Chapter 9: Vikram

VIKRAM

Late nights were often a requirement of Vikram’s role as regent of Ahiranya, and they were at times a pleasure. Other times they were a burden. Sometimes, like tonight, they were both.

Tonight, Vikram was playing the diplomat, entertaining one of the low princes of Saketa, Prince Prem, who had been merrily holed up in a brothel in a neighborhood of disrepute, drinking and whoring with a few of his men and a handful of disreputable noble cousins. According to the complex rules of Saketan blood lineage, Prem was considered a first cousin of the high prince who ruled his city-state, and was therefore of similar status to Vikram. Despite his role as regent of Ahiranya, Vikram did not possess a jot of highborn blood. Everything he’d earned under the last emperor, Sikander, he had earned in his own right as a general of Parijatdvipa.

Another low prince or city-state royal might have demanded more obsequiousness from Vikram than he would have enjoyed providing, but Prince Prem was a genial, frivolous lecher and no trouble at all, requiring nothing but the typical courtesies. He’d visited Vikram a few times since his arrival, and had largely been pleasant if rather unedifying company. He held his liquor well and had brought an excellent Saketan vintage with him on every visit. He played pachisa with the grace required not to irritate, his moves measured and his repartee witty.

It would have been a pleasant evening, much like the ones that had come before it, if not for the presence of Lord Santosh. The man had refused to play pachisa. “I know the other nations of Parijatdvipa like it,” he’d sneered. “But in Parijat we are more refined.” He hadn’t touched Prem’s Saketan wine, or the array of Ahiranyi liquors arranged in beautiful colored casks upon the table for the delectation of guests, instead demanding that a proper Parijati liquor be brought for him. This, he did not share.

As he drank, he interrogated Vikram about Ahiranya’s rebellions, which had grown notably bloodier since Emperor Chandra’s coronation. He commented on the high number of Ahiranyi servants in the mahal—“If this were my mahal, General Vikram, I would fill it with our countryfolk”—and asked question after barbed question about the routines of the guards, based on the observations his own men, scattered through Vikram’s forces, had fed back to him.

After an hour of Santosh’s attention, Vikram’s patience was wearing thin, and Prince Prem was attacking his wine with worrying enthusiasm, a false smile fixed to his mouth. And still, Santosh continued.

This is the man Emperor Chandra sends to sniff around my regency, Vikram thought with hysterical despair. This buffoon. I should let him have it. Either he will destroy Ahiranya within a year, or it will destroy him.

But Vikram would not, and could not, give up his regency so easily. For years, he had held this fractious nation together, paying every necessary price to see it survive under his rule. Until Emperor Chandra commanded his removal, he would fake ignorance of Santosh’s purpose and do his best to maintain everything he had.

That Emperor Chandra liked Lord Santosh well enough to allow him to prod at Vikram’s authority did not reflect well on the emperor. Chandra was nothing like his elder brother, Aditya, who had at least had the semblance of a good ruler: a suitable coterie of friends and advisors, drawn from across the nations of Parijatdvipa, and therefore the full support of the empire’s city-states. And a sense of honor that would have stopped him from indulging in anything too ambitious.

A shame that he’d found a new faith and left his duties behind.

“Tell us about Parijat,” cut in Prem. “How is it in the capital? Is Harsinghar as beautiful as I remember it?”

“Harsinghar is always the most beautiful of cities,” said Santosh seriously. “The palace is being redecorated.”

“How so?” Vikram asked. He did not have any particular interest in architecture, but he would feign an interest if he had to.

“Statues are going to be built for the new mothers in the imperial court, so they may be thanked and worshipped for Parijatdvipa’s glory,” Santosh said proudly, as if he’d had a hand in it.

Smiling at such a pronouncement was difficult. Vikram wore prayer stones and prayed to the mothers, lighting candles for them morning and evening in the family shrine. He did not know how to find any common ground between Emperor Chandra’s version of faith and his own. But smile he did.

“Fascinating,” said Prem, sounding suitably awed. “And how will they fit that many statues in the court? Is it being expanded?”

