***

The Capital’s most popular inn didn’t look the part. It was small, built from the same mud brick as the rest of the city, but its wooden stable was triple the typical size. Plenty of travelers slept on its roof both for the cool breeze and lack of vacancies. It was more than old enough to be well established, with many local stories putting its founding before the Capital’s walls. Inside, the mudbrick glowed a gentle amber from the one cooking fire at the center of the room, and the wicks on every table. Patrons rested on the haphazard pillows and tables, all made of varying wood and cloth. There were travelers, merchants, tradesmen, and a single bronze clad warrior.

Though the Capital had many public houses for drinks, Dhanur was more comfortable and familiar with the rancor of a wayward inn.

Tendrils of her clay red hair fell from inside her black hood and emphasized the same undertones in her deep brown skin. Her complexion was a much richer and deeper hue than most other southern patrons and the guards atop the wall, like all Uttaran northerners. There were only three like her at the inn, a single group of traders with the facial markings of their clans while Dhanur had none. Most were the typical sandy southern Daksinian brown, with a few fairer traders from far afield even lighter than those from further south bringing their wares in from the western ports.

An entire tunic of scaled bronze protected Dhanur’s torso while the rest of her armor was various findings made of leather shoddily tailored to fit. They were scuffed but shining with oil. She was barely at her twenty–seventh summer, but her resplendent bronze set her apart from the typical adventurers and travelers her age who could only boast similarly scarred leather. No one had any bronze beyond a belt loop or an ax head. 

She sat alone at her table. No one dared to be near her since anyone permitted or skilled enough to don such things was best not quarreled with.

Janurana entered, escorted inside by an exiting patron who so kindly held the tarp up for the young woman, then went to calm his bull. She stood straight as a spear, twisting the thick fabric of her parasol as she held it low in front of her. Peeling one hand from her vice like embrace of the parasol, she pushed her hair from her face and surveyed the room. She quickly scanned each patron but eventually landed on the armored figure that stood out. Her eyes widened.

She began to leave, seeing a warrior like the gate captain, but paused as Dhanur drunkenly waved her bow at an unfortunate man who accidentally bumped her. She didn’t even look up. Janurana blinked at that. The information obtained from the townsfolk would be safer, but less valuable than that from a warrior.

‘A drunk talks easier. She may not even remember talking tomorrow. Okay. I can do this. They might not even look at me,’ Janurana thought to herself.

“Excuse me, miss? You’re blocking the doorway, miss,” the innkeeper called as two men tried to squeeze around Janurana. They did their best to not touch her as they did.

She hadn’t noticed. “Sorry. My apologies,” she said as she bowed, slipping into the fire’s threshold.

As Janurana approached Dhanur's table, she felt the gazes of the men and women around her. Most went back to their conversations as she wasn’t too odd compared to the other patrons with their varied skin tones, haphazard armors, or queer foreign garb. But a few lingered, wondering what a higher–class woman was doing in the lower class section of the city. A northerner sneered.

Once at Dhanur’s table, Janurana did her best to keep her composure and started to bow, then hesitated, and instead sat softly on the pillow beside the slumped pile of armor and alcohol. Janurana leaned her parasol against the table, symmetrical with Dhanur’s bow and quiver, and adjusted her sari so she could sit properly. But Dhanur didn’t react. Instead, she mumbled to herself, occasionally twitching or rolling her head.

Janurana sucked her teeth.

“Pardon me!” Janurana raised her hand, calling for the innkeeper with a veil of excitement. “May I have a drink?”

“Yes, of course you can. What kind?” The innkeeper bowed.

Dhanur raised her hand to interject.

“Ahh…” she stammered. “Ya know. This.” Dhanur waved her hand as if her actions would summon the words and scoffed at the new woman’s ineptitude.

Janurana blushed.

“Yes, right away,” he said.

Janurana sighed in relief as he hurried off to remove the lid from an urn of drink. She turned to Dhanur whose arm then fell with a thud. Her table and nearby patrons leapt at the sound.

