Mirror after mirror… giving way to countries spiked with spires, turrets bursting with small ivy flowers, cities awash in color, and a thousand skies painted in vespertine violets of anxious nightfall waiting for stars, dawns just barely blooming pink and orange with new light, afternoons presiding over sleeping towns… it was allhere. I could have stared through those mirrors for hours if Gupta hadn’t kept marching forward.
“You see?” said Gupta smugly. “Lovely, aren’t they?”
“And you can get to any of these places?” I breathed.
“Oh yes.”
“Could I go?”
“Soon enough.”
We passed the mirrors, and the corridor gave way to a stone archway.
“May I ask you something?” I said suddenly.
“You may, but I cannot guarantee I can answer it.”
“Why does the Raja of Akaran hide his face? Is he… disfigured?”
“So many of us hide behind our glazed words and practiced expressions. Amar is not like that. His expression leaves no room for mistake. Around you, let us say his expression would make his feelings too obvious. Give him time.”
Gupta threw open a pair of doors. “This is the throne room,” he said, quickly blocking my path. “Gaze lightly. This kingdom is magnificent, but its power is old and runs deep and will not hesitate to test you.”
I nodded uncertainly before walking past him, my eyes widening as I took in the stark and imposing room. But what stole my breath was the tapestry covering the wall beside the dais. On the left wall, obsidian threads shimmered, forming a tempestuous ocean streaked with foamy white waves; rose-gold filaments arced into a bulbous lotus and silken veins stretched into gnarled orchards.
Across the tapestry’s middle stretched a terrible seam, rent apart on either side like the scalloped edges of a flesh wound. Something about the tear struck me, I could feel the ripinsideme, forcing me to glance down and lightly tap my wrist to make sure that it was flesh that met my fingers and not a thousand threads. The tapestry stretched far beyond the walls of the throne room. I could feel it like a cloak around my heart.
“We’ll meet again in the evening,” said Gupta.
“Anything else I should know before you leave?”
Gupta grinned. “Amar is terrible at flattery.”
I smiled, but I couldn’t help but wonder who had been the last person he had attempted to flatter. The thought bothered me.
“I was never wooed by courtly speech anyway.”
As Gupta closed the door behind him I heard a soft laugh by my side.
“Is that so?”
Amar.
I turned to face him, my gaze tracing the emerald robes that matched my sari perfectly. Like yesterday, he wore a hood that left only the lower half of his face in view. I looked at him, and even if it was only a moment, he eclipsed the staggering pull of the tapestry.
“I’m not swayed by flattery,” I said. “I think a woman could feel insulted by a compliment. But I suppose that depends on the delivery.”
“I think it depends on thesincerity. If you tell a woman she sings beautifully when she knows the sound of her voice might as well drop a slab of stone on the person next to her, then a compliment would be insulting.”
I crossed my arms. “She could think you’re blinded by love.”
“Or deafened.”
“You seem quite learned in the art of giving compliments,” I countered. “Do you give them often?”
“No. Gupta was telling the truth. I’ve forgotten how to pay courtly compliments,” said Amar. “For instance, etiquette demands I tell you that you look lovely and compliment your demure. But that wouldn’t be the truth.”
Heat rose to my cheeks and I narrowed my eyes. “What, then, would be the truth?”