A beat of silence. Vikram reached for his own wine and drank.

“The statues will be for the mothers Narina and Alori alone,” Santosh said. “The other women were given a gift—were purified—but they lacked the qualities to be true mothers of flame.”

Not highborn, Vikram translated. But he said nothing and did not allow himself to feel revulsion. It would have been hypocritical, after all he himself had done.

“Ah, my mistake,” Prem said blithely.

Santosh gave him a tight, displeased smile, then looked at Vikram. “Anyway, General Vikram,” he began. “I wanted to discuss your advisors. Your Lord Iskar is from Parijat—”

“Ah, Santosh,” Prem protested. “I’m here to drink and have fun, not to talk politics. Shall we converse about something else?”

“I can see you have little concern for important business,” Santosh said, with no subtlety whatsoever to disguise his disdain, which made sense, Vikram supposed wearily. Subtlety was cultivated out of necessity, by people who knew that power needed to be treated with care—who understood how easily it could be stolen or taken. Santosh had the emperor’s ear, and the emperor’s crude belief in the supremacy of Parijat and Parijati blood. He had no need for such things as subtlety. “But I am at the forefront of imperial politics, Prince Prem, and I can’t simply act as you do.”

“You’re at the forefront of politics, and Emperor Chandra sent you here?” Prem’s forehead creased with puzzlement, even as he continued to smile. It gave his expression a rather mocking edge. “You’re very far from Parijat here, Santosh! Besides, it isn’t politics that brings people to Ahiranya.” He grinned as he lifted his wine. “It’s pleasure. The brothels are very fine.”

Santosh’s expression was slightly concerning, his sneer taking on an edge of cruelty. So Vikram intervened, saying, “Lord Santosh graciously accompanied Princess Malini on Emperor Chandra’s behalf. A great honor that he fulfilled admirably.”

Prem’s smile twitched slightly, but even he seemed to see the sense in avoiding commenting upon the princess. Santosh purposefully turned, excluding Prem from the conversation. To Vikram he said, “Speaking of Princess Malini and her—contemplation—there are things you and I must discuss, General Vikram. Just as Emperor Chandra is keen to see his sister reflect on her choices, he would like his most difficult nation to learn to be more biddable. I have many suggestions to make on his behalf. I know the emperor’s mind on this matter extremely well. We spoke of Ahiranya often.”

Vikram did not allow his anger to show on his face, but Prem seemed to have no such control. The prince’s eyes had already narrowed at Santosh’s slight against him—the slight of a mere highborn lord of Parijat against a Saketan of royal blood—and Santosh’s casual boast of closeness with the emperor had only served to goad him.

“You’re right, you’re right, what interest do I have in politics?” Prem announced, overloud. “It was my uncle who always cared for politics—and he was removed from his treasury position by the emperor only a month ago, wasn’t he? Or was it three months? Numbers aren’t my strong suit as they were his, but I do remember that when he complained he was executed. Put to death, just like that,” he said brightly. “A real scandal.”

“Prince Prem,” Vikram murmured, but there was no stopping the man.

“I can’t rightly remember who took his place—ah.” A click of his fingers. “One of your cousins, I think. Congratulations.”

Vikram lowered his own glass. “Lord Prem,” he said. “You are inebriated, I think.”

Santosh’s jaw was trembling with fury.

“You drunk sot,” he said, in a tone that suggested he would be using far worse words—or perhaps his blade—if not for the disparity in their status. “When Emperor Chandra finishes cleaning up the imperial court and this forsaken hole of a country, I’ll be sure to direct him to Saketa. You need to be reminded of your place.”

Prem lurched to his feet. Vikram rose more sedately to his own.

“Let me escort you out for some air, Prince Prem.” Without waiting for a response, Vikram took the man by the shoulders and led him from the room.

Prem did seem unsteady on his feet. One of Vikram’s servants in the hall beyond gave him a questioning look, asking without words whether Vikram would like the prince taken off his hands and gently escorted to a room to convalesce. Vikram did not respond to it. No matter how things had changed, Prem was important enough to receive his full attention. The last thing he wanted was an angry letter from the high prince’s scribes, on top of everything else.

