Today, we’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Aman J Bedi’s debut novel, South Asian epic fantasy KAVITHRI

Before we dive into the excerpt, let’s check out the official blurb:

An action-packed South Asian epic fantasy featuring necromancers, jinn, and one seriously fearless heroine…

Meet Kavithri. Outcast. Underdog. Survivor.

Kavi is a Taemu. Her people, once feared berserkers and the spearhead of a continent-spanning invasion, are the dregs of Raayan society. Their spirits crushed. Their swords broken. Their history erased.

But Kavi has a dream and a plan. She will do whatever it takes to earn a place at the secretive mage academy, face the Jinn within its walls, and gain the power to rise above her station and drag her people out of the darkness.

Except power and knowledge come at a cost, and the world no longer needs a Taemu who can fight. So they will break her. Beat her down to her knees. And make her bleed.

But if blood is what they want, Kavi will give them blood. She will give them violence. She will show them a berserker’s fury.

And she will make them remember her name.

An action-packed and empowering South Asian fantasy epic that fans of Jade City will love. An underdog story like no other – Kavithri will remind you of fantasy heroes like Arya Stark, Gideon the Ninth and Kaladin Stormblessed.

Kavithri is due for publication on 16th May. You can pre-order your copy HERE

Chapter 4

Kavi’s rations were gone. Her railway porter uniform, her sleeping mat, her cooking utensils, her trusty bucket, even her collection of rags. All gone.

Her stack of books, however, which she herself had accumulated via theft and miscellaneous skulduggery, remained unmolested. She sat in the corner, shoulders slumped, as she had for the last several hours since her return, and ran her eyes over the bound and weathered spines.

The Raayan Word: stolen from a distracted schoolgirl’s bag ten years ago. Numbers and Basic Arithmetic: same schoolgirl, a month later. Once Kavi had worn those out, she’d snuck into the school disguised as a cleaner and acquired the rest. Modern Raayan History, Flora and Fauna of the Subcontinent, Social Studies for Beginners, and right at the top of the stack, with its frayed and yellowed pages: Mages, Maayin, and the Jinn.

She’d not read anything new in months. Not since the library peon who borrowed books on Zofan’s behalf had retired.

Maybe she could sell the books. They were worth what? Maybe half a rayal? Not even that. They were outdated, torn, and most of their text was smudged and illegible. Probably why they’d been left behind.

Kavi sighed. She didn’t really want to part with them anyway. They gave her an odd sense of comfort. Her silent, stoic friends, who waited patiently for her to return every evening.

Why so sentimental, ah? she could hear her father say. The pages can’t feed you, the words on them will not save you, so why?

Shut up, Appa.

A wave of exhaustion, which she’d kept at bay with sheer force of will, crashed down on her. Her eyelids drooped, head sagged, and it all just seemed so pointless. Life was just an endless cycle of failure, despair, picking herself back up, starting over, and failing once again.

Kavi rubbed her palms against her eyes and groaned. But it could be worse. So much worse. She only needed to look around. Her neighbour, a woman from the Gashani tribes, had haemorrhaged while giving birth to a healthy baby boy and was now permanently catatonic, stuck in a nightmare from which she would never wake. Further down, an agoma addict had made his fifth attempt at setting himself and his family on fire and finally succeeded. In the other direction, a drain cleaner had come home drunk and boxed his four-year-old son in the head, killing him on the spot.

And Haibo . . .

Her problems? Compared to theirs? She scoffed. Trivial. So, what now?

She needed money to fill the pothole that was her stomach, but she couldn’t go to the platform today. Stationmaster Muthu would take one look at her and send her packing. There was only one other way to make some quick coin in the Bochan slums. Well, only one way she was willing to consider. She’d been a beggar and wouldn’t do that again. She’d been a thief, and those days were over. She refused to go to the gangs, and she would not sell her body. Not that anyone would want it, anyway; the Aunty-ji at the seaside brothel where she’d briefly  worked as a cleaner had made that abundantly clear. So that left her with the sahibs and their artists.

There was no shame in what she was about to do. Her father would have beaten her black and blue if he ever found out, but she wasn’t like him. Appa was proud of who he was and what their people once were. Kavi, on the other hand, not so much. She slipped her feet into her chappals and crawled to the entrance of her hut. A shove, and the plank of wood that served as a door fell to the ground.

Row upon row of blocky thatched huts and beige tents stretched into the distance. The scent of freshly boiled rice mingled with the stench of the morning’s sewage filled her nostrils, and like an audience applauding a well-acted play, her stomach responded with a sorrowful, low-pitched growl.

