Chapter 7: Priya

PRIYA

It was early morning by the time the maidservants made it down from the Hirana and back into the mahal. Billu had a plate of food warm and ready for them, and they divided the roti and pickles between themselves. Gauri excused herself quickly, claiming she needed her rest.

“We should rest too,” said Sima, dabbing her roti through the leftover fragrant oil and brine. Priya opened her mouth and Sima raised a finger up to stop her. “Don’t speak until you’ve finished eating, Pri, please.”

Priya rolled her eyes and swallowed down her mouthful of food with a swig of water, then said, “I’m not tired yet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to the orchard,” she said. “Billu,” she called, and the cook turned from the humongous pile of onions he was hacking his way through. “I’m heading over to the orchard, so if you want me to carry anything to the boys…?”

“You should be going to sleep,” scolded Billu, but he gave her some parathas to carry with her, and a big flask of tea, the steam carrying the warm perfume of cardamom. “Tell them there’s a little onion sabzi left, if they’re quick,” he said. “But I won’t send it with you. Too messy.”

The few people with rot in the household had been assigned the task of clearing the blighted acres of the regent’s orchard, alongside the servants who usually managed the care of the regent’s trees. The rot-riven were, after all, already marked—they couldn’t be infected again. Or that was the logic used, at least.

For days they had been working from first light, hacking down the branches and piling them into a bonfire. Priya followed the smoke and found them clearing an old, old tree. It was vast, thick-trunked with deep, sprawling roots that were half-visible, now that the soil around the base had been cleared away. The roots had been pared open so that the interior would begin to dry out and catch alight more easily.

The men working wore cloth wrapped around their mouths to stop them from breathing in the worst of the smoke, but Priya wasn’t half as prepared. She drew her pallu over her mouth as she balanced the food and the flask against her hip, taking shallow breaths and trying not to think of all the things the smell of smoke always made her think of. Her brother’s arms around her. Blood. The Hirana.

The princess, staring at her with bloodshot eyes, dark as pitch.

Are you real?

She forced the thought back and peered through the haze until she caught sight of a familiar small figure, staggering under an enormous pile of wood.

“Rukh!” Priya called.

He looked over the stack, and his eyes creased with a smile when he saw her. He excitedly flung the wood onto the bonfire.

“I’ve brought everyone food,” she yelled out, and there were relieved noises from the other men as they lowered their machetes.

There were vats of salted water set nearby, and all the workers poured pitchers of it over their own hands before they began to eat, to cleanse their skin. Salt, some thought, helped keep the rot at bay.

“How is life as a servant going?” Priya asked Rukh, after she had parceled out the food and passed the flask of tea to the nearest man, who murmured his thanks.

“The food is great,” Rukh said, wiping his wet hands on his tunic. His eyes were fixed on the parathas. He grabbed one quickly.

Priya wanted to interrogate him a little more. She’d only seen him now and then since leaving him in Khalida’s care, usually in the times when he came to eat in the kitchens in the early morning, along with the rest of the servants. Once or twice, he’d come to sit with her after dinner and let her tell him yaksa tales. That was all. But he was tucking into the food with such joyful vigor that she hated to interrupt him, so she sighed and said, “Give me your hand.” She took hold of his wrist. “You can eat with the other one.”

“It’s a lot better,” he said, through a mouthful of food. “Doesn’t hurt as much.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

He pushed the rest of the paratha into his mouth, cheeks stuffed, and nodded quickly. She bent her head to hide her grin, inspecting his fingers. The bead hung snug at his wrist on a strong thread.

She felt a wave of relief. His rot was no better, but it was no worse, the skin still puckered around the growth beneath it, but unbroken. The bead of sacred wood was working its magic.

“When the bead goes cold, come to me straight away,” she said. “Before it gets worse, Rukh. Not after.”

“Okay,” he said mildly. “I promise,” he added, under her stern look.

“You should probably join them,” she said, gesturing over at the others. “I’ve got to go to bed anyway.” She resisted the urge to ruffle his shorn hair. He wouldn’t appreciate that in front of others.

“In a second,” he said. He rocked back on his heels a little, eyes lowered. “Priya. Will you…” He hesitated. “Will you do me another favor?”

