I had no fondness for them. Yet I wouldn’t wish such an end to their lives either. Where had I been when the world was pulling up its roots and razing the places and people I knew? I wondered if they walked past my chambers while I slept, dreaming up nightmares and gardens that splintered underfoot.
“I am not anyone’s mother,” said Mother Dhina softly.
Her face was unguarded. Grief transformed her and for a moment, the Mother Dhina I knew sank away. I saw a woman with ruined beauty, kohl-dark eyes ringed with dryness. I saw a woman who had placed her faith in an era that had not treated her any differently, that had taken her children and left her with the double-edged sword of a long life.
“Broken-bone, broken-bone, smash her with a silver stone,” trilled Kamala in my ear. “Maybe-queen-maybe-liar, you share something with this crone. Is it blood? Is it sinew? Let me rend and taste her tissue.”
I shoved Kamala. “Why don’t you go graze?”
“Graze?” she retorted. “I do notgraze.”
“Go stalk a peacock.”
“You are not very nice,” said Kamala, huffing and trotting away.
“Now you want to take away my last consolation in old age,” said Mother Dhina, her voice heavy with accusation. “You want to send Gauri into some no-man’s-land and you expect me to help.”
“Sheexpects you to help, and if you didn’t agree with her yourself, I doubt you would have accepted,” I said. “Besides, I can assure you that it is not what either of us want.”
That much was true.
“What would you have me do?” asked Mother Dhina.
“The Raja Skanda is fond of his wives, yes?”
A cruel smile turned up the corners of Mother Dhina’s lips. “Oh yes. He adorns them with jewels and spends each night in their company. He gives them the largest rooms and drives out the old. He lets the wives stomp on those of us who had been there first, who had served the realm longest, who had yielded the palace children that didn’t live long enough to deserve names.”
Her voice had lost none of its smoke-rasp, but where it was once husky and sultry, it was now like dragged-over stones. The darkest sense of triumph snuck into my heart. Now she knew what I had known all those years.
But I felt something else too. Pity. The thought that it would even find its way to me was its own irony. Still, I felt it, a humming in my throat. A desire—though I tamped it down—to forgive her. I knew the future that had been before me, and I had escaped. Even if it felt like days since I had left Bharata, I always knew that my future there had been a lonely cage. Mother Dhina had only recently come to that conclusion.
“Start a fire in the harem,” I said.
Her eyes sparkled. She smiled.
“Don’t harm anyone,” I added quickly. It was best not to stoke Mother Dhina’s particular brand of cruelty. “The last thing we want is for Gauri to be blamed for any deaths.”
Mother Dhina considered this and nodded reluctantly.
“Send them all to me. All the wives, all the women of the harem. The Raja Skanda will be able to take care of the fire, but by the time that happens, Gauri will already be gone.”
“You speak her given name,” warned Mother Dhina. “That is far too familiar for my liking.” She took a step closer to me, her eyes scrutinizing my face. Whatever ash and paint streaked my features, her gaze seemed to chisel everything away. “Do you know the Princess Gauri from before?”
I swallowed. “No.”
Mother Dhina stared at me for a long while. “You remind me of someone.”
I could guess who.
“She died in childbirth,” said Mother Dhina. “She left behind a daughter who needed a mother—” She broke off and her face, even through the veil, was stony. I knew who she was talking about.Advithi. My mother.
“She was not afraid to trust and hold someone’s trust in return,” said Mother Dhina, in a tone of begrudging respect. “Though that didn’t earn her any admirers. Or my friendship, for that matter.”
“And her daughter?” I prompted, trying to hold back the tremble in my voice.
“She had an affliction, one could say,” said Mother Dhina. “This was during a time when the realm gave credence to horoscopes.” She sighed. “That time is gone. But the girl had a poor one. A dangerous one. And we were living in strange times, not nearly as strange as now. But it was a start, you understand. We were not used to it. We wanted answers and had none. We wanted an explanation for our grief but could find none. So many of us had lost children, brothers, families in war… and so the girl became, well, she—”
“Became someone to blame?” I finished.
