Chapter 6: Priya

PRIYA

It was only their fourth week climbing the Hirana when they faced disaster.

Priya was at the back of the line of maidservants, halfway through the climb, when she heard a scream that cut through the blackness, followed by the clang of a lantern striking the ground. She froze. Above her, the snaking line of lanterns wavered and went still, as their bearers froze along with her.

She sucked in a slow breath. She tasted rain, or blood, or something iron-sharp that somehow resembled both. She pressed the soles of her feet down onto the damp stone, grounding herself. In her left hand the guiding rope—slippery with water—stung her already abraded palm. Wet rope was an agony on raw skin, but Priya had only clung on tighter when the rain had begun to pour halfway through their ascent, soaking the rope along with their clothes and skin and supplies. It had stopped now, but only after turning the stone of the Hirana slick and dangerously smooth. It was no wonder someone had fallen.

Behind her Meena whispered, “What happened?”

Meena was the youngest maidservant who’d volunteered to take up this role, and she was a nervous thing at the best of times. The scream had shaken her. Priya could hear how shallow her breathing was now, a panicked in-out rhythm that made Priya’s own lungs ache in sympathy.

“I don’t know,” lied Priya. She tried to sound calm, for Meena’s sake. “Are you still holding on tight?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to look.”

“But—”

“Take the lantern.” She handed their shared light to Meena, who grasped it with trembling fingers. “I won’t be long.”

Just like Priya had once known how to peel skin from bone, she’d known how to climb the Hirana. That was what the temple children had done, after all: led pilgrims seeking the blessings of the yaksa spirits up the Hirana’s surface; guided the pilgrims up to the temple elders, who were the yaksa’s chosen. There had been no rope then. Pilgrimage was a journey, after all, both spiritual and physical. It had a cost. Some faltered or failed. Some fell. The yaksa demanded strength from their worshippers, just as they had demanded it from their temple council.

Only the worthy could rise.

Priya had been worthy once.

Without the lantern in her hand, it was easier to move swiftly. She held the rope only loosely, darting up the Hirana as fast as she could. She and Meena had fallen behind the other maidservants—Meena’s nervousness had slowed them both down—but Priya soon reached the point where the others stood, huddled so close their feet were almost touching.

The maidservant nearest to Priya was leaning out precariously, a hand twisting the guiding rope, the other holding her lantern as far out into the dark as she could.

In its light, Priya could see Sima.

Sima was trapped to the left of the guiding rope, slightly farther down the Hirana’s surface: She must have tripped, slipping, her body sliding treacherously down the wet rock. Her arms were outstretched, every muscle in them defined. She had her fingers hooked into one of the fissures in the stone, knuckles white with the strain of holding her body up. The rest of her was invisible.

She’d fallen into a rift carved into the rock, a cleverly concealed gap hollowed out between a series of statues, shaped to follow the natural fall of shadow. From most angles, it would have been invisible. But now that Sima was caught in it, the trap was hard to miss. It held her like a mouth, toothless and grasping.

Priya had no idea how deep the rift was, but the thought of Sima losing her grip—of Sima being killed by the tumble that followed, or worse, being trapped alive down in the dark where no one could reach her—made Priya’s stomach clench with nausea.

The leaning maidservant was yanked back by a rough hand.

“Don’t lean out,” Gauri, the head maidservant, said angrily. “I can’t have you falling too. You,” she shouted to a woman farther up, gesturing at her with her stick, “go and fetch a guard from the doors. Tell them a girl’s slipped. Hurry!”

The woman began to climb. But she was too slow, on the wet ground, with the lamp and the rope in her hands. Too slow.

Sima was panting hard, the whites of her eyes visible in the flickering lantern-lit dark.

“I can’t hold on,” Sima wheezed.

“You can and you will,” Gauri said. “You’re a strong girl. Don’t let go now.”

But Sima was frightened, and her hands were surely as raw as Priya’s, the stone glassy under her fingers. She would not be able to hold on until help came.

