Chapter 54: Priya

PRIYA

“I’m fine,” said Priya, dazed. “I’m fine.”

She was suddenly kneeling. Had she planned to kneel? She wasn’t sure. Malini was beside her, knee touching her own.

“Priya,” Malini said, teeth chattering, as if cold or shock had overcome her. “Priya. Are you hurt?”

“No,” Priya said. “No, I’m not hurt.”

“I didn’t mean,” Malini began. Then halted. “I would never. I. I don’t think I would have.”

All her words were fragments. And Priya did not know how to feel, looking at her. She was perhaps a little shocked herself.

Priya pressed her forehead to Malini’s.

“Breathe with me,” she whispered, as the world steadied around them, and Bhumika’s power and her own wove the forest back into place. The soil smoothed, the trees settled. The leaves rustled in the wind.

When Malini pulled back, she had a brilliant streak of blood on her forehead. Priya touched a hand to her own scalp and winced.

“Here,” said Bhumika. She was looming over them, a cloth in hand, which Priya took and pressed hard to the wound. She didn’t think it was deep. Head wounds always bled far too much, shallow or not.

Finally, Priya looked around in wonder. Then she began to laugh.

“You’re—all of you. Is that really Commander Jeevan? Billu? You—Bhumika!”

“You seem to have lost your words, Priya,” Bhumika said serenely.

Priya felt tears threatening at her eyes, through the laughter. She forced them back.

“I was afraid for you.” Priya’s voice was rough.

“And I for you, although I don’t know why I bother, when you’re always throwing yourself into trouble.” Bhumika glanced at Malini, who was now standing behind Priya, watching them with the attention of a hawk. “Why,” Bhumika said, “are you in the forest with the emperor’s sister?”

“She would have died if I’d left her on the Hirana,” said Priya.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Lady Bhumika,” said Malini, bowing her head, just slightly, in the gesture of a noblewoman greeting a respected equal. After a moment, Bhumika returned it.

“We should speak privately,” said Bhumika.

The three of them walked some distance away from the traveling household—though Priya turned as they walked, looking for familiar faces in the crowd. With difficulty, Bhumika sat on the severed trunk of a tree, using Priya’s arm for support as she lowered herself. Priya kneeled down, Malini mimicking her. A small distance away, Khalida hovered, eyes narrowed and arms crossed.

Now that she was not using her twice-born gifts, Bhumika looked pained and tired. Her child was due so soon, Priya knew, and she felt a pang of worry run through her as Bhumika carefully straightened in her seat with a quiet sigh.

“Speak,” said Bhumika.

Priya was the one to explain the new agreement between them. The possibility of self-rule for Ahiranya—freedom entirely from the control of Parijatdvipa. As she spoke, she watched the way Malini looked between them, weighing up all she’d seen—Bhumika and Priya’s shared gifts, the informal way they spoke to one another—drawing her own conclusions about the bond between them.

At the end, Bhumika nodded. Said, “I see.” Then she leaned forward a little, expression thoughtful. “To me,” she went on, “the difference between a place in the empire and a place beyond it, as an ally nation, is—negligible. You may have noticed that our crops and our farmers have suffered greatly. We cannot easily feed ourselves. Our position is weak. To survive as an independent nation would require us to be like any city-state of Parijatdvipa in all but name. And we would still have no power at the imperial court.”

“I cannot promise you power at court and freedom,” Malini said. “But as for independence… Lady Bhumika, surely the symbolism is important, is it not? No one forgets what the Ahiranyi were in the Age of Flowers. Parijatdvipa does not forget the way your temple ancestors and the yaksa nearly took everything. Ruled everything. And my own people think, on balance, you would not have been kind masters.

“Your subjugation, as a vassal nation, has been a symbol to Parijatdvipa,” Malini continued. “A symbol of great power, demonstrating that no one may stand against Parijatdvipa’s nations without consequence. Your freedom, however yoked to the empire by commerce or need, will be a symbol to your own people, that you are no longer under the empire’s feet. Perhaps it would even be enough to make Ahiranya’s rebels obey you.”

Bhumika looked no less pained or tired, but there was a new light in her eyes.

“Should your brother Prince Aditya win, we can perhaps agree that symbolic freedom would be—helpful,” Bhumika said, with care. “But until he wins, Ahiranya will be vulnerable to Emperor Chandra, and to the other nations of Parijatdvipa. We do not have the strength to fend them off.”

“I believe you have a source of power that can protect you,” Malini said. “The rebels sought it. And Priya has the key.”

Finally, the two of them looked at Priya.

“Princess Malini. I think you and I should, perhaps, talk further alone,” said Bhumika.

Priya thought about protesting. She was, after all, not exactly uninvolved in any of this. But then Bhumika said, “Priya, I think there’s someone in my retinue you may want to go and meet.” She smiled, only slightly, but it was a true smile.

Malini did not touch her. Did not try to stop her. Her fingers twitched faintly where they rested on her knees, and in an even voice she said, “Thank you, Priya. You can go. Lady Bhumika and I will both be fine.”

