"So that is Oodpur.”

Param stared upwards at the city positioned on the hill, built at the very top overlooking the plains to the South.

It had been a long three days. Between Gahkhpur and Oodpur was a long dirt road that lacked any forest for shade, making the travels painful under the sun. Looking behind the caravan, he could see the farmland stretch endlessly, the crops ripe for harvesting.

“It feels like the city was built just for the view.”

“I love this city just because of the scenery,” replied Aabna from within her palanquin. “Though, it probably doesn’t beat the view of Jefdaar in Bauka. There’s a reason why the Simbaqs had called it a Paradise on Earth. The glaciers, the rivers, the city built into the mountains…”

“Hm?” Param turned, finding her head —wrapped in a pink scarf— poking out the palanquin, a sly smile written on her face.

“What?”

“You could solve the problem of your failing romantic life if you brought a girl there!”

“How do y—

He stopped. The men around them turned to Param piqued perhaps by the unfolding conversation.

“Sir… you had problems getting a girl?” asked one.

Param felt a rush of warmth in his face, quickly turning to the scenery below them and waving his hand in dismissal. “Don’t listen to her…”

“Oh really? I overheard you had a falling out with a girl the other day and I think that relationship…”

Param’s mouth fell a part as a sudden cold overwhelmed him. How did she know?

He scratched the back of his head. “Oh God help me…”

“I think it lasted for… oh what was it now? Only four days? My, if it’s only for four days, I can’t imagine a girl married to you for the rest of your life.”

Some of the men around them chuckled, but Param cringed more than he would have liked. “Kill me now.”

“Oh but I can’t allow that,” she said amused. “After all, Bhagat —or should I say the new Lord Gahkhar— wanted you to train more men. What’d he say if you died now?”

Param glanced at his hand.

Still flushed.

He took in a deep breath, looking hard at the scenery below as he tried to calm his nerves.

“When did you become a witch?”

Her chuckles came off crooked in his ears. “It’s not nice to call a Lord’s granddaughter such a twisted name.”

Param maintained his gaze, looking towards the farms at the bottom of the hill and the endless grown crops. Today would be an especially long day.

“Halt the men Param.”

Param turned, brow raised. “What? Why?”

She seemed serious, the smile on her gone. “Someone is coming to greet us.”

Param looked at the road ahead and noticed a figure.

“Men!” he shouted, raising his hand up high. “Stop!”

The men stopped one after the other. Param could make out a youth rushing towards them on a horse.

“Sirs!” shouted the young man, stopping his horse. “Is Lady Aabna here?”

What’s going on here? Param looked to Aabna, who gave a nod.

“Lower the palanquin,” she said.

The men rested the palanquin to the ground and Aabna got off, her face stoic as the Sun’s rays reflected off her pink dress.

“How’s the situation in the city?”

“T-terrible,” replied the youth, sinking his knees to the ground. “Looting, arson… murder! Neighbors are plunging blades into one another!”

What? The words spilling out of the young man’s mouth gave Param a chill.

“The city dwellers all took up arms like what your men suggested, but then after the guards… they started attacking the innocents! All the poor and well-off, all the destitute and fortunate… everyone is dying for no reason at all!”

She lied to us. Param stared at the young boy whose eyes teared up. He probably wasn’t even fifteen yet his hands were shaking violently, the words from his mouth shaking with his knees.

The boy was scared. Like the World within the city had been reduced to ashes.

“Weren’t the Afraaris our enemy?”

Aabna had said that the city was liberated, but she didn’t say anything about the cost.

“Aabna,” said Param, whispering close by. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but we need to get there fast.”

She faced Param, her face cold. “You’re… right. I hadn’t anticipated this.”

Aabna returned to her palanquin. Param extended out his hand to the boy.

“Don’t worry child, we’ll make sure the city is under control. I swear you this as a warrior under the Gahkhar family.”

“The Gahkhars?” repeated the boy. “Have the Gahkhars really come?”

“Of course,” replied Param, pointing to his attire. “Why else do we wear these red and indigo colors?”

“Bhagat, shouldn’t someone with more knowledge than I learn this tongue?”

