Chapter Text
On the worst day of his life, a boy stands by a river.
He has seen this river thousands of times already. He has stood in the spot he is standing now, with a wide smile on his face and laughter on his lips. He has chased the others in his village down these banks, been chased in return. He has swum in this river and fished in this river and soaked his feet, aching after many hunts, in this river too.
And though he knows it to be full of life, the boy thinks the river has never seemed so empty.
He stands by the water for a long time, chewing at his lip, blinking unseeing eyes. He should go home, he knows this. He knows his mother will wonder, will worry. He knows the others in the village will do this too. He does not care about this, right now.
What he cares about is the gaping, gnawing emptiness in his heart. The sick churn in his stomach, burning up his throat.
He will not cry, he tells himself. He will be strong. He will be stern. He will find the men who are the reason he is here. The men who did those things, in the village he cannot bring himself to return to right now. He will show no weakness, no mercy. He will make them regret ever coming here.
He cries. By himself, for a very long time.
And when he is done, he dries his face. He steps to the river, staring into the murky waters. And he speaks, voice rough and raw, cold as it has ever been.
“I will never let this happen again, Papa,” he tells the river where he has come with his father so many times before.
“I will protect them, Papa,” he tells the river, and his father. His father, who he will never see again. “I will protect all of them. If it costs me my life, I will do this.”
It is a vow he keeps, for many years. And the people in his village notice this and call him by a new name. And the people outside the village, the ones who would come here and do harm again, start to notice too. They call him many names, few of them kind. He does not care what people call him. He only cares about the things he has vowed to do.
And then he returns to his village one day, after a long hunt that has taken him deep into the forest, to find that it has happened again. Despite his vow, despite everything he has done.
He makes another vow, holding his sister’s hand in his. He tells her that he will bring her daughter back. That he will do this thing, if it costs him his life.
It does cost him his life, in the end. The life he had, washed away, replaced by something new, one he still feels like he’s trying to fit into. A life for a life.
And it gives him many other new things. A new family and a new world, both so much bigger and so much stranger and so much greater than anything he ever dreamed of in the village. New fears and new losses and new scars, too.
A new brother. One he wishes, sometimes, that he could tell his father about. He would tell his father many things about this new brother. That this new brother is strong, and brave, and so very clever. That this new brother is smart, about a great many things. And sometimes foolish, about many things, mostly himself.
He would tell his father this new brother is a good man, a better one than he thinks he is. That this new brother could be a great man, if he would only let himself be one. But he would also say that whatever this new brother chooses to be, the boy will always stand by his brother’s side.
On a morning many years later, when this boy has long since become a man, he will not think of these things. Of his father, long gone, and his mother too. Of promises kept and vows broken. Of that awful day, so long ago.
He thinks, instead, that riding a train is far less fun than riding a motorcycle.
A train will move him just as quickly, this he must admit. And with greater ease, over a greater distance, than the motorcycle he had in Delhi would.
And he does not have to worry about petrol. Does not have to listen to the engine as it rumbles, wondering if that sound might be a wobbling piston. He is not exposed under the brutal midday sun or drenched by torrential rains that gather in the afternoon, let loose on him with a startling crack of thunder.
He does not have to consider his route. Does not have to steer, watch for children dashing across the street or carts stalled in the middle of it. Does not have to grab at Ram’s wrist to steady him when the other man slips in his seat after they turn a corner too suddenly. When Ram is too busy watching the buildings fly by or watching people roam through the streets behind them to watch the way ahead. He does not have to listen to Ram complain at this near mishap, let out an aggrieved sigh, and tell Bheem to drive more carefully, to watch where he is going, as if this was the result of Bheem not paying enough attention.
Still, Bheem thinks, from the relative comfort of his seat in this train car, he would prefer his motorcycle. For many reasons. And maybe, though he would not admit it to his brother, the memory of Ram’s finger jabbing into his back or Ram’s hand slapping at his shoulder or Ram’s voice behind his ear, bemoaning some perceived error, is one of these reasons.
