Chapter 56: Malini

MALINI

I almost killed her.

That would be a new nightmare, to fold in with the rest. Already, she dreamt of fire, the smell of burning flesh, Narina’s blackened smile.

Now she would dream of Priya’s heart in her hands. Pulsing. A hairsbreadth from her blade.

She did not allow herself to reveal how she felt. She walked with Lady Bhumika’s strange retinue of people—soldiers, maidservants, cooks—and ignored the looks they gave her.

Bhumika had agreed to ensure that Malini would be returned to her brother Aditya’s side, so that Malini could carry out her part of their bargain. Then, in turn, Bhumika would return to Hiranaprastha, where she would protect Ahiranya with all her and Priya’s full might and wait for Aditya to succeed or fail. For now, Bhumika directed her retinue to continue along the seeker’s path, and insisted on keeping Malini close, often leaning on her arm for support. As Bhumika did so, she made a point of asking Malini small, prying questions about her life at court. About imperial politics. About Chandra and Aditya.

Malini should not have underestimated Bhumika, when she first met her. That had been a grave error on her part.

Malini answered as best as she could. They did, after all, have an alliance. And she was glad to have made an ally of the Ahiranyi woman rather than an enemy.

Malini asked after the fate of the regent only once.

“I think you know the answer,” replied Bhumika. She said it without any visible emotion, but Malini knew how little that meant. She did not pry further. What lay in the privacy of Bhumika’s mind was Bhumika’s business.

“My condolences,” Malini said simply.

“It was necessary,” Bhumika said tonelessly, which was… revealing.

Malini nodded, walking sedately at Bhumika’s side, to match her pace. To her distant left, she saw Priya, walking with a child and another maidservant. As if sensing her gaze, Priya turned to look at her. There was a question in the shape of her mouth, the tilt of her head. They hadn’t yet had a chance to talk alone.

Malini looked away and found Bhumika watching her with an unfathomable expression.

“Are you happy with our pact, Lady Bhumika?”

Bhumika considered this, turning her head forward once more.

“Yes,” Bhumika said finally. “Symbolism is important. And freedom… You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long.” She clasped her hands before herself. “And yet I never wanted this—this collapse of the regency. This end. I understand that to ease the pain of being a vassal nation comes at the cost of mortal lives. Now bloodshed is inevitable… I gladly enter a pact that allows the death to be minimized, and even a shade of our freedom, our selves, to be saved.

“Besides,” Bhumika murmured, “who am I to undo the vows made between my sister and yourself?”

Malini glanced at her. Bhumika looked weary, but there was a smile on her lips, small and knowing.

Later, when everyone stopped to rest, Malini slipped away and found a place to sit alone—the trunk of a fallen tree, beneath the cover of an old banyan that had sucked the moisture and life from the earth around it, leaving a private glade. She waited.

It wasn’t long before Priya arrived.

“Finally,” Priya said, approaching. The ground whispered beneath her feet, small plants turning around her heels. Malini wondered if Priya even realized it was happening. “I’ve wanted to talk to you.”

“It’s been difficult,” Malini agreed. “There are—so many people. I’m not used to it any longer. It was so much quieter on the Hirana.”

“Malini,” Priya said. “I just…”

Malini watched Priya draw in closer, until Priya was standing over her, one arm wrapped across her stomach.

Malini braced herself. Waited.

“I understand,” said Priya, “why you threatened what you did. It was the only weapon you had.”

Malini tilted her head back, looking into Priya’s eyes. “But do you understand that I almost killed you?”

Priya was silent. She didn’t look away from Malini. Didn’t move.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Malini asked, looking up, up. “If you had lost—and you were losing, Priya—he would have killed me or hurt me, or used me as a hostage in order to use you. Better to have killed you than that. Better to have killed you than let an enemy of Parijatdvipa have that kind of power. That… that is what I told myself before Lady Bhumika came. I told myself to drive the knife into your heart. I would have done it. I would have…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Images of Narina and Alori and the blood in Priya’s hair seared themselves behind her lids. She opened them again. “I couldn’t,” she admitted. “I couldn’t do it.”

Priya exhaled. The light was behind her. Malini could only see her eyes—the fall of her hair, black haloed in gold.

“Then you’re not the person you think you are,” Priya said.

“But I’m going to have to be, Priya. I need to be—the part of me I need to be—can’t be good. Or soft. Not to do what’s needful.”

Priya said nothing. She simply tilted her head, listening.