Bhagat leaned back on his chair. “What? Are you telling me you’re stupid?”

“Well…”

“Look Vishar, if you have the balls to get yourself hurt knowing that’ll help us, then you’re already trustworthy enough to handle the tasks I’m going to be giving you from here on out, sides, it’s better than lounging in bed with those cotton bandages.”

Vishar raised a brow. “Well… when you put it that way… but ‘balls?’”

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

Vishar hadn’t had nearly as much time understanding his jargon than Param. Hell, Param had learned to accept whatever came from Bhagat’s mouth, but Vishar was more of the formal type. It’d be hard to have him loosen up.

“What language is this?”

“It’s called English,” replied Bhagat.

“Why should I learn this? What’s wrong with speaking Lohaani?”

“There’s no problem speaking Lohaani or Kaashi or even Muftaani, since we can understand one another regardless. But the problem lies in the scripts.”

Vishar raised a brow. “Then why must we learn this… English?”

“It’s because the three other languages have completely different alphabets. Muftaani borrows the alphabet structure of foreign lands, whereas Kaashi is a derivative of the Original One’s alphabet structure. Lohaani was developed by the Five Teachers as a way of bringing literacy to the common man and while it does follow the basic principles of the Original One’s alphabetic structure, it’s still vastly different when compared to Kaashi.”

“Well then why can’t we just make everyone learn Lohaani if it’s the easiest of the three?”

“Valid question,” replied Bhagat, staring at the hill of books littered on his desk. “It all ends up going back to religion. No Haraan will ever want to learn a Sudhist or Kashaari’s tongue since there’s no point. No Kaashari will ever want to learn a Haraan’s tongue and no Sudhist will ever want to learn either’s tongue.”

“But if it’s for Lohaan, anyone could do it…”

“You’d be surprised. For one, no one is so selfless.”

Bhagat stood up and walked to the end of the room, overlooking the buzzing streets of Gahkhpur.

“Lohaan isn’t what it used to be. It’s no longer a ‘single’ stretch of land spanning six rivers. Sooner or later this land will split into two or three parts just because of how different each end of it is.”

“So then… using this tongue will help us?”

“I hope it does. The primary purpose of using an entirely different language is to protect our bureaucracy and unite the different religious groups in our military. But maybe later…”

Bhagat turned. “Yeah, let’s just keep it at this level for now. I want this language to protect our secrets more than anything else.”

“I’ll try my best then.”

“Cool. While you master this, I’ll be writing textbooks for mathematics.”

“Math?”

“Yeah, but not the 1 + 1 or the 5 x 3 kind of math, I mean stuff like derivatives and integrals.”

“What are those?”

Bhagat waved his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll start teaching that in 3 weeks. For now, master this so you can teach it to others. We’re going to be bringing in many people across Lohaan and I want to make it all worth it before the monsoon rains.”

“I understand Bhagat.”

“Good.” Bhagat reached for the door at the end of the room. “Now if you can excuse me, I need to look at our treasury. Make sure no one notices or reads a single letter.”

Vishar gave a curt nod.

Walking around the bottom of the keep, Bhagat couldn’t help but admire the maze he found himself in despite the increasing agitation. He twisted and turned around the stone-encassed corridors, his steps echoing deeper into the chambers as his wandering shadow disappeared and reappeared in the torchlight.

“Hey you two!” he shouted, walking over to the guards patrolling the labyrinth. “Do you guys know where Meethi is?”

“Meethi?” replied the man. “That tall one?”

Well, that works too. Bhagat brimmed a smile. “Yes, the tall one.”

The man pointed behind them. “If you go left and then take a right, you’ll find him by the vault.”

“Thanks guys.”

Bhagat continued on his journey, bidding the two farewell. Finally a fucking clue.

He turned a corner.

Why’d my ancestors—

He turned again.

A dead end.

Bhagat closed his eyes, placing a hand on his face. “Fuck this place.”

Now he’d have to retrace his steps and turn a few other corners to figure out where he had to go.

“Lord Gahkhar?”

“Huh?”

Bhagat turned. Before him was a tall man wearing a long cotton skirt, stretching to his ankles, that donned his family’s colors —indigo and red.

