Chapter 21: Priya

PRIYA

It takes poison time to leave a body. And yet it seemed as if Malini improved almost immediately. She remained awake for once at night, instead of falling directly into a stupor.

“Light a lantern,” she insisted. “I want to try walking about.”

Would anyone notice that Priya had used more lamp oil than usual? It was something the senior maidservants in the mahal would have noticed. They would have remarked upon it. But Priya didn’t think anyone cared here. Certainly not Pramila.

Malini clung to the wall for support and walked around the edge of the room on unsteady feet. Priya watched, seated upon the charpoy Malini had abandoned, as the princess pressed her hands to the stone, feeling the edges and curves of the obliterated carvings, a map destroyed. “It feels like the walls are always changing,” Malini said with the faintest laugh, her eyes bright. “I feel like I’m swimming in this place, I’m so unsteady.”

“Do you want to try letting go of the wall?” Priya asked.

“I’m not sure that’s wise,” said Malini. She looked at the blackened image of the yaksa on the wall. Then she exhaled and said, “Why not.”

Priya stood up and walked through the spill of lantern light. “Here,” she said, holding her hands out before herself, palms up. “Let me help.”

“Thank you,” said Malini. She took a tentative step forward and placed her hands above Priya’s. “I want to walk on my own, I think.”

“Then let me just keep my hands below yours,” said Priya. “You try to walk, my lady, and I’ll be here to catch you if need be.”

Their hands weren’t touching but shared the same air, the same fall of shadow, as Malini took one tentative step after another, and Priya walked backward in front of her.

Malini’s eyes met her own, face alight with a smile.

“You’re doing well,” Priya said, encouraging, and Malini’s smile deepened.

“I feel less dizzy than I did a moment ago,” she agreed. “I never thought I’d see the day when I would be complimented on not falling over. How my life has changed.” Her voice turned wistful. “You’ve never seen me how I really am. I wish you could. I used to wear the most lovely silk saris in Parijat, and flowers twined in my hair like a crown. I was beautiful then.”

Priya swallowed.

You still are.

“There is a way you have to move, when you’re dressed like that,” Malini went on, apparently oblivious. “A way you have to behave. You can’t hold yourself hunched, as I am now. You can’t lower your head. You can’t show any weakness. You have to look strong.”

“Strong,” Priya repeated, turning a little to match the curve of the room. Malini turned too, as if they were dancing. “How so? You don’t mean like a soldier, I think.”

Malini laughed.

“No, not like a soldier. Strong like… Ah, perhaps it would be simpler to show you.”

Malini straightened her spine. Lifted her head, her neck an elegant line, her eyes suddenly cool. She moved with grace, lifting her feet with a subtle kick that Priya could tell would make an overlong sari—the kind of impractical length Priya would never wear—flutter where it touched the earth. For a moment she was utterly transformed, untouchable and yes—strong. But it wasn’t anything Priya had ever known as strength before.

Then Malini stumbled. Priya caught her hands immediately, taking Malini’s weight. They were so close, Malini’s face so near to hers, that their breath mingled. Their eyes met. Malini exhaled another faint laugh and drew back a little. Priya did the same. Her heart was pounding.

They were still holding hands.

“What was it like here, long ago?” Malini asked, voice strange. She was clearly trying to distract from whatever had just happened between them, and it was effective. Priya felt like she’d been doused in cold water. Malini had not said before the temple burned. But that was what she had meant.

If Priya closed her eyes she could envision it: carvings painted in rich shades of green and blue, with red eyes and red mouths. Blue floors, and gold lacquer on the great pillars that held up the walls. Lanterns of colored glass in sconces. Children laughing. The elders in their fine, soft silks.

But she looked around her, and nothing remained. Just motes of dust on the air, and the charred, empty walls. Just Malini watching her.

“What was it like in the imperial mahal?” Priya asked in return.

Malini offered Priya a sly smile that made clear she understood what Priya was doing but was willing to be led.

“It was beautiful. Sprawling. There were gardens everywhere, Priya. Such beautiful gardens. My ladies-in-waiting and I used to play in them, when we were small girls.” She moved her fingers restlessly against Priya’s own.

“I wish you would tell me about yourself,” Malini added. Her voice was soft. “I want to know everything about you.”

Priya’s throat was suddenly dry.

“Me? I’m not very interesting.”

“I’m sure you are. Let me prove it to you. A game.” Her voice was almost teasing. “Tell me one thing you want right now, Priya.”

“Want?”

“Yes. What do you want? Come, I’m testing if you’re dull, after all.”

It felt like a dangerous question. Priya shook her head, and Malini cocked hers.

“Come now,” Malini cajoled. “Everyone wants something. Me, for example. I want the sweets my brother Aditya always brought me for my birthday when I was a girl. Ladoo, but like none you’ve ever eaten before, Priya. Soaked in rose syrup and sugared almonds, dusted in a filigree of gold. Oh, they were perfect. I haven’t had them in years. So. What do you want?”

“Right now, I think I want those sweets,” said Priya, half-serious. A ladoo soaked in rose syrup sounded decadent, and she suddenly wanted to be decadent. Craved something delicious.

“Don’t cheat,” Malini scolded. “You have to pick your own want. And no food. I’ve picked food.”

“You can’t pick all food!”

“I can and I have.”

“Respectfully,” Priya said, in a tone that was anything but respectful, “that isn’t fair.”

