Something else guided my hands. Images flashing sideways—a different hand, a samite curtain. I was convinced that we owned this single moment, this sphere of breath, this heartbeat shared like a secret. I don’t know what possessed me, but I took the white garland and threw it around his neck.
I stared at my hands, not quite believing what they’d done:
With one throw, I had married him. Amar lifted the garland of white flowers and grinned. “I hoped you’d choose me.”
The right corner of his lips curled faster than the left. It was such a small movement, but I couldn’t look away from it. His smile was disjointed, like he was out of practice.
The doors of the chamber burst open. The fighting that was already churning in the halls now pooled into the inner sanctum. Guards and enemy soldiers spilled inside with spears raised.
The smell of burning rice filled the room, acrid and bitter. I grabbed the edges of my sari,feet pounding against the silk of the floor. My run was frenzied. Blind. In the adjacent hall, I tripped over abandoned swords and shields, slipping over puddles far too warm and far too red to be water or oil. My heartbeat roared in my ears, pushing out the sounds of fists connecting with flesh and the echoing trill of locked swords. All the fatigue, ache and grief lifted from me, dissolving in the air. Energy snaked through my bones. A fierce, almost painful desire to live pushed me toward the door, taunting me with the promise of the sun searing my skin, of clear air rushing into my lungs.
A soldier’s hand grasped for me, but Amar pulled me away. Arrows zoomed past, but each time one came near, he would whirl me out of the way. Amar never shouted. He didn’t even speak. He moved fluidly, dodging javelins, always a few steps behind me, a living shield. His hood never budged and revealed nothing more than the bottom half of his face.
The doors began to open, creaking like broken bones. Blinding light spilled into the room. I squinted against the brightness, but my feet never stopped. Hot, dry air filled my lungs and left them aching. The second I slowed, I felt a cool hand on my wrist—
“My mount is this way,” said Amar, pulling me away from the road.
I was too out of breath to protest as his hands circled my waist and lifted me onto the richly outfitted saddle of a water buffalo. The moment I found my grip, Amar leapt onto the animal’s back and, with a sharp whistle, sent dust flying around us. The water buffalo charged through the jungle. Sounds bled one into the other—crashing iron to thundering hooves, gurgling fountains to colliding branches.
At first, I sat still, not wanting to disturb a thing in case this was a death-dream, some final taunt of escape. But then I saw the jungle arcing above me. My nose filled with the musk of damp,alivethings. The numb evanesced.
I was free.
7
THE NIGHT BAZAAR
I tilted my head back, letting the wind sting my eyes. Every now and then, my hand crept to my heart, reassuring me that there was a heartbeat. Freedom was bittersweet. I would never spend another afternoon drawing beside Gauri. I would never lose hours in the honeycomb rooms of Bharata’s archives. The future was blank and the weight of everything unknown left me dizzy and grounded.
We rode beneath a canopy of golden trees. I glanced behind me. We had long since left the road and no ghost of its existence loomed on the horizon. The jungle had swallowed it whole.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “The main road leads to all of the major kingdoms.”
“Not all of them,” said Amar.
The water buffalo ambled toward a cave matted with black vines. Compressed earth formed the walls, and veins of quartz ran through the cave.
“To get to Akaran, we must first go through the Night Bazaar.”
I nearly choked. Maybe there was such a thing as magic, but the Night Bazaar was fantasy. Its provenance lay in childhood, in dreams. Amar was teasing me. I raised an eyebrow, thinking back to Yudhistira’s bullying incident and the cloud of bees that chased him into a puddle.
“Just because I was raised behind thick walls does not make me—”
The dark tunnel gave way to light.
A divided sky illuminated an unearthly city. To the left, the moon bathed small shops and twisting plants in a pearly light. To the right, the sun beamed and soft sunshine fell over strange trees shaped like human limbs and animals. The sky, ever divided by day and night, blended into a spectrum of rainbow.
Creatures both impossibly tall and short slipped between shadow and light. An ethereal elephant whose hide shimmered pearlescent dipped its trunk into the pocket of a tall mouse. Twelve birds with comely female faces batted their eyelashes at a group ofnagamen who slithered closer, their scales flashing emerald. A child with the hunched wings and crumpled beak of a vulture pouted beside his mother, who had neither wings nor beak, but the sweeping train of a peacock…
The last of my taunt died in my chest and I sat there, gaping at the world around me.
Thiswasthe Night Bazaar.
All of my calm slipped away. In my head, I pictured royal maidens dragged off to serve potbelliedrakshasor princesses turned scullery maids in the bowels of the Night Bazaar. I scrambled off the water buffalo, biting back a wince as I struggled for some balance. Catching my breath, I backed away from Amar. In the shadows, the hood over his face glinted sinister.
“Do not come near me!” I hissed.
Amar halted.
