Page 9 of The Witch who Trades with Death

Chapter Nine

Two months after killing Kokaatl saw Khana in Tlaphar, at its southern border with Divaajin. The mountains were the biggest things she’d ever seen, and she’d collected dozens of horror stories during her travels of people falling prey to leopards, avalanches, and the cold air itself. So, with the last of her money, she hired a guide from the village of Pelete at the mountain’s feet. The Reguallian forces closed in on Tlaphar’s capital, and everyone speculated that it’d be a matter of days before the kingdom fell.

Traveling through the mountains was one of the most stressful experiences of Khana’s life. Some of the roads were so narrow that a slight misstep would have sent her careening off the side, with no aji to cushion her fall. The wind cut through her with icy knives, despite her guide assuring her that it was, in fact, late spring.

“In winter, is much worse,” he spoke in broken Reguallian. “Big storms, make you not see. Wind blows you off. Snow buries you twenty paces down.”

“Snow?” she echoed.

He pointed to the white-covered top of the next mountain over. “White things. Snow. Get warm and turn to water. Get colder, turn to ice.”

Huh. Snow. She’d heard of the stuff, vaguely. How did it get there?

The journey took weeks, winding through the maze of stone that made Khana dizzy just to think about. Her guide caught mountain goat, hare, mice, even a fox at one point, cooking them over a fire. Khana shared the last of her bread with him, bought weeks ago in the last town and tasting just as bad as the first batch she had gotten.

They rarely spoke to each other, but about halfway through their journey, the guide said bluntly, “You are girl.”

Khana bristled. “What? No, I’m–”

“No hair,” he said, patting his own beard that had grown shaggier in the last week. “You go away to pee. No cock.”

She stilled, suddenly very afraid. She needed him alive to get out of these mountains. What was he going to –

“Do not worry,” he said, grinning. “Me, good man. No sex. Too cold! Unless you want.”

“…Thank you,” she said, not entirely reassured. Especially since, every night, they had to sleep huddled together against whatever shelter they could find from the wind: caves, stone walls, even an abandoned cougar den. But he kept his word and didn’t touch her.

It was a long, harsh journey. Khana usually found herself humming under her breath; if she focused on a tune, she wasn’t focusing on how her hands and feet were blocks of ice, how she was miles from anything familiar or how one misstep could spell her death. The guide never asked her to stop, so she kept humming.

Finally, they descended into a town too large to be a village, too small to be a proper city.

“This, Pahuuda,” the guide said. “Good town.”

Almost all the buildings were made of stone, likely pulled straight from the mountain. When Khana got close enough to touch, she saw that some of them had decorative carvings in the rock: wolves, soldiers, cats, divine beings she didn’t recognize. The rooftops were sharply slanted like arrowheads. Even the animals here were strange: rather than herding sheep or cattle, the farmers herded massive woolly beasts with large horns and dark faces. She found out later those were called yaks. Others herded some of the shaggiest goats she’d ever seen.

The oddly-shaped houses were huge, and so were the people. The first few men she passed were almost twice her size, dressed in only a few layers of cotton and wool. Despite it being the start of summer, it was still chilly. How were they not shivering like she was?

Given that the men both held spears and shields, they were likely soldiers, patrolling the streets. They nodded to the guide, who raised a hand in greeting and led Khana past them.

“Most speak no Reguallian,” he warned as they passed more people. “Speak Ghura, here.”

“I don’t know Ghura,” she said, trembling. Whether that was from cold, or fear of this land of giants, she didn’t know.

“Some refugees here, like you. Go to east of town, you find them.”

“Thank you.” They were still fairly high up the mountain, enough to look down on most of the town. Beyond that, there was nothing but an empty field of short grass. “What’s beyond that?”

“Tundra,” he said, using a word she didn’t know. “Cold nothing. Big animals. No grass. No trees. Next city, many miles.”

“So it’s a desert,” she muttered. One she didn’t know how to navigate. “How do you get through?”

He shrugged. “I never go to tundra.”

Great. She needed to hire another guide, after spending all of her money on this one.

“I find inn now,” he said. “Sleep in bed. You, go east. Find Reguallians.”

“Thank you,” she said, sincerely. Though frustrated that he couldn’t help her further, she never would have gotten this far without him.

She wandered into the town, clutching her threadbare bag to her chest. Not everyone was as large as those two soldiers; some were merely a head taller than her. Most ignored her. Some people glanced at her, with a frown or sneer of annoyance. She was a dirty, tattered mess after walking through an empire, a kingdom at war, and the mountains. She couldn’t imagine she smelled particularly great, either.

Everyone spoke a language she didn’t know – Ghura, she supposed. It was almost lyrical, something you’d play a big horned instrument to. She wondered if the rest of the kingdom spoke the language, or just this little piece of it.

A pair of women played a flute and drum on a street intersection, gathering coins in a hat. Khana watched, mesmerized, for far longer than she should have. She didn’t recognize the tune at all, something bright but with melancholic dips now and then. Eventually, she forced herself to move on.

As she moved further east, the people felt more familiar, and so did the language. Reguallians, refugees from the very empire Khana had fled, dressed in heavier cotton but with similar patterns that she was used to seeing. She spotted some Tlapharians, too, but they spoke the same language, albeit with a different dialect.

They lived in the same strange buildings as the rest of Pahuuda, though they were smaller and closer together than the others. The people here were still taller than her, but that was true of every adult Khana had ever met. At least they weren’t the giants who ran the rest of the town.

She found a small cluster of women hanging laundry between two houses, laughing and chatting. She steeled her nerves and approached. “Excuse me?”

They stopped talking and two of them looked mildly curious, but the third was blatantly suspicious. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if there were any caravans or guides going through the… tundra?”

“Some traders. Why?”