He tips his head back against the seat behind him so the breeze flowing into the car from the windows cracked near the top might tousle his hair, a pale imitation of the wind roaring in his face as he sped down the roads at Delhi’s outskirts. Bheem does this for a time, until he hears a creaking from the empty lacquered bench across from him.
He cracks an eye open to find a new occupant there. A man, build similar to Bheem’s. Unremarkable dark hair and an unremarkable short beard and an equally unremarkable kurta in a drab gray. The man’s dark eyes meet Bheem’s for a moment before flitting back to the window beside them.
“Looks like more rain,” the unremarkable man notes, unremarkably.
Bheem follows the man’s gaze out the window, up to a slate sky roiling with thick, puffy clouds. “Yes,” he agrees. “It does.”
They pass the rest of the ride in an easy silence, quiet save for the resonating clang of the train’s iron wheels rumbling over a seam in the tracks, the wind whistling through the windows along the car’s sides. The attendant who punched Bheem’s ticket when he boarded announces the next stop, just before the train’s brakes start to creak and moan.
Bheem stands, feet braced to steady himself against the train’s motion. He slips his satchel over a shoulder and steps away from his seat without a backward glance at that unremarkable man, still looking up at those gray clouds, and shimmies past the people lingering in the aisles to an open door.
He climbs down the stairs and takes a grateful breath as he reaches the concrete platform, savoring the fresher air, though many scents still cling to it. Sour smoke from the hungry engines and scorched metal from the train wheels and the delicious aroma of something sweet frying from an unseen cart. He ignores the rumble in his stomach with great reluctance and strides down the busy platform, stopping briefly to drop a few coins in a beggar’s outstretched palm.
A flash of khaki – jacket and trousers – in the corner of his eye, and he tilts his head away, heart hammering in his chest. He forces his stride to stay even, his lungs to keep breathing. He expects it, any moment, that call to stop, turn around, identify himself, hand himself over. But this call never comes, and he takes another grateful breath when he rounds a street corner and the station vanishes behind him.
The town’s streets are quiet, the dust still wet from a rain that must have come through not so long ago. Bheem picks his way past the puddles and ducks to one side as he walks to make way for an ox-drawn cart carrying bundles of some unknown treasure. He smiles when the driver sketches him a thankful nod.
Bheem reaches the edge of town a few minutes later. As he approaches its threshold — an arched stone gate that would serve its purpose better were the ancient walls around it still standing — a shadow melts out of a darkened alleyway and falls into step beside him.
The unremarkable man from the train says nothing as he walks next to Bheem, and Bheem says nothing back as they pass under the high arch of the old gate together. The breeze picks up once they are clear of the shelter provided by the town’s buildings, lifting the hair from Bheem’s forehead in a gentle caress. It carries a new smell of damp ground and green things growing and dying in the dark forest past the golden fields.
The road cuts through these fields, ocher soil rutted with the imprints of a thousand carts come and gone, hauling grain to the town, hauling sacks of flour back to the villages. Hauling people and animals and all the stories they carry with them. Bheem walks down this road, wondering about all these stories, the man from the train keeping pace with him. They crest a small rise in the earth and come down the other side, the line of the land obscuring the town behind them. They stop as one and turn to each other.
“Well,” the man from the train mutters, white teeth flashing past the curve of his lips. “You’ve started to get the hang of…oof.”
Of what, Bheem doesn’t hear, whatever else the man might say muffled by the fabric of Bheem’s kurta as he hauls the man into a forceful hug. “What was that?” Bheem asks.
The man twists his head until his mouth is free. “I was going to say,” Ram grumbles, “that you were getting the hang of this. But now I’m not so certain.”
“I am getting it,” Bheem insists. “I can be…” He recalls the letter Ram sent, the instructions it contained. “Unremarkable.”
“You’re about as unremarkable as a herd of elephants,” Ram complains. “You’ll make me reconsider asking you to come along.”
“I am the problem?” Bheem asks, affronted. “You were to meet me out here, not on the train.” He pitches his voice in a poor imitation of Ram’s. “To lessen the odds of us being seen together.”