Priya looked down at the ground. At the stone, carved to resemble vines and leaves, melding with the green sprouting up through its cracked surface.

She’d known the Hirana once, and it had known her.

It knew her still.

She hadn’t been sure the first night she’d climbed, when all she’d been able to concentrate on had been making her way up to the top without losing her nerve. But she was sure now. As she stood and forced herself to breathe—as the lanterns shook, and Sima’s fingers slid the tiniest bit from their handhold—she felt the pulse of the wet stone beneath her feet, slithering as if the vines on its surface moved to cradle her. She had a feeling that if she pressed her ear to the Hirana she’d hear the stone heave, like the vertebrae of a great, sleeping beast.

She could step out. Let that spine carry her. All it would take was a leap of faith.

I shouldn’t, Priya thought distantly. Spirits, I really shouldn’t.

But this was Sima. Her friend.

She kneeled down. The yellow lantern light threw shadows over her bare feet. The stone beneath her was black, its surface fissured like a cracked egg, leaking lichen and moss from the yolk. She touched her fingertips to the green; felt the warmth of it beneath the rainwater.

“Ground protect me,” she murmured. Then she stood once more and stepped away from the guiding rope, out to the left and into the darkness.

She heard shocked cries above her—heard Gauri yell her name—but Priya did not lift her head. She kept on moving. Slow, careful, cursing herself in her head.

She did not want to do this. She would regret doing this.

She wanted to do this. She wanted to know if she could.

She could hear Sima’s panicked breath.

There were raised carvings, on this step: serpents coiled into heaps, a cobra with its mouth parted and its teeth pointed up. She felt the sharp edge against her skin. Froze.

She heard a voice in her head. Not her brother’s this time. Low, cultured. Amused.

An elder.

You and the Hirana have a special bond, don’t you, small one?The memory of hands on her shoulders. A figure looming over her, robed in a sheath of white cotton, beads of sacred wood cascading from their hair. But don’t forget it’s built to trick your eyes. So don’t trust your eyes.

She swore internally. Closed her eyes, as if her temple elders were still alive and there to be obeyed, to approve of her. She moved her foot farther to the left, trusting her skin. Roughness gave way to soft vines, tangled together. Beneath them the stone was solid.

One step. Another. Another. She tested the ground. Broken, here. Solid, here. She could hear Gauri still shouting, voice hoarse. The stone dipped, sudden and sharp, and Priya stopped once more, curling her toes against the ground. Sima’s breath was close now, very close, so Priya opened her eyes.

Sima lay on the ground before her. The whites of her eyes were bright in the dark.

Priya drew back her feet and kneeled on the ground where it was rough enough to hold her steady. Then she lay on her stomach. Held out her hand.

“You can climb now,” she said. “If you use me. But you’ll have to let go of the rock and take hold of me. Can you do that for me, Sima?”

“I…” Sima stopped. Her bloodless fingers twitched. “I… don’t think I can.”

“You can,” Priya said steadily.

“I’ll drag you down too. We’ll both die.”

“You won’t,” Priya said, although she wasn’t entirely sure. “Come on now, Sima.”

“The ghosts are going to take me,” whispered Sima. “I know it.”

“If there’s any justice, the spirits of the temple elders and temple children are with the yaksa, somewhere far away from the Hirana,” Priya said quietly. “And if there isn’t, well. I don’t think those ghosts would want good Ahiranyi lives, when there are plenty of Parijati above us for the taking.”

“Priya,” Sima bit out. “Don’t. You’ll—”

“Get in trouble? You can tell me off properly when we’re both safe. I promise I’ll listen.”

Sima let out a whimper that might have been an attempt at a laugh. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Priya. I’m scared.”

“You don’t have to be scared. I’m right here.” Priya pressed her upper arms down onto the stone, dragging herself a little closer. Just enough that she could touch her hand to Sima’s. She could feel Sima’s fingers shaking. “The worthy are always safe on the Hirana,” Priya said. “That’s what they used to tell pilgrims. And you’re worthy, Sima. I’ve decided it. So you’re going to be fine.”