Khana winced. “Tlaphar isn’t doing well. It’s only a matter of time before it falls.”

“Let it. The empire will never cross the mountains.”

“That explains why we’ve been seeing more refugees pass through,” another muttered. They spoke fluent Reguallian, but with an accent. Khana wondered if they were refugees like her guide had said, or if they’d been born here.

“Please?” she asked.

The third took pity on her. “If you really want to cross the tundra, you’ll need at least a month’s worth of food and supplies. And probably some sort of guide. Some of the traders cross to do business in the city, and vice versa, but they don’t like taking stowaways, and they already have apprentices to carry their luggage. You’d have to bribe them to get them to agree to take you.”

“Sometimes women and boys can do special work for them,” another added, rolling her eyes. “But… you need to be pretty for that job.”

Khana’s chest tightened.

“Sometimes you can hire the hunters,” the first woman continued, like her friend hadn’t spoken. “They don’t mind taking odd jobs. But again, you have to pay them.”

None of this was what Khana wanted to hear. She bowed her head anyway. “Thank you. Where can I start working?”

“The town has a couple of brothels. They might take you; you look exotic, and that’s enough for some. Otherwise, Heimili runs an inn. He has a soft spot for refugees.”

Khana thanked them again and left. She was beyond the mountains now; that was the important thing. But it was still too close to the empire’s borders; as soon as Tlaphar fell, she would be closer still. Khana wouldn’t be safe until she had the tundra, a few cities, and maybe an ocean or two between her and Yamueto. She needed money, and she needed to start making it now.

She found one of the brothels first. She’d seen several during her travels, young women draping themselves against the walls to look enticing. This place sported both women and men – a rarity in Khana’s experience – all wearing a little bit of pink and flirting with anyone who passed by. A few flirted back, but only a handful actually entered the building. Khana watched them, stalling in the middle of the muddy street.

Maybe letting someone use her body wouldn’t be so bad if she was getting paid for it? If she knew for a fact that it was temporary. If she could leave or refuse certain clients. If she actually got something from it…

She crept closer, trying to get a better look at the workers without being obvious. She didn’t see any bruises, but those could be hidden with makeup. They seemed happy, but they were whores. Acting was part of the job. Maybe if she could just pull one or two aside to ask…

A man spanked an older whore with a crack that made Khana jump. “There’s my favorite girl!”

The woman giggled, flipping her black-and-gray braid over her shoulder. “It’s been a while! I was worried you’d found someone else.”

“Well, worry not, my dear. I just got paid, and I don’t intend to leave until morning.”

Feeling her face heat as she watched the whore pull the punter into the building, Khana turned and walked away. She would never be able to do that. One of those men would grab her the wrong way or handle her too roughly, and she’d end up crying and begging them to stop. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t have the fortitude for that kind of work; she’d be back on the street in no time.

Selling her witchcraft was too risky. Healing was valuable, even if it meant sacrificing plants or animals to do it. It was also, unfortunately, very noticeable. Talk would spread. Quite possibly beyond the mountains to Yamueto. Best to avoid it if she could.

After asking directions a couple of times, Khana found the inn on the edge of a winding street. It didn’t have a name, just tavenido, the Reguallian word for inn, carved into the stone above the door. Khana stepped inside.

It was her first time indoors in weeks. The warmth made her groan. The ground floor was a restaurant, and there was a massive fireplace in one wall that pulled Khana in like a moth. She almost put her hands in the flames to warm them.

Animal hides hung on the walls, probably for further insulation, as well as colorful blankets woven in intricate patterns. There was no wooden furniture, instead mats and thin cushions marked spots for people to sit and eat. Khana hadn’t noticed in her rush to the fireplace, but a handful of people were sat enjoying a midday meal, cross-legged on the floor in trios or pairs, drinking from cups made of animal horns. Most were clearly Reguallian, but there were some native Ghura.

A large man came out of the kitchens, spotted her, and approached with a heavy limp. His leg was missing, replaced by something carved of either pale wood or bone. He clapped his hands when he got closer, filling the air with puffs of flour that stained his wool clothes and bushy beard gray like a ghost. “ Nachu! Imatiya sadat ta?”

Khana smiled. “I’m sorry, do you speak Reguallian?”

“Some,” he replied in a rough baritone. “You want a room?”

“Well, yes, but…” She paused, and he raised a bushy eyebrow, waiting.

Khana took a breath. “I’m a refugee. I have no money. I just arrived today. I’m looking for work.”

He hummed but said nothing. Khana bit her lip, waiting. What more could she say? She had nothing to convince him with.

“Too little for kitchen work,” he decided. “Clean?”

“Yes!” she blurted. “I can clean. Sweep and mop. Pick up plates. Do bedding and sew up any holes. Do dishes and–”

He held up a hand. She stopped her rambling, feeling her face heat.

“I am Heimili,” he said. “My son is Haz. My mother, Amati, she is old. You help her in day. Make beds. Clean rooms. At night, we get people. You help me and Haz. Speak with Reguallians and Tlapharians so we speak to Ghura. Clean kitchen and dining hall.”

All the tension Khana had carried since she arrived drained from her shoulders. “I can do that.”

“Pay is little. Most money goes to more food, blankets, fire. Your pay is room and food. But customers, they give tips. Extra. They are big in summer, small in winter. You, Haz, Amati, me, we share tips. Understand?”

That would likely not be as much as she wanted, but if she was able to save up…

“I do not have to pay for a room or any food you give me?” she clarified.

“No.” He looked down at her. “But do not take too much. Three meals. Maybe a little between. Any more, you pay. You do bad work or steal; I throw you out.”

That was fair. She took off the hat she’d bought on the other side of the mountains, running a hand through the inches of tangled black hair that had grown over the last few months. “When do I start?”

“After you eat.”