Chapter 12: Priya

PRIYA

The Parijati placed many names for Ahiranya’s great forest upon their maps. They segmented it, delineating it with fine lines, affixing labels on all the parts where humans were able to survive, where time did not move strangely and the rot hadn’t infiltrated: the burnt fields of the east; the thick tranches of ancient mangrove, where marsh villages on their water-stilts flourished, to the west. Name after name, each painstakingly transliterated between Parijati and all the disparate scripts and tongues of Parijatdvipa. Only the Ahiranyi language was not included.

The Ahiranyi tongue had been erased, of course—reduced to a scattering of phrases and words that the people of Ahiranya sprinkled through common-tongue Zaban. But Priya, who’d once been taught traditional Ahiranyi as a temple daughter, knew that the Ahiranyi had never had names for the forest. Ahiranya was the forest. The woodland was as unnamable as each breath of air, as indivisible as water. It was the cities and villages they named, the mountains they charted. The woods, they left alone.

But that did not mean Priya did not recognize the place Rukh had led her to. They had snuck from the mahal out into the surrounding city of Hiranaprastha. They had made their way through a city shuttered and gutter-lanterned, to the place where the trees melded with the houses, and small alcove temples to the yaksa hung above them in branches, affixed high among the leaves by flat boards hammered between the trunks. They had walked along narrow paths delineated by ribbon and flag, carefully carved though the forest by travelers between Hiranaprastha and smaller villages.

But soon they veered away from the ribbon markers, nothing to guide them but their shared lantern and minute etchings on the bark, the symbol language used by hunters and woodcutters. And then Priya looked up, and realized they were in the bower of bones.

The bower of bones was an ancient place—both a grave and an entrance to an old, old trail carved by yaksa hands. There were places in Ahiranya where time moved differently; this path was the strongest of them and the most well-marked. The seeker’s path, some called it, because it led to the neighboring nation of Srugna, and Srugna’s great monasteries to the nameless god, where priests meditated on the secrets of the cosmos and worshipped their god above all other immortal beings.

But it was a cursed place too. Local villagers and woodcutters in search of sacred wood to harvest claimed to have heard whispers among the graves. They found footsteps in the dew-wet soil, at sunrise, and the bodies of rot-riven animals on the ground. It was as if the creatures had come to the bower to die. Or been left there, some said, by ghostly hands.

When the flesh rotted away, those ghosts returned to finish their work. Above Priya and Rukh hung the bones of the animal dead, strung up on ribbons of red and yellow. They gleamed yellow-white in the light of the lantern. As the wind rustled the leaves, trapped rainwater fell in a cold shimmer, and the bones chimed against one another with the click of chattering teeth.

“Well,” Priya said mildly. “What a pleasant spot for a meeting.”

“I don’t usually meet them here. But…” He shrugged, his expression guarded. “I was told to, this time.”

Meena had worn a crown mask. She’d drunk deathless water broken from the source, and fought viciously, so Priya already knew these rebels were the hardest kind—the ones who used murder as their method of resistance.

She’d heard the gossip and stories of the rebels who wore masks. When the merchant had been killed, people had spoken of seeing a masked figure leaving his haveli. She thought of that now—of rebels who struck fast and vicious—as she glanced down at Rukh.

He looked miserable; his arms were wrapped tightly around himself. She felt anger curdle in her, at the thought of them using a starving boy, a dying boy, turning his heart to their ends. It wasn’t right.

She raised the lantern higher, the dark night staring back at her between fronds of leaves and bone.

“What usually happens, when you meet the rebels?” she asked.

“I give them information,” he said. “Before they sent me to you, I told them whatever I heard in the markets. They used to give me food.”

Not much food, she thought.

“No sacred wood?”

Rukh shrugged.

“Okay,” Priya said levelly. “What did they want you to do in the mahal?”

He said nothing.

“Come on,” she coaxed. “Surely you can tell me now.”

“Just to be their eyes and ears,” he muttered. “To watch you. And—anything else interesting. Anything they could use. That’s all.”

She nodded. “Are any other servants doing the same?” she asked, and he immediately frowned.

“A few, I guess,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know. There might be more of us hidden.”

“Us?”

“Rebels,” he said.

“You’re not a proper rebel,” Priya said immediately.

“I am,” he insisted.

“Meena was a rebel,” she said. “She knew how to kill. You don’t.”

“How do you know?” Rukh asked. There was a mulish set to his chin.

