Hira frowned. “But I know this story! I thought you said this happened to you.”
“It did.”
“But I already know the ending. I don’t want a story where I know the ending.”
Besides, Hira could not imagine what this story had to do with Meghana and her wedding. Meghana had never even met her husband-to-be. Though that did not stop her from imagining that their souls had known each other from the moment they were forged.
Hira thought this sounded foolish.
“People can take a lot of roads to get to the same ending, and even with the same ending, sometimes it is quite a different story,” said her grandmother.
“But everyone knows this story,” said Hira, sighing. “Is this the one with the happy ending or the sad ending?”
Her grandmother did not smile this time. She did not look out the window wistfully the way she sometimes did. Instead, she reached for the strange necklace at her throat. It was fashioned like a snake. Sometimes Hira thought that it changed colors, switching its jewels from emeralds to rubies and sometimes sapphires, the way a person might select different silks from a wardrobe. But Meghana and her parents said that was just her imagination.
“It is the one with the true ending,” said her grandmother.
THE BARGAIN FOR BREATH
Gauri crouched beside Vikram’s bed.
Ever since the royal physician had visited Vikram, a steady parade of diplomats hesitated to knock at the door. But that did not stop them from lingering. And it certainly did not stop their words from traveling to Gauri where she sat hardly a foot away, leaning over Vikram. One courtier’s wife wept loudly, declaring:“Ah, so soon a widow! Her henna has not yet dried!”
But Gauri was no widow. She was not even a wife.
Both kingdoms stirred restlessly.
Distantly, Gauri wondered whether the diplomats of Ujijain had already begun packing for their kingdom. Outside the chamber they spoke of broken treatises, and even foul play at the hands of a clever queen. After all, she was the last one who had seen him alive and well. And wasn’t her glass hand rather cruel looking at times? Why did she not smile around the emperor the way he smiled aroundher? Perhaps her dark eyes had lured him. Perhaps not all of her had returned from that strange land they had visited. Perhaps, perhaps. All splinters of a tale twisting out of hand.
The physicians could not diagnose him.
Aasha declared that no poison had touched him.
Gauri smoothed the hair from his forehead, fussed with his sheets, rubbed his feet to bring warmth back to his skin instead of this burning fervor that had gripped it. She sat and loudly criticized his favorite books. She declared that she was utterly naked and entirely bored. She told him this was a game she did not wish to play.
But she recognized what she was doing. She had seen her enemies do the same. Polishing their armor, squinting at the sky, poring over plans that had already come to pass. Redundancies on the way to the inevitable.
Out of earshot, Gauri was called unseemly and theatrical.
She was never called grieving.
The physicians declared that their best hope was to wait and see. But Gauri did not miss the twist of their mouths. They pitied her. They thought he would die if not by tomorrow, then in a matter of days.
Scouts had brought back reports of a similar illness gathering souls outside of the city gates. One day, people coughed and fell asleep, burning with fever. They never woke.
Once the physicians had left, Gauri admitted no one but Aasha and Nalini. Nalini held her, wept the tears Gauri could not summon. More would come. By morning, Vikram’s father would be here so that the ones Vikram had loved best would be there when…
No. Her mind could not bear the weight of those thoughts.
“I did this to him,” she said.
Vikram had not moved in hours. His eyelids had ceased their twitching. The fever had lulled from a fire to a flicker, leaving his skin cold and wooden.
“Hush, don’t say such things,” said Nalini. “How could you have known?”
“ButIsent him beyond the city walls.Itold him that he should go on a procession, meet officials, shakehands. I—”
She broke off.
