“Why does that matter?”
“Because you are splitting yourself, maybe-queen-but-certainly-liar.”
Splitting myself.
“You are a fraying, fragmented bone. And no one, not evenI, would deign to eat such a thing.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“I don’t expect anything,” said Kamala archly. “I expect sunshine and moonshine. But I am telling you to stop being a broken bone. You are in one place, so be in one place. Or I’ll bite you.”
Be in one place. I was here. I wouldn’t leave Gauri. It wasn’t like last time, when I had no choice but to flee or die. Right now, she was the one who needed me. And truthfully, I needed her too.
By now, we had nearly reached the palace temple. Beautiful sandstone walls arced around us. I stayed outside, near the pillaredmandapahalls where deities with half-lidded gazes considered us stonily. There was a figure moving toward us, an emerald veil pulled low over her face. She must be Gauri’s friend from the harem. I wondered who she was. The figure didn’t look familiar. The woman moved slowly. She was older. Stockier. She had none of the lissome watery-grace of the harem wives I remembered. She moved like someone who had no one left to impress.
Sweet incense wafted from the temples. The afternoon sun of Bharata looked like thick yolk as it dribbled slowly into evening. The parched air had lifted. Insects practiced their enigmatic songs in stark bushes and wilted flowers.
The harem wife approached. I practiced how I would greet her. Should I bow? Should I do nothing?
“What’s your plan?” asked Kamala.
“I’m going to ask her to start a fire.”
Kamala’s eyes gleamed. “Oooh… I do love when they’re served up hot and piping and charred.”
“You and I will be gone by the time the fire starts. It’s just a distraction for Gauri.”
The harem wife was finally here.
“It is a great honor to meet you,” I began. “I am so pleased that the Princess Gauri has placed you in her confidence. It will make this next task much easier.”
The harem wife stopped, her fingers still tightly clasping the edge of her green sari. She removed it, slowly, from her face, peeling back the silk until it showed a chin that I knew wobbled when she screamed, thin lips now parched dry from repeated inhales at a water pipe, a smirk scalded into the sagging flesh of her left cheek, and eyes made for watching you burn and never once—not even to wipe away particles of dust and ash—blinking.
Mother Dhina.
23
A SHARED CONSTELLATION
All my words, whatever they wanted to be, fell out of me in a long whoosh.
“You,” I breathed.
I forgot that I was wearing the garb of asadhvi. Mother Dhina glared and took a step back.
“How dare you speak to me in such a manner, beggar? I don’t know why Gauri placed our trust in you.”
Our trust? I had to be mishearing her. The Mother Dhina I knew had never helped a single person. I didn’t even know whether she cared about anyone beyond her daughters and they were probably married and long gone from the mirror-paneled foyers of Bharata’s harem.
I dug my heels into the ground, preparing for a slap that never came. And why should it? I wasn’t Maya anymore. That girl really had become a ghost. I was clinging only to the emotions she stirred in me—hate and anger. But also… regret. There were so many times I had waited outside the gossamer curtain of the court’s inner sanctum, waiting for them to notice that I was more than my horoscope. More than some girl they could tack all their half-remembered suspicions to.
I gathered my breath, and said something I didn’t expect:
“I apologize for insulting you and your—”
“My daughters died of the sweating sickness,” cut in Mother Dhina. “I am not Princess Gauri’s mother. In case that is what you thought.”
Parvati and Jayadead?
