steps back. "You said that was the fever talking."
"It was, and it wasn't," Lasha said.
"You said she was delirious."
"She wasn't."
Aram pointed at Asher. "A changeling? There's a Vish changeling? I..." The words died on his lips. "That...I thought that was just gossip."
"It wasn't," Asher said. Aram stared at him when he spoke, half in fear, half in fascination.
Lasha sighed again. "Aram, Rama will sleep here. Unless you would rather him sleep elsewhere."
Asher's head whipped to face his brother. "Do you think I'm dangerous, Lasha?"
Lasha held up his hands. He refused to look Asher in the eye. "You were my brother, Rama, and you always will be, but you are a changeling."
"You begged me to come here!"
"You are a changeling," Lasha said again, very quietly.
"Lasha, you spineless–"
Aram stepped forward between them. He pointed down the hallway from which he'd emerged. "She is asleep," he said softly. "Let's let her stay that way. If Mama wants him here I'm not going to throw him out. I'll be fine. We'll be fine. Go home to your boys, Lasha."
Asher and Aram watched Lasha leave. Asher swallowed down the dark knot of anger as best he could, but everything in the house touched a raw nerve, poured salt into some old half-healed wound. That was the chair his mother held him in when he was scared. That was the cabinet he'd hidden in when the neighbors' suspicions whipped his father into a rage. Everything in the room was horrifically familiar except for the boy standing next to him. Asher turned his attentions to Aram. It seemed to him somehow cruel that he had a brother he'd never known existed. It seemed to him that he should have known somehow, should have been able to feel it. Life had gone on without him in this house.
Aram gestured at the cot. "Will it be alright?"
"Yes, it's fine," Asher said. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen," Aram said. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-eight."
Aram narrowed his eyes. He made calculations, he realized, and he looked away. Had his father still been alive, their parents' marriage would only be thirty-seven years old. "Are you hungry?" the boy asked.
"No. I'm just tired."
"Do you want to see her?"
"If she's sleeping, let her sleep," said Asher.
⚜
When Asher woke the next morning, Aram was already awake. He'd built up a fire in the old black stove in the corner and was heating water for tea. "Oh, I didn't mean to wake you," Aram said.
"It's alright. Do you need help?"
Aram peered at him over his shoulder for a long moment. He shook his head and went back to watching the water struggle to raise a boil. "You don't look thirty-eight."
"I know."
"You look younger than Lasha. He's thirty-one."
"I know how old Lasha is," Asher said. He felt in his pockets for a cigarette, which he lit with the stove's fire.
Aram watched him smoke. "My father used to smoke those," he said.
"I know. Where do you think I picked up the habit?" Aram frowned to himself. "Lasha says she's sick."
"She is," Aram said. "She has been for a long time. He thinks she's dying. They all think she's dying, but I...she's strong."
"What does she have?"
Aram stared into the pot of water. "No one's sure. It's hard for her to breathe sometimes. Sometimes she coughs blood."
It was tuberculosis. It was common in the Quarter, and unseen anywhere else in the City. "And you? Do you have trouble breathing?"
"No."
Asher sighed. He looked around this house, which as a child had seemed so large. The entire house was the size of his attic apartment where he lived alone. He'd lived there with three siblings, two parents, an unmarried uncle, and an ailing grandmother. All in this cramped house. People lived on top of each other in the Quarter. They split food meant for four people between eight and risked well water rather than drink from the same pipes as the rest of the City. "Tell me, do they say she's caught the long death from her bad luck?"
Aram stood very tall and looked at Asher over his shoulder. His eyes were wide, terrified. "How would you know they say that?"
"Because whenever a family falls to this stupid disease the neighbors blame a changeling. Even if the family hasn't pushed one out, they look for one. Changelings, you know, they steal food, and life, and give nothing in return." Asher sighed and leaned against the wall. "The Qin have powders you can take to slow the disease. Had I known I would have brought some."
"No." Aram's voice was loud, harsh. "They are just like you: changelings. A changeling cure for a changeling disease is madness."
Asher took a long drag on his cigarette. He smiled. "Tell me about the family. Who is the guide?"
"Potha."
"Potha?" Aram nodded. Asher laughed. "When she was a girl it was pulling teeth to get her to go past this street. And she's the guide. What about you?"
"What about me what?"
"What are you going to do? Who is taking you under their wing?"
Aram poured the tea. "I'm taking care of her."