“Another favor?” she asked, incredulous. “You mean besides getting you a job? You do have some cheek.” She paused. “Well, it depends what it is.”

“Please. Don’t go up the Hirana this week.”

That… was not what she’d expected. “At all this week?”

“All week,” he confirmed. He swallowed. “Please.”

It was such an absurd request that she could only laugh. When he raised his head, she arched an eyebrow at him.

“How will I keep a job if I don’t work, hm? You think the regent keeps on women who don’t pull their own weight?”

“Say you’re sick. They won’t make you climb if you’re sick, and you said his wife is kind, she wouldn’t let him send you off,” Rukh pressed on, determined. “Please, Priya. Everyone says that place is haunted. And after what happened with you and Sima…”

“Sima was the one who fell,” Priya pointed out. “Not me. And you’re not asking her to fake illness, are you?”

“She’s not you,” said Rukh. “You’re the one who spends your money on sacred wood for children with rot. No one else wasted that on us. You’re the one who gave me this chance. Not her, or anyone else.” His expression was solemn, filled with an earnestness that was both childish and somehow too mature for that sharp, small face to contain. “Priya, just. Please. Just for a week. Until the rains die down?”

“You’ll have a place here no matter what happens to me,” she said. Maybe he needed to hear that—needed to be sure. “But I have no plans to get hurt. If I have a choice, I’ll be around to help you, you understand? Some things we can’t control, Rukh. We both know what the world is like. As long as I can help, I will. But I can’t help if I don’t work.”

“You still shouldn’t go,” Rukh said mulishly. And as he glanced down, Priya recognized what he was trying to hide.

Guilt.

“Is there some other reason you don’t want me climbing?” she asked carefully.

Rukh said nothing. Then, awkwardly, he muttered, “Because you matter to me.”

“That’s very sweet,” she said. “Why else?”

“I’ve told you the truth.” He sounded wounded, but Priya wasn’t convinced.

“Don’t mistake my being softhearted for being a fool,” Priya said levelly. “You’re not good at hiding your feelings.”

“It’s not safe,” he repeated.

“Come now,” Priya coaxed. “What have you heard? Have the maids been making up tales of dangerous and evil spirits? Surely you know better than to listen to them.”

Rukh shook his head. “Never mind. I’m going to eat now.”

“Rukh.”She was fairly certain that it wasn’t ghost stories that had him biting his lip and tugging that thread around his wrist. But she wasn’t sure how to get the truth out of him.

“You should listen to me,” he said, frustrated. He took a step back. Another. “You should trust me. I trusted you.”

“That’s not how trust works,” she told him, baffled.

When she tried to follow him, he began to run, pelting his way into the trees. One of the men yelled after him, warning him to come back or he’d get a beating later. But he didn’t reappear.

Eventually she gave up waiting for him to return and went to the dormitory instead, flinging herself down on her mat, exasperated and exhausted, staring at the ceiling until she finally, begrudgingly, fell asleep.

When she woke it was evening, the air velvety with dying warmth, and Sima was sitting cross-legged on the bedroll beside her own, undressed, her shoulders still damp from bathing. Sima was sewing up her sari blouse, the sleeve torn clean in two.

“What a mess,” Priya murmured.

“I ripped it when I fell,” Sima said. “Why didn’t you rest earlier?”

“I was looking for Rukh.”

Sima gave a faint snort. “Of course you were.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. He was looking for you, too,” she said lightly. “Did you do something to make him angry?”

“Why do you say that?”

“He doesn’t want you to earn a living, apparently. He asked me to give you this.” Sima fished into her bedroll; pulled something out in her fist. “He said he’ll take it back if you return it to him after sunset.”

“He was here? When I was waiting for him in the orchard?” She let out a groan. “Hand it over.”

Sima dropped the bead of sacred wood, still threaded on string, into Priya’s palm.

“Fool boy,” Priya cursed. “He knows he needs to wear it constantly.” She clutched the bead tighter, the heat of it radiating against her skin.

“My fall must have scared him,” said Sima.

“It did.” Priya exhaled, frustrated. “But I told him I can look after myself. I saved you, after all.”