She looked down from his sharp little face to his clenched fists. With his hands as they were, prickling with threat of new green growth, she wondered if he would be able to handle a knife, even if he was given one. Knives required delicacy.

“You don’t,” she said simply. “Whatever she is to them, you’re not that.”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Rukh muttered.

“Clearly not,” said Priya.

There was no sign of anyone around them. No villagers, no hunters, no rebels. Priya supposed she and Rukh would just have to wait. She lowered the lantern to the ground. Then she straightened.

He stared at her. She stared at him.

“You’re not the only one allowed to believe in things,” Rukh said in a low voice. Priya was disturbingly reminded of the tone she’d taken with Bhumika. “I’m allowed to want the world to be better. I’m allowed to want to help make that happen.”

Ah, soil and sky, she needed to learn how to talk to her temple sister with more authority and less petulance, when they were alone. If this was how it made Bhumika feel when Priya spoke to her, then it was a wonder they ever managed a civilized conversation.

“I didn’t say anything, Rukh,” Priya said evenly. She made herself stay calm. The calm was an armor that she wrapped around herself, as she stood on ground laden with the dead, and listened to the wind, and thought of the decisions Rukh must have made to bring himself here, only a boy but beholden to killers. Only a boy, and she had not seen the signs that the rebels had set their claws into him. She had not known. Her evenness sounded like steel, because it was. “But I think you should try to believe in things that won’t get either of us killed in the future.”

“They won’t hurt you,” said Rukh. “I told you. I promised. They asked me to make sure you wouldn’t climb the Hirana. That you’d be safe.”

“They asked you to do that?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d know,” he said.

She couldn’t think of that yet. There would be answers soon enough, probably. So instead she said, “If I had listened to you—if I had remained in the mahal and let the others climb on their own—Meena probably would have tried to kill someone else.” She thought of Sima’s scream, of Gauri’s body crashing against the pillar.

“I didn’t know she would hurt anyone,” he whispered.

She gave him a look. “You don’t protect people,” she said, “you don’t tell them not to go somewhere, unless they’re at risk of getting hurt if they do go. So you knew, Rukh. Don’t lie to yourself. You know what these rebels do.”

He turned his head away.

“They’re trying to do something important,” he insisted. But his voice was thin.

Priya sighed. She could not help it. “Are people you fear so much truly worth your loyalty?”

“They’re worth my loyalty because I’m afraid of them,” he said. “They are here to fight the empire. I’ve seen General Vikram. I’ve seen his soldiers. If they’re not stronger than that…” Rukh’s words trailed away.

“Being able to frighten children isn’t strength, Rukh.”

“They don’t just frighten me,” he scoffed. “You saw the streets. They frighten the regent. He wouldn’t send all of his men out otherwise. That’s what real power is.”

If only she had Bhumika’s eloquence, or her keen, instinctual understanding of Parijatdvipa’s thorny games of power.

“Power doesn’t have to be the way the regent and your rebels make it be,” Priya said eventually, making do with her own artless words, her own simple knowledge of the way the world worked. “Power can be looking after people. Keeping them safe, instead of putting them into danger.”

He gave her a suspicious look. “Are you saying you’re powerful?”

She laughed reflexively. “No, Rukh.”

What power did she have? What had she really done to change anything at all in Ahiranya? She’d been thinking of Bhumika, not herself.

The idea of her having any power…

For a moment on the Hirana, she’d had it. She’d learned the limits of that quickly, in the cell and in Bhumika’s chambers. And in the moment she’d killed Meena, it had felt like weakness too; a quicksand of rage inside her.

“Don’t be stupid,” she added, after a moment. “I’m not strong, Rukh.”

“You tried to protect me and the other kids,” he said. “Tried to make sure we wouldn’t die of rot, at least. You gave me a home. That sounds like what you just said.”

It was a child’s logic, a child’s conviction. Still, Priya turned her face away from him. The way he saw her was far, far from the way she saw herself, and she didn’t know how to respond.

The wind rasped through the bones once more.

“Did you really kill Meena?” Rukh asked hesitantly, lowering his arms.

“I told you I did.”

“Did you… Did you mean to?”

Priya began to speak. Stopped, the words settling upon her tongue. She held her breath, momentarily. Listening.

The silence around them was no longer empty. It was watchful. Priya felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She turned.

A man stood on the graves. The bower threw shadows across him. But his face…

He wore a mask. Not a crown mask, wrought of sacred wood, but one made of normal mahogany, carved with a ferocious curl to the mouth and eye sockets wide enough to reveal thick eyebrows and eyes the deep brown of turned soil.