"Who is taking care of you?"
Aram cut his eyes at Asher. "What do you do out there? What is the rest of the City like?"
"I run a bar. The City is big. There's space for anything and everything in it. Good things, bad things, all of it. Is she awake?"
"She might be," said Aram. He turned down the fire at the stove and led Asher to the sleeping room. Aram hesitated slightly at the door. He edged it open slowly, carefully. "Mama?"
She coughed in response. "Rama is here."
The blankets on the bed shifted. It was the same sprawling bed she'd slept in when he was a boy, the same one Lasha and Bhishan and Potha had been born in. And probably Aram, too. Aram drew the curtains and opened the shutters. Asher's mother lay in a shock of red morning light. She methodically, patiently worked herself upright and searched the room for him. Her face was skeletal; her hair was thin and brittle. Her throat rattled when she drew breath. But her eyes-the red dawn light turned her amber eyes a flaming orange. The force of her remained in her eyes even as her body wasted away. "Rama," she said.
Aram handed Asher the cup of tea, and slunk to the back wall. Asher gave his mother the tea. She took it in hands fragile as dead leaves. Her hands shook with every hard-won beat of her heart. "You dyed your hair."
"Lasha dyed it."
"I knew you were alive," she said. Her face contorted and she fell into a coughing fit. Aram leaped across the room. In half a second, he had the cup out of her hand before the tea could spill. He leaned her upright and held a rag to her mouth while she coughed. It was a terrible racking sound, like some desert demon was trying to claw its way out of her through her lungs. It took some time before the fit subsided. "Mama, you shouldn't talk so much," Aram said.
"Go," she croaked. "Aram, go."
"Mama-"
"Go."
Aram slunk out of the room. Asher felt trapped without him there. "I knew you were alive," his mother said again.
Asher fought an urge to light a cigarette. His fingers twitched for it. "Lasha said you won't let Bhi perform the rites."
"He is second-born," she said.
Asher pulled a chair to the edge of the bed. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his face turned away. His head hung down, and the dyed strands of his hair mocked him. "I am not Inalan."
"You are my son." Her hand roamed the edge of the bed searching for his, but the search was in vain.
"What would you have done if I had died?"
"I knew you were alive."
"No, you didn't."
"I would have felt it, Rama."
Asher dropped his face into his hands. He felt split apart, felt cracked open. "There is no Rama."
Silence hung heavy between them. The light turned red to gold. His mother wheezed, his mother coughed, and then his mother spoke again. "I thought he was you," she said. "Aram. I thought he was you, Rama. I thought you had died, and you had come back to me. I thought that's why I became pregnant again after so long," she said. "He is very like you."
"He is not me."
"I know. That's how I knew you were alive." She coughed again. Asher winced to hear it but made no offer of help. "I'm not sure who Aram is."
"Maybe he is me, Mama. Maybe he's the part of me that died in the wilds." Asher stared out the window. The Quarter lived in its own rhythms. He could not be sure, but some of the faces that passed by the window looked familiar. "When do you want the rites performed?"
"Not yet," she said.
Asher sat with her the next day, too, from dawn until dusk. Aram lurked around the house, bringing food, bringing clean rags. His sister, Potha, came to the house. She pretended not to see Asher there. It did not bother him. He was used to being invisible. There was a safety in invisibility, a comfort in it. Asher only left his mother's room when she fell into a fitful, ragged sleep. He slipped out the back door and lit a cigarette. He watched half-naked children draw water from the neighborhood well and struggle to get the bucket down the street. He had a few bare minutes of peace, and then Aram came out and sat next to him. "Should you be out here?"
"No."
"Are you really a changeling?"
Asher sighed and tapped the ash of his cigarette on the broken street. "I didn't pass the test."
Aram sat hunched, his lanky arms wrapped around his long legs. His chin rested on his forearms, and he stared out at the well thoughtfully. "Was there relief when you failed the test?"
Asher stared at him, this boy he did not know, this brother he never knew he had. "What kind of relief could there be in that? I was banished. I nearly died out there."
Aram plucked at his hair, shielding his face from view. "I just meant...I thought it might be a relief to know for sure you don't fit. Did you wonder before the test? Or did you know?"
"Why are you asking this?"
"You're my brother. I want to get to know you."
Asher stabbed out his half-smoked cigarette. "I am a changeling. I'm not someone you should get to know." He went back into his mother's room. It smelled of medicinal herbs, of blood, and of her. When she woke, he asked again if she wanted the rites, and again she refused.