Sima shook her head. Drew on her sari blouse over her damp shoulders, brushing her hair back from her neck. “That won’t stop him from worrying,” said Sima. “He’s trying to protect you.”

“He’s a child,” said Priya. “Doesn’t he know it’s his elders’ job to protect him, not the other way around?”

“Why would he know that?” Sima asked bluntly.

Sima was right, of course. He’d had no one, before Priya had brought him to the mahal. If his family had been farmers, they’d probably died of starvation when their crops had grown rot-riven, leaving him alone. He likely came to Hiranaprastha without anyone to care for him.

“Besides,” Sima went on, “most of us, we see children with rot that bad, and we look away. There’s no point crying over something you can’t fix.”

“Even a sick child?”

“Especially, maybe,” Sima muttered, smoothing down the sleeves of her blouse. “There’s so many of them, you’d never stop. Priya, you’re kind to care about him. Kind for all the little things you do out in the city, but you’re going to break your heart over that boy when he dies. And he will die.”

“My heart is fine,” Priya said, a little stiffly. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

After an uncomfortable silence, Sima spoke again, more gently.

“Give him a few days. He’ll stop worrying. I’ll tell Gauri you’re not well.”

Priya uncurled her fingers and stared down at the bead. A few days. That made sense. But Rukh had asked her not to climb the Hirana for a single week. If he was worried about her safety, why set a time length at all? Why not ask her to give up the job entirely?

Something wasn’t right. She’d known that, when Rukh had made his request. But the certainty had only grown stronger.

I need to speak to Bhumika, she thought. Dread coiled in her belly. I need to do it now.

“How long until sunset?” she asked.

“Not long.”

If only he’d been honest with her. She hadn’t known he had any guile in him.

“I’ll simply have to worry him, then,” Priya said. She lifted the thread up and looped it over her own wrist. “I’ll return it to him in the morning.”

She made her way swiftly down the servants’ corridors, the mazelike routes created so they could travel through the palace without crossing paths with the nobility. Eventually, she emerged into the central garden of the mahal and began to walk toward the rose palace.

Lady Bhumika was a woman who valued privacy and beauty, and her quarters reflected that. Instead of living in the grand opulence of the mahal, she maintained her closest household in the rose palace: a manse within the rose garden that lay at the heart of the grounds. Its doors were surrounded by fronds of flowers: sheaves of white and burgundy, pink and glorious red.

Usually the doors of the rose palace were flung open, the sumptuous carpet of the living room crowded with visiting highborn women who sat under a ceiling inlaid with a starburst of emeralds cut to resemble leaves, listening to music and drinking wine, laughing and playing the kind of frivolous games of politics that Priya had little patience for.

But today the doors were shut, the air painfully quiet, and there were only two people at the entrance. The sour-faced senior maidservant, Khalida, was speaking to another woman. The other woman was carrying a case at her side. It was open at the top, and even from a distance Priya could see its contents. Vials. Calipers. She was a physician.

Priya stopped in her tracks as both women caught sight of her.

“Girl,” Khalida said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to clean my lady’s chambers, ma’am,” Priya said, bowing her head in respect, keeping her voice demure.

“Not today,” Khalida said. “Our lady is unwell. She doesn’t have time for you. Go away now.”

At another time, Priya would have pushed or bribed or cajoled Khalida into allowing her entrance. But time was running short before dusk and the physician was still standing by, looking between them. Priya knew there would be no bending of the rules around a stranger. So instead she bowed her head again. “Ma’am.”

She turned and walked away. As she did so, she heard the physician’s voice rise in a question, and Khalida’s voice respond.

“… one of our lady’s strays. Barefoot beggars, all of them. She can’t stand to see an orphan go hungry. But they do like to whine for scraps.”

I hope a rat eats your hair, Khalida, Priya thought sourly.

A stray. It wasn’t untrue, not really. But that only made the words sting all the more.

It was a night of miracles. Priya made it to the base of the Hirana with time to spare, and Gauri did not say anything, which meant the princess had not mentioned Priya’s mistake to Lady Pramila. Thankfully, there had been no rain for hours, so the Hirana’s surface had baked dry in the day’s sun. And despite Meena’s insipid trembling, she too turned up at dusk, scampering behind the others with a pack of firewood strapped to her back.