Priya began to walk away. She glanced back only once. Malini’s back was to her. Her face was turned away, invisible, unknowable.

Priya didn’t touch the wound at her ribs. She took the blood-soaked cloth away from her head, crumpled it up, and kept on walking.

There’s someone in my retinue you may want to go and meet.

Sima. There was Sima, standing among the other maids, talking to a warrior who held his mace at his side. Sima, looking up, then running across the forest.

“Priya!”

Sima, hugging her fiercely.

“You’ve kept so many secrets from me,” Sima gasped.

“I had to,” Priya said, then coughed as Sima squeezed tighter. The burn beneath her ribs hurt—a pain she didn’t want to contemplate, a pain deeper than skin and her capacity to understand her own wayward heart. “You’re hugging me too hard.”

“You’re a big girl, you can take it.”

“Your hair is in my mouth.”

Sima laughed wetly and pulled back. She gave Priya a huge grin, even as her eyes streamed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so glad you’re not dead.”

“I’m so glad you’re not dead too,” Priya said. “What are you doing here? And is that—are you carrying a scythe?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m here to bring you home safe. And because—because the city is in ruins, and Lady Bhumika is leading us now. So. There’s that.” Sima’s smile wavered, then faded. “I can’t exactly rely on my wages, now that the regent is dead.”

Priya looked at the people around her—at Commander Jeevan, watching her with flinty eyes. Of course the regent was dead.

“Rukh,” said Sima. “You’ll want to see him.”

Her heart was suddenly in her mouth. “See him? He’s here?”

Sima nodded.

“What is he doing in this place?” Priya asked. Who had brought a boy—a child—to the deep forest, to blood and to war?

“Lady Bhumika ordered him to come,” Sima said. She hesitated, then added, “Lady Bhumika… she knows Rukh did something he shouldn’t have. Spoke to people he shouldn’t have.”

So Bhumika had found out, then.

Maybe Rukh’s presence was a punishment. A punishment for Rukh—or a punishment for Priya, for bringing him into the mahal. But such viciousness didn’t seem like something Bhumika would willingly choose, so Priya was not sure she could believe it.

“I do want to see him,” Priya said. “Please.”

Sima nodded. Then she said, “Just. Prepare yourself, Priya. He’s not like he once was.”

And indeed he’d grown so much worse. All of his hair had the texture of leaves now, dark as ink. His veins stood out, a strange green against his skin. There were rings like the secret heart of bark, inked along his arms. Even the shadows beneath his eyes were more wood than flesh. He’d been sitting a little apart from the rest of Bhumika’s retinue, wrapped in a blanket beneath the cover of a tree. When she approached, he stood and let the blanket puddle at his feet.

He looked at her. She looked at him.

“Rukh,” she said. “Won’t you greet me?”

“Are you sure you want me to?” he asked.

She could have told him the rot had never scared her. She could have assured him in a dozen different ways.

Instead she walked over to him, bent down, and hugged him carefully. It was the first time she’d done it, and she wanted him to know he could push her away. But he didn’t. He stayed very still.

“I’m so glad to see you again,” she said.

She felt the tension in him. The way he held himself, wound tight with his fists clenched, ready for anything that could be thrown at him. She felt it break.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped out. “I’m sorry.”

She held him tighter then, fiercely, as if she had the power in nothing but her arms to keep him safe.

“I’m sorry I joined the rebels,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t loyal. But I am now. I’m staying here, with you and Sima and Lady Bhumika, I made a promise, and I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “None of it matters. You’re okay.”

“I told Lady Bhumika what I was. I told Gauri. I…” He trailed off, as if he couldn’t explain himself to her. As if he didn’t have the words for why his heart had changed. Why he wanted to remain with her, with Bhumika.

“It’s different,” she said. “Having a home. Isn’t it?”

He pursed his mouth to stop his lip from trembling. Nodded.

“You’re okay,” she said gently. “We’re both okay. You have nothing to apologize for, Rukh, nothing at all.” She hugged him again, pressing her head to the leaves and curls on his head. “I’m sorry I’m hugging you while covered in blood.”

“That’s fine,” Rukh said, muffled, sounding calmer now. He sniffled a little. “I don’t care. It doesn’t smell great, though.”

“I bet it doesn’t.”

She let him go then, before either of them could begin to feel awkward. Rukh smoothed down his clothes. Rubbed his eyes dry.

“There’s a lot that’s happened in Hiranaprastha since I left,” said Priya. “Will you both tell me everything you can?”

Some of that awful guilt finally dimmed from Rukh’s face. Sima drew in closer, and the two of them began to weave the tale as Priya thought of the deathless waters. The promise of them. The hope.

She thought of her dead siblings. The thrice-born, like Sanjana, who could manipulate the rot. She thought of what she might be able to do to save Rukh, if she had the same kind of power.

She could make something of what she was—of what she and Ashok and Bhumika were—that wasn’t only monstrous or cursed. She could make something good. She could save him.

Cure. Not curse.

Perhaps.