“Sorry, sorry,” said Prem.

“No need, my lord.”

“How long is he staying?”

“As long as Emperor Chandra wills,” said Vikram. “And you?”

“As long as my coin allows,” Prem replied with a laugh. “I’d hoped we’d be able to talk alone. The last time I came we played an excellent game of pachisa. I’d like to do that again.”

“You’re always welcome,” Vikram assured him, slapping his back with fake joviality. You should be careful, he considered saying. The prince was young. An older man’s advice could not harm him. Things weren’t as they once were. A man who did not recognize that would not live long.

“You know that his rudeness to me and to you will not be the end of it, General Vikram,” Prem said, placing an arm loosely around Vikram’s shoulder. As if they were friends. “We should certainly meet again, you and I, even if not for games or wine. You may be Parijati but not the sort, I think, that will do well in this new age.”

Dangerous talk, bordering on treasonous. Vikram said nothing.

Prem leaned in, voice lowered, eyes intent. He was, perhaps, not as drunk as Vikram had believed.

“I am saying, General Vikram, that Emperor Chandra is changing Parijatdvipa.” His breath was sweet with aniseed. “He thinks that because the mothers forged his line and the city-states remember their debt, we’ll kiss the hand of any inbred Parijati he favors. But we Saketans don’t forget that he’s not the only scion of the mothers with a right to that throne. And I don’t think you forget either, General Vikram. There is another way.”

The prince would not be the first to think—or say—it. And Vikram was almost tempted to agree. Almost. He knew Prem had something to offer—some bargain to make, some information to exchange.

But Vikram had not achieved his status by taking unnecessary risks.

His last meeting with the freshly enthroned Emperor Chandra, just after Emperor Sikander’s death, was seared upon his brain. Back then, the new emperor had not yet begun to remove non-Parijati advisors from their posts—had not ordered the execution of old, venerated Dwarali war ministers or Saketan treasurers, or burned a noble lady of Srugani descent and a princess of Alor. He had burned a famed courtesan and all her attendant women, but popular rumor suggested she had been a favorite of Emperor Sikander, and Chandra had been well-known for his virulent distaste for impurity in women. It had struck some of the nobility as cruel—but they overlooked it as the type of blood and tumult that was to be expected when a new emperor rose to power.

They hadn’t yet begun to understand the horrible depths or the commitment of Chandra’s faith.

Chandra had been genial, welcoming. He had smiled at Vikram, thin-lipped, accepting his bow with grace. Offered him a Parijati sherbet made of sugarcane and crushed flowers, handed to Vikram by a lovely maidservant. Chandra had exchanged pleasantries. Light conversation.

Then he’d said, Tell me how you did it, General Vikram. Tell me how the temple council burned. Tell me how they killed the children.

Vikram would never forget the look on the emperor’s face.

Despite his years of service, he had believed that people were not innately cruel. Everyone Vikram had ever had a hand in killing—even the temple children—he had killed out of necessity. But Chandra… Chandra listened to every excruciating detail, with a light in his eyes and a smile on his mouth. And everything he had done since that first meeting had been a confirmation of that first smile, that first flash of teeth that had sent a foreboding chill down Vikram’s spine.

I have use for a man like you, he’d said.

Those words. The pleasure in them.

Vikram had understood that a man like that should not be crossed.

Prem must have seen that his expression had grown suddenly shuttered, because the smile died upon his face.

“General Vikram,” he said. “Perhaps I’ve overstepped.”

“Yes,” said Vikram. “I fear indeed you have.”

It was almost a relief when a guard barreled down the corridor. A young, green one, followed by the commander of Vikram’s personal guard.

“The princess,” said Commander Jeevan. “The conches have been sounded.”

“It has been a pleasure, Prince Prem,” Vikram said. “Perhaps we will meet again soon.”

Prem agreed politely enough. But they both knew Vikram had rejected whatever overture he had been offering.