Sima’s grip faltered. Her body jolted, and Priya scrambled for her, heart racing. Sima’s hand clamped back against stone a moment later.

“Priya!” Her voice was reedy with terror.

“Take my hand,” Priya said. “Come.”

After a long, fraught moment, Sima did. She clasped Priya’s hand in a painful, wrenching grip. She choked out a sob, then a scream, and dragged herself up, up. Her nails dug into Priya’s skin. Priya gritted her own teeth, hooking her foot against rock, and prayed they’d both survive.

Finally, Sima was free from the hollow. Gasping, they both climbed to their feet. Above them, the other maidservants were silent—afraid, perhaps, that a single noise would make them fall.

Deep breath in. Out.

“Hold my arms,” Priya said finally. Now that she had Sima, the panic had finally caught up with her. She could feel it singing in her blood, in the hot sting of the nail marks on her arms. “I’ll guide you back to the rope.”

It took time. But eventually they climbed back to the others and gripped the guiding rope. Sima collapsed to her knees, crying; another maidservant murmured to her and placed a hand on her head.

Priya felt a sharp rap against her shoulder. She turned to see Gauri. The older woman’s face was bloodless white. Eyes unblinking.

“You fool,” she said. “Both of you. Stop blubbering, Sima. We’re late.”

Sima hiccupped something incomprehensible in response. But she rose to her feet. The maidservants began moving once more. Gauri gave Priya one last look—terrified and furious and too thoughtful by far—then turned away.

“I can keep carrying the lantern, if you want,” Meena said. She stood behind Priya, trembling like a leaf.

Priya curled and uncurled her hands. Her whole body ached.

“No need,” she said. “Thank you for carrying it, Meena. But I’m fine now. Here, let me take it from you.”

Two guards waited at the gates to check each of the women carefully for weapons. They examined Gauri’s stick, as they always did, before handing it back to her with a nod of respect. They were both soldiers who’d traveled with the princess from Parijat, and they looked at the rest of the maidservants coolly, dismissively.

Priya looked at them in return. She missed her little knife.

“She’s waiting,” said one. Then he added, “I heard a girl fell. Sorry for your loss.”

Gauri’s jaw tightened, just slightly.

“We were lucky not to lose her, spirits be thanked,” she said. “I sent one of mine to ask for your help. Did she not request that you come?”

His expression was remote. He shrugged.

“We were told not to move. But all’s well, I suppose, if the girl’s alive.”

“All’s well,” Gauri agreed. But she did not look happy.

Priya couldn’t help but think that if one of their own, like Mithunan, had been guarding the princess—or even the regent’s own personal retinue of cold-eyed men—they would have come to save Sima. Or at least would’ve tried.

The guards opened the gates. The maidservant who had gone ahead was waiting for them, face marked with tears. When she saw Sima her expression brightened—but the brisk tap of approaching footsteps dimmed it once more, and she lowered her head.

The princess’s attendant appeared in the entrance hall.

Lady Pramila was a Parijati noblewoman, tall and severe. She was always clad in a sari embroidered with white jasmine flowers as a mark of her highborn blood, a thick shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders. Around her waist she wore a belt, and upon it she wore a set of keys and a knife sheath. For all her noble blood and the fineness of her sari, she was no more than a jailer, and every single servant—Priya included—already hated and feared her.

“There are only three hours before dawn,” Pramila said coolly.

“The rain delayed us, my lady,” Gauri replied. “The monsoon is—that is to say, it is difficult to climb in this weather. We almost lost a girl.”

Pramila shrugged as if to say, That is no concern of mine.

“She lies asleep in the northern chamber, as always,” she said. “Make sure you’re gone by daylight. If your work is not done by then, so be it.”

“My lady.”

“The next time you’re late,” said Pramila, “I will need to inform the regent of my displeasure.”

Gauri bowed her head deferentially. Priya and the others did the same. As soon as Pramila was gone, disappearing into her study, Gauri turned to them.

