Tinder Stricken Read Online Free PDF

Gita’s
shoes and her satchel, laid on the gumgrass like a rainstorm’s
leavings. Maybe there ought to be a funeral, Esha thought. A
pittance of a ceremony. Gita Of The Fields had no family who
acknowledged her blood ties: she had been disavowed just like Esha.
It would only take moments to fetch some field sisters and honour
Gita's life, while showing them the tragedy brought by poor
official work.
    Or Esha could simply acknowledge Gita’s life
right this moment, alone. Quietly. Gita had returned to the sky now
— likely not to the gardens of heaven, knowing her irreverence and
her schemes, but it felt good to believe otherwise. Gita had died a
human: some tribute needed to be made.
    Turning Gita’s shoes over, finding them worn
but still sturdy, Esha wondered what to throw over the cliffside.
What defined a human being, other than their very body, however
long that lasted?
    Gita had hooves and hair encroaching on her
body, just like Esha did. If Esha died and left a friend behind
watching, she wouldn’t want her effects thrown away. Funerals were
about honour, about singing hymns for the sky to hear. What was
honour to disavowed field worker, to a grinning woman who had never
cared for honour in her entire life?
    Nobles would look down on this choice.
Nobles hadn’t done Esha any favours in recent years. If Esha Of The
Fields had been the one to fall, she wouldn’t want perfectly
valuable things to be thrown after her. Let material goods serve
the living. Let some field sister actually know comfort.
    Esha opened her own satchel and stuffed
Gita’s shoes inside. They would fit well enough when she wore her
current sandals through— if her feet stayed human long enough for
that.
    Horror roiled in her stomach again as she
opened Gita’s satchel to take the sundry goods inside. One extra
throwing stone; a knuckle-sized piece of pine pitch; a
paper-wrapped stick of jerky; one lone rupee coin, probably for
bribing soldiers. And in a small inner pocket, Esha found a metal
piece that flashed white in the setting sun: Gita’s nameplate. Her
simple name, the same familiar Of The Fields strokes that
she had signed on the clerk's dry paper.
    Gita never had believed in wearing her
nameplate in her clothing like most of the others did, like Esha
did. I don’t want Of The Fields stamped into my hide if I trip
and fall , she said.
    Esha had always thought it foolish. Gita had
always been a little foolish, for all her cleverness. But
here Esha sat with Gita Of The Fields's imperial identification,
the only true piece of Gita that remained. What a paradox, that if
Gita had kept her nameplate on a pendant cord to keep it safe, it
would have been lost. Instead, Esha held it, real and cold.
    If one fieldwoman used another’s nameplate
for a few trifling things, who would ever know?
    With a stone weight in her gut, Esha slipped
Gita’s nameplate into her own satchel. Gita had tied a leather
thong onto it, to string her official property token together with
her name. This made Esha the owner of two meagre farming shacks,
for all anyone knew or cared.
    Then she turned to the worldedge and threw
Gita’s empty pouch, so it soared away on the wind. And that was
all. No one would know where Gita went or how to find her, and that
cunning fact could help Esha now. If only their roles really could
be reversed.
    Evening approached. Esha ought to return to
the farm and make her report. Her field pay would be scrawnier than
usual as it was — the same worry as always, Esha thought with a
tired body and valuable burden in her pouch.
    She stood — and that was when she saw guards
approaching, three armoured figures glinting with gilt, polearms
silhouetted on their backs. Panic filled Esha, cold.
    “Hail, subject,” a hard voice called.
    “Graciously met,” Esha replied. She signed
namaste to them with arms that didn't feel like her own.
    She held the gesture, frozen, while the
soldiers approached — two men and a woman, strong and