Vikram would not meet with the Saketan prince again.

Vikram climbed the Hirana slowly, laboriously. He was too old for such exertion and most miserably of all, the rain refused to relent. The servant at his back was holding a parasol above his head that was pitifully ineffectual against the downpour. Every time the surface of the Hirana dipped, the man wavered, the parasol teetering and tilting in his grip.

At least Jeevan was with him: a solid, reliable presence, watching his back, bow and arrow in hand.

The only small pleasure was that Santosh had not accompanied him. The man had tried, but he was clearly terrified of the Hirana, and the liquor had made him too unsteady on his feet. He’d clambered up for two minutes then relented and returned to the ground. He’d sent one of his own Parijati guards in his stead, who followed behind Jeevan, clutching the guiding rope as if his life depended upon it.

Vikram did not bother to fear the Hirana. When the temple elders still lived, it had been the regent’s responsibility to supervise the temple council. Every month, he had been guided up the Hirana by one of their youngest temple children and had eaten with the elders. He hadn’t thought much of them, those relics of a long-gone age—a time when Ahiranya had still been powerful—playing their symbolic role. But still, he had found them quaintly fascinating. They had been friendly to him, even shown him the little tricks of magic they could still perform, shifting the Hirana’s surface subtly to their will.

He was not afraid of the Hirana. But he was afraid of the consequences of this night.

An assassin. A Parijati princess, howling and weeping, insensible with terror. If not for the intervention of one maidservant—a thing of pure chance—the emperor’s sister would be dead, and Vikram’s own death sentence would have been sealed.

He reached the Hirana’s summit, and the guards at the door bowed to him. Their commander opened the gates and led him in.

“She’s here, my lord,” the guard said in a low voice. “Lady Pramila hasn’t left her side.”

They entered a cloister room, an outcropping from the western corridor of the Hirana. Princess Malini, only sister of Emperor Chandra, king of kings, master of the empire of Parijatdvipa, was kneeling on the floor, vomiting into a bucket.

“Take it away,” the princess gasped, shoving the bucket one-handed, even as she gripped its edge precariously for balance. “Please.”

“And have you ruin the floor?” Her jailer’s voice was grim. “No. Keep it close, there’s a girl.”

“General Vikram begs your indulgence, princess,” said the guard, bowing his head once more, drawing back into the hallway. He left Vikram alone with the women.

The princess lifted her head, her face gray, eyes wet.

Before her brother had sent her to be imprisoned, isolated, upon the Hirana—where she may contemplate her decisions and the state of her soul, as I have contemplated it, in a place befitting of her fate, the emperor had written—Vikram had seen the princess once, on a visit to the imperial mahal in Parijat itself. She’d been a genial and pretty thing, wrapped in fine silks. Royal daughters did not wear crowns. Instead they wore imperial symbols: jasmine flowers, yellow and white, twined into a halo; marigolds and roses, gold and carnelian, fresh and still touched with dew, bound to the roots and ends of a heavy braid.

The woman he looked upon now did not resemble the flower-wreathed princess of Parijat. She did not even look very much like the princess who had arrived nearly a month ago at his mahal. That girl had been quiet and dour but healthy enough, tall and shapely with severe dark eyes and a wary turn of the mouth.

This woman was thin and dirty, panting hysterically, skin mottled with tears, eyes sunken and red-rimmed.

Mothers of flame protect him, he should have concerned himself far more closely with her welfare than he had, emperor’s orders be damned.

“Princess,” he said, speaking in Dvipan—the formal language of court, and a royal daughter’s mother tongue. “Were you injured?”

“Merely frightened, my lord,” her jailer said quickly.

Vikram looked at the princess, wavering where she kneeled, her face flushed with suffering.

“She requires a physician,” he said.

“She does not, my lord,” said Pramila. “She has a frail constitution. She merely needs rest. Medicine, and rest.”

Vikram was not convinced. Far from it. How could he be, when the princess continued to tremble, her hair as loose and wild about her as a priest’s, her body all gaunt ugliness?

“Princess Malini,” he said once more. “Tell me how you fare.”

