Chapter 43: Priya

PRIYA

The first step, after entering the deathless waters, was to emerge at all. If you could fall beneath that cosmic blue and come back out again, your body still in working order—well. You’d already managed a minor miracle.

The next step was surviving the hours that followed. Priya had not forgotten the sickroom: not forgotten the twice- and once-born who’d died there, lost and feverish in their beds. But she had not thought it would come for her now, when the Hirana had called her to the waters, when she’d felt nothing but a kind of bliss as she’d lowered herself into them and the sangam had unfurled for her.

But here she was. Burning. Spitting bile into the bushes.

It was her own fool fault for thinking she was somehow special. She wasn’t. And now she was dying.

Weeds withered and resurrected in a frenzied cycle beneath her hands as she dry heaved. She swore, dizzy on her hands and knees.

“Can you get up?” Malini asked. Her voice was near. She was kneeling by Priya, her own eyes fixed on the path behind them. Looking, perhaps, for other people running for refuge, or soldiers.

“I can. Just give me a moment.”

With great effort, Priya stumbled to her feet.

Fell.

“Well,” said Malini. “Apparently not.”

“I’m going to have to,” Priya gritted out. “We can’t stay here. Not with the city in the state it is.”

Malini was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You understand that my strength is—limited.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then you’ll forgive me if this ends badly. Come. Put your arms around me.”

Priya did. Somehow, Malini managed to leverage them both to their feet, with Priya’s face against the crook of her shoulder and Priya’s hands clutched tight against the cloth of Malini’s blouse.

“What on earth has happened to you?” Malini whispered, voice feather-light on Priya’s hair. And Priya shivered, not from the fever alone, and said, “I can’t explain it.”

“Can’t?”

“Won’t, then. My magic is—my business.”

“Leave your magic and your gifts a mystery, then, if you must,” Malini said. “Just tell me where we need to go, to reach this bower of bones.”

Priya told her. And Malini began to walk—slow, careful steps, mindful of the stumbling weight of Priya in her arms. Priya forced herself to move one foot in front of the other, again and again, even as her blood felt like a tide turned backward inside her body.

“Priya,” Malini whispered. “Priya, Priya. Listen to my voice.”

“Why are you saying my name?”

“Because you’re not answering me.”

Priya’s breath gusted out of her. “I’m sorry I’m scaring you.”

“I’m not scared,” Malini said, sounding furious. She was still holding Priya—still using her strength to drag Priya through the fronds of great dark leaves.

“Of course you’re scared,” said Priya. She meant her words to sound gentle, understanding, but they came out of her slurred with pain, and Malini ignored them.

They walked. Walked.

“I can’t drag you any farther,” said Malini, after an age. “We’re going to need to wait here.”

Wait for what?Priya thought. But she didn’t ask. Malini was trembling and sweating, gray-faced as she sank against the knotted trunk of a tree, the light of the sun streaming over her. Her cheek, where Pramila had struck her, was livid.

“The needle-flower,” Priya said faintly.

“I wish you would shut up about the needle-flower,” Malini said. But after a moment, she swore and reached over Priya. Priya turned her head so that Malini could remove the chain from her throat.

Malini took a dab of the tincture on her lips. Grimaced. “There,” she said. “Now we don’t need to discuss it further.”

“Put it—round your neck.”

Malini gave her an unreadable look and slipped the chain over her own head, the small cask settling at the hollow of her throat.

“Why do you want to know about my magic?” Priya asked. “Why does it matter to you?”

“I told you that you interest me,” said Malini. “I told you that I want to know everything about you.”

“You said that to make me think—you liked me,” Priya said haltingly.

Malini’s dark gray eyes fixed on her own. “I do like you,” said Malini.

“Please don’t say that.”

“You have helped me. You tried to save me from poison. You comforted me. When reality felt far away, and I didn’t know what was real, you—”

“Please,” Priya said, and knew she sounded like she was begging this time. “Don’t.”

She didn’t want to be convinced into foolishness again, to let herself like Malini too much. She didn’t want to trust her, or want to be friends. She didn’t want to want her. And it would have been so easy, after all they’d been through together—after she’d seen Malini nearly die and watched the way Malini’s eyes had gone wide and cold with fury when Pramila had held the knife to Priya’s throat. She was teetering on the edge. She did not want to fall.

A silence settled between them.

Then, in an unreadable voice, Malini said, “If you say so. Perhaps this will be more palatable to you: I want to understand the world I live in, strange though it may be. I need to understand, in order to survive it. I learned young the importance of understanding the nature of those around me, but also the need to understand greater things: religion. Military strategy. Politics, and all its many games. Your magic is no different from any of that.”

That was better. Easier to handle. It made Priya’s heart feel less open, less bruised.

“There is a river beneath the Hirana,” said Priya, into the velvet quiet of humming insects, of Malini’s uneven breath. “Your nursemaid was right about that. But it isn’t accessible to just anyone. I think if General Vikram or any imperial soldier tried to hack their way through the stone to it they would have found nothing. It’s… magic. And living, and it let me find it because of what I am.

“All rituals are in three parts in Ahiranya,” continued Priya. “I don’t know if it’s the same in Parijat or any other place, but we always knew as children that we’d have to pass through those waters three times, if we wanted the gifts of the yaksa. Since the founding of Parijatdvipa, the ritual has only given our elders the smallest gifts. Power to control the Hirana. No more. But we traveled through the waters, me and my siblings, at the festival of the dark of the moon, and… suddenly, we were as the elders had once been, in the Age of Flowers.

