Chapter 32: Rao

RAO

Prem was sitting alone, a great shawl wrapped around him despite the heat, an open carafe of wine in his hands. He was drinking directly from the bottle, a look of contemplation on his face.

“The horses are ready,” announced Prem. “My men are arranging provisions. I tried to meet with General Vikram to give him my farewells, but praise the mothers, he’s not receiving visitors at the moment. Share a drink with me?”

Rao leaned against the wall. “Princess Malini may be dying,” he said. It was all he could manage.

Prem’s eyes widened, then narrowed, in comprehension. “The maidservant was from her,” he said. “I should have known the girl was one of her spiders. Gods, that woman has a way of collecting people, does she not?” Prem turned and thunked down his wine. He tugged the collar of his tunic. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to save her,” said Rao. “But I know that isn’t possible. And it isn’t what she wants us to do anymore.”

“Good. It isn’t what I want us to do, either.” When Rao gave him an incredulous look, Prem shook his head. “Don’t stare at me like that. You know there’s no easy way to save her. And brave as she was at court, as excellent as she was for putting together Emperor Aditya’s cause, she’s not… vital.”

“Is she not?” Rao murmured.

“Aditya will come back for her, Rao. When the war’s won.”

“He can’t if she dies.”

“Then she’ll be remembered for her sacrifices, and Emperor Aditya will honor her,” said Prem firmly. “The promise of death awaits us all, Rao. Some of us get a good death and some don’t. At least she won’t die burning.”

“As my sister did.”

Prem didn’t flinch at that. Only nodded and drank. “As your sister did, yes.” He drank again, then sighed. “Ah, I’m sorry, Rao. I’m not good company.”

“It’s fine,” Rao said.

It was not, in fact, fine.

“I am sorry for your loss. I am. But…” He shook his head. “We’ve lost so much already, and this coup isn’t yet really begun. But that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Removing a despot from power comes at a cost. I just didn’t particularly want to pay it.”

A maudlin comment, from the usually lighthearted low prince. Rao waited, frozen for a moment, as Prem looked at him in return.

“You can’t pine after her forever, Rao,” Prem said finally. “She was never for you anyway.”

Rao had to bite back a laugh. Prem didn’t understand anything at all. Didn’t understand what Malini was to him; what had been whispered to him long ago, a secret, a thing that was his and his alone, in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” he said, straightening. “I’ve been a fool. I—” He turned. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Rao—”

“In a moment!” he shouted, and pelted out of the door.

He should not have been able to find the maid. In the dark of a crowded night, on a street that never slept, it should have been impossible. But when he ran out of the pleasure house, he saw the shadow of her, the shape of her shoulders and the paleness of her sari, as she moved between lantern-lit market stalls. He caught up with her. Gasped out, “Wait.”

She turned, one swift arc, and he saw her hand clench into a fist. There was a knife in her grip, an ugly kitchen blade. She had the sense not to brandish it. It was held tight at her side, her arm at an angle, as if she were ready to gut him if need be. Her expression was tight, and only thawed minutely when she realized who he was.

“What do you want?”

“To give you a message.”

“You’ve given me a message. I’ve given you hers. What more is there?”

“Just this. You tell her, I’ll be beneath the entrance to the seeker’s path,” he said. “We’ll wait for her at the grave site.”

“The bower of bones,” corrected the maidservant. “That’s what we call it.”

“The bower of bones,” he agreed. “Tell her I’ll wait until the festival of the dark of the moon is done. If she can escape, we will take her with us. If she sends word, we’ll try to come for her. I’ll try to come for her.”

“She wouldn’t want that,” the maid said tightly.

“I know,” said Rao. “But… she may weigh the risks and change her mind. I want her to have the choice.” And then, with embarrassing sentimentality, he said, “If she is dying, she may want to be cared for her by her own people.”

“More than she wants her cause to win?” The maid laughed. “You don’t know her as well as you think you do, my lord.”

“I know as much as I need to,” he said.

He could not tell her that he knew deep in his bones that Malini would live. Such things were not for outsiders. He could not tell her the secrets of the nameless—the whispered answer that lived in his blood, that told him more about Malini than even Malini knew.

“Tell her that,” he said. “That’s all I ask.”

After the maid had vanished, he made his way back to the pleasure house much more slowly. His side ached. Prem was gone. To organize his men, no doubt, or sleep off the drink.

Lata found him seated on the steps to the veranda of their ridiculous room. “You’ve delayed long enough,” she said into the silence. “It’s time to go to Aditya. He’s been waiting for you.”

“After the poet, when I was injured—you asked me what I wanted to do.”

“You can’t do what you want,” Lata said. “Can you?”

“No.” He shook his head.

She gazed back at him, entirely calm. She’d nominally been a servant in the imperial mahal, before Malini’s fall from grace. But in truth, she’d been an apprentice to the sage who had educated Malini and Alori and Narina as children. She was as familiar as anyone could be with the strange weight of the nameless faith—its joys, its demands. Its price.

“Lata,” he said. “Why do you never call me Rao?”

She gave him a considering look. Then she crossed the floor and sat beside him.

“I may be no priest of the nameless, but I am a sage,” she said finally. “I understand the value your people place on names. And I know Rao isn’t your true name. I know you keep to the oldest ways and pay the price those ways demand. I don’t need to call you by a pet name. I honor the name that was whispered at your birth.”

“Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head. “How would I?”

“My sister knew it,” he said. “She told me her own, before she died. And I… I told her mine.”

“I had no opportunity to speak with the princess before her immolation,” Lata said quietly. “And she would not have told me anyway. I understand the telling is… significant. Special.”

Rao nodded. “When your name is a prophecy, it is wise to keep it secret. Or so I was always taught. We only speak of it when the time is right. When the prophecy nears its fulfillment. When our voice has a purpose.”

He knew the tale of his own naming. How his mother and father had carried him to the temple garden of Alor, a gentle, swelling valley full of trees that dripped with jewels upon threads. How the priest, in his pale blue, had taken Rao into the monastery and sought out his name from the fathomless dark of god. Rao had returned to the garden, at age five, and been given the gift of his name. He’d carried it ever since—the weight of its sharp consonants and its soft vowels. The weight of its promise.

“Alori…” He swallowed. “My sister. Her true name was—old Aloran is hard to translate but—but she was named She Who Will Burn upon the Pyre. And so she did.”

“A death name is a terrible burden,” Lata said, with such learned compassion that he did not dare look at her.

“She was strong. She managed it—well.” Better than Rao would have. “My name doesn’t prophesize my death. My name…”

“You can tell me if you wish,” Lata said gently. “Or not.”

He looked up at nothing. He thought of his sister, with her silences and her cleverness, and the way she’d touched her forehead to his arm and told him, Don’t weep, please don’t weep. I’m okay. I’ve known all my life that one day I’d burn.

“No,” he said. “It isn’t the right time. I know that.”

He stood, wincing a little as the wound in his side pulled.

“But it is the right time for me to begin my journey to Srugna. I’ve done all I can here. Princess Malini’s fate is out of my hands.”