“I was,” Ram concedes. “But I viewed it as an acceptable risk, given the likelihood that you would get yourself lost if I were not there to help.”
“How is it,” Bheem wonders, “that I was able to find my own way, without your help, for all those years before I met you?”
“I have asked myself this same question.” Ram places his hands on Bheem’s shoulders, making as though he would push away. Bheem locks his elbows in place until Ram settles with a sigh that Bheem supposes is meant to sound annoyed. “And I have yet to find a satisfactory answer.”
“Perhaps it is because I always reach my destination. Even if I do take a different route than the one you would.”
“Perhaps it is because fortune favors a fool.”
Bheem laughs. “Ah. Then we both must be blessed, brother.”
Ram laughs back. “I suppose we are.”
“I missed you.”
“Of course you did.” Bheem gives Ram a tighter squeeze, one that pops something in his back into place. “I missed you too,” Ram wheezes.
Finally appeased, Bheem releases his brother, only to snatch the other man’s face in both his hands, turning it this way and that, as if he was looking for a smudge of dirt on an unruly child told to wash his face before mealtime.
Ram submits to it with the same grace such a child might. “What?” he whines.
“I am only looking to see if you have any more bullet holes in you than the last time I saw you.”
“I do not.”
“Hmm. Broken bones? Stab wounds? Snake bites?”
“No,” Ram intones, aggrieved.
“I see. It is always good to check these things.”
“Bheem.”
“You are well, brother?”
Ram’s cheeks crinkle under Bheem’s palms as he smiles. He reaches for Bheem’s wrist and rests his hand lightly on the wraps tied around Bheem’s arm. “Yes. I am.” He gives Bheem a look, up and down, as best he can with his face still trapped by Bheem’s hands. “And you?”
Bheem smiles back. “I am well, too.”
“Wonderful. Now perhaps we can go? Forget the bullets. Old age will take me before we reach our destination at this rate.”
“Fine.” Bheem releases Ram’s face, and they fall back into step again. “But if time is the thing you are concerned with, I do not know why you made me take this route to get here. You had me travel on the train to the north. And then all the way back on this train to the south. And now we will walk to this place, when I could have just come here from the village, in far less time.”
“You were to see if anyone was following you,” Ram admonishes, as if Bheem did not already know this. “If someone went all that way north, and then came back all that way south, it could only be because they were trailing you.”
“Ah, yes, this does make sense.” Bheem tilts his head. “And, you know, I do think there was someone following me.”
Ram’s hand latches onto Bheem’s arm, stalling their progress. “What? Who?”
“Well,” Bheem considers. “It was a man. Nearly my height. Short beard. Dark hair, dark eyes. Wearing a gray kurta. Very unremarkable. Almost as if he intended it so. He followed me on the train, and he followed me through town, and then he followed me down this very road.”
Those dark eyes flash. “Very funny.” Ram straightens, tips his head back as though he were trying to look down his nose at Bheem. “And I’m the same height as you.”
“Believe what you want, brother,” Bheem calls airily as he sets out down the road. A few seconds before he hears Ram’s footsteps, and his brother reappears at his side.
“Perhaps I should have come here by myself,” Ram mutters. “It certainly would have been a more peaceful trip.”
“You would have missed me,” Bheem replies with a confident smile.
A matching smile plays at the edges of Ram’s mouth. “Maybe.” It spreads to the rest of his face, and he tosses an arm across Bheem’s shoulders with a soft laugh, one that eases something that was drawn tight in Bheem’s chest. “I just hope you remember how to get to this place.”
Bheem bobs his head. “I do, brother. It has been many years, but I remember the way.”
Bheem leads them down the road, and they talk as they walk. About the villages, and about the fight, and about the new governor recently installed in Delhi. Then about the lighter things in Delhi. All of Ram’s books that he misses, and Bheem’s motorcycle that he misses, and the surprising viciousness of young goatherders.
“I have not forgotten that you ran away from him first,” Bheem notes about this last. “You would have left me alone to face him.”