Rukh stepped forward, coming to stand at her side. He moved as if to speak, and the man raised his hand, quelling him to silence.

“Please,” said the man courteously. “Tell me. Why did you kill her?” His voice was gentle, his mask mocking.

“Will you harm Rukh, to make me speak?”

“No,” he said. “Rukh is one of mine.”

“Will you harm me?”

“That,” the man said, “depends upon you.”

Priya heard Rukh swallow convulsively beside her. She raised her head and squared her shoulders, standing firm and tall. She pressed her teeth together. Remained silent.

The man took a step forward. She watched the movement of his feet—smooth, winding motions. He felt the earth without looking upon it, trusting instinct. He moved with almost utter silence. No wonder the wind and the rattle of the bones had masked his approach.

“You won’t answer me?”

That, Priya thought, was self-evident.

“Kneel,” said the man. “Lower your head. Kneel. You will obey, and you will speak.”

She could not see the man’s mouth. But she was sure—almost sure—that he was smiling.

A memory rolled over her. Childhood duels. An older boy, still skinny but taller every day, grinning at her. Kneel, he’d said. And obey. Say I’m better than you. You know you’re not going to win, Pri. May as well do it now.

And she’d ground her own teeth together, smaller, more stubborn, ready to prove herself, and she’d said—

“We’ll see about that,” she murmured.

She took a step forward of her own, and another, moving the way temple children moved—a dance upon the dirt, a thing bred into the muscle and bone. She angled herself away from Rukh, hoping he would have the sense to remain where he was.

Those eyes through the mask. That particular shade of brown.

The hope in her…

She was almost, almost sure.

She would not kneel. She would not speak until she wanted to speak—until she had the answers she hungered for.

She didn’t wait for him to attack. She darted at him instead. He braced himself, and she feinted to the right. He turned swiftly, following her in that same loop of furious motion, but she moved again, sliding beneath his arm.

She faced him and the two of them circled, winding around one another like predator and prey. Priya knew what she was: muscular, but narrow-boned and slight in comparison to his breadth. She would only win by cunning.

When she was in range, she reached for the kitchen knife tucked in the waist of her sari, drew the blade from its makeshift sheath as he turned toward her, and raised it. His gaze sharpened, and she heard his breath quicken.

With lightning speed, he grasped her wrist, tightening his grip to force her fingers open and the knife to drop. But it was too late. She’d already raised it to the side of his head, and slashed through the first threads of the three-twined rope binding the mask to his skull.

With her other hand, she wrenched the mask. There was no stickiness of melting flesh—no painful heat burning her already singed and sore fingertips. She felt nothing but wood grain and skin. She looked at his face.

He flung her back and she fell to the ground. He pinned her—hand to each wrist—and she was reminded of her childhood, and of Meena, and the smell of burning flesh all at once, a dizzying skein of tangled memory. It was as if time had folded, creasing through the middle, as paper does.

“When I was a girl,” she gasped out, “you used to test me just like this.”

“And you never won,” he said.

“I was younger and smaller and weaker, and that hasn’t changed,” Priya told him. “But my intent wasn’t to win. I wanted to know if you were… you.”

His grip loosened.

“Priya,” he said. “You’re stronger than you used to be.”

“Ashok,” she said.

Brother.Bones above her, and his face beneath them, carved to shadow by the moonlight. Her voice cracked. “I thought you were sick. I thought you’d died.”

“I was sick,” he said quietly. “And I thought I would die too.” His eyes traced her face, and she thought perhaps he felt as she did—flayed by feeling, overwhelmed by the weight of time. “It’s a long tale.”

She swallowed. Her throat felt tight, and her wrists ached.

“Will you let me up?”

He released her. The mask lay on the ground between them.

Rukh was watching them, bright and wan all at once. He looked at Priya as if everything suddenly made sense. He looked at her as if he finally saw her for exactly what she was.

She told him to walk away. She told him to wait in the distance, beyond the bower of bones. She couldn’t think. Her mind was a narrow point of focus, all of it honed upon her brother—her living, breathing, infuriating brother.

Her brother gave him a nod, and Rukh went. And then her brother told her his tale.