“We’ll start in the kitchens,” she said. “Quickly, now. And if you tarry, I promise to beat each and every one of you blue.”

Priya kindled the kitchen fire, fanning it into steady flames. She chopped onions and peeled vegetables, setting them aside to be cooked. That finished, she moved to one of the temple corridors commonly used by the guards and began to scrub the floor clean of their muddy footprints.

“Priya.” Priya raised her head, startled. Sima was looking down at her, arms crossed in front of her. “I—I wanted to say thank you.”

“You don’t need to.”

Sima nodded. Her face was drawn. There was a question in the tilt of her head, in the curve of her mouth.

“I’ve never seen you like that before,” Sima said.

“Like what?”

“Brave. I suppose.”

“Hey now,” Priya said, “I’m very brave. Who was the one who caught the lizard that got into our dormitory when all the other girls were screaming? Me.”

“What you said,” Sima replied. “When you were—when you saved me. I…” She hesitated. “Did you…?”

Priya waited. She wondered what Sima would ask. Were you a pilgrim once? That would be fine. Priya could lie convincingly, if Sima asked her that. But if she asked, Were you a temple child? How could Priya lie, then, when even being on the Hirana made her past feel so close, her skin too tight to hold it in?

Ah, spirits, Priya hoped Sima wouldn’t ask.

Finally, Sima said, “Gauri wants you to find Meena.”

“What?”

“Meena’s missing,” Sima said. “Hiding, I expect. I think she was very frightened.”

“She was,” Priya agreed. Sighing, she dropped her rag in the bucket. “I’ll go and find her.”

“I’ll finish your work,” said Sima. “And, Pri, if you need anything…”

“Yes?”

Sima kneeled down, taking up the sodden cloth.

“Then talk to me,” she said. “I owe you. That’s all.”

Priya made an effort to find Meena. Truly she did. But if the girl was crying in a corner somewhere, she’d likely turn up in her own time. After peering into a few small cloister rooms, once used to house the effigies of spirits—now empty and gathering dust—Priya discarded the task and took the opportunity to head where she’d wanted to go all along.

Beyond the cloister rooms, Lady Pramila’s study, the kitchen, the latrine, and the bathing room—not far from the living quarters that once belonged to the old temple elders—lay the triveni.

The triveni was a room open to the air, held up by huge pillars carved to resemble yaksa. They grasped the ceiling with vast arms. Three branches of the temple were accessible through the triveni: the forbidden northern chamber where the princess slumbered, and those to the west and the south. Between them were swathes of the sky, the sunrise entering unimpeded from the east. If one was unwary, they could step directly out onto the Hirana’s outer surface—and straight into all its dangers.

Priya was not unwary. She crossed the triveni’s surface, which was covered in deep, sweeping grooves intended to resemble water on a shore. She came to the plinth at the room’s center. Above the plinth was the roof, a circle carved in the center like a window to the sky. The plinth’s surface was wet, its pale stone rain-washed and glimmering.

As she had so many times before, she murmured a prayer and pressed her hands to the plinth’s surface. She lowered her head.

She remembered there had been fat cushions on the floor once, for the temple elders to sit upon comfortably. And there had been chandeliers hung from the ceiling, laden with candles. She remembered running between the cushions, a hand dragging her back from the edge, and another cuffing her around the ear. Behave or you’ll fall, you silly child.

She remembered the rasp of silk against the ground; a crown mask of varnished wood, glinting in the light. Her brother’s voice. The laughter of her other siblings, mingled together. That, and no more.

A noise broke her reflection: a crash, overloud, splintering the air. She raised her head with a jerk.

“Meena?”

The noise had come from the corridor ahead of her. The northern chamber. If the fool girl had gone toward the prisoner’s room…

Priya lifted her hands from the plinth and slipped into the corridor, which was dark, one mere torch guttering in its sconce. On the walls were stone reliefs of the yaksa at war, conquering the world with swords of thorn in the gnarled wood of their hands. The paint had peeled and faded long ago, but the images were still clear. The mythical temple elders of old stood by the side of the yaksa, staring at her through crown masks, featureless apart from their open chests, which were hollowed out, three streams of water pouring from them onto a battlefield of corpses.

