Chapter 13: Malini

MALINI

It was early morning when the maidservant arrived. Malini was lying on her charpoy, curled up on her side, the room tilting and swooping lazily around her, when Pramila unlocked the door and entered.

“You’re a very lucky girl,” Pramila was saying. “Your new tasks won’t be terribly onerous, and when you leave my service, you’ll have much finer skills. You’ll perhaps even rise in the regent’s household. Won’t that be nice?”

“Yes, my lady.” The voice that replied was low and warm, with the lilting inflection of an Ahiranyi speaker of Zaban. Malini closed her eyes, glad her back was turned, and readied herself.

She’d seen this maidservant twice. Once, when she’d flung the dosed wine across the floor with numb hands, too addled by needle-flower to do anything but crawl and sob and peer at the face through the lattice and wonder, hysterically, if she had dreamt it all up.

The second time, she’d watched the maidservant murder a woman.

She could not remember the maidservant’s face. Only her arms, and the rippling shift of muscle in them as she’d fought. Only the way she had straightened, shoulders back, the wind against her black hair. She could only remember the maidservant turning and—looking at her. The shock in those eyes.

She could remember thinking—even as she wondered if the maidservant would kill her, even as her mind bent and twisted and examined the things she’d seen and heard—I can use this one.

I can use her.

She had fought to have this opportunity, feigning a collapse in the presence of Pramila and the guards that had left a very real bruise on her hip; crying like a hysterical child before the regent. All of it, in order to have this: a maidservant who was not Santosh or Pramila or Chandra’s creature, a maidservant who was likely not simply a maidservant, standing before her within the walls of this blighted prison.

“Princess,” said Pramila. Her voice was clipped, almost blade-hard, at Malini’s back. “I have your new maid. Here, as you begged for. Aren’t you pleased? Won’t you greet us properly?”

Malini took in a steadying breath and rose up onto her elbows. Then sat up straight. Turned, setting her bare feet on the stone floor. The room tipped alarmingly around her, then settled.

“The one who saved my life,” Malini said slowly, taking her time over the words so that she could also take her time looking the woman over. “I remember.”

The maidservant stood in a spill of light coming through a high window, half her body illuminated, half in shadow. She was in a slightly finer sari than the one she’d been wearing when Malini last saw her. Someone must have dressed her up for this meeting. Swathed in burnt umber, her hair bound back in a neat braid, the maidservant was not beautiful or charming or even particularly ugly. There was something forgettable about her: about the way she stood, with her head slightly forward and her shoulders curved, the plainness of her clothing, her slight height. If Malini had not seen her on the triveni—had not seen her through a lattice in the dark—she would have looked right through her.

“The one you demanded from the general, yes,” Pramila said. “Bow to her, girl.”

The maidservant gave a start, as if she’d forgotten Pramila entirely, then bowed. She touched her fingertips to the floor. Then she rose, and whether by accident or design, her eyes met Malini’s.

In the spill of sunlight, her eyes were warm brown, her lashes more gold than black.

“Come closer,” said Malini. “Please.”

The maidservant did. She crossed the floor, leaving Lady Pramila behind.

“What is your name?”

“Priya, princess.”

“I am Malini. But you must call me your lady, not princess. You are my household now.”

Priya had likely never had any reason to know the intricacies of titles in an imperial woman’s household, but she said, “Yes, my lady,” obediently enough anyway.

“How did you come to work in the regent’s household, Priya?”

“I am an orphan, my lady,” Priya said. “The regent kindly took me in when I was a young girl.”

“How good of him.”

“I am grateful for the regent’s kindness,” Priya said. Her voice was subservient but her eyes—her eyes were still fixed on Malini’s, as if mesmerized. Her lips were slightly parted.

“And I am so grateful that you’re here, Priya,” Malini said, never letting her eyes waver from Priya’s own in return. The way the maidservant looked at her—it made her wonder. “I have been so afraid. I struggle to eat or sleep. With your protection perhaps I will be more at ease.”

“I hope so, my lady,” Priya said.

Pramila had told Malini tersely, when Malini had expressed a desire for information, that the other maidservants would still come to do the bulk of the work of feeding the guards and carrying supplies and cleaning once a week at night, when they would not be able to disturb Malini’s contemplation, but the new maid would take care of Pramila’s and Malini’s comforts. Their baths. Their meals. “If we’re lucky, she’ll know how to dress and braid hair,” said Pramila, in a tone that suggested she did not expect a girl who swept floors to know anything of the sort, but she lived in eternal hope.

“I would love it dearly if you could tell me stories, Priya,” Malini said earnestly, leaning forward, clasping her fingers before her. “Would you be willing to do that? And guard me when I sleep? I think it would help me a great deal.”

Priya nodded mutely.

I would not know what you are if I hadn’t seen you, Malini marveled. If you hadn’t moved as you did on the Hirana.

I do not think you are used to being seen, are you, Priya?

It made something warm settle in her stomach, that thought. That she had recognized the value of this woman when others hadn’t. That somehow, however unwitting, when she had found that Pramila had failed to lock her room and stumbled out into the corridor and seen the maidservant on the triveni, she had witnessed a woman full of raw potential. Someone powerful who looked at her and looked at her, as if Malini—sick, unkempt, her curls in a snarl and her mind liquid—had the sun inside her.

Someone she could use to set herself free.

She hoped. Oh, mothers. She hoped.

“The maid will have plenty of other duties to attend to,” Pramila said from the door. “She won’t be able to sit at your heels all day, princess. Remember that.”

“The general gave her to me,” said Malini. “To ensure my health, and my ease.”

Pramila snorted. “And what tales can she tell you, princess? She’s likely not even literate. Are you, girl?”

“I am an Ahiranyi maid,” Priya said, which was not exactly agreement. “And no more.”

Malini smiled at her, the barest lift of the corners of her lips, and saw the maidservant’s eyes widen a little.

Surely, they both knew that was a lie.

“My nursemaid told me Ahiranyi folktales,” Malini said. “And my brothers and I thought they were fascinating. You know those, don’t you, Priya?”

“I do, my lady. There is a—a child I tell such tales to sometimes, in the mahal.” She added, “I would be happy to share them with you.”

Malini had seen this one kill a woman without hesitation and with seemingly no remorse—seen her move with shocking agility and brute strength. But there it was, clear in her words. A soft heart.

“Thank you,” Malini said, and smiled. “I would like that very much, Priya.”