⚜
Asher sat next to his mother's bed while another day came and went. She sounded worse. She could no longer sit up. She could no longer keep down food or water, and her skin was dull and dry. When she coughed, he had to help her onto her side lest she drown in her own blood. "Mama, the rites."
"No."
"You are dying."
"No," she said. Her voice sputtered over phlegm and blood.
"Why not, Mama?"
Her hand flung out to the side of the bed, desperate and panicked. He took her hand, and she held his firm with shocking strength. She pulled him towards her. Her eyes were fevered, searching. "I am sorry I was foolish when I was young. I am sorry you paid the price for it instead of me. I am so very sorry for that."
Asher wanted to pull his hand back. He felt his skin prickle, grow hot. His heart beat too loud and too fast. "Mama, the rites-"
"Do you forgive me, Rama?" she asked. Her wretched voice carried in it a power, a force, a demand.
Asher held her hand tight. "No. I don't. I don't forgive you. But I will give you the death you want." The fire in his mother's eyes went out like a snuffed candle.
He sent Aram to gather the rest of her children, but just the children. The priest, her sisters, Uncle Komala, they would all have to wait until Asher was out of the Quarter. Lasha, Potha, and Bhishan stood along the wall opposite their mother's bed. Lasha could not bear to look at his mother. Potha could not bear to look at Asher. Bhishan shook in rage any time Asher spoke. Aram stood next to Asher and prompted him through the rites. Aram held his mother's hand, and wept, and was the shadow of her firstborn. Asher stumbled through the ritual words. With each response, a little more of his mother's will to live slipped away. "May you pass to the hands of the cardinal spirits in comfort," Asher said. He kissed her forehead. "Tell your children what you need to pass to the spirits."
She coughed. Aram helped her, soother her. His tears mingled with her blood. It took her some time to catch her breath, to marshal the strength to speak again. "What I need cannot be given," she said. She squeezed Asher's hand. "I would have privacy."
"Mama, no," Lasha said.
"Please," she said.
"I will come if you need anything," Aram said.
Asher pulled his hand from hers and led his siblings out of the room. "The rites are done," Asher said. "I'll leave in the morning."
Lasha laid a hand on Asher's shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you for bringing her peace."
"I don't know that I did."
"I am sure you did. Thank you." Bhishan and Potha said nothing. They waited for Lasha to leave and followed him out.
Aram sat curled up on the floor. Asher made the boy a cup of tea and sat down next to him. Aram took the cup and held it, stared down into it like a soothsayer. "Thank you."
"Are you alright?"
"No." He sighed. "She really is going to die."
"I'm sorry, Aram."
"She's going to die, and then what? What do I do?"
"You live."
Aram wrenched his gaze from the tea. He stared at Asher with that same ferocity his mother's eyes had carried. "When you go in the morning, can I go with you?" Aram asked.
Asher blinked in surprise. "Why?"
"Maybe you're not the only changeling in the Vish family."
"You are distraught. You are Inalan."
Aram sunk his face deep into his arms. "Everything here is so pointless. You got out, Rama."
"I was forced out."
"Would you have stayed? If you'd passed the test, would you have stayed here?"
"I never would have passed the test. I'm not human enough to pass it." Asher sighed. He stared at Aram, this boy who'd nursed his dying mother for months, maybe years. A boy who was lost, but a boy who had a place. "You are Inalan, Aram. Lasha and the rest, they'll take care of you. It will be hard when she goes, but they'll be there to catch you."
Aram sat up. He stared at the door to the sleeping room for a long time. "You're really leaving?"
"Yes."
"Will you come back?"
"If I did I'd be killed."
Aram stared down at his hands. "But we're brothers."
"We aren't," Asher said. "I'm glad I met you, but we're not brothers in any way that counts. You stay on your side of town, Aram, and I'll stay on mine.”
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About the Author: B R Sanders lives and works in Denver, CO, with their family and two cats, where they spend a whole lot of time writing character-driven fantasy. Their work explores sexuality, gender, and resistance set against a rich and fully realized fantasy backdrop. They studied Psychology, Law and Society, and Religion at Oberlin College, and earned a Ph.D. in the Personality and Social Contexts Area of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor’s Psychology Department. When they are not knee-deep in words, they are crunching spreadsheets as a K-12 Education data analyst.
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