They had both been hungry all the time, when they had lived on the streets of Hiranaprastha. She remembered that. But Ashok had caught an illness—not rot, something far more prosaic—that had made his lungs rattle and made him spit blood. He’d grown weaker, his magic fading with his body’s strength. And Priya had still been his responsibility, small and hungry, her magic splintered along with her memories. The power that had condemned their siblings had been beyond both of them.

He’d worried about feeding her. She’d woken him, sweating, shaking, from nightmares he’d had of what would become of her after his death. And then one night, when his hands were drenched with blood and Priya slept curled against his side, he had made his decision.

“I went to Bhumika and asked her to take you in,” he said.

“You abandoned me,” Priya murmured.

“I let you go.”

Was that agreement or correction? She didn’t know.

“You did not have to simply leave me,” she said. “You could have told me the truth.”

“Ah, no. I thought I was finished. I thought I’d leave you at that old bastard Gautam’s for Bhumika to save you, and go into the forest, and die a good Ahiranyi death.” A faint, bitter smile curled his mouth. “And I couldn’t say good-bye to you. I couldn’t stand the thought. I was weak.”

“But you didn’t die.”

“No.”

“And still, you never came back for me.”

She wouldn’t weep or clutch at him like a child. He’d have no patience for such emotion. He never had.

“I was found by a woman,” he said. “She took me in and nursed me. She told me she knew what I was. ‘I remember your face,’ she said. ‘I was a pilgrim many a time, to the Hirana. I remember all your faces. And I have a gift for you.’

“She gave me vials of deathless water. She fed me the waters. She saved my life, and she gave me a mission. A purpose. With her, I finally learned the use of what we are,” he said, light in his eyes. “The elders trained us to be strong. Then the waters gave us gifts the likes of which our elders hadn’t seen for generations.”

He moved his hand above the ground. Priya watched the grass move, bending as if under a physical touch.

“We are like the temple elders of the Age of Flowers, Priya. Those thrice-born who conquered swathes of the subcontinent. I realized—surely we have strength enough to take Ahiranya back as our own? Surely we must? Parijatdvipa refused us the right to our own rulers. The empire calls us depraved even as it takes its pleasure from us, and profits from it. They let the rot kill us and do nothing, because our lives hold no value to them. This emperor…” Ashok’s lip curled. “This emperor is a monster. But even before he rose to power, I realized all this. My purpose. My task. And you, Priya—you were just a child.”

“Weak,” she said. “You thought I was weak.”

“You were a child,” he said again, which wasn’t disagreement.

She looked at his face. His strong, hale face.

“You drink from the vials,” she whispered. “Even now.”

He nodded once, slowly.

“The water keeps me alive. And it makes me strong.”

“The waters must be taken from the source,” Priya retorted. “Ashok, you know that. Remember what happened to pilgrims who tried to drink from the vials? To rise you need source water, rich with magic—not something bottled and made small and—and faded. And to feed it to others—” She thought of Meena, her stomach roiling.

“The three journeys through the deathless waters aren’t without danger either,” he cut in calmly. “Plenty of temple children died in those trials.”

That isn’t the same, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“I drink to be strong enough to see the people who wanted to burn us—who debase us—removed from our country. And those who choose to drink with me do the same. It’s a calculated risk,” he told her, more gently, perhaps in response to the look of horror on her face. “We only have to survive long enough to find the deathless waters and pass through them. No more.”

“You won’t,” said Priya. “You can’t. The way is too well hidden.”

“It takes time,” said Ashok. “And access to the Hirana that I do not have. I sent Meena for the task, but…” He trailed off. “I cared deeply for Meena,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t killed her.”

“As do I, brother. I also wish she hadn’t tried to kill me,” Priya shot back. “That was your handiwork. I had no desire to harm her. But better her than me.”

“Yes,” he agreed simply. He looked at her—a long, assessing look. “I should never have kept you from my work. You’re not like Bhumika, to play at weakness. You have always been made of stronger stuff. Priya… sister. You’re not a child anymore. And you’re more powerful than you were as a girl. You can help me now, if you’re willing. Will you help? Will you find me the way to the deathless waters? You have access to the Hirana. Access and time—and more patience, I think, than Meena possessed.”

She had more access than he knew.

“Why not ask Bhumika? Why not try to find the way yourself?”

“There are too many guards for me to get near the Hirana,” Ashok said. “And Bhumika would sense my presence. She has no interest in helping me.”

His tone was suddenly cold, at the mention of their shared sister. But then his expression smoothed once more.

“I wanted you to be safe. Meena should never have touched you,” said Ashok, in a voice intended to weaken her anger, to crack her resolve like the fragile shell around a yolk.