Forcing herself not to hesitate—not to linger and stare, drinking in the stories with her eyes—Priya slipped past them, bare feet silent on the ground.

She paused suddenly. The floor was damp, and not with rain. The ceiling and walls were enclosed here. She kneeled. Touched the liquid and raised her fingers to her face. Wine.

Close—very close—came the sound of muffled sobs.

Priya turned her head.

The wall to her right was latticed, with perforations wrought into the shape of flowers. Through it, Priya saw cloth, heavy silk curtains wavering as if in a wind, partially torn from their hooks. A metal pitcher upon the ground, the source of the spilled wine. She leaned closer…

And met a woman’s eyes.

For a moment, Priya didn’t know where she was. She was in her own past. She was staring at another temple daughter, sprawled on the floor before her. She was staring at her own ghosts made flesh.

Wide dark eyes. The whites bloodshot with weeping. The eyebrows were thick and arched, the skin a pale teak. The sobbing eased, and Priya could hear the woman’s breath: a staccato rhythm, rattling and sore.

It was the breath that brought Priya back to herself. Left her back in her own skin, shaking on her knees.

The prisoner. She was staring at the prisoner. The emperor’s sister. The princess.

There should have been no way for this to happen. The prisoner should have been sleeping.

But the lattice wall—this lattice wall—was in a corridor that no maidservant should rightly have entered. No one had thought to block the lattice with more than a simple curtain; no one had thought this could occur.

Look away, thought Priya. Look away.

She should have lowered her gaze. She should have bowed. Instead she stared, unblinking, into those eyes. She stared, and held her own breath inside herself, a tight kernel that threatened to burst against her ribs. She was like a bird, pinned by the wing. Flight was beyond her.

The prisoner gazed back in return. She was lying on the floor, propped up on her elbows, her hair a wild, dark curtain around her. The wine had stained her pale sari wound-red. Still holding Priya’s eyes, she leaned forward.

“Are you real?” Low voice, kept carefully soft, to avoid notice, and rough from weeping. “Speak. I need to be sure.”

Priya’s mouth parted. No sound escaped her lips. She wanted to ask the same in return.

The prisoner swallowed. Priya heard the click of her throat; saw the tilt of her head, as she regarded Priya with an expression that Priya could not hope to understand.

“Real, then.” Her eyes were rimmed in red. “Good.”

“Please,” Priya whispered again. “Forgive me. Princess.”

She scrambled to her feet. Bowed, head low, hands clasped before her. And then she turned and fled.

She heard nothing behind her. Only the absence of weeping. Only the princess’s hoarse breath, fading into the silent void of the night.

She raced back to the triveni.

At the center of the room, on the low plinth, sat Meena. Her back was to Priya, but she turned when Priya approached. Blinked at her. There were tear tracks on her cheeks.

“Priya?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I was just tidying,” said Meena, which was such an obvious lie that Priya could only stare at her, openmouthed, for a moment.

“Get down.”

“I was just…”

“Get down from there,” she repeated. And then, because her tongue and her heart were traitorous sometimes, she said, “That isn’t for you.”

Meena climbed down. She crossed her arms before her, looking all the world like a guilty child.

“Do you know how near you are to the princess’s chambers?” Priya asked, shaken, her racing heart making her voice suddenly tremble. “Do you know the trouble we could be in, if the princess were to hear us? Or spirits forbid, Lady Pramila found us here? We have one job: We come here in the dark, we clean and prepare the food, and we leave before first light. We do not disturb the prisoner. We don’t allow her to know we exist. Those are the regent’s orders, and we obey, you understand?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Meena said shakily. “Please don’t tell Gauri.”

“I won’t.” She gripped Meena’s arm. “Think of the extra coin you’ll get for this job and behave next time, okay? Think of your future. Now come on. We’re going back to work.”

They left the triveni behind.