“I would be grateful to witness the ritual. I hope you’ll explain it to me.”
“I’d be happy to.” Niran rose. “Let us leave the table so our brothers can clean up. Intira, why don’t you go back to your studies while Kyra and I go to the temple?”
Intira nodded. “Yes, brother.”
“Be ready for the market at five o’clock.”
She smiled. “I will be!”
Intira, Bun Ma, and Kanchana pressed their hands together and nodded their goodbyes as Niran and Kyra rose and walked toward the temple.
“The thing you must understand is that this practice is very old,” Niran said. “Far older than Buddhism. Far older than Hinduism even. It is possible this is something that was once practiced by early Grigori, though it was lost to us and only survived in the human world.”
Kyra said, “The Irin have tattoos, but I don’t really know what they’re for. Other than controlling their magic. I don’t know the specifics.”
“As far as I can tell, what you do with your singing—the words, the spells you say—they do with their writing. The tattoos just capture the magic more permanently. It is the same history with the Sak Yant.”
“But you said you learned it from humans.”
“We did,” Niran said. “My brother, Sura, was dissatisfied with his life even before our sire was dead. He used to say he felt as if he were rotting from the inside. He became friends with a very old holy man who lived not far from here.”
“A monk?”
Niran shook his head. “No. I don’t know what gods he believed in, but his life was honorable, his body was healthy, and he claimed to be over one hundred and ten years old.”
Kyra said, “Humans don’t live that long.”
“Sura believed him. And this man, he had many markings. All over his arms…” Niran rolled up his sleeves to show Kyra a stylized tiger on his forearm surrounded by unfamiliar writing. “His legs. His chest. The old man had tattooed himself the same way his father tattooed himself. The same way he taught his sons before they left him.”
“But what did the tattoos mean? They were human? Or did he learn them from the Irin?”
“He was human. And the tattoos were very old mantras written in Pali, the language of the Buddha. He called them Sak Yant and told my brother Sura that he would teach him if Sura was willing to learn and to take care of the old man until he died. The old man also told Sura that in order to teach him, he would have to live according to five laws.”
“What kind of laws?”
“Simple things for a human.” Niran paused and pulled a ripe mango from a tree near the temple. “Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t lust. Don’t live a hedonistic life of pleasure.” Niran pulled out a knife and sliced the mango neatly, carving petals from the flesh of the golden fruit. He handed them to Kyra as they walked. “These laws are all things humans endeavor to do anyway. Most human laws relate to this.”
Kyra understood immediately. “But not Grigori laws.”
“We have no laws,” Niran said. “And to Sura—for a Grigori raised by a Fallen angel—these ideas were revolutionary. We and all our brothers were taught from birth to kill and lie and steal and lust. That was our identity. It was also what was rotting my brother from the inside. He took advantage of our father’s absence and fled into the forest to learn from the old man. Over the years, he went back again and again. He discovered that the meditation he practiced and the words the old man tattooed on his body—later the words he tattooed himself—cleared his mind.”
“It did what the Irin tattoos do for their warriors.”
Niran shook his head. “I’m sure their systems are more extensive. Their spells are far more complex. They have thousands of years of scholarship behind their traditions. But for us—for those who don’t have anyone to teach us—these human tattoos do help.” He motioned to the temple where saffron-clad Grigori walked in prayer or meditation.
Some were cleaning. Some tended plants. Some sat in quiet conversation. All of them bore the same intricate tattoos Niran did.
“You’ve seen the Grigori here,” he continued. “We still train to protect the city, but all of us live according to those five rules. All of us wear the tattoos that Sura taught us. All of us live more normal, more controlled lives. We’re not special, Kyra. We were as violent as any in our race. If we can do this, so can others.”
Kyra didn’t need more convincing. She’d listened to the soul voices of Niran and his brothers. It wasn’t an illusion. They were more calm. More controlled. More peaceful. “This could help my brothers,” she said. “This practice could help them too.”