“She should never have touched anyone,” Priya retorted. “But that is what your rebels do, isn’t it? Kill.”

“For a purpose.”

“Parijatdvipa kills for a purpose.”

“An unjust purpose, and you know that well enough.” He sounded eminently reasonable. She could not make him flinch, it seemed. “They want to maintain their empire, and they know that there is a greatness in us that they must suppress. They belittle us. They control us. They let us die of rot.”

“The rot,” said Priya, “is hardly the general’s fault.”

“Is it not? Some of us believe the rot is Ahiranya rising up in protest against imperial mastery.”

Priya crossed her arms. “That’s utter foolishness, brother.”

“Is it really?” Ashok said, an otherworldly light in his eyes. “Why else did the deathless waters begin to grant us gifts? Generations of temple children passed through the waters unchanged and then—us.” He held his hands before him, palms open. “Suddenly we had the mythic powers of the yaksa in us. Power in our voices, in our skin, in our souls. Suddenly the rot arrives. You think all of it without purpose? You think there was no grander significance to all of this?”

“And what good have those gifts done us?” Priya snapped. “I barely have any power at all.”

“But you’ve regained the strength you once had,” he said. “You’re almost what you were meant to be.” Imagine what more we could gain together, his voice implied.

She said nothing to that, a stubborn silence. She knew the Hirana had strengthened her. She’d felt it, when she’d lain on its rock and reached a hand to Sima. She’d felt it when she’d sent Meena toppling to her death. She’d sought that strength out.

And yet.

“I watched the thrice-born burn, just the same as you did,” Priya told him finally. “Their gifts couldn’t save them. Nor their strength.”

“We won’t make their mistakes,” said Ashok. “We won’t trust wrongly.”

“I shouldn’t trust you,” she replied. But she felt elated and furious and very close to tears. She couldn’t distrust him. She didn’t know how.

His expression softened. He reached out a hand—held it between them both, like a question—then touched his knuckles to her cheek.

“You’ve grown so much,” he said wonderingly.

“Time has that impact, generally.”

“Your nose is crooked. Did it use to be?”

She took his hand, lifting it away. He released her.

“You must believe me, Pri. I’ve worried for you,” he said, serious once more. “I’ve watched out for you, through other people’s eyes.” He didn’t look at Rukh. “Though it would have been easier for me to do if you hadn’t been in the regent’s household.”

“I only ended up there because of you.”

“I thought you’d leave Bhumika’s service once you were older,” he said. “She should not have kept you on as a mere maidservant.”

“I’m not a child anymore, Ashok,” Priya said steadily. “I may have ended up in the regent’s household because of you and Bhumika, but neither of you controls my decisions now. I’m a woman grown. If I had chosen to, I could be a married woman and a mother.”

He snorted. “You were never inclined to be a married woman.”

“If only I lived in the Age of Flowers after all,” she said dryly, not allowing herself to feel any bitterness. “Then I could have married a woman like the ancients used to. But I could still have chosen to make a home with a nice girl, marriage or no marriage,” Priya added with a shrug. “I chose to stay at the mahal.”

“Why?”

Priya began to speak, but Ashok was already talking once more.

“You stayed, Priya, because you can’t forget what we should have been any more than I can. You feel the injustice of what was stolen from you. You may not want to see Ahiranya free the way I do, but you want what’s rightfully yours. And mine.” He leaned closer. “Please, Pri,” he said. “Help me. Help us both.”

It was as though she were no longer standing on the mossy ground of the forest, a grown woman with her hands in fists at her sides. Instead, she was a child drenched in soot and blood. Her head was against the crook of his shoulder as he ran, struggling to hold her, as he whispered, Don’t look, Pri, don’t look, don’t look.

Just show me the way—

“We need the deathless waters.” His voice was a midnight wind. “Will you find the way for us, Priya? Will you help me take back what was stolen?”

She thought of Bhumika, pregnant and wed to a murderer, using everything she had to give a handful of orphans a modicum of life, and Ahiranya a modicum of stability.

She thought of Rukh, who had thrown his lot in with rebels, who had rot-riven hands and no future to speak of.

She thought of the Hirana. A heartbeat beneath her feet.

Maybe wanting more than what she had was selfish. Maybe it was a mistake. But she thought of all she had suffered, and all Ahiranya had suffered, and felt the kernel of anger in her chest bloom open.

“Yes,” she said. “Brother. I suppose I will.”