A Flight of Broken Wings: Aeriel Trilogy #1

Chapter 111

The dining hall was big, sparsely decorated with mismatched curtains and generic prints of rural scenery on the walls. The dining table – a humongous weather-beaten ten-seater – was covered with a table-cloth that had once been white. Now it was a tapestry of coffee and curry stains occasionally intermingled with what Ruban suspected might have been baby puke. The scent of stale tobacco permeated the air, coalescing strangely – though not unpleasantly – with that of freshly baked Southern bread.

Six people, including their libidinous hostess, sat at the table, helping themselves to bread and watery tadka. Three of them were middle-aged men, business travellers in sensible suits carrying large briefcases. The other two were women. One was a local lady of about sixty – she had hazel eyes and umber skin, which led Ruban to believe she was a native of the state. Being just a short boat-ride away from Kanbar, Ibanta hosted a lot of immigrants, and consequently saw a far greater incidence of green eyes and darker skin amongst its citizenry than the rest of the country.

The other was a young woman, little more than a teenager, with lanky brown hair and a face that looked like it had just recovered from a vicious outbreak of pimples. She was reading a book that looked to be almost double her weight as she shovelled bread-wrapped tadka into her mouth. There could have been a dead mouse in her food and Ruban didn't think she would have noticed. One of the aspirants for the civil services exams scheduled for the end of the month, he supposed.

"Ruban, my dear young man! Do come in. Have a seat," Luana exclaimed the moment they stepped into the hall, her voice brimming with far more cheer than Ruban thought the occasion warranted. "My lord," she turned to Ashwin, her enthusiasm undiminished. "Take a seat. Have some tadka. It's our speciality, you know. You'll find nothing like it in all of Vandram."

If Ashwin doubted the veracity of this tall claim, he gave no indication of his misgivings, seating himself primly to Luana's right and giving her one of his beatific smiles. "Ah yes, I'm sure. It smells wonderful," he said, his speech slightly warped by the heavy Zainian accent that Ruban couldn't remember having heard until that moment. He leaned slightly closer to Luana. "And please, call me Ashwin. Vandram is such a lovely country, with such lovely people. I'm quite in love with it. It feels like a home away from home, doesn't it? So let's not allow such formalities to come between us."

Luana all but swooned, which made Ruban feel vaguely sorry for her, but not enough to suppress the snicker that rose unbidden to his lips. He snatched a napkin from the table and pretended to dab at his mouth with it, seating himself opposite their hostess.

As Luana ladled steaming tadka onto his plate, Ashwin directed a winning smile at her and said with the air of nonchalant, touristy curiosity: "And you were saying something about a body..."

"Oh, so you heard that, did you?" Luana shook her head, although her eyes lit up in a way that made Ruban think she wasn't as crestfallen at having been overheard as she would have them believe. "Not the kind of thing you want to talk about with guests to the country, now is it? It's quite true, though. They've found a body upriver. Near Chetla, I think it is. Happened just the day before yesterday, if I'm not mistaken. Quite the shock, as I'm sure you can imagine, my lord – ah, I mean Ashwin." Ruban would never have thought a simple two-syllable name could be enunciated with so much subtext, but somehow, Luana managed it. "I was just saying to Geeti," she nodded at the hazel-eyed, elderly woman seated to Ruban's left. "What a shame it is that such things are happening in Ibanta now. It used to be so peaceful here back when I was a girl. Nothing but boats and fishermen. And of course, the foreign traders passing by on their way to Ragah and the central cities."

"It's all these tourists," the old woman said, biting into her bread rather aggressively. "Time was, there'd only be tourists in the winter, for the pilgrimage. But now they're here all the time. Like bugs. Drinking and gambling and making a disgraceful mess everywhere they go. Of course you have bodies turning up all over the place! What else can you expect, with all these tourists?"

"Oh Geeti, I do think you're being too harsh," Luana said, shooting Ashwin an apologetic glance. "They're not all bad."

"This probably had nothing to do with the tourists anyway," said one of the men, taking a sip of his coffee. He was dressed conservatively in a dark green coat that fell below his knees and loose black trousers. Heavy, black-rimmed spectacles sat uneasily on his wide, stubby nose. "As likely as not, it was the gangs. Apparently, the man was stabbed, then dumped in the river. And his eyes were burned out when they found him. Acid, they say. That's a premeditated murder if ever there was one, not just some random bar-brawl gone wrong."

Looking up from her book, the young woman shuddered. "Eyes burned out with acid? Who'd do something like that?"

"The gangs do it sometimes," said Ruban, sitting back in his chair. "When they think somebody needs to be taught a lesson, or to send a message to a rival gang. That sort of thing. Or, of course, if they've managed to find a new source for their raw material."

"You think this has got something to do with the feather trade?" the girl asked curiously.

"Everything in this part of the country has something to do with the feather trade," said the man in the green coat. "It's bloody ubiquitous."

"Well, at least it's not as bad as it used to be," said the man sitting beside him, sporting a more casual, waist-length maroon jacket over a long, cotton tunic. "They've become more organised over the years. Certainly far better than when I was living here. Still, I'd never heard of anything like this happening in Chetla before. It was one of the few neighbourhoods in Ibanborah untouched by the gangs. Had the most beautiful houses too."

Ruban hummed. "Not that I ever lived in Ibanta for any length of time, but I did spend some of my summers in Chetla as a kid. My father's grandmother was from Ibanborah, and I think her family left her the house in Chetla. Baba used to visit the place every few years for maintenance and stuff. It really was a beautiful house. And so far as I can remember, it used to be a pretty quiet neighbourhood, though it's been a while since I last saw the place."

"Ah, so you have Ibantian blood?" said Luana, her lips quirking upwards. "That explains a lot."

Ruban raised an eyebrow.

"Ibantaproduces handsome men," said their hostess, raising one shoulder in a carelessshrug. "What can I say? It's just a fact."