He saw the princess swallow. Saw her raise her chin. “An assassin tried to take my life, General,” the princess croaked out, in a voice that wavered like flame. “My imperial brother and master would never have allowed such a thing in his household.”

Ah.

He was conscious of the eyes upon him. The guards that surrounded him, barring Jeevan, were all Santosh’s men and not his own. And Santosh had plenty of reason to report any and all of Vikram’s failures back to the emperor.

Emperor Chandra clearly did not care, overmuch, for the princess’s well-being. He would not have sent her here if he did. But nonetheless she was royal blood, sequestered in Vikram’s care. If she had died at an assassin’s hands imprisoned in Ahiranya, if Vikram had failed to keep her safe, and allowed imperial blood to be spilled on his lands…

Well. Emperor Chandra was not known for his generosity. Vikram again remembered the hunger in his eyes, when he’d asked about the temple children burning. It was not a hunger Vikram could trust.

“I vow to you, daughter of flowers, that every effort will be made to keep you safe as a pearl,” Vikram said.

She shook her head. “It is not enough, General. How can it be enough? Oh, mothers of flame, protect me. I cannot survive here, alone and unloved!”

“Princess,” hissed Pramila. “No. Silence, now.”

“I…” Her face crumpled. “I have nothing here. No attendants. No ladies. No guards that I can trust. I was gently raised, General. I am sure I will die like this.”

“Princess,” he said. He kneeled, then, before her. His knees ached. “Your brother has ordered that you be kept in solitude. In contemplation. I cannot give you the court you once possessed. It would be treason.”

“One attendant would be enough to put my heart at ease,” whispered the princess. “General, the woman who saved my life—can I not have her? She is only a maidservant. No doubt she knows nothing beyond obedience. I doubt she even speaks a civilized tongue. It would be as if you provided me a—a loyal hound. She would not disrupt my contemplation. But perhaps I would feel… safe.”

It was not an unreasonable request.

One maidservant. Well. Surely the emperor would not be wrathful if Vikram provided the princess one simple Ahiranyi girl to sweep her floors and help her sleep at night. Surely Lord Santosh would not object to this measure if Vikram framed it as a way of calming a frightened girl. One maidservant was a small price to pay, to keep the princess biddable. Even now, looking into his eyes, her breath was calming. New color flushed her cheeks.

“What,” Vikram said carefully, graciously, “can I, a humble servant to your family, do but attempt to ease your pain? You will have the maidservant. I promise it, princess.”

After Vikram had spoken to the Hirana guards, the weeping princess, and his closest advisors—and even comforted his wife, who had woken when the conches sounded and begged for news of her precious servants immediately upon his return—he went to his own private chambers, stood upon his shaded balcony, and stared into the distance for a long moment, gripping the wood of the balustrade so tightly it creaked in the vise of his hands. A servant, standing in attendance by the door, asked him tentatively if he wanted to change his garb. His tunic and dhoti, both a silk so dark a blue they were almost black, had grown sodden, darkened with rain and sweat by the journey up and down the Hirana.

“No,” Vikram said shortly. “Arrange a bath for when I return.”

He did not want fresh clothing for this task.

The servant murmured an acknowledgment and withdrew. Vikram left the veranda, returning to the cool interior of the mahal, and made his way deeper and deeper into the building, and deeper still, beyond gates and guards, down to a dark staircase protected by barred doors and men alike.

Santosh was waiting for him there. Vikram had hoped the man had gone to bed. But one of Santosh’s men must have informed him of Vikram’s location.

Beneath the mahal, in the prison cells, a priest awaited them.

“General,” the priest said. “Come. She is prepared.”

Santosh bowed his head. For once, he was quiet. In the presence of a priest of the mothers, he finally showed proper respect.

The priest had pale eyes, green-brown, and a mark of ash upon his forehead and his chin. He was a true Parijati priest, and accordingly, he had arranged the assassin on a slab of stone, swathed her in white cloth, and marked her skin with resinous perfume. He had put right the worst of her fall: All her limbs were where they should have been, which Vikram gathered had not been the case when the guards had first found her, at the foot of the Hirana. A garland of flowers, half-wilted from the heat, was piled at her feet.

