“The coin isverygood.”
“I would have thought she’d have more volunteers than she could manage, then.”
“Ah, no.” Sima squinted through the bars. “Come over here. I can see horses.”
Priya got up with a groan. When Sima didn’t move, she nudged in close to her, pressing their faces together so they could both look.
The horses were beautiful, pure white and bridled in brilliant gold, drawing a chariot of silver and ivory bone. The inhabitants were hidden, shrouded above by a dark cloth canopy, surrounded by a wall of curtains. There were riders on either side of the chariot, but there was, indeed, no full retinue. Just a clutch of soldiers, bristling with weapons, and a nobleman who lowered himself from his horse and bowed perfunctorily to the regent.
“The princess,” Sima said against her ear, as the curtain of the chariot parted and an older noblewoman alighted, “is being imprisoned in the Hirana.”
There was a sudden white emptiness in Priya’s skull.
“Gauri’s struggling to get volunteers,” Sima was saying. “There’s me, of course. A few new girls who don’t know better. That’s all.”
“But youdoknow better,” Priya managed to say.
“I want the money,” Sima said quietly. “I don’t want to be a maid for the rest of my life. I didn’t come to Hiranaprastha for that. And you…” Sima huffed out a breath, but Priya was so numb she didn’t feel it, even though they were cheek to cheek. “I don’t think you want to be here forever either.”
“It’s not a bad life,” Priya said. “There are worse ones.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t want just a little bit more than you have,” said Sima. “And what happened there—it was a long time ago, Pri.”
“The Ahiranyi don’t forget.” Priya moved away from the window. Pressed her back to the wall and stared at the ceiling.
“Let the rebels remember,” Sima said. “Let them write their poems and songs and take up arms. You and I, we should look after ourselves.”
She didn’t addbecause no one else will. That truth was ingrained in their marrow.
But.
The Hirana.
If Gautam had brought her close to the bones of her past, the Hirana was the grave where the broken pieces of her memory lay at uneasy rest.
It all tumbled over her then. The exhaustion. The void inside her. Rukh’s bravado and loneliness, like a mirror flinging her own past before her. The thought of how easily a blade could part skin. The humiliation of being knocked over, dismissed, talked down to.And what do you do? Sweep floors?
She was meant to be so much more, once.
She couldn’t be the person she’d been reared to be. But maybe, just maybe, she could allow herself to want a little more than what she had. Just a little.
It sparked up suddenly in her heart—a desire so small and yet so powerful that it welled up in her like hunger in a starving body. She couldn’t let herself want her old gifts or old strength. Butthisshe could want: enough coin to buy sacred wood without groveling before a man who hated her. Enough coin to make life a littlebetter: for those children at the market, who had no one. For Rukh, who was her responsibility now. For herself.
Coin was power. And Priya was so tired of feeling powerless.
“I can see her,” Sima gasped suddenly. “Ah—I can’t see her face, but her sari is lovely.”
“She’s a princess. Of course her sari is lovely.”
“Gray, though. I thought she’d wear something brighter.”
“She’s a prisoner.”
“Who knows what imprisoned royalty get to wear? Stop sniping at me, Pri. Come and look.”
Priya took Sima’s place this time. A slim figure had just alighted from the chariot. Priya could see the edge of a hand still resting against the chariot’s wall, the pearly fabric of the princess’s sari moving slightly in the breeze.
“I’m going to find Gauri,” she said, stepping back.