“Ah Meethi there you are! I was just about to grow mad trying to find you.”

Meethi gave a sorry look. “Apologies My Lord, I should’ve sent someone to guide you.”

Bhagat waved his hand. “Forget it, I’ve found you now. Anyways, did you find anything interesting?”

“Yes I have My Lord,” replied Meethi. “Please, come this way.”

The two began to pace the halls. In one moment they were in the shadows and in the next they were in the torchlight.

“Has Lord Suhliq divulged any… information?”

“No My Lord,” replied Meethi plainly. “Not one word.”

“I see.”

“You know My Lord, we could just hurt hi—

“No. Never. I don’t want my prisoners to be tortured, even if it costs me my life.”

“But—

“There are no exceptions. None at all.”

A silence interrupted the conversation.

“If you say so My Lord.”

They turned a few different corners before arriving at their destination closely guarded by a few warriors.

A vault.

Opening the many locks keeping the door in place, Meethi pushed the heavy door open.

“My Lord, this is the wealth stashed away here.”

“My God.”

Within the treasury were mountains of coins, more than even he could’ve ever imagined. The silver shine and gold luster radiated with the light projected by the torchlights, mesmerizing Bhagat.

“How many bloody coins are there?”

“We’ve still got to count it but it’s more than enough for 3 years if you don’t indulge on anything excessive.”

“Three bloody years?”

Bhagat paced around the lustrous room and reached for a gold coin mired in an exotic pile. He fumbled the coin in his hand, noticing the coldness. On the coin was the raven —symbol for the Shah— and words inscribed in Naezaati, the Haraan version of Kaashi, that Bhagat himself couldn’t understand.

“Is this genuine gold?”

“I haven’t tested it yet.”

“Well, gold is a soft metal so it should be bendable.”

Bhagat gripped the coin with both hands and applied pressure for a good few seconds. He then approached a nearby torchlight.

The coin was bent.

“Wow, it really is genuine gold.” Bhagat fumbled the coin in his hand. “How were they able to make this much money?”

“Well…” began Meethi. “It’s because of what they stored in the other rooms.”

Meethi left the chamber first, signaling Bhagat to come along. Bhagat stepped out and the guards secured the vault. He could hear a loud shriek as the door slammed shut behind them.

“Have you talked with that foreigner?”

“I tried.”

“You tried? It didn’t work?”

Meethi let out a sigh. “No. He tried speaking Kaashi but… it wasn’t really Kaashi at all. If anything, it felt like he was insulting us with his dirtied tongue.”

“Well if you were to speak a foreign tongue, you too would feel the same way as him.”

“True.”

“How about this? Have someone teach him Lohaani and the Sudhist script.”

Meethi turned, a brow raised. “Why? Aren’t we going to execute him for helping Suhliq?”

Bhagat waved his hand. “That’s a waste of foreign experience Meethi. If we kill a man from a land that’s not from our own, how can we possibly understand the progress of other nations? How can we possibly modernize or even exceed others if we ourselves aren’t capable of using any of the means available to us?”

“Hmm,” replied Meethi, somewhat dissatisfied. “What makes you say this?”

His words hushed Bhagat. Did he want to reveal the insights he had gained?

“Well Meethi I had a vision,” began Bhagat, striding in front of the man and turning, his hands in the air as the skirt, stretching to his ankles, ballooned out. “I saw entire lands fall to simple yet ruthless kingdoms. They tried ‘civilizing’ their conquered but ended up exploiting them for profits.”

Bhagat continued on, his skirt subsiding. “I can see this same thing happening to Azaad one day.”

“That seems too drastic My Lord.” Meethi gave him a confused look. “How can a country conquer a land the size of Azaad? It’s impossible. Not even the Simbaq’s could do it.”

Bhagat shook his head. “If a nation can exploit even the tiniest things, invent the most inconsequential of instruments and interact in the most benign ways imaginable it’ll all eventually add up into a force that can dominate a land with even the oldest of traditions.”

A silence interrupted the men. Meethi slowed down his pace until coming to a complete stop in the middle of the hall.

“Is this it?”

