Chapter 42: Ashok

ASHOK

He could barely feel Priya any longer.

He stood before the squat little fort—the rose palace, Bhumika’s ugly creation, of that he had no doubt—that lay at the heart of the mahal. Surrounded by gardens, its walls were a knot-work of thorns. Thorns as wide as a man’s arm. Thorns as sharp as a blade. They were gristly with blood.

She was within those walls. But Priya was not.

“I could reach you, Bhumika,” he murmured, eyes closed. “If I tried, I could do it.”

“They have archers on the roof,” one of his girls said quietly. She was standing in the cover of shadow, her mask raised.

“Not very good ones,” Ashok said calmly. “Those they lost on the outer walls.”

The boiling liquid they kept flinging down concerned him more. Cheap tricks, but they were effective, in light of her limited resources.

The mahal, after all, was shattered.

Ashok had only lost a few men and women. It wasn’t clear if the thorns or the arrows had killed them, in the end, but he thought it unlikely that anyone but Bhumika had put their lives to an end. His soft-spoken sister, too highborn to dirty her hands, had always been a monstrous opponent when she allowed herself the indulgence of proper battle. That apparently hadn’t changed.

No matter. Let her molder in this place. He didn’t need her anyway.

When he returned—when he was thrice-born, with all the strength of the waters in him—then they would talk about Ahiranya’s future. And his will would overpower her own.

“With me,” he said, and turned. He walked from the rose palace; walked from the broken mahal to the Hirana. It loomed above them. Together, they climbed, using the rope for purchase.

The last time he’d been upon the Hirana, his temple siblings had burned. He’d had nightmares for years after their deaths. An old rage rose in him as he climbed and looked at the carvings, both familiar and made strange by the passage of time. This had been his home once. This had been his.

On the Hirana, he put his rage to good use. The few guards they found, they killed efficiently. They explored the rooms. Found nothing. There was one woman only, unconscious on the ground in the northern chamber. Not, he thought, the imperial princess. A pity.

Ashok beckoned over one of his men. “Wake her,” he said. “Interrogate her. Find out if she knows anything useful about my sister.”

His man nodded and removed his scythe from his sash.

Ashok left him and returned to the triveni.

You are mine, he thought, speaking to the Hirana in the quiet of his own skull. He placed his hand upon the plinth. And I am yours. I did not die in you for a reason. So show me the way.

Beneath his hand, the stone was cold and unresponsive. He couldn’t feel the warmth of it, as he had as a boy. It was still and cold, a corpse of stone. He’d hoped, perhaps, that he could find the way without Priya. Now that the regent’s power had been broken—now that Hiranaprastha burned, and the Hirana was as good as his—he had hoped the temple would yield to him. It had been a small hope, against all reason.

No matter.

One of his women entered the room, wiping her hands clean of blood. Behind her were three more rebels, watching him, waiting for orders.

“We keep searching,” he said. They did so. He walked the length of the Hirana—entering each cloister room, every space where his siblings had once run and fought and played and prayed. He entered the sangam, hoping the Hirana would feel it and yield to him. But the entrance to the deathless waters did not appear. He could not find it.

Perhaps if he meditated—if he spent days upon days here, as she had—he would find the way.

But there was no time. The deathless waters swam in the blood of his followers, quickly turning to poison. Leaching away their strength. Their lives. He needed to act before they ran out of time.

Damn you, Priya.

“We’re leaving,” he told his followers eventually, defeated by a pile of stone. “We’re going to seek out my sister once more.”

“I’m sorry,” another of his men said. Through the mask, Ashok couldn’t see his expression, but he sounded ashamed. “I shouldn’t have let her escape.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “We still have our new strength. We’ll find the way.”