1
The morning of the raid Sunheri hung full and brassy in the sky, dappling the black water with a trail of gold. The blue moon, Neel, was invisible and would remain so until the night of the moon festival next year—a small blessing as far as Roshan Chaya was concerned. The light of one moon was bad enough; two moons together would have likely given away her position by the riverbank, along with every other member of the Shadow Clan.
Her breath fogged the air before her; nights were chilly here in Jwala’s westernmost province, no matter the time of year. But tonight, Roshan barely felt the cold. She watched the vessel emerge from the darkness, a large cargo dhow slowly making its way across the gleaming river, its sails rolled up. The carved figurehead of the fire goddess gleamed eerily on the bow, protective enchantments lending it a dull blue sheen.
Roshan whistled: a passable imitation of a bulbul in a tree. An owl hooted back perfectly: confirmation that Governor Yazad Aspa’s weekly shipment of grain was on its way to the capital city of Prabha. Smack-dab in the middle of the river.
Completely out of reach.
Another hoot followed and Chotu rose into the air, small and wingless, his slender form slowly blending in with the sky. He would soon be invisible to everyone, except for Roshan, who knew exactly where to look. If she didn’t love the little boy with her whole heart, Roshan would have been envious of Chotu’s gifts. Levitation was hard enough magic without adding a reflector spell to the mix. Now she watched him float toward the dhow, his body but a blur against a scene that would have appeared tranquil—if not for the bloated corpse of a ruddy shelduck floating in the water nearby, its sour, peaty odor lingering in the air.
Without thinking, Roshan reached up to touch the amulet between her collarbones. Made of firebloom wood, it was a perfect, flat square embossed with a tree, the remnant of parents she had never known. That is … if it had been her parents who’d gifted her the one object that best amplified her magic—before abandoning her as a newborn eighteen years ago.
Do not dwell on the past, bitiya, Baba had told her whenever she’d asked him questions about them. It is best left behind.
It had been difficult for Roshan to drink in her bitterness. To leave thoughts of her parents behind. But for Baba, she’d done her best. Baba, who’d called her his bitiya, even though he wasn’t her father. Baba, who took her in, taught her to pick locks without magic, to fight. To kill, if necessary—and only if necessary.
After Baba’s death a year ago, Roshan had had no choice but to kill. As Bandit Bhim Chaya’s adoptee and favored successor, she had known that someday she would have to prove herself, even fight for the clan’s leadership. She had not expected a battle to the death mere hours after Baba was killed. Roshan still remembered the way her hands had locked around her rival’s throat. How she’d blocked his arteries with a magic normally used to fix broken bones, smooth bruised skin, and knit torn flesh. The world classified life magic and death magic as two separate things—the first wielded by healers and the second by warriors. But healers like Roshan knew that those who breathed life into a body or extended it with magic could also take it away.
Last year was the only time Roshan had used her life magic against a member of the Shadow Clan—an act that had earned her its leadership and also cleaved it in two.
She could hear some of the bandits behind her now: viperous susurrations followed by loud giggles, an intentional violation of her order for silence on this raid. Roshan hadn’t taken the bait before. And she wouldn’t tonight.
“When they don’t give us our birthright, we steal it,” she whispered the Shadow Clan’s motto to steady herself.
Baba had bellowed the same words when he was last alive, his coat as bright as flame, his atashban glowing with death magic. He’d been shot in the back by four Brights—gold-armored brutes from Governor Yazad’s private army. Ultimately, though, it had been the leader of the Brights—the governor’s son, Shera Aspa—who had killed Baba, severing his head from his body and then levitating it onto a pike for all throughout Ashvamaidan valley to see.
“Bhim Chaya is dead!” Shera had cried out. “And we’ll kill his witch of a daughter next!”
A jagged streak of light interrupted her reverie: Chotu had shot the first atashgola at the blue shield. A gong sounded all the way to the coast, the small grenade ricocheting off the enchantments, shooting fragments of clay and fireworks into the sky. But that was not the end of it.
Not even close.
Chotu launched more atashgolas at the dhow’s barrier, gongs erupting like a frenzied devotee ringing the bell at a temple, invoking the fire goddess herself.
“Wake uuuuuup, you gold-plated bastards!” a voice sang out next to Roshan. Lalit winked from over the top of the black cloth masking his face, strands of coppery hair sticking to his pale forehead from under a tightly wrapped black turban. He was Roshan’s right hand and one of the few people in the world she would trust with her life.
Roshan smiled under her own mask. “If they aren’t awake already, they certainly will be now,” she said.
She hoped they would try to shoot Chotu—a feat that could be accomplished only if the dhow’s protective barrier was raised. It was risky, certainly. Chotu could die. Or the Brights could ignore them entirely, causing their mission to fail. Yet Roshan and the clan were used to risks like these. Used to teetering on the edge between life and death, their laughs masking their fear.
Also, the Brights had been turning complacent recently. Falling asleep on watches at the governor’s warehouses. Using shortcuts like simple blue deflector shields that, when hit correctly, completely disappeared on impact. Chotu shot yet another atashgola, and this time, instead of a gong, Roshan heard a resounding boom and watched an enormous blue star explode in the dark sky. She waited until the shield surrounding the dhow vanished, allowing the enemy to shoot a couple of red spells into the air.
“Now,” she commanded.
Lalit’s hands glowed red on the grip of his Lohar-era atashban, an old but powerful magical crossbow, and he shot a spell that split into a dozen flaming arrows from its tip, piercing holes in the ship’s hull, right at the waterline.
That would get them moving in a hurry.
“Arms at the ready,” she called out.
“Haan, Sardar!” a few voices chorused in acknowledgment.
It felt odd at times to wear Baba’s former title the way she did his old red jama, the silk coat magically shrunk and cleverly altered to fit her smaller form. But not now. Right now, Roshan’s skin thrummed with excitement, and her face warmed the way it did whenever a raid went exactly how she planned.
To avoid sinking, the dhow rapidly changed course, curving toward the beach, its trajectory leading right to where Roshan stood, in a space between two large rocks. A web of yellow light cast out like a fishing net; a few yards away, the clan’s best conjurer, Vijali Fui, was drawing the dhow to shore with wrinkled hands, faster than the lightning she was named for, her braid like old gold in the dim light.
Text copyright © 2023 by Tanaz Bhathena
Map copyright © 2023 by Jared Blando