“Let me carry that for you,” Priya offered. But Meena shook her head.

“Oh no, I can do it. Only—will you carry the lantern?”

Priya agreed, and they began their climb. The moon was full, fat and gleaming, its silver light almost as strong as lantern-glow. At the Hirana’s summit, the guards checked them for weapons, allowing them entry, and Pramila greeted them with her usual frosty instructions before they went to work.

Priya was sweeping the floor clean of cooking fire ash when Gauri grabbed her by the arm.

“Come,” Gauri snapped. “Meena’s gone missing again. Find her and bring her to me. I can understand her being afraid yesterday. But twice in a row—it’s too much.”

“Ma’am,” Priya said deferentially. She put her broom aside and walked off.

“Tell her if she does this again she won’t have a job. Do you hear me, Priya? Tell her that!”

Priya headed straight for the triveni, but there was no sign of Meena on the plinth, or anywhere else.

The air was clear and cold, and Priya was alone with nothing but her own memories, the lines upon the floor, and the knowledge that the prisoner lay at the other end of the triveni, one corridor away.

She had tried not to think of the princess. But she couldn’t help it.

Those eyes. She pictured them and something nameless flooded through her. For a moment, she’d felt as if she were staring into a dark mirror. Her past reflected back at her and made into something new.

Priya knew what everyone knew about the princess, and only that. Emperor Chandra had ordered his sister to rise to the pyre alongside her handmaidens, to sacrifice themselves as the mothers of flame had done, so long ago. But the princess had refused the honor. And now she was here.

You almost burned too, Priya thought as she stared at the corridor. Just like me.

That voice. The rasp of it. That mouth, shaping words in the semidark.

Are you real?

Stop being a damn fool, Priya told herself.

But she found herself crossing the triveni again, barely paying attention to the velvet night sky around her, or the figures of the yaksa carved into the great pillars holding the ceiling up above her. She moved as though the dark corridor ahead of her and the lattice wall that lay within it were a light and she were a particularly stupid moth.

“Priya.” A small voice. “Stop.”

The voice came from behind her. Priya turned.

Meena was behind her. In one crooked arm, she was cradling a small pile of firewood. Her face was strangely pale.

“I need your help,” said Meena.

“What’s happened?” Priya asked, alarmed. “Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Is anyone else?” When Meena shook her head, Priya said, “Then what is it?” When Meena remained silent a heartbeat too long, Priya pressed on. “Let’s go back to the kitchens. I’ll ask Sima to brew you a cup of tea. Something to calm your nerves—”

“I know what you are,” Meena said, the end of her words a quiver.

Priya’s words died abruptly.

“I knew it the moment you saved Sima. When you moved—you moved like you’d walked on the Hirana before, like the ground knew you.” Meena swallowed, visibly. Then she said, “You’re a temple daughter. Or you were, once.”

“You’re mistaken,” Priya said.

“How many times did you pass through the waters before the council died? Are you once-born? Twice-born?”

“Meena,” Priya said gently. “You’re addled. Go to the kitchens, now.”

“I’m not,” Meena said firmly. “I’m very sure. I know you’re a temple child. You were raised here, in this temple. Raised to rule our faith. And then the regent burned you all, didn’t he? You and your elders. But you survived, somehow. Hiding in plain sight. You’re not the first I’ve met. He told me what to look for. I know.”

Meena crossed the triveni. She took hold of Priya’s arm. Her grip was like iron.

“Look at this,” Meena said, voice firm, fierce. So Priya looked.

In Meena’s left hand, half-concealed beneath the drape of her sari, was the shape that Priya had thought was kindling.

It was a mask. It must have been hidden among the bundle Meena had been carrying on her back. The guards would not have noticed it when they checked the maidservants for weapons. It was, after all, not a weapon. It was no more than wood, deep and dark, bent and carved into crescents that stretched from a central hollow. But it was beautiful, and familiar, and every inch of it was carved from the boughs of sacred trees. Close to it now, Priya could feel the warmth of it, rich as a bloodied heartbeat.

