That was the last time Veer remembered seeing Virat excited about something. Afterward, he seemed to disappear for days on end, reappearing occasionally to reassure he hadn’t died somewhere. He had been happy on Veer’s marriage day. Though other things had preoccupied Veer’s brain, he remembered his friend’s beaming face and heartfelt congratulations.
Remembering that made it even more gut-wrenching to see his pale face that night, eyes wide in frozen terror as he lay dead in Amaravathi’s gardens. Veer had found his wife crouched over him, digging out her short dagger from his friend’s stomach, her white saree sprayed with blood. Her impassive face hadn’t cracked even when it took several men to stop him from reaching for her throat.
Veer was no stranger to the rusty smell of blood, but that day the thick scent of it had made him gag. He didn’t remember the scream of rage that left his throat, but he was told by Shota and others that he was like a raging wild beast that day.
The next few days after that had passed in a haze and not until he had left Amaravathi borders far behind, did Veer feel like himself, enough to grieve the death of his dearest friend.
In a way, Virat’s death was his fault, because the choice to choose his wife was left to him and instead of listening to good counsel, he had chosen Chandrasena. And others paid the price for it.
So what if it turned out she encountered Virat before his death? She was still the person who stuck the killing blow with a knife.
“For once, I agree with you in principle, Princess. I’ve no more desire to rehash the past than you,” he said. “We leave in three days. Be prepared.”
Part 4
THE CAVES OF AMARAVATHI
Chapter 10: The Covert Guardian
Veer woke with a start. A scorpion scuttled its way across the ceiling. He blinked while trying to figure out the time. Day and night had no meaning deep in the caves of Amaravathi. He sat up and threw off the rough wool blanket, yawning. His internal clock said it was still maybe an hour away from sunrise.
Billadev was supposed to keep watch by the fire, but a glance at him showed he was nodding, leaning on his sword planted onto the floor. Whenever his sword slipped, he would be jolted awake and look wide-eyed around before succumbing to sleep again a few minutes later.
Veer ran a hand through his hair and stretched, working out the kinks. He surveyed the mass of blanket-wrapped bodies sleeping on the cave floor, like leftover fish in an angler’s basket. As had become his custom, Veer cast a cursory glance toward the place where Chandrasena usually slept and found her pallet empty.
A dark figure brushed past him.
He went on alert, hastily borrowing the senses of the nearest animal. A spider, in the process of reeling in its hapless prey, went still on its web as it registered Veer’s alien presence in its mind.
Veer was up and following the princess before the spider even realized who it was.
A stray cinder had caught Billadev’s leg, and he woke with a curse, trying to stamp it out. The spider had gone back to its reeling. Veer’s presence in its mind, already forgotten.
* * *
Amaravathi didn’t have a proper seacoast, despite being bordered by the sea. A massive coastal plateau, instead, rose along the shore, protecting the land from the fury of the sea.
The caves of Amaravathi were a honeycomb of interconnected chambers that peppered this plateau, stretching along its length for miles.
Veer turned a bend and almost collided with a stone wall. Cursing, he retraced his steps back to the point he remembered and glanced around, giving up when the view seemed the same no matter where he looked—a hopeless serpentine maze of darkened stone corridors bathed in twilight.
Exploration through these caves without the aid of a map was foolish. And now he had lost sight of his quarry.
But no matter, he had a solution. Veer closed his eyes, seeking the consciousness of the small animals inhabiting the caves. He “leaped” through their minds, staying no longer than a few seconds, enough to let their instincts guide him.
It helped that there were no other humans loitering about this early, so there was no chance of confusing his target for others.
Judging by her course, she was moving toward the upper caves today. Veer wondered at the change of destination.
While it was difficult to pin any level of organization to these caves, the older generations of Amaravathi had attempted to do so, by roughly assigning them into the upper, middle, and lower levels. Likewise, the old maps that Amaravathi hadprovided relied heavily on the course of the underground river, Saraswathi.
Unfortunately, the River Saraswathi had disappeared a few generations ago, presumed to have dried up, making the maps useless. This meant they had to start their exploration from scratch.
Bracing, salty sea air blew gently through these upper-level caves, dispelling the stale, slightly stagnant air of the interior. He watched her glance around, then duck into an opening that was almost hidden by a vertical ledge of rock.
Peering carefully around the edge, he saw that it was a modest-sized cave—one of the airy, well-ventilated ones. It had an archway facing the sea. A short ledge projected outside from the archway, like a rough balcony, wet with the spray from the sea.
Like most of the other caves on this level, this one, too, bore the signs of coming under a skilled mason’s hand. A tracery of vines, faded now, were carved around the archway. Shallow steps were cut into the gentle slope that led to it. Outside, the ledge carried the broken remains of the rim of a balcony.