“Of course,” Ram agrees earnestly. “I am not brave enough to fight that fight.”
“No. But you are foolish enough to try.”
They turn left when they reach a soggy junction, then follow that road for a time, past more fields and farms, the sawing hiss of crickets filling the mild morning air. Then right onto another unmarked road that leads into the encroaching forest.
Just past the shelter of the first trees, Bheem pauses to reach into his satchel. He tugs out a leather shoulder pad and a strap with three sheathed claws. He buckles these things onto his torso, feeling more at ease when they are on. He runs his fingers over the claws. Not the same ones he had for many years. Those, he left on a rooftop in Delhi, the stones still dark with Ram’s blood.
This thought, as always, brings a frown to his face, a cold rock sinking in his stomach. He glances over to reconfirm Ram’s unblemished face, his unbloodied chest, and fights back the urge to reach for his brother once more just to make sure he is as intact as he claims.
“You came prepared,” Ram notes.
Bheem scans his brother more openly up and down now, noting the lack of weapons, or even a bag. “More than you, I see.”
Ram flashes him a smile and pulls a small folding knife from his pocket.
“That little thing is all you brought?” Bheem asks.
“This little thing is all I could get away with, should anyone search me at the station. This, I could explain.”
“But it would be much harder to explain having a gun.”
“Yes.” Ram tips his chin at Bheem’s pad and claws. “And how would you have explained these? Not exactly something most people wear.”
“Yes, sir, but you see…” Bheem casts a timidness into his voice. “I must travel through the forest to my village. There are dangerous beasts there, sir. I have seen them myself!”
Ram chuckles. “If that is your answer, I think you’d be better served by a gun after all.”
“Lucky for me that no one looked into my satchel, then.”
“I suppose so,” Ram agrees, tucking the folded knife back into his pocket and waiting for Bheem to secure the satchel across his chest before they head deeper into the forest.
Bheem sighs inwardly as they pass through the trees, another screw of tension in his chest loosening as he returns to the forest’s familiar embrace, as the dome of green leaves obscures the gray sky above, as he listens to the hornbills singing to one another. Leftover rain drips from the leaves above to patter on his head and shoulders whenever the breeze grows stronger, like some gentle greeting. Ram’s gaze grows more cautious, though, and he spends more time looking into the shadows beyond them, head tilted to better hear any strange sound.
“You needn’t look so worried,” Bheem calls softly. “Most of the creatures here are far more frightened of you than you are of them.”
“You just said there were dangerous beasts in the forest,” Ram protests. He gives Bheem a considering look. “And I have seen the damage they can do.”
Bheem lets out a grumbling sigh, drawn back to that night at the governor’s palace yet again. “Yes. Well. Need I remind you that was not in the forest?”
“You need not.” Ram glances up at the nearest tree, at the level where a leopard might lurk, just before it pounced on something walking below. “But if anything does come out of this forest, I’m leaving it to you to handle.”
“Where will you be?”
“Running in the opposite direction.”
Bheem laughs, startlingly loud in the quiet forest, and Ram responds with a shushing noise that only makes him laugh harder. “Very well, brother. It will be every man for himself, then.”
They walk more, the road gaining elevation as it winds through the trees. For a time there is nothing, save the forest. Then Bheem sees it, in brief flashes between the leaves as they grow closer. A structure, in large red stone that speaks to a solid build, topped by arched crenellations that speak to a skill from its builders.
Finally, the trees stop abruptly, in a line too straight to be natural. And the fort they’ve come to see rises above them like some great, slumbering beast. It clings to the top of the hill, a sharp demarcation between the cool greens of the grasses and forests, and the gray sky streaked with gunpowder clouds.
Ram lets out a soft sigh as he comes even with Bheem. “I gather this is it, then.”
“This is it,” Bheem confirms. He scans the tops of the walls, the open archway like some gaping maw that leads to the fort’s interior, seeing nothing that indicates the place is occupied. He still listens, for the murmur of activity he doesn’t hear. He still sniffs, for the scent of fires or burning petrol or the waft of someone else’s meal, and smells none of these things.