“Thank you, sir.” Janurana bowed.

Dhanur started up, having just noticed Janurana had sat next to her and not at another table. The trill of her ‘r’s made Dhanur take a moment to process what was said through her inebriation.

“I’m not a man.” Dhanur slowly met Janurana’s gaze. She furrowed her strong brows, a thick scar cleaving her right one in two. Dhanur’s face curled into an offended scowl that accentuated her pointed features, less rounded than most Uttarans.

Janurana pressed her lips together. She bowed once more, her hair falling to block her face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s… Whatever,” Dhanur sighed and slumped again. She let her hand slide to the floor, no longer reaching for her bow to shoo the woman off.

“Well. I’m Janurana. May I ask your name?” She gave a soft smile.

“No.”

“Oh. Mm.” Janurana’s face fell. The innkeeper placed Janurana’s drink in front of her gently and bowed. She returned the gesture with a smile but then drummed her nails on the ceramic cup, filled with the typical light beer that every inn served.

“’Cause it’s not for you to know.” Dhanur rolled her head on the table, sighing. “But you can call me Dhanur ‘cause, ya know.” With considerable effort, she nodded to her Kalia bone bow. “I’m a dhanur.”

Janurana was astounded at such a piece of craftsmanship and status, despite its size being closer to that of a child’s than a soldier’s. It was even more exquisite up close, but before she could reconcile its potential value to the treasures she had known in her youth, Dhanur continued.

“I like my name. It’s what I do, use a bow…” she slurred, correcting herself. She furrowed her brows again to think hard about her next words.

“You must have done such work for the Maharaj to earn that bow and armor,” Janurana raised her inflection at the end.

Dhanur’s eyes shot open. “No. I made this.” She didn’t slur a single word.

“And the armor?” Janurana pressed, hesitantly.

“What’s with these questions?” Dhanur sat up, towering over Janurana. She glared down at the smaller woman, scrutinizing her.

It was similar to how the gate captain examined Janurana, but she buckled. Dhanur’s stare contained hints of surprise, curiosity, and distrust.

“Pardon me, madam Dhanur.” Janurana rose from her pillow.

“No.” Dhanur snatched Janurana’s wrist with her gloved hand. “No. No. It’s fine. Sorry.” She slurred her speech again and let go of Janurana, took a sip of her drink, then put her head back down on the table.

Janurana looked around the inn. There were no other guards around, and all the patrons looked like common folk. Janurana thought about that. She hadn’t been taken away by any official she had seen, and the bronze clad woman smelled slightly different from the captain who greeted her and the tax collector who approached her. Dhanur’s scent was rather homely, like spiced chai.

Janurana sat back down and the rest of the inn got back to their drinks.

“I must say, you seem quite out of place among these common people,” Janurana said.

Sitting up straight had caused Dhanur a surge of headache, so she had laid on the table again and could only roll her head to look over. The mill wheel in her mind gave an almost audible grind as she processed what Janurana might mean. “Wha? I am common people.”

Janurana took her turn eying the other woman up and down, then shifted from side to side. “No, you’re not.” She tilted her head.

“Uh, yeah, I am?” Dhanur drug out her words with condescension, as if her circumstances should be obvious. “They,” she paused, stared forward for a second longer, and downed the whole of her drink, “kicked me outta that class after the Uttarans surrendered. Stupid Light lost nobles.” She punctuated her cursing with another sip but groaned at her empty cup.

“Really?” Janurana willfully ignored Dhanur’s condescending tone. “The nobles.”

Dhanur growled at the word.

“What are they like?”

“They’re the same ‘s any others?”

Janurana mumbled incoherently to herself and slipped into her own thoughts. ‘Dhanur’s still allowed to keep her armor. She’s not wrapped up with the nobility… And they’re no different. Perhaps the gwomoni left them alone to serve as vassals…’

“Wait.” Dhanur blinked at Janurana’s sari and parasol, evidently just noticing them and sat up. “Aren’t you one of them?” Her eyes narrowed.