“I’m the one testing you. It’s my right to decide the parameters of the testing. Now, go on: Tell me what you want most.”

Priya didn’t consider herself a complicated person. But she didn’t often think of her wants. What did she want, anyway? To remember herself, her past. To see Rukh alive a few more years. For Ashok to be well and… different. Able to love her. And Bhumika. She wanted Bhumika to respect her.

Those were bigger wants than Priya wanted to admit… or than Malini surely wanted to hear, even if Priya were free to confess them.

“Maybe I want to learn to walk the way you do,” said Priya, straightening her neck, tilting her chin just a little, in imitation of Malini’s regal posture.

“Do you really? I could teach you.”

“Spirits, no,” Priya said, and watched Malini’s lip twitch once more. “People would say I was pretending to be a princess. I’d be mocked, my lady. No.”

“Then I need a different answer, Priya.”

Priya considered for a moment. But it was hard to think, with Malini’s hands in her own, with Malini’s thumbs brushing the insides of her wrists, where her blood thrummed. There was a promise in this somewhere—in the touch and the smile and the joy written in Malini’s face, the teasing edge to her voice. She didn’t know what exactly to do with it, or with the way it made her own heart turn.

“There are coconuts that you can find growing in the forest,” she blurted out. “Sometimes foragers or woodcutters collect them and sell them at the bazaar. Only the richest can afford to buy them.”

“I said no food,” Malini said in a chiding tone. But she was listening.

“They’re not exactly edible. They’re—the forest, my lady, is entirely Ahiranyi, and sometimes you find strange things inside it. Unexpected things. When you split those particular coconuts, you find flowers inside. Dark purple, violet, black. The color of shadows. The rich place those blossoms in their shrines. Or they used to.” The wealthier pilgrims had brought those coconuts to the Hirana once, too. Priya had cracked one open herself, and nearly wept when the flowers had burst out, tumbling beautifully over her hands, a cascade of darkness. “I’d like one of those coconuts. I’d like to make that offering. It would be frivolous and stupid and… it wouldn’t help anyone I’ve lost. Or summon any kind of luck. But it would be like a cry against the void. And that would be what some of the people I’ve lost would have wanted…” Priya trailed off. “I’m not usually frivolous. But that’s why it’s a want,” Priya added. “Right now, in this place? That’s what I want.”

Malini was still staring at her, wordless. All playfulness had fallen from her features, leaving them blank and austere.

“Such a serious answer,” she murmured.

“I’m sorry.”

“You are,” Malini said, “a genuinely interesting person. I thought it the moment I saw you, and I haven’t yet been proved wrong.”

Malini said it as if it were an accusation—as if Priya’s words were somehow an affront, a blow, a thing that had harmed her. When Priya blinked at her, Malini released her abruptly, moving back to her charpoy and falling down upon it, head turned away.

“Are you well?” Priya asked, alarmed.

“Fine,” Malini bit out. But she did not turn back to look at Priya again.

The sea change in her mood wasn’t something Priya understood. But nothing about the curve of Malini’s spine, the way her arms were wrapped around her body, suggested that she wanted to be asked further questions. As if reading her thoughts, Malini said quietly, “I would very much like to be alone.”

“Of course,” Priya said without thinking, and headed to the door. It was only when she touched the handle that she remembered she no longer possessed the key. The door was locked for the night.

Under her hand, the Hirana listened. The air shifted. The door swung slightly open.

Ah.

Priya glanced back. Malini was still curled up.

“I’ll let you rest,” Priya said. “I’m going for a little walk. I won’t be long.”

When Malini did not protest, Priya left the chamber.

The silence followed behind her. It was the kind that had thorns.

The triveni was empty. There was no rain. No cold wind. Perhaps the monsoon was passing. When she glanced up at the sky, she could see the wink of stars.

She took a few steps forward toward the plinth and—tripped.

With a quiet “oof” she regained her balance, straightening up. It was strange. She knew the triveni. She’d walked it so many, many times. The triveni had held her. But she’d missed, now—slipped against a groove. Her encounter with Malini had left her flustered, but not that flustered.

She looked down.

The lines upon the floor had definitely shifted. Instead of dancing like waves upon the shore, they’d merged together, jagged and strange.

They looked like flames. Like a warning.

There was a clattering noise. A shriek. She saw the shadow of one of the guards in the hall. Saw Pramila running toward her.

“The princess,” Pramila cried urgently, breathless, “is she safe? Is anyone here?”

Priya shook her head, startled, her mind still trying to catch up. “Only—only the guards at the doors of the temple, I think, my lady. Is something wrong?”

Pramila strode over. There were high spots of color upon her cheeks. “There has been a terrible attack upon the city, on the home of one of the general’s advisors—and no one has yet heard from the general himself—oh!”

Priya heard the whisper of Malini’s footsteps behind her before she saw her, standing in the door of the northern chamber.

“I’m sorry,” Priya said, cursing inwardly. She didn’t want to break Pramila’s fragile trust so soon. “I left the door open, I’m so—”

“Something is burning,” said Malini. “Please. Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

A deep slow breath brought an acrid scent to Priya’s nose.

Priya went to the edge of the triveni, standing at its lip with nothing but the cracked surface of the Hirana below her to catch her, should she stumble. But she wouldn’t stumble again. The Hirana was hers, and she belonged to it in turn. It was changing for her.

The temple ground held her as she looked out.

Below them, she saw yellow and orange flame.

Something was indeed burning.

The rebels had attacked.