His stomach still growls, loud enough Ram flashes him a grin. “Did you bring any food in that satchel of yours?” And maybe there is a hopeful note in that question.
For a moment, Bheem regrets not bringing any along. Not just for himself and his rumbling belly, but for Ram. Ram, who never told Bheem that the British rarely fed him in that cell, but Bheem hears it anyway whenever he watches Ram eat. Inhaling the first few bites like it’s going to disappear before he forces himself to slow, to savor, to nibble at each mouthful, to eat every grain of rice on his plate.
That is all too heavy, too hard, for a day like this, so Bheem draws a scowl across his mouth instead. “No. And if I had, I would not share with you.”
A little moue steals across Ram’s lips, though the rest of his face says he recognizes the lie. “Of course you wouldn’t. Now come on, let’s go take a look.”
Bheem rests a hand on Ram’s arm as Ram makes to step forward. “You are certain there is no one here, brother?”
“The British cleared out of here weeks ago. Or so we heard.” Ram nods at the fort’s empty walls. “And I do not see anything. Do you?”
“No,” Bheem concedes. “And what is it you hope to find here?”
Ram shrugs. “Maybe nothing. Maybe they left something behind. Equipment, documents. We might find something useful if they did.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“Then you and I will have had a nice walk in the forest and will spend some time exploring an old fort before we go back to the town, in time for dinner,” Ram says. Bheem’s stomach grumbles again, predictably. “I’ll even pay for it.”
“Good. I spent the last of my money on that train ticket.” Bheem eyes the tall walls again, wary. “Hmm. Perhaps we should be careful.”
“Komaram Bheem,” Ram marvels. “Preaching caution? What other wonders will befall me today?”
Bheem answers with a glare. “I will remind you that you said that next time I pull you out of some trouble, brother.”
“So long as you show up to pull me out of that trouble, I will take that reminder gladly.” Ram shakes the arm under Bheem’s hand. “Shall we?”
Bheem scours the area between the forest and the fort’s gate once again, noting the grasses nibbling around the edges of the narrow dirt road slicing through the clearing. “There is…something about this place that I do not like.”
“What, evil spirits?” Ram chides gently.
“It is not the spirits I am worried about,” Bheem counters. He glances at the fort’s imposing walls, the heavy red stone and the thin loopholes adorning the rounded towers that flank the entrance. “Just the living.”
“It certainly looks like the British have abandoned this place. You have been here before though, yes?”
“Yes. Several times. It is not so far from the village. We would wander here, when we were young.” Bheem tilts his head. “It certainly seemed more interesting than learning how to make yet another poultice. Or how to weave yet another snare.”
“Did you ever go in?” Ram asks.
“We were told not to.”
“And that stopped you?”
“No,” he admits. “We would come to this place. Linger in the shadows here, at the edge of the forest, and watch the people that went in and out of this place. Soldiers. Many of them, with many weapons.” He cuts a glance at Ram. “They are what stopped us from going in.”
“Hmm. That is probably for the best.”
“I imagine they would not have been pleased to find us lurking around their fort.”
“No. I imagine not.”
Bheem rubs at his chest, at the thin line of a scar he can barely feel through his kurta. “What would they have done, had they found us?”
“I…don’t know. Not for certain. But I suspect they would not have been kind.”
“Were they kind to you?” Bheem asks, the thought striking him suddenly. “The British soldiers? Or the policemen? When you were…well. When they thought you were one of them?”
“I didn’t spend that much time with the soldiers. But the other policemen? Some were kind to me. They did think we were colleagues. And some…were not.” Ram shakes himself. “But that is neither here nor there.” He waves a hand at the fort. “Now, come on. At this rate the place will have crumbled to dust before we get there.”
Bheem thinks, as they pick their way across the rutted road, eyeing the fort’s walls and the forest’s bulwark all around, that he would not mind so much if this place crumbled to dust.
He will think the same thing, much later. Though he will have many more reasons to think so, by then.