"Wha-What is this?" Karnan opened his eyes at the dread in his attacker's voice. His hand was inches away from his knee, crimson hair coiled around it. Suddenly, he was yanked back. The boy screamed while being dragged over the stones, towards the short woman standing a few paces away.
Master Sha looked furious. Her hair spread behind her like a red halo with locks extending out like spokes of a wheel. Five of those had stretched and wrapped around each of the bullies, and in no time, they were floating. The leader, Rajuma, had his neck tied in a noose from Master's red hair and struggled to breathe.
"Low lifes. Grouping against the weak. Imbibe this lesson into your souls. Pleasure and pain go hand in hand. You receive one, the other follows." She twisted her voice. Shrieks resounded through the gully.
Karnan picked himself up; his knees were battered and stung even with the slightest of movement. He was still enraged, but he didn't want those boys to be handicapped for the rest of their lives. After tasting helplessness, he wished it upon none.
But there was no need for him to stop Master Sha. She let them loose. Five unconscious bodies thunked the ground at the same time. All with their chakras still unbroken. Suppressing a groan, he bowed awkwardly.
Master Sha walked up to him. Her hair shrank with each step she took. She stopped before him, her face sorrowful and her eyes moist.
"Master," he said softly.
She quickly regained her composure and handed him a set of neatly folded clothes and a scroll. "Wear this and return your uniform. And this," she said, eyeing the scroll. "This is a low-level martial skill, apt for someone like you. The celestials awaken our prana. But, as yours is a lone and faraway star, your awakening would also be abysmal. This skill will not tax your body as it requires minimal prana to work."
"I am grateful for this, master." he meant it. Master Sha had been nothing but tough on him throughout her time teaching them. He had expected her to be the first to turn on him after his results were declared. But, like all things today, his judgment too had been wrong, for those he had sought warmth from were the ones who struck the harshest.
"No need to thank me, this is the least I can do. Take this." She proffered him a fist-sized pouch that jingled with coins.
Karnan folded his hands, "I am sorry, master. I cannot take this."
She forced the pouch onto him, "Keep it. Else, that idiot friend of yours will drive me insane with his chatter."
"Friend?" Karnan asked with confusion.
Mater Sha rolled her eyes, "Ravim. That whiny kid was so infuriating. He barged in right after you left, heard about your stupid vow and offered his clan's medallion, something passed through generations, to pay for your debt. The clan head had enough sense not to indulge him and shooed him away. But that haughty boy was back again, with this. Heaven knows what else he must have sold for these coins."
"Where, where is he?"
"He had to leave. He has a long journey ahead of him, clan Ketu is based in the far north after all. It would take a month even on the fastest carriage."
You too didn't forsake me. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. I will remember this.
He whispered a prayer for Ravim's safe journey and opened the pouch. Coins, both gold and silver, were packed in it. He pocketed two silvers and a gold and held the pouch out for Master Sha.
"Why are you giving it back? It's all yours," she said, surprised.
"Please give this to the clan. At least they could buy Nina what she needs for her journey," he said.
"Boy! Are you insane?" Master Sha poked her finger into his chest. She was strong, like a stone, and her simple poke made Karnan wince in pain. "You really think they are that short of funds? And what about repaying in a year? This is about five thousand gold and some silver. This is nothing before what they spend in a month just to maintain the clan kitchens. What amount of help is this going to be for them? And why are you trying to pay off what you were never owed? Do you realise how much eighty-seven thousand gold is?" She fumed.
Karnan gave her an earnest smile, "Master, even if they use me. I won't mind. They took me in, gave me a roof, a name. I can't complain about serving the clan."
Sha Kuntala threw her arms up and turned. She seemed disturbed and angry. Karnan asked for permission to change.
"Go ahead. I won't peek," she brushed off.
He donned his new set. A plain black shirt and trousers with common leather shoes. The right one's vamp was patched with pieces of white leather. He handed her the garments. Without another word, she went back her way.
Karnan sighed and looked at the coins in his hand. Two silvers and a gold. A decent room should cost a bronze per night, so he was good for about a week with one silver. Food was two bronze coins per day, so for four days, the other silver should suffice. Within that period, he would have to get some paid work. Even though powerless as a fighter. He still had other talents he could use.
The boys strewn on the ground began to groan. He bolted off. Eager to leave the alley before any of them woke.
…..
"This won't do." Master Avyu shook his head. "You told me, exactly seven days back. That you'd have some money and wanted seven days to repay me. Today, you tell me that you don't have the coins?"
"I, I am trying, master Avyu. I am going to talk with the rune master. I am hopeful that he'd listen to me and-"
"You told me the same thing seven days ago and seven days before that, and again seven days before that. Each week, the same story. But with different characters. Are you so foolish? Or do you think that I'm a cripple like you?"
Karnan suppressed a comeback he was so eager to return to the stocky man wiping his brow. But his place was the only one that had fit under Karnan's budget. It had been two months since the ill-fated day of the ceremony. The gold and both silvers lasted for the first month. Avyu had surprisingly agreed to let him stay in the basement, though at the price of a regular room, and now, he rightfully expected his payment.