She imagined Kostas with tattoos that could help him control his cravings for human energy. She imagined Sirius being stronger and more focused. They patrolled every night, plunging into temptation over and over again, battling the worst parts of their nature to defend humans against Grigori in thrall to other Fallen angels and themselves against Irin who were trained to stab first and ask questions later.
Niran stopped at the steps of the temple. “There’s another side effect of this,” he said. “We’re also better fighters. Because we’re more focused and present, we are far more deadly to our enemies. That is why I am so cautious with this knowledge. I am not being greedy or controlling, but this practice in the wrong hands could undo everything free Grigori like me and your brothers have been trying to prove to the Irin world. We are capable of living peaceful and protective lives. But we have to make sure that those who hold this knowledge are willing to live as we do.”
“I understand.”
Kyra toed off her shoes with Niran and ascended the steps to the temple. She could smell the fragrant incense and the flowers filling the front of the temple. A large golden Buddha sat peacefully at the front while a line of monks sat along the side of the room, chanting a mantra. Kyra followed Niran to the opposite side of the temple where a young monk, no more than twenty, bent over the back of a shirtless man. The man looked up, nodded at Niran and Kyra, and closed his eyes. It was the Grigori who had come to receive Sak Yant.
“Sit with me,” Niran said. “Make sure the soles of your feet are not exposed.”
Kyra sat cross-legged, her palms resting on her knees as she watched the young monk and the Grigori.
The monk’s lips moved in prayer, then he opened his eyes and began to write on the man’s back in a quick, curving script. His pen didn’t stop until he’d written multiple lines across the man’s shoulders. He set the pen aside and took a long bamboo rod with a metal tip and dipped it in ink.
As the monks on the far side of the temple chanted, the young monk set a quick rhythm, piercing the man’s skin with the metal point over and over again as he tattooed the words into the man’s back. Kyra watched in amazement as the Grigori sat motionless, not even flinching. He kept his eyes closed, his lips moving in his own prayer as he sat in the lotus position on the ground of the temple, a string of marigolds in one hand, a small gold coin in the other.
The tattoo must have taken an hour or more to complete, but the wind passed through the open windows of the temple, carrying the smell of frangipani to her nose. The incense and the chanting lulled her into a meditative state, and in what seemed like only moments, the bamboo rod ceased moving. The monk sat up straight. He prayed over the Grigori in words Kyra didn’t understand. Then the Grigori turned and bowed to the ground, offering the flowers and the gold coin the monk took and put on the altar beside him.
He said a few more words over the man, then the Grigori rose, nodded to Niran and Kyra, and walked silently out the door.
Kyra sat silently until she felt a movement on her hand. Looking down, she realized she’d taken Niran’s hand at some point, and their palms were lying pressed together. She looked at him, blinking as if just waking up. His voice was a quiet murmur in the background of her mind, like the soft chanting of the monks in the temple.
Niran smiled. “Hello.”
Kyra pulled her hand away and felt the heat on her cheeks. “Hi. I apologize.”
“There is no need.”
“That was…” Extraordinary. Unearthly. “Magical.”
“Yes.” Niran pulled his knees up and rose, holding his hand out to her. “It is very magical.”
She took it and rose to her feet as the young monk who had performed the tattoo rose with them.
“Kyra,” Niran said, motioning to the monk. “I’d like you to meet my older brother, Sura.”
Sura walked with Kyra through the night market, nibbling on noodles and crispy tofu as the sounds of pop music and bargaining surrounded them. There was a band at the end of the street, and the rhythm filled the air, along with honking horns and the sizzle of frying food. Niran had walked ahead with two of his Grigori, and Intira walked beside them.
“I’m so glad you like our city,” Sura said. He’d abandoned his robes and was wearing a pair of jeans and a traditional cotton shirt. “It’s a very cool place. Niran worries so much, sometimes I don’t think he enjoys it at all.”