Meethi nodded his head, motioning the guards to open the vault door. The door screeched open, the torchlight from the halls seeping into the darkness within the room. Another guard instinctively picked a torch from the wall and lit up the torches in the room inside.

Inside were barrels flanked on the sides of the room stacked on top of one another. Bhagat approached a barrel that had it’s lid taken off, finding rough blocks inside.

Bhagat placed his hand within the sea of rocks, feeling the rough edges prickle his skin. “Hmm.”

Taking his hand out, he picked a few cubes and approached a nearby torch, basking the cubes under the light for a closer look.

“Varying shades of red… wait, this one is just about whi—

His eyes slowly widened.

“No… wait a minute, it can’t be…”

He rubbed the rocks between his two fingers.

“Rock… different colors… this made them money?”

Bhagat turned to Meethi.

“Is this salt?”

Meethi gave a silent nod.

“Really?”

Excitement ran through his blood as he gave the rocks in his hand a good look once more, bringing them close to his mouth.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, the faint bitter and sour taste lingering in his tongue. “It is salt!”

“It seems they had discovered a salt deposit in Oodpur 19 years ago. Despite the salt being of lesser quality, the Afraaris were quick to buy it all up considering there wasn’t any other place they could purchase salt from. The merchant families sold salt at an incredibly high premium, whereas the Sheirans never sold their salt anywhere West. That left Suhliq the sole source of salt for much of Central Azaad.”

“Huh,” replied Bhagat. “Maybe that’s why that kid is such a fucking stuck-up brat, he probably sent those men after us knowing more of them could be brought from Afraar.”

“The Suhliqs had guarded the salt, they even designated entire rooms here for salt storage; however, most of the salt here was meant for the residence and the inner quarters of the city that housed the Haraan elites.”

“Really now?” Bhagat looked at the rocks left in his hand. “This isn’t even the greatest of salt, but they still considered it a luxury?”

“I inquired with a local trader regarding the prices. The merchant families sold their salt at a rate of 7 gold a barrel, whereas the Suhliqs managed to sell at 2 gold a barrel.”

“What?” Bhagat raised his brows. “That much for garbage?”

Bhagat placed the last few salt rocks into his mouth, shuddering from the the bitterness.

“Last time I checked, Lohaan never had any salt of it’s own. We had to rely on Bauka, didn’t we?”

“Yes, the Baukans sold their salt to the merchant families, who’d sell the salt across Lohaan and outside as well. But you can tell the price is a bit… excessive…”

“Yah I wouldn’t pay 7 bloody gold coins for a barrel even if it was the best quality around.” Bhagat paced around the room. “The people would also be charged an incredibly high price. Enough to lose even a months worth of wages…”

The thought was disheartening.

“The merchants families…”

The mere thought of them gave Bhagat pause.

“They hold most of the trade monopolies in Lohaan. They’ve even convinced most of the lords to sell them wheat at a low price so they can maximize the profit to fill their bottom lines. I hate that. It pisses me off.”

“But we can’t do anything about it, can we? The Afraaris will find out that we’ve taken the city and they’ll launch an attack. They probably won’t even buy salt from us anymore. The merchant families are the ones bankrolling our efforts so we shouldn’t be alienating them, not now at least.”

“You’re right, but they’ve been giving us peanuts compared to what we could make if we did sell the salt directly.” replied Bhagat, pondering his next choices. He could flood the Lohaani markets with salt, though he’d need a merchant enterprise to handle those sales and there was no way in hell he’d have the men for it, unless he could hire a local merchant to do his bidding.

“Oh that reminds me, I found a barrel with something that didn’t quite feel like the salt here.”

Bhagat turned, raising an eyebrow at Meethi’s words. “What do you mean?”

Meethi poked around, probing the nearby barrels. “This one, right here.”

Bhagat approached the barrel and felt the powder brush against his hand.

“Hold on a minute,” he said, his heart beating. Looking at his hand under the torchlight, the compound had smeared his hands, leaving a layer of white residue that he had difficulty dusting off.

“Is it really?” A racing sensation traced his veins as he gave the powder a good look again. “This is… saltpeter…”