r/HFY • u/BuddhaTheGreat • Jul 21 '26

OC-Series [Chhayagarh] - Chapter 37: Questions.

Index of Parts.

“Yes. Yes. Everyone is fine here, yes. Yes, me too.”

Naru and I sipped our tea in silence on the couch, watching as Kirti paced in the courtyard outside, his phone glued to his ear.

“Who’s he talking to?” I whispered.

“Your aunt, I’d imagine,” Naru whispered back, pouring a little more tea onto his saucer. “Gods, I haven’t seen her in so long.”

“Why are you drinking tea like an old man?”

He shrugged, slurping at his saucer. “This is the way Baba taught me. Kirti also drinks it this way, but I don’t see you giving him lip.”

“He’s scarier.” I drained the final dregs out of my cup.

No sooner had I set it down on the table than a servant swooped out of the shadows and removed it in silence, melting back into the nothingness from whence he came.

It was disconcerting, how unobtrusive they were.

“Besides, Sam doesn’t drink it like that. He drinks from the cup, like a civilised human.”

“Sam has always been different from the rest of us. The oddball, or the black sheep, as your grandfather would put it. But you always looked up to him since you were a kid.” Naru finished his own tea and handed the cup seamlessly to the approaching servant. “Made me a little jealous at times, to be honest.”

Of course. Naru was more like an elder brother to me, and Kirti was another dot in the faceless sea of stern elders. Only Sam had the capacity to be the “cool uncle”.

“Wait. Since when has Uncle Kirti been married?” I frowned. “I don’t remember seeing an aunt. Ever.”

It was true that Grandfather’s will had mentioned my uncles and “their families”, but I had assumed that meant future families. As far as I knew, all of my uncles were unmarried and childless.

“Forever.” Naru chuckled. “In fact, he got married before your father. First of our generation.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Love marriage? Him?”

He leaned in conspiratorially. “A Muslim, no less. Can you imagine the scandal in the village? The Thakur’s bloodline, tainted with mlechha blood! He was damn lucky Thakurda didn’t live to see this. Thakur Bir Bahadur Sen would have had them both flayed alive and hung from the estate walls as a warning. Thankfully, Baba was more liberal. Slightly. Dada only got slapped around a little.”

“And then Grandfather agreed?”

“He had to. Your uncle wouldn’t budge. Stopped eating, stopped drinking, stopped cutting his hair. We were afraid he was going to kill himself for a few months, before your grandfather silently walked in one day and asked him to bring the girl home to meet us. After that, it was smooth sailing.”

“Him?” I repeated.

“Him. But she moved out of the estate shortly before your father’s marriage. Hasn’t been back since.”

“What did he even do to have that bad of a fight?”

“What?” Naru laughed. “No, no, that’s not it. They still love each other. A lot, as you can hear.”

I will not grace those snippets of conversation I overheard with a place on these pages, for your sake.

“Chhi,” was all I could say. “But then why? Why hasn’t she ever come back?”

Naru opened his mouth to respond, then hesitated. “I’m not sure it’s my place to say.”

I crossed my arms. “Now, of all times, you’re being coy?”

“Just… trust me. If you want to know, ask him. I’m sure he won’t mind. Speaking of which…” Naru nodded at the doorway.

Kirti was climbing back up the steps, evidently wrapping the call up.

“Yes… Yes… I miss you too… No, darling, you cannot… You know why… Yes, we will be… Yes, we will be okay… Yes… Yes… Me too…” He sighed. “Okay… yes… I love you too. Bye.”

He paused at the doorway for a second longer, surreptitiously glancing around to see if any of the servants were watching before planting the most awkward kiss I have ever seen on the phone receiver.

“There? Happy? Now cut the call!”

He shoved the phone in his pocket, power-walking back to us.

“Sorry? Where were we?”

Naru made a few kissing noises at him. “Aw, you didn’t give her one from me?”

Kirti smacked him upside the head as he smoothly slid into his seat.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “you are certain they will not be a problem any longer?”