Kavi staggered from her hut and swayed as a fresh wave of hunger-induced nausea slammed into her. She allowed herself a moment to recover, then hobbled through the slums’ winding gullies and hills of stagnant refuse. With each step, like leaves from a diseased tree, she let her emotions wither and fall. Pride, hard-earned but fragile, was the easiest to let go. Shame, worth- less and unnecessary, sloughed off outside the neighbourhood water pump. Self-pity, dumped at the entrance to the dhobi ghats. One by one, she cast them off, until the only things left were what they expected from her, and what she would need to survive. Submissiveness. And obedience.

There was, however, one thing she could not cast aside: the balled-up inferno of fury buried deep within her chest, spitting, gathering new fuel, waiting to consume her. This, she could not discard. This, berserker’s rage, they called it, was what damn near obliterated her people long before she was born, and the best she could do with it was to keep it chained, and hidden.

When she arrived at the street that separated the slums from

the city, she found the beggars already lined up and practising their poses by the roadside: lying down with face-in-puddle, tearfully pointing to the holes in their dhotis, slapping the base of their palms against their foreheads and howling at the fate the Gods had bestowed on them.

Kavi squatted next to a particularly bedraggled and evil- smelling man and gave him a nod when he glanced her way. ‘Looking good, boss.’

He snorted and picked his nose.

Steam-rickshaws hissed, honked, and zoomed in both directions. A herd of buffaloes lounged while their herders sat under a cloud of grey smoke and puffed away on their beedis. Kavi nursed her wounds, poked at newly discovered bruises, day- dreamed about shade and iced beverages and samosas until the sahibs and their entourage finally emerged through the heavy mirage that hung over the road.

Uniformed attendants cleared a space on Kavi’s side of the thoroughfare and scurried to erect shamianas to protect their masters from the sun. The artists waited in a huddle, easels and canvases clutched to their chests.

With excessive bowing and scraping, the beggars entrenched themselves in the filthiest spots, and put on their most miserable faces. Attendants made their way down the line, pointing, choosing, and sending the dejected away with a flick of the wrist. Kavi stood, stretched her back, and made her way up the line.

A man grabbed her wrist as she strolled past. ‘Get back in line, bitch,’ he said through a cloud of halitosis.

Kavi studied the hand on her wrist and turned to him with heavy eyelids.

‘Hah? You have some important uncle or what? Bleddy . . .’ He blinked, registered the colour of her eyes, and dropped her wrist with a hiss.

She ignored the glares from the rest of the regulars and continued on with a quiet confidence. Here, they would let her through.

Only a handful of Taemu still walked the Raayan subcontinent, and for better or worse (mostly worse), she was one of them. She also knew, from the countless knockoffs floating around the black market, that art in Raaya was in high demand, especially art that captured pain, misery, and – of particular significance to her – the faces of the fallen.

The Taemu were special that way. They’d fallen not once, but twice. First, almost eight centuries ago, when they were colonised, uprooted, and forced into the vanguard of the Kraelish expeditionary force. And then again, after decades of violence, when they were allowed to settle on an arid piece of land in north-east Raaya, where they regained their pride, grew, and eventually made the bone-headed decision to join the Raayans in a revolt that ended with the siege at Ethuran and the near annihilation of the entire Taemu people.

An attendant took one look at Kavi, at her dark-brown skin and coarse hair, her small forehead and wide nose, her deep- set eyes and blood-red irises that screamed, I am Taemu, and – with raised eyebrows and an open mouth – waved her in the shamiana’s direction. She gave him a half-salute and ambled through.

The Kraelish left, eventually. Internal strife, over-extension, and successful rebellions in the Hamakan Isles and Nathria forced their hand. The Raayan elite stepped in to fill the void, the Council was created, and the free, independent Republic of Raaya was born.

Free? She stopped. Spat. And waited to be noticed.

The artists were already directing their sweat-soaked models for the morning: getting a beggar to look this way or lie that way; while the sahibs at their back, in their Kraelish shirts and trousers, were deep in discussion.

‘The contrast, yaar, look,’ a tall sahib with mutton chop side- burns said. ‘The reddish-brown hues of the mud and dirt on their faces juxtaposed with the hope in their eyes, too much, yaar.’