Priests showed respect to the dead, whether they deserved it or not. And Parijati priests showed special respect to women who had passed on. It was their way.

In the lantern light of the cell, Vikram looked at the body. At the face.

He turned away quickly. Not quickly enough.

No amount of drink would blot out the image of that skull. No fall had pulverized it. It looked as if it had… melted.

“The mask she wore has power in it,” the priest said tranquilly. He held his hand before him, and Vikram saw that the skin was burned. “Take it with this cloth, if you wish to look upon it,” the priest added, holding the mask toward him. “Carefully.”

Vikram held the mask of wood, stained with blood and gristle, in the glove of perfumed cloth the priest had offered him. He looked at the eyeholes, the gape of a mouth. He could feel the heat of the thing through the cloth, warmer than flesh.

“You call it power,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“The rot?”

The priest shook his head. “The woman’s body is clean of impurities.”

“What is this, then?” Santosh asked. Vikram startled. He had forgotten that Santosh was there. The Parijati lord’s face was gray. “Some kind of Ahiranyi witchcraft? I thought their cursed power died with their yaksa.”

“No,” Vikram replied, shaking his head. “Likely just a product of the forest. The wood there has always been—unusual.”

Even before the rot, he thought.

With weariness, he realized so much had gone wrong during his reign. The rot had begun. The temple children had grown more powerful. They and their elders had burned. The rebel unrest had swelled unceasingly, rising as the rot spread hunger and death and displaced villagers from their ancestral homes. And now… this.

“There will need to be justice,” Santosh demanded. “Witchcraft—whatever it may be, it is a crime. These Ahiranyi think they can bring back the Age of Flowers. They need to be punished. They must learn that Emperor Chandra is not weak.”

Vikram nodded. “Rebels will be interrogated and executed,” he said. The rebels who were likely behind this would be nigh on impossible to capture. The most violent of them, masked and therefore faceless, were too good at vanishing into the forest, where no sensible man would follow. But the poets and singers, who recited forbidden Ahiranyi poetry in bazaars and daubed mantras on walls, who offered visions of a free Ahiranya—they would be an easier target. A suitable scapegoat.

Even as he spoke, he knew it would not be enough. And sure enough, Santosh’s mouth firmed. He shook his head.

“They owe us more, General Vikram,” said Santosh. “They owe the emperor a sacrifice.”

What would be enough justice—enough blood, enough death, enough suffering—for an emperor who sought to burn his own sister to death?

What must I do to ensure that my rule survives this night’s work?

Vikram thought, grimly, of his young Ahiranyi wife, her placid eyes, her foolish, kindhearted nature and the child in her belly. His wife—who collected orphans and rot victims with a kind of mania—who had perhaps brought the assassin into their home, however unwitting…

She wouldn’t be happy with what he had to do. But she would accept it. She had no other choice.

He looked at the bones of the assassin on the stone slab before him, the open husk of her face, the bare vulnerability of the jawbone devoid of meat. The room was filled with the stink of death, despite the garlands and perfume.

Vikram lowered the mask down upon the table.

“Have her last rites,” he said. “With all due reverence. Scatter the ashes. She has no family to take them.”

The priest inclined his head. He understood the ways of the dead.

“With all due reverence,” Santosh repeated.

“Would the emperor object to such?” Vikram asked.

“Ah, no,” said Santosh. “No. Emperor Chandra would be pleased to see the proper religious order respected. To see a rebel purified, at the last.”

Santosh had made something that Vikram intended as an honorable act into a vengeance. And indeed, perhaps it was. The Ahiranyi preferred to bury their dead, after all. A rebel would not want to burn.

“It will be the first purification of many,” said Santosh. He no longer looked drunk or boastful. Only intent. In his face, Vikram saw a shadow of the glinting, brittle evil of the emperor. “We will make Ahiranya pure, General Vikram. In Parijat’s service.”