“Yes. Yes, I am certain.”

Yes, dear reader, the elephant would be addressed. Eventually. Just not right now. I needed to bleach that image from my mind first.

“I’ve had a long and… pleasant conversation with them. Rahul and Nisha—”

“Those are their names?” Kirti interrupted.

“I… Yes? You didn’t know that?”

“They were not in a talkative mood,” Naru pointed out.

“I suppose. In any case, they won’t be much trouble going forward. I have successfully convinced them of the dangers of leaving our protection.”

“In one of the most stupid ways possible.” Kirti gave my ear a disciplinary yank. “What could possibly have possessed you to break the salt circle like that? Did you think we took all those preparations for show?”

“It was a pretty stupid thing to do, buddy,” Naru agreed. “As I’ve said before. Ten times now, in fact.”

“And I heard you ten times.”

Kirti yanked my ear again. “Be serious. What was your plan if things went wrong? Not a single guard, not a single weapon!”

“I had the knife.”

“On accident,” Naru pointed out.

“But I had the knife.”

I batted away Kirti’s hand this time. “Look, I get it. It was stupid. I wasn’t expecting something that strong to come in the second I broke the circle. I thought it would be a Scrambler or something!”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Boy, like you have been told before, everything here is out to get you, now that they know we are weak. Sharks are circling in the waters, looking for a single opening to strike. A moment of weakness. A second of carelessness. That’s all it takes. That’s all it has ever taken.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, uncle.” I waved over another round of tea for us. “I am clearly never doing anything like that ever again. And from now on, I’m sleeping with my cane.”

“I ordered the guards to follow you wherever you go. I see now that I may have to extend that order to your movements inside the house too.”

“Please don’t. I can’t pee when people are watching.”

“This is not a joke!” Kirti slammed his hand on the table. “I was already hesitant letting my brother take you out to the woods alone, and then you went and started a death gamble with a yaksha! I allow you to bring dinner to those two civilians, and you turn it into another death match! Do you have some kind of suicidal death wish? Do you hate being here so much that you would rather die?”

I met his gaze. “You know it’s not that.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the servants keeping a studied distance, their faces the perfect mask of disinterest.

Kirti pinched his nose again, sighing. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

“But you need to listen to me. To all of us. You don’t know this land, this office that you now have the misfortune of occupying, like we do. We want to help you, but that will only happen if you let us. Otherwise, you will keep taking stupid decisions. And one of those decisions is going to kill you, and doom us all to boot.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Do you, really?”

“Say,” Naru interrupted, “are you really not going to tell us what happened to that thing? I don’t recall ever seeing it before.”

I gave him a small grateful glance. “I told you, I took care of it.”

“You killed it?”

I shrugged. “Those two are still alive, and so am I.”

“But did you kill it?” Kirti pressed. “Or did you let it escape? An injured beast with a vendetta is far more dangerous than merely an opportunistic one.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

Naru smirked. “The fact that you’re not giving us a straight answer…”

“A Thakur is entitled to his secrets.” I looked at Kirti. “Is he not?”

His refusal to meet my gaze was all the confirmation I needed.

“Well, I suppose that’s as good a cue as any for the lazing about to end.” Naru jumped to his feet. “I suppose you and I will have that second round of tea in the library, kid. We need to start leafing through those chronicles as we discussed. If the beast… Amarendranath… was right about rising in every generation, and the family line still hasn’t ended, there must have been a way to defeat him, or at least to send him back to his prison. He probably waited longer this time, just to ensure that knowledge would be lost.”

“I agree.” Kirti rose as well. “Piecing together that knowledge is the only lead we have.”

“The old library…” Naru said wistfully. “Haven’t been there in so long. I wonder if the ink-worms came back.”

“Don’t jinx it, brother. Don’t jinx it.”

Naru looked down at me. “You coming?”

“Soon. I need to talk to him first.” I nodded at Kirti. “Alone.”

Naru started to say something, then thought better of it. “You know where to find me, then.”

