“I can’t leave you here,” she said instead.
Usha smiled wanly.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
There was a commotion below them; a scream, and then silence.
If the noblemen found Lalita, she would be the one screaming. She knew very well what Ambhan noblemen thought of the worth of Amrithi. She knew the cruelty they could inflict, before they forced her from the city and the life she had so carefully, laboriously constructed for herself. She thought of her grandmother’s scarred lip, her warning, and shivered.
Usha gestured with her free hand, the other one tight on her scimitar.Go.
Usha slipped away, toward the courtyard, and Lalita headed to the right. The exit from the kitchen was ideal. It led out to a poorer district of Jah Irinah, winding and crowded and likely to be unfamiliar to the noblemen who had come to punish Lalita for tainting their city with her heathen presence. They wanted to protect the people of Jah Irinah from her, but—thank the Gods—they knew very little about the lives of the ones who were not of their rank.
She reached the kitchens. Pushed open the door and stepped out into the street. The body of the man Usha had killed lay against the wall, in a pool of its own dark blood. She murmured a curse, averting her eyes, and finally let the panic she’d been holding at bay take her. She sucked in a breath and began to run.
Her final mistake was tangled in with all the rest: She had wanted, so very deeply, to perform the Rite of Dreaming at Mehr’s side. She’d wanted to do so for Mehr’s sake, because she loved the girl dearly, as if she were her own child. But most of all she had wanted to dance the rite for herself. The Rite of Dreaming was a rite for worship and joy, for history and family, but most of all, it was a rite for dancing with clan. Lalita had wanted, just for a moment, to perform the rite with someone who was clan to her. Just for a moment, Lalita had wanted to belong.
She’d always understood that keeping even the barest bones of her heritage demanded a terrible price. But she had kept her heritage regardless. That was her gravest error.
Now all that was left for her was to survive.
CHAPTER THREE
On the morning when the sky above the city began to bleed from pale blue into the dark jewel tones of dreamfire, Mehr knew the storm had finally arrived. She went onto the roof with one disapproving guardswoman to accompany her. She couldn’t stay long. The guardswoman was muttering darkly about Lady Maryam, gazing up at the sky with obvious trepidation. Mehr took a brief moment to stare at the dreamfire, to snatch in the scent and the sight of it, then returned inside.
Once she was back in her chambers, a maid handed her a message from Lalita, confirming that she would be at the Governor’s residence by evening.
Worry knotted Mehr’s stomach and wouldn’t fade. Maryam’s words wouldn’t leave her. It would be a relief when Lalita arrived.
After the rite was done, she would speak to Lalita about the things Maryam had said to her, the whispers Sara had confided. She would find a way to keep herself and her family safe.
The hours passed and the sky darkened. Rather than waiting impatiently for Lalita, Mehr dressed. She put on her fanned skirt and her blouse. She wound indigo cloth around her body, draping it so it would move easily with her body and also protect her from the storm. The red silk she drew around her waist—and tucked her dagger securely into a fold, where she could feel the promise of it against her skin.
She marked her hands and feet with red. Her eyes she lined with black, and touched her forehead with ash also rimmed with red. She looked at herself in the mirror in her bedchamber. The woman who stared back at her had eyes like midnight and skin like rosewood, a solemn mouth and a forehead tipped vermilion. Sky and earth and blood.
She was ready.
She practiced the first few steps. She moved in the flickering shadows that fell through the screen wall. The sky was shifting, bright and changeable. The glow sharpened into white lightning against color. Eventually Mehr gave up on practice and simply stared at the whorls of dreamfire waiting to fall and the great winged shadows that flitted through them.
Time passed. It was night, deep night, and Lalita still hadn’t come.
Mehr could think of a dozen reasons why Lalita hadn’t yet arrived. Perhaps she had fallen ill. Perhaps she had been forced to leave unexpectedly. Perhaps, perhaps. But all those excuses felt flimsy, when Mehr remembered the wistful yearning in Lalita’s voice, when she spoke of dancing the Rite of Dreaming at Mehr’s side. She remembered Lalita’s exhaustion. Her careful words.
I have drawn some unwanted attention.
The air shimmered. With frightening suddenness, the dreamfire poured from sky to earth like water, coils of light exploding into facets of brightness. It drenched the city in its glow. The air crackled.
The dreamfire was falling.
Mehr’s heart was in her throat.
The dreamfire was falling, and Lalita was not here.
Mehr touched the hilt of her dagger, taking comfort in its presence. Words and warnings swarmed in her head. Something had happened to Lalita. She knew it.
We can be clan to each other, Lalita had said. Well, Mehr wouldn’t abandon what little clan she had. She walked to the entrance of her chambers and looked out into the corridor. Empty. No one would be leaving the household today, not while the storm hung over the city. They were all hiding from it, most likely.
Good. That would work in her favor.