A bald sahib, older than the others, frowned and pointed with his sandalwood cane. ‘That group there, with the armless man, if they were to be captured together, as they were, it could be a masterpiece, one to rival Dreyhas . . .’ He trailed off as he spotted Kavi watching them with her hands tucked into her pockets.

‘There is something different about these slums, yaar,’ Mutton chops continued, ‘the ones in Azraaya are just vile, filled with degenerates, hopeless, but here—’

‘Wah! These poses, outstanding!’ A rotund sahib tipped his hat to the beggars.

The bald sahib pointed at Kavi, and all conversation stopped. They stared at her with a mixture of disgust and curiosity, like she was a cluster of pustules they desperately wanted to pop. Excited conversation erupted among the artists before devolving into an argument about who would get to sketch the Taemu. In the end, not one, but three artists turned their easels her way.

‘Sit,’ they said.

She sat. Cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees. ‘Move your hair away from your eyes,’ they said.

She obeyed.

‘Roll up your sleeves. Tear some holes in the kurta.’ Kavi hesitated. She had no other clothes.

‘Do it, or we’ll find someone else.’

Her trembling fingers couldn’t find any purchase, so she used her teeth.

‘Good, another one.’

She blinked the tears away and tore another flap open over her collarbone.

‘More, and rub some dirt into the kurta, it looks too clean for you.’

When the commands ceased, the artists launched into an argument on composition and angles while the attendants served the sahibs – Kavi licked her torn, chapped lips – iced lassi in crystal goblets. Once the artistic differences were finally resolved, they set to work.

The minutes dragged on. Kavi kept her eyes on the hap- hazard movements of the malicious charcoal pencils and off the demands of her belly. She noticed one sahib in particular seemed unusually enchanted by her presence. The others had returned to their gibberish talk on art and colour and whatnot, but not this man. She tracked him out of the corner of an eye as he stood bent over his cane, staring at her like she was Raeth himself incarnated. Or, maybe, that was just the way his face was. She glanced at him.

He looked away and started up a conversation with the mutton chops sahib at his shoulder. The attendants now offered the sahibs skewers of grilled meat, neatly arranged on silver trays. Bowler-hat grabbed two, used his front teeth to drag a chunk of meat off the thin metal rod, and chewed it while he carried on with his conversation.

Kavi’s mouth watered. She could hear him munching, could taste the spices and juices on her tongue. She swallowed the collection of saliva in her mouth, and for once, allowed a seed of hate to embed itself in the fertile soil that was her soul.

She was nothing to them. A novelty.

A distorted emblem of an era they wished they were born in. A reminder of a time when the Kraelish still ruled the sub- continent and steamrolled civilisation into Raaya; when their shirts and ties had lifted them above the rabble and their sons were shipped off to Kraelin to be educated and returned as the new Raayan elite.

But now?

Now they were aristocrats without power. The last generation of hereditary zamindars who could not bequeath their land to their children because it would all be claimed by the elected Council that now ruled Raaya. She scoffed. And just like the Empire they worshipped, they would all wither away and die.

An hour into the session, the butta hawker arrived.

Kavi eyed the man as he set up shop across the road; absentmindedly picking at a scab on her shin while the artists tsked at her and told her to stop moving.

The hawker carefully arranged a wire rack over a pile of smouldering charcoal, and one by one, lined a row of peeled corn upon it. A fan made of palm leaves magically appeared in one hand, while the other flipped the roasting pieces of corn. And then – Kavi bit her lower lip to stop it from trembling – and then he used a slice of lime to rub a mixture of salt and chilli powder into the corn. She flared her nostrils and shuffled closer to the edge of the footpath.

An artist hurled his pencil at the ground and stormed over. ‘Dai!’ The man spat at her feet. ‘If you cannot sit properly, then go. Go!’ He pointed a finger in the general direction of her hut.

Kavi ducked her head and kept her eyes on his feet. ‘Sorry, mistake saab-ji, I will sit.’

The man spat and yelled at her some more while she raised placating arms in apology. He walked back to his canvas muttering about red eyes and filth and how he would use three – no, four buckets of water to wash when he returned home.

Kavi crossed her arms and tucked her hands into her armpits with a sad grumble.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, and when they were finally done, one of the sahib’s attendants walked over to Kavi and dropped a handful of coins in her waiting palms.

Four rayals. The shroud of numb indifference she’d been fighting to hold together disintegrated, and she burst into tears.

I can eat.

She saluted the sahibs, slapped the back of her hand against her brow and left it there while the other beggars glared at her. Once the sahibs turned their backs on her, she levered herself up with a sigh. Knees cracked and muscles groaned as the pain in her back spread.