“I am going to have to carve out a new face. A face that can pay the price I need to pay. I am going to become monstrous,” Malini said, tasting the weight of the words upon her lips, her tongue. “For so long I have only wanted to escape and survive. But now I am free, and for the sake of my purpose… for the sake of power,” she admitted, “I am going to become something other than human. Other than simply not good. I must.”

Priya hesitated. Said, finally, “I’m not sure that’s what being powerful means. Losing yourself.”

“As if you haven’t paid a price,” Malini said. “As if your Bhumika hasn’t. Or your brother.”

“Fine. So power—costs. But what you do when you have power, when you’ve gained it—that’s the key, isn’t it?” Priya took a step forward. “I know what my brother would do. And… it’s not exactly that he’s wrong. But he’s not clever enough to make something that lasts out of the carnage he’ll bring. I should know. Neither am I. But what will you do, once you have your justice?”

“Once Chandra is dealt with? I don’t know,” Malini said. “I can’t imagine it. To even hope—it’s been beyond me for so long.”

“You could do something good,” said Priya. “No—you’ve already promised something good. Ahiranya’s freedom.”

“And that’s kind of me, is it? Freeing Ahiranya so rebels like your brother can seize it and ill-use it in Parijatdvipa’s place?”

Priya sighed. “I don’t know what it means to be a just ruler, all right? I don’t know what you want to hear. But I think you can figure it out. You’re going to be influential when your brother Aditya claims his throne. I know it.”

“Priya. I almost slid a knife into your heart. How can you be here? How can you speak to me?”

“Well, if you had, I’d be dead, and we wouldn’t be talking about anything.” She shrugged.

“Priya.” And oh—the voice that came out of her was pleading. “Please.” What was she pleading with Priya for—honesty? Forgiveness? Whatever she wanted, she knew only Priya could provide it.

Priya gazed back at her, keen-eyed, unsmiling.

“When I was small, when I began as a temple child, I learned how important it is to be strong. We were trained to fight—to fight enemies and fight each other. To cut away the parts of us that were weak. That was what surviving—and ruling—meant. Not being weak.” Priya paused. “And still, most of us died. Because we trusted the people who’d raised us. I suppose that was weakness, too.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That… that the people you care about can be used against you. And strength—strength is a knife turned on the parts of yourself that care.” Priya’s fingertips touched at the hollow of her own ribs.

Malini swallowed. She thought of the night when the needle-flower leaving her body had nearly killed her, and she had pinned Priya beneath her. She thought of the blazing softness of Priya’s beating heart.

“I know what it means to have power,” Priya continued. “I know the price. I don’t know if I can blame you for wanting to pay it.”

“You should,” Malini rasped. Her throat felt raw.

“Maybe,” Priya admitted. “Maybe if I’d been raised gently by people who taught me to be kind and good, I’d know how to do it. But I was taught goodness and kindness, or what passes for it, by other damaged children, so I can’t.” She came forward. Sank to the ground by the tree stump where Malini sat. “My own brother ripped my heart out in a vision. That part doesn’t matter,” Priya said hastily, when Malini’s mouth began to shape an alarmed question. “What matters is that my own brother hurt me, horribly, and I don’t think I can hate him, even now.”

Malini pushed the obvious questions aside. “When my brother hurt me, I made it my life’s purpose to destroy him.”

Priya laughed softly. “Maybe that’s the better way.”

“I’m not so sure.” She couldn’t smile. Her heart felt like a howl. “You need to forgive less easily, Priya. You need to guard yourself.”

Priya looked up at her through those eyelashes like strange gold, those clear eyes pinning her soul.

“You couldn’t use the knife on me,” Priya said. “Do you think one day you’ll turn yourself into someone who’ll be able to? Who’ll carve out my heart with no regrets?”

Malini thought of Alori and Narina and burning. “Priya,” she said finally. Her voice was choked. And in it were all the splinters of her, all the things frayed by loss and fire and prison, isolation and fury, by the tenderness of Priya’s mouth on her own. She did not know. She did not know.

Priya’s expression softened. There was something knowing about that look—knowing and fond.

“Malini,” she said. “If you do, if you change—I won’t let you do it. I may not be canny or clever or—or anything you are, but I do have power.” The leaves around them, as if in response to her words, rustled and drew closer. The trees were a wall around them. “I’ll stop you. I’ll turn any blade to grass, or to flowers. I’ll bind your hands with vines.”

“Will you hurt me?” Malini demanded. “You should, to save yourself.”

Priya shook her head. “No.”

“Priya.”