“The ones like me, who were passing through for the first time, we were changed. But the ones who were passing through the second time, or the third…” Priya shook her head. “It was as if a seed had been planted the first time, and it had been growing inside them until that moment. Something that had been growing in the waters, perhaps for years, bloomed in us. Our elders, they… they should have been pleased. But they were not. Because they thought…” Priya swallowed. Should she admit this? The terrible suspicion they’d had, of her siblings, of her? “The rot arrived when our powers did,” she said eventually. “It was smaller then, weaker, but they were afraid. They thought we were the cause. And that we were monstrous. We were too strong. So they killed us. Died with us.”

Priya propped herself up on her elbows. The green beneath her was soft. Soothing.

“I’ve been seeking the waters again,” said Priya. “Seeking the way. And I found it. But the finding—it has a price. And I’m paying it.”

Malini made a choked noise. But Priya did not look at her. “I don’t want pity,” she said, still staring at the green.

“What were you hoping to accomplish?” Malini said after several heartbeats, her voice low.

“I was trying to find… myself. After the others died, I… I think my mind tried to protect me. I forgot so much. I couldn’t use even the gifts I already had any longer.”

“And have you found yourself, Priya?”

Priya shook her head. “I don’t know what it means to be a temple child anymore. Maybe it means being useful to people who seek power,” she said, finally looking at Malini. “Maybe it means being monstrous. Sometimes it feels like it. But maybe… maybe it means something else. The children and I, we could control the Hirana. Control nature. Someone once told me that the strongest of us could even control the rot. Maybe what it means to be me is to… to be a cure.”

It was a hope she’d only started to consider now that she could feel the power fading out of her, ebbing and flowing. Now that she’d felt the heady sweetness of it. Could her magic really be monstrous, if it felt this sweet?

“You think you may have the power to end the rot?” Malini asked.

“Maybe,” said Priya. “It’s all—everything is maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now, does it? I’m not going to survive to test my strength.”

The tree roots on the surface of the forest floor gave a little flutter, shivering, creaking their way across the soil as they reached for Priya.

“Should I beat them away?” Malini asked in a strange, dry voice. “Or are you calling them?”

Priya sighed, suddenly weary. “Leave me. Go to that Lord Rajan of yours. Go to your brother. Do—exactly what you’d hoped to. I know you want to. Don’t pretend you care what happens to me.”

“You saved my life,” Malini said. “You saved it more than once.”

“And you still don’t care,” said Priya. “I know that. So go.”

She could feel Malini considering it. Malini had the needle-flower now. Priya had told her to take it exactly for that reason. She could leave Priya here and walk to the bower of bones and begin her journey to Srugna. If she was swift, perhaps she would even catch up with Rao and all the other men.

“I’m dying anyway,” Priya added. “What does it matter?” I’ve served my purpose.

“What indeed,” Malini said, in a voice that was too sharp by far. Suddenly she wasn’t sitting back against the tree trunk. She was leaning over Priya, gaze intent, something fierce in the curl of her mouth. That held Priya’s attention, even through the stupor of fever. Malini was often vulnerable, or cunning, or as blank as glass. But fierce? No. She was rarely that.

“You don’t have to believe that I care for you, Priya. You only have to believe that I need you. And I do need you.”

“You have the needle-flower. You know the way.”

“I need you,” Malini repeated. And there was so much in those words—in the set of her lips. “So, what can I do to ensure that you live? Do you know a healer?”

Priya thought of Gautam and how they’d parted. “No,” she said.

“Then how can I help you?”

A shiver racked her. Cold. She was beginning to feel cold. That was a bad sign with fever.

“There is someone out there who will save me.” The strength in her was fading, but she knew what she’d sensed in the waters: the sangam, the forest, intertwined. She’d sensed other kin. Perhaps even thrice-born, because their presence had felt nothing like her twice-born siblings—somehow sharper in the sangam, distant and brighter all at once.

“Where?”

Priya tried to speak. Swallowed. She lifted a hand, pointing the way, and marks carved themselves into the trees in response. Her heart raced.

“Through there. Follow—marks on the trees. Like fingers.”

“How helpful,” Malini said. But even in her daze, Priya could hear the fear beneath her wry tone. “Here,” she went on. “Lean on me again.”

It took a long time to lift Priya to standing once more, and Malini was panting when it was done, wan with exhaustion. But she held Priya with a grip like iron.

“It wasn’t my nursemaid who told me tales of Ahiranya’s yaksa and magic waters,” she said. “No self-respecting maid would risk her position like that.”

“No?” Priya thought she knew something of what it meant to be a self-respecting maid.

But Malini only smiled at that, a thin, tight smile, even as she stumbled forward on unsteady feet, and said, “No. No normal maid who has to worry about losing her position. It was my teacher, my sage who told me. She educated me. As the women of my mother’s family were educated. As princes are. And she taught me this too: no wars are won without allies.”

“Your allies are at the arch.”

“But I’m here, in this forsaken forest. And so are you.”

“Are we fighting a war right now, Malini?”

“Yes,” Malini said. “We always are.”