A crown mask.

The bead of wood at her wrist didn’t hold even a shadow of such power.

Priya flinched, despite herself.

“You recognize it,” Meena said, and her shaky voice was full of triumph.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Please, Priya. You do. I know you do.” Meena took a step closer. “You can help me find the deathless waters. You have to. We need their strength to free ourselves from an empire that has always hated us, from rulers that want us to roll over like dogs for the crime of being better than them.” Her grip tightened on the mask. “They’ve stolen so much from us. Our language. Our elders. They deemed our culture filthy, they let us starve. We need the waters, Priya, we all do, before it’s too late.”

“You’re hurting my arm,” Priya said steadily. “Let go of me. And we’ll return to work and forget any of this happened.”

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Meena’s face was a picture of despair. “This mad emperor will burn us all. We need to be strong. We need to be what we once were.”

“I am listening to you,” Priya said levelly. “And I think we should return to work. I think you want something from me that I can’t give you.”

There was a sound, beyond the triveni, as two maidservants passed, chattering to one another. Priya stiffened, utterly silent. Do not come in here, she thought. By soil and sky, please, do not.

They passed. Their voices faded.

Meena was watching her, intent as an animal gazing upon prey. But she trembled, and trembled, as if her own instincts terrified her.

“Show me the way to the deathless waters,” Meena said in a quicksilver whisper. “Just tell me how to reach the waters, simply tell me, and I’ll leave here. I’ll cause no trouble.”

“What do you mean, ‘trouble’?” Priya asked.

Meena swallowed. Her gaze was unflinching.

“Being strong means being ruthless,” said Meena. “I know that. And I am—not afraid. To do what needs to be done.”

“Strong,” Priya repeated. Oh, she remembered what strong had meant, when she was a girl. “Do you mean that you’ll torture me? The other maidservants? Do you mean that you’ll kill them, to force me to show you the way?” When Meena remained silent, Priya smiled at her—a fierce, hard smile. “There would be no point, anyway. I don’t know the way.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Meena said, voice suddenly high and thin as if she could not control it. Her grip tightened. Ah, that hurt. “I’ve asked the others. You’ve lived in the regent’s mahal since you were a girl. If anyone knows the way, it’s you.”

“Meena,” Priya said, in the calmest voice she could muster, even as her heart raced, “if I had the power of the deathless waters at my fingertips, do you truly believe I’d be toiling in the regent’s household? Wouldn’t I be more than a maidservant? Think sensibly.”

“I think you are a coward,” said Meena, suddenly viperous. “I think you’re willing to lick the regent’s boots, and you disgust me. You’re nothing like him.”

Priya could not ask her who he was—could not say a word—because Meena released her and clasped her face instead. She dug sharp nails into Priya’s jaw; tightened her hand like a vise. For a small woman, she was strong. There was a feverish light in her eyes.

“Tell me the truth.”

Priya felt Meena’s hand dig in tighter and tighter.

She forced words out through a mouth pressed tight by Meena’s grip.

“Meena. Stop.”

Meena’s nails dug in harder.

When Meena did not stop, Priya did the only sensible thing she could and stomped down on the other woman’s foot. Heel first, the full weight of her body behind it. Meena gave a shriek, her grip slipping, and Priya grabbed the hand still latched to her face. She dug her own nails into Meena’s wrist and wrenched herself free.

She could have yelled for help, then. But Meena was panting before her, a crown mask clutched in her hands, and she had called Priya a temple daughter. Fear left Priya’s lungs airless. She thought of her brother, his eyes terror-wide in yellow firelight. She thought of darkness, and water, and his voice in her ears.

Don’t cry. Oh, Pri, don’t cry. Just show me the way.

Meena raised the mask.

“Meena,” Priya said sharply. “Meena, do not do it. Do not.”

“I’ll risk anything. I’ll do anything,” Meena said, voice taut with fear and despair—and something else too. Something poisonous. “I have no choice. I can’t go back without an answer. So tell me now. Please.”

“I’m being honest with you. I don’t know.”

In the silence that followed, Priya heard a distant roar of thunder.

“This was your choice,” said Meena. Her lower lip was trembling. “I hope you know that.”