“No. I’m sorry, but no. Because I’m strong enough not to need to.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Malini. “Don’t—”

Her own words left her. Her own words broke. This was what she had needed. Not forgiveness, not a balm for this strange writhing fury inside her, but the promise of someone to care for—to love—that she could not harm. Even if she had to. Even if she tried.

She leaned forward, and Priya took Malini’s face in her hands, as if she’d been waiting to trace Malini’s cheeks with her thumbs, to look up at her with that utter, terrifying softness.

“I’ll never understand your magic,” said Malini, as Priya gently stroked her brow. “And I’m glad. So furious, and yet so glad.”

Priya made a noise—a noise that meant nothing and everything, and raised her head, and kissed Malini once more. This time there was no fury in it. Only the warmth of Priya’s skin. Only her soft breath, and the pin-straight fall of her hair, brushing Malini’s cheek like the flat of a wing. Only a feeling like a deep dark well, a feeling like falling without the desire to rise.

Bhumika went into labor the next day.

Malini was standing near the lady’s palanquin when a gasp came from within it. She turned and was suddenly surrounded by a throng of people as the palanquin was hurriedly lowered.

“We’ll need to stop,” said Bhumika tightly. “For a time. Just for a time.”

“Someone set up a tent,” barked her maidservant.

Malini stepped back, back. She watched Priya crouch at her sister’s side. After a moment, she slipped away. She wasn’t needed here.

As she walked, she glanced around. She’d expected the soldiers to come running the minute the lady cried out, but they were disturbingly absent.

Malini walked farther up the path, still alone. She hadn’t been alone in a long time.

I should be afraid, she thought. She’d seen enough of the strange tree behind the hut where Priya had recovered to give her a healthy terror of this forest—of its waters and its soil, and most certainly, its trees—but she was not.

She finally saw Bhumika’s Ahiranyi soldiers in a clearing ahead. As she approached them, their commander whirled. He turned the sword on her. Aimed it, with instinctual swiftness, at her sternum.

She didn’t flinch. To flinch was to invite the first cut. Chandra had taught her that. She simply met his eyes and waited. She could see the moment when he realized who she was—and saw, too, the moment that followed, when he considered skewering her through anyway.

He lowered his sword.

“Princess,” he said.

“Commander Jeevan,” she said. She’d heard his name often enough already on this journey to remember it. “What has frightened you?”

His jaw tightened. He didn’t sheathe the blade.

“I am not frightened.” His voice was a whisper. “And keep your voice low. There are men farther along the path. Setting up camp. We can’t skirt them without being seen.”

And they couldn’t move anyway. Not easily. Not now.

“I’ll get Priya,” she said.

“No. Lady Bhumika needs her.”

Ah. So someone had told him what was happening. “She has plenty of women to rely on,” Malini said. “But you will need Priya’s strength.”

She turned to go. He grabbed her arm.

She met the soldier’s eyes. “They are Parijati, aren’t they?”

He said nothing.

“Don’t fear,” she murmured. “If they’re Chandra’s men, I have no qualms about you killing them.”

“And if they are your priest brother’s?”

It seemed too much to hope, that they would be Aditya’s soldiers. But nonetheless she said, “Then, knowing the pact I made with Lady Bhumika, you should allow me to join them.”

“I’ll get Priya,” one of the other soldiers muttered. Jeevan gave a curt nod and did not let go of Malini.

“You accompanied me to the Hirana,” Malini said. “I remember.”

“I did,” Jeevan said.

She tilted her head a little, considering him. “You feel no pity for me,” she murmured. “But you took no joy in my suffering either. Curious.”

“Not so curious,” he said, gaze still fixed on her, though a muscle in his jaw twitched a little. “I care about only a few things. You are not one of them.”

After a long moment, someone approached.

“What is it?” Priya’s voice was low. She drew near them, her footsteps silent on the ground.

“Men ahead,” said Jeevan. “Camped. They don’t yet know we’re here. They will soon.”

“Are they dangerous to us?”

“They’re Parijati.”

Priya met Malini’s eyes.

“Protect us however you see fit,” said Malini.

Priya huffed out a breath. “Jeevan, why are you holding her hand?”

“Someone is approaching,” one of Jeevan’s men said, quiet, sword at the ready.

Jeevan swore, finally releasing Malini, who had just long enough to wish she had a weapon herself before a man appeared ahead of them. There was no way for them to hide from view. Jeevan and his men stepped forward with their swords, and Priya straightened, drawing on the strange magic within her.

The Parijati man turned on his heel and ran.

For a moment, they simply stared at his retreating form.