Kavi counted the coins again, just to be safe, and set three aside to replenish her stores of salt and rice. She wiped the drool off her chin, checked the road for rickshaws, and crossed over to the butta hawker.

She brandished the silver coin stamped with the profile of Sree Golmadi, the long-dead leader of the Raayan push for independence and the most mythologised man in Raaya, and said, ‘How many can I get?’

The butta hawker studied the coin while his hands continued their fanning and corn-flipping acrobatics. ‘Two. One if you want extra chilli.’

‘Give me two,’ she said, ‘one of them with extra chilli. Please.’ The butta hawker rolled his eyes but gave her a grudging nod.

If the food didn’t make you sweat, the cook was skimping on the spices, or so the saying went. This butta hawker was most definitely not skimping on the chilli. Kavi’s lips burned, and rivulets of sweat ran down the sides of her face as she devoured the first piece of corn.

She took her time with the second one. Enjoyed the tang, the savoury-sweet crunch of the kernels and the heat of the chilli that kept sending her back for another bite.

On the other side of the street, the attendants were busy packing up the shamiana. The artists, their work, and their patron sahibs had long since departed – Kavi froze with the piece of corn halfway to her mouth.

Not all of them, apparently. The cane-wielding sahib was still there, staring at her from across the road, studying her with the same quiet intensity as earlier.

She met his eyes, swallowed what was in her mouth, and took another bite.

The sahib, for whatever reason, took that as a sign. His face paled, the shrivelled hand on his cane trembled, and its tip stuttered on the asphalt as he stepped out into the street.

Kavi frowned with a fresh mouthful of corn. Had they met? Maybe a passenger at the station? Maybe she’d carried his luggage?

He took another hesitant step. The cane wedged itself into a narrow pothole, barely a gash on the road, and Kavi gawked in horrified fascination as the sahib was thrown off balance.

The gilded stick went flying. The sahib hopped, skipped, and fell flat on his face with a loud oomph!

At the other end of the road, a rickshaw sputtered and picked up speed. The driver – Kavi squinted – was wrestling with a horde of schoolboys, all piled into the backseat, one of whom was actively attempting to nose-dive out of the vehicle. The distracted driver had not seen the sahib fall, was completely oblivious to the flailing old man soon to be acquainted with all three of his tyres plus the weight of half a dozen squirming brats.

Kavi took another absent-minded bite, fully absorbed and mesmerised. Cane-sahib was about to become roadkill-sahib, and a bitter corner of her soul cackled with glee. For someone with such fancy clothes and polished shoes, the man sure looked miserable. In fact, the closer she got to him, the more morose his face seemed to get. The closer— What The Fuck Was She Doing?

Her traitorous feet had carried her halfway to the sahib.

The disoriented old man was dabbing at the blood leaking out his broken nose while the steam-rickshaw hissed and sputtered and maintained its course.

Tentacles of icy dread wrapped themselves around Kavi’s head and held it in place. Choose. They squeezed. Now.

Her pupils dilated.

Her breath caught in her throat.

If she let this happen, if she backtracked to safety and left the man to his fate, then just like that pothole in the road, just like the seed of hate taking root in her, a fissure would run through her soul and rupture. On one side, the old Kavi, irretrievably lost, who, despite everything, believed in kindness and good and hope; and on the other side, the new bitter, hateful wretch she was turning into.

She tucked the half-eaten piece of corn into her pocket for later. If this got her killed, she’d find this bhaenchod in the next life and run him over with a bleddy bullock cart herself.

Kavi lunged and closed the gap. Grabbed the man by the arm. And gasped as her foot slipped into the same pothole that had trapped the sahib’s cane. An audible crack, a flare of agony, a spike of adrenaline. The ankle went numb.

The sahib looked up at her in astonishment.

She growled, dropped his arm, and latched onto his collar. Using the wedged foot as a fulcrum, she swivelled, and with a guttural roar, hurled the old man off the street.

The steam-rickshaw shrieked as it bore down on her. The driver saw her, twisted his wrist and jammed the brakes. An unsecured schoolboy flew out of the backseat and collided with the back of the driver’s head, propelling the front of his face straight into the horn in the middle of the steering bar.

Kavi yanked her foot out of the pothole and stumbled. Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open as the vehicle swayed, veered clear, and its side-view mirror came hurtling into—

Yes, that really is where the chapter ends!

Kavithri is due for publication on 16th May. You can pre-order your copy HERE