She placed the mask over her face.

Priya stood still, cold except for the place where the bead warmed her wrist. She watched the crown mask press against Meena’s skin. In the spaces between the bands of wood, she watched Meena’s skin flush instantly, suffused with heat. Meena gave a gasp and raised her head; in the dim light her face was like a lamp, glowing from a deep light within as the strength of the sacred wood poured through her.

Meena took a step forward. Then she froze. A pained hiss escaped her, through tightly clenched teeth.

“Take it off,” Priya said urgently. “Meena, right now, while you still can.”

But Meena did not take it off. She breathed in and out, in and out, hunched forward with pain. When she raised her head, the skin between the bands of wood was mottled, pinched. The wood stood out against it, having taken on the pearly, varnished sheen of bones boiled clean of flesh.

Meena had chosen her path—chosen to fling herself into the hands of death. Priya would not do the same.

She ran.

She didn’t make it very far—barely even turned her body toward the door of the triveni—before she felt a blow to her back that knocked the air from her lungs and threw her to the floor. Her hands slammed into stone. Pain jarred through her. She heaved herself onto her knees, struggling to get back to her feet.

Meena shoved her back down with the efficient application of an elbow to the spine. Priya twisted onto her side, thinking of shoving Meena’s weight off her, or—no. That would fail. Slight as Meena was, she had a mask of sacred wood on her, and Priya could feel the new strength of Meena’s hands already as she pinned Priya down against the stone, panting behind her mask, her eyes wild.

Instead Priya grasped for Meena’s throat, trying to cut off her air long enough for Priya to slip out from under her. She managed to get her hands on Meena’s skin, digging her nails into the tendons there—even as Meena ground her knuckles into Priya’s shoulders, her knee into her stomach. Priya gritted her teeth, tightened her hand, and—

Meena pinned her hands to the floor.

“Stay,” commanded Meena, and Priya tried to wrench her hands free, tried to twist to the side, but Meena simply tightened her grip until Priya’s hands felt as if they were on fire, the bones of her wrists grinding painfully.

“You feel it, don’t you?” said Meena. She pressed her hands down harder and Priya gasped. “I’ve tasted the deathless waters. I have its gifts.”

“Then you shouldn’t need me,” Priya forced out, turning her cheek down against the stone, letting her body go limp. She tried to look as if she’d given up the fight. Let Meena believe she’d won. After all, in that moment—her hands pinning Priya’s shoulders, grinding her bones down, knees in Priya’s gut—she was the victor.

Meena had realized it too. And that knowledge seemed to soften her. She leaned down closer—close enough for Priya to smell her skin: the rotten, cooked smoke of it.

“I’ve only had a taste,” Meena confessed. “And not from the source. Only—a mouthful from a vial. No more. And it’s not…” Her grip spasmed. Her skin was burning hot. “It’s not enough.”

Priya tried to twist free again. She could not.

“Tell me the way,” Meena said heavily. “I don’t have long.”

“The mask is killing you, Meena.”

“It’s making me as strong as I need to be.” Her words were confident enough. But Meena’s eyes were red, and barely blinked. She knew what she was becoming. “The deathless waters are killing me with hunger. The mask is killing me with power. And I—don’t care.” There was a hitch in her voice. “But I need answers. For the sake of Ahiranya, and the others like me who want to save it. I need to know the way.”

“I don’t know the way, you idiot. You—sniveling child. You called me a temple daughter. You know what I am. Did you never think to question my motives for coming here, as I should have questioned yours?” Priya craned her neck, lifting her head one bare, painful increment. “I can hardly remember anything. Oh, I passed through the waters, I am once-born, but when I watched my siblings and elders burn, I lost everything. I’m damaged goods. My mind—” Priya cut herself off, afraid she would do something ridiculous like laugh at the dying woman above her who seemed liable to break Priya’s wrists. “I can’t help you. I’ve been trying to remember myself—I came here and I thought, I’ll try. But now perhaps I never will because of your foolhardiness. The only people who can show you the way now are all dead.”

“No.” Meena’s voice trembled like a flame. Her eyes were wild. “No, no!”

Meena’s grip had eased, just a little. She was distracted. Priya took her chance.

