Chapter 64: Bhumika

BHUMIKA

Even with the use of a palanquin, she was exhausted by the time they reached the bower of bones. Labor had left her body changed and depleted, and the baby barely slept. Thank the spirits that she had Sima to give her advice on keeping the poor child alive.

This is no place for you, she thought, holding Padma close to her chest. They had made it to the bower of bones. There were fine, delicate profusions of bones upon the ground. Clinking in the leaves above them. No place for any of us.

As Khalida kept watch, she rested her back against a tree and fed Padma. She was so tired that she could have wept.

“Not long now,” she whispered to Padma, who was now only quietly fretful. “Soon, we’ll be home.”

“The city isn’t safe,” Khalida reported, later. She and Jeevan had entered Hiranaprastha, returning to the edge of the forest, where the others waited, with what news they were able to gather. “People are protecting their own homes as best as they can, but guards and soldiers without masters are causing plenty of havoc. We could be in trouble if we enter the city as we are.”

Bhumika nodded in acknowledgment, unsurprised. Her mind was overfull of possibilities and concerns—the likely distance of any imperial forces, sent to quell unrest or provide the regent aid; the quantity and strength of the soldiers she and the others would have to face; whether they would end up caught between multiple forces, in a melee of blood…

“We don’t have to fight,” Priya said suddenly. “There’s a way to move through the city without upsetting anyone until we’re ready and able to deal with them.”

Priya’s plan was neat and simple, and Bhumika couldn’t keep an approving look from crossing her face.

“See,” Priya said, with a smile. “I am clever. Shows you.”

“I’ve never said that you’re not clever.”

“You call me a fool all the time.”

Bhumika wrinkled her nose and looked away. Sisters.

“We’re prepared,” one rebel said, soon after. The vial-cursed stood in a circle around them. Ashok was lying near them, wrapped in a shawl, Padma fussing in her blanket next to him.

Priya met Bhumika’s eyes. Bhumika nodded.

A slow, shared exhale of breath and the ground around them bloomed with sharp flowers, stormy purples and bitter yellows. The rebels breathed with them, sharing strength.

The flowers began to rise up the rebels’ feet. Bhumika looked down and watched them curl around her own ankles. Moving across her like new flesh.

The city was broken: buildings burnt and smoldering, the few that stood shuttered and boarded. There were figures moving in the distance, groups of men with axes or maces, faces swathed in cloth. But they didn’t approach the rebels or the people of the mahal.

Even from a distance, the leaves and flowers rising from their skin were visible. They looked like a huddle of rot sufferers, stumbling wide-eyed through a city that had no place for them. They were given a wide berth.

Bhumika held Padma—who was, blessedly, sleeping—against herself as they crossed Hiranaprastha, and gazed at the mahal. Its outer walls were shattered, where the rebels had broken the stone with vine, and shifted the foundations by moving soil and root with their vial-cursed strength. But as Bhumika looked, she saw a light flickering from deep within the mahal.

A woman on the walls, an arrow nocked upon her bow.

Bhumika shouldered to the front, head held high. When the woman on the walls saw her, she lowered her bow. Gave a shout. And with relief, Bhumika realized her people had held the rose palace after all.

“The thorns kept the worst out,” the maidservant Gauri said gruffly. She walked with obvious pain, but there was a steel to her that told Bhumika she’d held her own well since Bhumika’s departure. “Those are vicious, my lady. We were glad of them.”

A handful of exhausted Parijati and Ahiranyi soldiers, the armed maids, the orphans—these were the people who had held the mahal since Bhumika’s departure.

The servants looked uneasily at the rebels but said nothing. It was a relief, at least, that the rebels possessed the good sense not to wear their masks. But Bhumika had no desire to test her servants-turned-soldiers, or the fragile, uneasy truce that had grown between her retinue and Ashok’s. It would not take much, she knew, to destroy it.

“Take her,” she said, turning to Jeevan and handing him her sleeping daughter. “If I don’t return, she’ll need a wet nurse. Speak to the maids. They’ll arrange it.”

He stared at her, stricken.

“I must go to the Hirana,” she said. “I must gain the strength we need to keep this country safe.”

He looked as if he were struggling for words.

“Speak up,” she said to him.

“She will have no one,” he said finally. “My lady.”

“If I die, then she’s no one’s child,” Bhumika said. “And that would be fitting, I suppose. It was my fate once, and I refused it.” But she touched her own face to Padma’s regardless, and breathed her in, and kissed her forehead before straightening up.

Jeevan bowed his head to her. Said nothing more, as she left, his hands gently clasped around the small bundle.

Together, they began the walk to the Hirana. The rebels. Her siblings. Priya, expression determined. Ashok, half-conscious, blood trickling from his nose.

“Lean on me,” said Priya.

Ashok shook his head, exhausted.

“I can carry you,” said Priya, taking his arm.