"Please, give me three days. I will arrange something for you. I give my word." Karnan pleaded. Though he himself wasn't sure about what he said. He had tried with the Yantra makers, wood masters, shoe masters, glass masters and now the mantra masters. None wanted him. He had become a symbol of bad luck, a pariah. The cursed boy, discarded by the heavens and now unwanted by all.
"I give you three prahars. Get me my coins else I am going to the city watch. Some good time behind bars should knock some sense into you." Said Avyu.
"Three hours?" Karnan complained. "Master Avyu. Please, have mercy. Please don't go to the guards. They will lock me up for half a year at least. I need to earn, Master Avyu. I will work for your tavern, for free. That should work, right? And your helper left three days ago, I know. So, that position is-"
"I have hired someone," Avyu said, crossing his arms. "Three hours. Then it's the jail for you. Owl boy. You better keep my coins ready," Avyu stormed out of the basement door.
Karnan plopped back into his hay bed. Bars of light streamed through the small window over his head, forming a white rectangle over the wainscoting of the wall opposite him. An oddity, looking at the otherwise plain ambience of the above floors. Perhaps, there was beauty hidden in everything mundane. Everything, but him. There was nothing left to redeem in him. In his pride, he had promised an amount he could never fathom. He had no food, no way to earn, no reputation, nothing. Yesterday, after master Habib, a lowly two-drop practitioner, refused to employ him. He'd thought of leaving the city, of starting life anew. But, his stupid pride had again foiled that plan, for it would mean running away from his word, like an ungrateful bastard.
What could he do? Should he end it all? Kill himself? Who'd even care if he was gone? Perhaps ending it would be best for everyone. The clan, Nina, Master Sha, and Ravim would all be saved from being shamed because of him.
"Found you."
Karnan was startled. He careened to look up at the source. On the stairs leading up to the ground floor stood the boy who'd bullied him right after he was banished from the clan. Rajuma grinned, like he'd finally caught a prey he had been tracking for a long time.
Or, perhaps, that was exactly why he was smiling. Karnan sighed, "If you yearn for revenge. Better be quick and make sure not to leave the job unfinished."
Rajuma frowned.
Karnan rolled his eyes and said, "Kill me, properly. Don't do a shoddy job as is your nature."
Rajuma barked a laugh, "I am the new helper here."
"What!" Karnan jolted up to sit. "You?" a smile creeping up the corners of his lips. "What has Master Avyu done to incur such wrath from the celestials?"
Rajuma shrugged, "Whatever. I am here to give you this." he threw a small triangular thing towards him. Karnan caught it with one hand. It was made out of steel, a red triangle with a black circle in the middle.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Dunno. I was told to get a job here and give this to you and tell you, if you go to the eastern wall, where the cemetery is and if you go inside, to the far eastern end of the cemetery, inside the tomb of house Shirra, you will have what your heart wants. That thing in your hand is the key to unlock the said tomb." Rajuma uttered in a single breath, as if reading from a parchment.
" You are telling me this, why? And why should I believe you?"
Rajuma shrugged again, "Don't believe me. But I was told to either die gruesomely or tell you this. I chose myself. So, go or don't. None matters to me. My work is done here." He turned and climbed up to the ground floor. Soon after, water gurgled over the basin near the bar, glasses clinked, and chairs were scraped back to their positions. Rajuma had begun his work.
Karnan took a long look at the shiny thing in his hand. A thought occurred to him all of a sudden, and he sat cross-legged, left palm placed over the right one. He checked his chakra; a faint silvery strand of light swirled like a goldfish in there. He inhaled, white prana poured into his chakra and mixed with the silver, and both began to circle one another. The dance of the cosmos, where the prana of the living world bonded with the light from the stars and planets to form a centre of power.
Soon, both lights intertwined to form a tiny sphere, smaller than his thumbnail. Karnan moved the sphere into the veins of his right arm. He opened his eyes and struck his right palm over the stone floor.
The cold black granite suddenly warmed for a fraction of a minute before going back to being cold again. Heatstrike. The skill Master Sha had given him. A low-level martial art that could send heat waves into one's body, disrupting prana flow for a few seconds at the maximum.
His sphere vanished after a single use. Generally, the light from the constellations was much stronger, and the infused prana spheres could last much longer, enabling power and stamina for stronger arts that could be sustained for long. But his celestial, a lone star, so far to even escape the detection of the grand telescope from the ceremony, could only lend him this much.
He stood, dusting hay and grime off his unwashed shirt and trousers and shot out through the door. On the ground floor, he nearly bumped into a rambling Avuya. He didn't wait to listen to the swear from the inn master. Rajuma was wiping a stool near the door. He slipped a smile at him as Karnan sprinted out of the building.
The street and the city greeted him not with desperation this time. After what felt like ages, he had hope.