Janurana sighed and frowned at her clearly well-worn clothes. “I was.”

Dhanur’s inebriated mind proceeded at a tortoise’s pace as she thought about the situation too. She could tell Janurana was not a noble anymore but was born one, which would mean that she’s out of favor. The nobles in the keep only ostracized traitors, if they weren’t dead already.

‘So, she couldn’t be with them,’ Dhanur thought.

‘You’re going in circles,’ said a secondary voice in Dhanur’s head.

She blurted out the first separate thought that came to mind. “Ya look like people I knew.”

“Oh?” Janurana seized on that. “People you liked, I hope?”

“One of ‘em I did. Used to…” She sank to the table.

“Hey!” The northerner who sneered when Janurana entered stormed towards the two with eyes fixed on Janurana. He bore the tan and white t–shaped tattoos across his forehead, around under his cheekbones drawn down to the sides of his chin marking him as Clan Macaque. His two compatriots struggled to stay in front of him, trying to push him back to their table and begging him in the Uttaran tongue to sit down. One had the brandings of Clan Fish with the red gills on their neck but the other had no such markings, labeling them as a clanless porter.

“Good evening,” Janurana said. She glanced back at Dhanur, the only acquaintance she’d made.

“Go away.” Dhanur’s words fell out of her with a tired rumble. She sighed and turned her back to the situation, rolling her eyes. “Light lost northerner.”

“Traitor!” The northern man flinched. Rage boiled behind his glare, but he dared not even look Dhanur in the back of the head. He waited until she had stopped moving before ordering his friends between her and Janurana with a nod.

“Sorry, sorry,” the Clan Fish muttered in the Daksinian language, still cowering and pleading with the Clan Macaque to leave. The other was willing himself to disappear into thin air as every southerner in the inn was watching them.

Janurana could pick up that the aggressor’s name was Ilanlan just before he glared both of his friends down and they shakily became his shield.

“Stiff,” Ilanlan curled his nose as he looked Janurana over. He struggled to parse the Daksinian words he knew through his inebriation and Uttaran accent, making some of his consonants too soft and combining some vowels. “Showiest. So what? Dance in, looking better than us. Daksin burned the Borderlands, now gotta remind our place?” Ilanlan thumped his large chest, as if inviting the much smaller Janurana to hit it. “We will give you fruit for cowries and gems, but not enough?!”

“I’m sorry? I wasn’t da—”

“Spirits haunt you!” He spat at her and every southerner present either shifted on their pillow, put down their drink, or reached for whatever weapon they had.

“Bunch’a people died in raids before we fought. Don’t make the war special. Nobody cares who died anymore. Quit being an asshole,” Dhanur groaned, gritting her teeth. She tried to reach for her bow but gave up when she didn’t touch it immediately.

Ilanlan’s friends jumped as she spoke and again as she moved. They warily watched the southerners on all sides and slipped back to their muscled companion. Ilanlan was too enraged to notice.

 “Daksin forgot the war?! Not special?! Your lands burn too and you forget?! No normal war! No honor war! Fires! Iranra was a brave man! He died better you all! You all were stuck in mud to carry ladders, he did not die so– so,” he didn’t know the southern word. “My brother died, but he fought and killed, your warriors fell to him, not your forced soldiers. Southerners forced to fight,” he scoffed. “But he would still pick fruit today! You all invaded!” Ilanlan had occasionally addressed Dhanur in his rage, but instead screamed full tilt at Janurana. “You gwomoni start the fires!”

Janurana wiped a fleck of spit from her cheek with a revolted flick that blocked the word gwomoni from hitting her ears.

Seeing her flinch at all, Ilanlan smirked “Ha! Gwomoni hate spit, no wonder we do so!” he said to his friends who were trying to placate the ring of southerners closing in on them with every hand gesture and sympathetic frown they could make.

Janurana could only stammer, dumbfounded at the disrespect, but the word gwomoni settled into her and her stammering stopped.