“Does no one have a bow and arrow?” Malini murmured.

Priya gave her a look. Twitched her fingers, and a branch flung itself through the air and hit the man on the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground.

He yelled as he fell. Priya winced, swearing.

“Be ready,” Jeevan said. The men fanned out as racing footsteps converged, and more Parijati appeared.

“There’s more of them!” One of the Parijati men shouted the words, then something incomprehensible that drew more footsteps, men running along the seeker’s path. Men of Parijat and men of Alor, in the sharp blue turbans of their people.

Wait—Aloran.

Jeevan and the others met them with a clash of steel, swords a dancing arc against the air. Priya spared Malini a glance—mouthed at her to run—then turned and strode into the fray. No weapons were in her hands—nothing but the thing that lay in her blood.

Malini should have fled. Common sense demanded it. But there was something more than sense, common or otherwise, at play. Aloran men. Men of Parijat, but—for all they wore Parijati clothing, in pale weaves, with prayer necklaces wound about their throats—they did not wear the white and gold of the imperial army. This was an opportunity, a possibility.

More fool her. Of course one Aloran man broke through Jeevan’s ranks. Of course he ran, and swung his sword at her.

“Rao,” she gasped out. “I know Prince Rao, do not harm me!”

The Aloran’s eyes widened.

Unfortunately, words did little good against a moving blade. Malini could only watch as it descended toward her—and then Jeevan was there. His sword met the Aloran man’s at an angle, knocking it aside and out of the Aloran man’s hands. He struck, and the Aloran ducked, rolling to the ground.

Malini stumbled backward, away from the fight, and felt the earth shift beneath her, carrying her farther as if on a green wave. Priya had not turned back, but of course Malini knew it was her hand in that moment of strangeness.

Run.Even the earth was saying it, speaking in Priya’s voice.

But Rao.

It was not her finest moment. It was not an act of subtle politics or cunning. It was only this: her hands clenching into fists as she sucked in a deep, deep breath and yelled with all her might.

“Rao!” She nearly winced at the sound of her own voice, so shrill and sharp. “Rao, I am here! Rao!”

“Stop.” A voice. Rao’s voice—a whipcrack of command, achingly familiar. “Peace, brothers. Peace!”

It should have done nothing. But Priya swore, and then the earth moved, the soil sinking, holding all their feet fast.

Everyone froze.

As the chaos settled, Malini took in the sight before her. Men with swords. And there—Rao.

Rao, with Jeevan’s sword tip beneath his chin. The two of them were caught by the earth, fused into the moment before the cut of the blade.

Here was the moment when she would know if she was a hostage after all.

“Let him go, Commander,” Malini said. “Lower your blade. These men are my brother Aditya’s.”

A pause. “Are you sure,” Jeevan said flatly.

“Yes,” said Malini. “In honor of the vow I have made. Yes.”

“Jeevan,” said Priya. “Come on. Lower it.”

Clearly conflicted, Jeevan finally let the tip of his sword fall. And Malini looked at Rao—that pleasant face, that dark unbound hair—and nearly shook from the familiarity of it. Of him.

“Hello, Prince Rao,” she said.

“Malini,” Rao said, by way of greeting. He blinked at her. “I—Priya?”

“Lord Rajan,” Priya said. “How nice to see you again.”

“Priya is my ally, Rao,” said Malini. “I think there has been a… misunderstanding. These Ahiranyi have allied with me. With Aditya.”

“Of course they have,” he said, the strangest smile gracing his face, for only a moment. “Stand down. All of you.”

His men lowered their own weapons, with a reluctance mirrored by Jeevan’s own soldiers. After a moment, the ground rippled, releasing them all, and Jeevan stumbled back with a curse. Carefully, Rao took a step forward. Another.

And then he was before her. He did not touch her. He merely bowed his head and touched his fingertips to his forehead, in a gesture of love and respect. Malini held her hands out before her, glad they did not shake.

“Prince Rao,” she said. “I know you waited for me. Sought to save me.”

“I did. I’m sorry I did not accomplish my goal.”

“No matter,” she said softly. “But tell me. Why are you here, upon this path?”

“Our scouts brought news of people here. Women, men, and children. And I hoped, but I didn’t know, couldn’t be sure… ah. Malini.” His voice lowered. “I am glad you’re here at last.”

He took her hands in his own. Looked at her, as if her face were a blazing light, as if she shone brighter than a statue of a mother.

“I’m here,” he said, “to take you to your brother. Your brother is here, Malini. He’s here.”