She slammed her own head against Meena’s, hard enough for her skull to rattle and her skin to burn from the heat of the sacred wood. In the moment it took for Meena to recover from the shock of it, Priya managed to reach one hand up and wrench at the mask.

She scrabbled with ugly, clumsy scrapes of her fingernails, worming her fingers between the blazing heat of the wood and the mottled char of Meena’s flesh. She felt something smooth beneath her fingertips, slick and overwarm. She realized with horror that Meena’s skin, around the sockets of her eyes, had burned clean down to tissue and bone. Meena gave a terrible shriek that rose and rose into a howl that echoed across the triveni, its columns and its absences, cutting through the crash of the rain that had begun to fall.

Priya shoved her backward. Climbed to her own feet. Her fingertips were blistered. Meena was still writhing on the floor, but Priya could hear footsteps in the corridor—could see Gauri and Sima in the doorway, suddenly, frozen and openmouthed.

“Get out of here!” Priya yelled. “Go!”

“Tell me,” Meena said raggedly, rising to her feet. “One of you. Please.”

When Sima saw Meena’s face she shrieked and clapped her hands over her mouth. She took a step back.

“Meena,” Priya tried instead. “Stop. They know nothing, Meena. Stop!”

But Meena was not listening. She moved with the frenzied focus of someone on the knife edge of death and desperation, crossing the floor and grabbing Gauri by the shoulder. Gauri screamed as she was jerked into the room and thrown against a pillar by Meena’s desperate hands. The older maidservant’s stick clattered to the ground. She scrabbled uselessly as Meena held her and gasped in, out, in, out, asking nothing, the whites of Meena’s eyes red with blood.

Gauri whimpered. Slumped forward.

With a furious shout, Priya leapt onto Meena’s back. She wrenched Meena’s head to an angle, forcing her fingers back under the edges of the loosened mask. When Meena did not even flinch—soil and sky, had she lost all sense of pain?—Priya shoved her forward hard, crushing Gauri against the pillar as she slammed Meena’s head against stone again, and again, and again. Then she released Meena, who crumpled, just a little.

“Run,” she barked at Gauri, and the older maidservant stumbled, and fell, then rose to her feet again as Sima grabbed her by the arms and dragged her away.

“Guards!” Sima was yelling. “Guards, help! Help!”

Meena gasped again—a long, thin exhalation that stretched into a hollow rasp. She turned, lightning-quick. Grasped Priya by the throat. Lifted.

Priya’s feet were not touching the ground. Her lungs ached and burned and she could not—she could not move her hands, though she tried to raise them. Her control was failing. Her body felt as if it were swathed in cotton.

Her lungs ached. Her vision was going black. But the dark was rich and textured, rippling like a lightless river. As Meena’s hand tightened an increment further, Priya felt the dark cleave open.

She felt water at her feet; three rivers joined around her ankles, swirling over her flesh. In the dizzying dark, she saw her brother’s shadow, kneeling, inked in red by the veins beneath her eyelids. She felt old memories clamor like bells, each one chiming against the next: an older temple sister testing her tolerance for pain, dipping her hand in hotter and hotter water, as the elders watched; little Nandi, her temple brother, helping her lay flowers and fruit in a shrine alcove, and filching one juicy segment of fibrous golden mango; pilgrims falling prone before the masked elders, begging for a memento of Ahiranya’s old glory. All things she’d lost. Pieces of herself.

Around her she could hear the Hirana singing, waiting, breathing for her. All she had to do. All she had to do…

Her eyes snapped open.

She clenched her hands around Meena’s wrist as the lines on the triveni’s surface flowed and shifted, throwing Meena briefly off-balance, allowing Priya to break her choke hold and slam a closed fist into Meena’s stomach. When Meena doubled forward, Priya punched her again, sending her stumbling across the floor.

Priya was once-born, she was, and the small tangle of memory she’d regained was enough to make the Hirana move with her, its stone constantly changing beneath Meena’s feet like receding waves, throwing her back, back, to the triveni’s edge where it lay open to the sky. As Meena stumbled, Priya paused to grab Gauri’s stick up from the ground. Only seconds had passed, but it felt as if ages had slipped away with her breath.