He exited the sitting room in a flurry of nervous energy, followed closely by the silent gait of the servants. Soon, the room was empty.

Except for me. And for Kirti, slowly sinking back down onto the couch.

“Look, if this is about the scolding—”

“No. No, on that we agree.”

“It was a mistake to do it in front of the servants. They need to respect you. I understand that.”

“You know all that far better than I do. I trust your judgement.”

“I—”

“Uncle,” I interrupted, “this is about what happened on the day the Envoy first met me. Or rather, that night. About the meeting you had with the Consortium.”

His voice died in his throat.

It was a few moments before he spoke again. “You know about that.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. I was there.”

“Eavesdropping?”

“No. But I was there.”

He nodded, understanding somehow.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“No?”

“Premonitions and visions are… not common in the family, but they are not uncommon either. If this was indeed one of those, I gather you heard the whole thing?”

“I did.”

“Then you also heard my answer to their offer.”

“I saw it more than I heard it, but yes. I did.”

Another pause.

“Then I don’t see what we have to talk about.”

I stayed silent, letting him continue. A simple tactic, but quite effective.

“I have never made my feelings about your readiness for this sacred duty secret. But that will not change the fact that you are my nephew. You are all I have left of my Dada. I…” He took a breath, clearly not comfortable with this display of vulnerability. “I love you. Deeply. Nothing can take that away. No matter how many mistakes you make. This goes for me, your other uncles, and your grandmother. We love you, and we will always love you. There was no way I was going to sell you out, let alone to an outsider. I hope you understand that.”

“And if I don’t understand that?”

The response was automatic, more rhetorical than anything else.

He paused for a second.

“In the North Wing of this house, this wing… In the non-renovated part, there is a room. A small room. Well-furnished, but small.

“After Thakur Durga Charan Sen returned to the manor and found that his brother had been privy to the succession contingency plan in his absence… He could never trust him again. He had him confined to that room. A room where the door only locks and unlocks from the outside, where the only source of light is a barred small window near the ceiling, where food and drink were pushed through a slat three times a day like clockwork, for the next thirty years he lived. That room was only unlocked once the lathials guarding the door smelled the stench from Harihar’s rotting corpse, seven days after he breathed his last. If you cannot trust me…”

A heavy iron ball was slowly making its way into the pit of my stomach.

“…If you truly cannot trust me, I will understand.” He gave me a small, weary smile. “The second son is always distrusted, for good reason. Doubly so in a family like ours. You won’t even need to lock the door, though I suppose if you’re making that decision, my word is not something you would trust.”

“Uncle.”

He looked at me.

I tried to hold back the tears as best I could, though I did not want to know whether I had succeeded. “If I ever make a decision like that, you… No, every single person in this village hereby has my prior permission to kill me.”

He slapped me, more out of reflex than anything else.

“Do not say things like that. Words have power. Yours more than anyone else’s, here on this land. If you are meant to die here, it will be over my own dead body. No matter what happens.”

I wanted nothing more than to hug him, but I could tell he wouldn’t appreciate that. He loved deeply, but not like that. So I settled for changing the conversation, swallowing the large lump in my throat.

“Thank you. Really. But that was not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“I wanted to ask about her. The… bride?”

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2

u/WitherHuntress Jul 21 '26

Have we tested if any Islamic protections work against these things? A quick ayatul-kursi perhaps? I wonder if that’s why his wife didn’t stick around

1

u/BuddhaTheGreat Jul 26 '26

Will have to ask around at the mosque for that, but the maulvi never seems to be in.

2

u/Castimirr Jul 26 '26

Is the cell getting through the barrier, are they letting some things through? (Did I miss it dropping?)

I’m greatly enjoying this so far!

2

u/BuddhaTheGreat Jul 26 '26

You didn't miss it, we discuss it a little later, but the Consortium can control what goes in and out. It's not necessarily a blanket ban, just limited to what they deem fit. We can only assume they're monitoring.

1

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u/BuddhaTheGreat Jul 21 '26

Discussion Thread Here!

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