G7

The crossroads town of Bhelpur existed primarily as a place where roads met and people stopped being wherever they'd been in order to briefly be somewhere else before continuing. It had a market, two inns, a rest-house for travelling merchants, a small temple of Hanuman, and a tea-seller whose establishment had been open continuously for thirty-seven years and whose owner had seen, in that time, approximately everything that human beings were capable of producing in the way of behaviour. His name was Mahesh-dada, and he was sitting on his customary stool behind his customary fire when, on a mild afternoon in the month of Ashvin, all four of them arrived at his tea stall within twenty minutes of each other. He noticed them individually and collectively, the way a man who has watched crossroads for thirty-seven years notices things. The first was the large young man from the north road — the one with the potter's hands and the amber eyes and the careful way of moving that said I have never been formally trained and also I know exactly how to hurt you. He ordered tea, paid the right amount without needing to be told the price, and sat at the far end of the bench with his back to the wall. The second came from the west road twenty minutes later — lean, dark, moving with contained precision, the kind of person who assessed a space before entering it. He ordered tea without sitting, which Mahesh-dada interpreted as someone who expected to keep moving but was allowing himself this one concession to comfort. He stood near the road, watching. The third came from the north-west — tall, round-faced, with the look of a man who had been walking for a very long time and was aware that his body had formed opinions about this. He sat near the centre of the bench, opened a worn book, read two pages, and closed it again. Ordered tea and a small flatbread. The fourth came from the north — and this one Mahesh-dada tracked with particular attention, because he arrived from a completely unexpected direction, having apparently come over the wall of the merchant's storage yard adjacent to the stall rather than through the front road. He landed silently, straightened, and walked to the stall as though this were entirely unremarkable. 'Tea,' he said, counting out exact payment. His eyes moved constantly. None of the four had looked directly at each other. But Mahesh-dada had been watching crossroads for thirty-seven years, and he could see, in the way each of them was very carefully not looking at the others, that they were extremely aware of each other. He made the tea. He served it. He sat on his stool. He waited. It was the large one — the potter's son — who spoke first. He didn't look up from the ground when he did it. 'Your hands,' he said. Silence. 'All of you,' the large one said. 'Your hands. Same as mine.' The lean dark one set his tea cup down very slowly. The round-faced one looked up from his book. The fourth — the one who had come over the wall — stopped the constant scanning motion of his eyes. Four glowing marks. Four different shapes. Four different colours — amber, blue-white, blue-black, and a quiet silver that was visible only when the light caught it from a particular angle. Mahesh-dada refilled his own cup and settled back on his stool. The large one said: 'I'm Arjun.' A long pause. 'Vikram,' said the lean one. 'Kiran,' said the round-faced one. The fourth said nothing for long enough that it became a statement. Then: 'Rahu.' Another silence. Then Kiran, with the direct practicality of someone whose training had taught him to assess situations without sentiment, said: 'You've all been following the warmth direction.' Three nods. Reluctant from one of them — Rahu's — but a nod. 'Right,' Kiran said. 'And you all saw the seven stars.' More nods. 'And none of you know exactly what the marks are or what we're supposed to do about them.' 'I know some,' Vikram said. 'I spoke with an imperial archivist. Agni Marga — the Path of Fire. Four cultivators, each representing one of the Mahabhutas. The marks are a designation.' 'Designation for what?' Arjun asked. 'That's what I couldn't determine.' Vikram looked at him directly for the first time. 'The archivist's notes cut off at the relevant section. Someone had removed pages from the original scroll.' 'Someone removed them,' Rahu said, 'or someone is removing everyone who has them.' He looked at Kiran. 'Your teacher.' Kiran went very still. 'What do you know about my teacher?' 'Nothing specific. But I've been moving through four cities in the past month, and in each one I heard about wandering ascetics found dead. Neck-broken. Searched.' Rahu's eyes were steady. 'And the notice at the imperial market specifically calls for people with the marks. Which means the empire knows about them. Which means we should all think very carefully about whether showing up at an imperial tournament is a good idea or an extremely bad one.' This was, Mahesh-dada thought from his stool, a good point. It was also, apparently, not what the large young man wanted to hear. 'The tournament is our way in,' Arjun said. 'To the Imperial Library. The scroll is probably there — the complete one. If we want to know what we're carrying and why people are dying over it, we need to be in Suryapura.' 'We,' Rahu said. The word sitting alone, flat. Arjun met his eyes. 'Is that a problem?' 'I don't know you. I don't know any of you.' Rahu's voice was not hostile. It was simply precise. 'Shared marks don't make us allies. Common interest doesn't make us friends. I'll go to Suryapura because it's the direction I was already going. What happens when we get there remains to be seen.' Vikram, who had been listening with his arms crossed and the expression of a man doing complex calculations, said: 'He's not wrong. We need information before we need solidarity.' He looked at Kiran. 'You said your teacher was killed. Did he tell you anything before he died?' 'He said to find the others with the mark.' Kiran paused. 'He said we would know each other.' Rahu looked around the table. 'Is anyone else bothered by how we all ended up at the same tea stall within twenty minutes of each other?' Silence. Mahesh-dada refilled three cups and did not comment on the fact that no one had explained how they'd known to sit in the same place. He had been watching crossroads for thirty-seven years. He knew that certain roads, for certain people, were not entirely a matter of individual choice. He also knew that the four young men sitting at his stall were, in ways he could not articulate beyond thirty-seven years of observation, not ordinary. He offered them flatbread. They ate it in silence, which was its own kind of answer. And none of them left. Not even the fourth one, who had said: what happens when we get there remains to be seen. He stayed, and finished his tea, and when Arjun eventually said 'We should move before it gets dark,' Rahu was the first one up. He just didn't say anything about it. Mahesh-dada watched them go — four young men on the road east, walking with the careful not-quite-together spacing of people who were moving in the same direction and not yet ready to admit what that meant. He made himself a fresh cup of tea and settled on his stool. Interesting times, he thought. The interesting times had been coming for a while now. He hoped those boys were ready.