“You don’t know what strength means,” she murmured. Her voice was hoarse, but it was steady. She was glad of that. “You don’t. But I learned. I know what it means to carry the waters.”

She held Gauri’s stick out before her. Touched the tip of it to Meena’s chest. Keeping her eyes on Meena’s, she said, “Keep on moving.”

Finally. Finally. The Hirana was speaking to her once more. The response the Hirana had given her when she was on its surface had been the rumblings of a thing asleep. This was a wakeful voice. Just a whisper, a nudge, but it was enough.

Meena moved. She took slow, reluctant footsteps back, back, as Priya nudged her with the stick toward the edge of the triveni’s surface, where it melded into the Hirana’s pockmarked, death-riddled stone. Meena stopped when her heels touched upon the edge.

They stared at one another. The rain fell.

“Please,” Meena whispered.

“Who is he?” Priya’s hands were damp with sweat and rain. She could hear shouting, somewhere, drawing closer. “Who was the temple son who gave you a taste of the deathless waters? Who condemned you to die?”

Priya could not see Meena’s expression through the mask. But she felt it, when Meena broke free from her shocked stupor; when Meena shoved forward, Gauri’s stick bending between them, a fierce cry escaping her throat as she tried once more to get her hands around Priya’s throat.

Priya dropped the stick and grabbed Meena by the front of her blouse. The rage that took her then was all-consuming. How dare she.

“The Hirana won’t spare you,” she said savagely. “You’re not worthy.”

And then she shoved Meena hard with both hands.

Meena fell without another sound.

Priya stood frozen, her hands still outstretched before her. She sucked in a breath. Another. The sheer rage that had taken her left her abruptly. Her hands began to shake.

Oh, spirits. What had she done? What had just happened? Her heart was still racing, but she couldn’t feel her limbs.

She lowered her hands. Turned.

The prisoner stood in the entrance of the northern chamber. Watching her.

The prisoner—the princess—was taller than Priya had thought she would be. And thinner. It was absurd, to think that now, when Priya’s life was finished; when she had murdered another woman in front of the emperor’s sister and spoken of the deathless waters. But the princess was tall and gaunt, and although her eyes were still red, she stood utterly still, unblinking, her mouth a smooth, unreadable line. She looked entirely unafraid.

Had the princess seen what she’d done? Heard what she’d said? The princess didn’t look as if she thought Priya would kill her, and wildly for a moment, Priya wondered if she should. No one could know what she was. But she was shaking, she couldn’t, she didn’t want to.

The guards rushed in, the maidservants at their back. Pramila strode after them, a naked blade in her hands.

“Princess Malini!”

Priya’s vision was still singed black. She could not think. She could not breathe. Ah, spirits above and below, Priya knew what they all saw, and how damning it was: the walls marked with blood. Priya, a lowly maidservant, bleeding. The princess. The princess…

“Pramila,” the princess gasped. Priya watched in numb surprise as the princess’s face crumpled with tears, her cheeks suddenly blotchy. The princess grabbed ineffectually at the edges of her shawl, as if trying to draw it up to her face, to protect herself from the eyes of the male guards, who stood and gawped, their weapons drawn. But she dropped the shawl, over and over again. Her hand was shaking. Then her teeth began to chatter, as if shock had overcome her. The princess leaned back against the door. “Pramila, ah!”

Lady Pramila dropped the blade and raced to her side, clasping the princess by the arms. “You there,” she snapped at one guard. “Restrain that servant. Now.”

A guard strode across the room, grabbing Priya brutally by the arm. Priya bit the inside of her cheek. She did not look at Gauri or Sima. She would not show how afraid she was.

“She saved my life,” the princess gasped. She was looking at Pramila, blinking rapidly, her expression terrified and open. “That maid—she saved me. There was an assassin and she risked herself for my sake and I—ah, Pramila, I cannot breathe! I cannot breathe!”

The princess collapsed in Lady Pramila’s arms. For all her thinness, her weight dragged Pramila down with her. And Priya could only stare openmouthed as everyone rushed to help the princess. As the guard’s hand loosened upon her arm, softened by the lie.