Mithunan shuddered.
“So,” said the kneeling rebel, still watching him. “What will you do?”
“I’ll show you,” Mithunan said. Swallowed. “Please. Don’t.”
The rebel dragged him to his feet.
The wife of the regent had her own palace in miniature, in the central courtyard of the mahal. As Mithunan stumbled toward it, a strange burning knife at his back, he could only wonder at how the smoke and the fighting had transformed even the normally prosaic miniature fort of flowers. The trellises of roses, the white and yellow blooms upon the windows, all looked somehow thicker and darker. The green of the vines was deeper, almost oily with color. The window shutters were absurdly open. In place of lattice were leaves, entwined with shadows.
“It doesn’t look like much,” the smaller rebel muttered. A woman, by the sound of their voice.
The male rebel grunted in response.
Shoved his knife forward.
Mithunan felt nothing for a long moment. He looked down and saw the shaft of the blade protruding from his stomach, surrounded by blood, as if through a dream. Then he began to shake. Fell, as the knife was drawn free.
You should not have trusted rebels to spare you, he thought, and the voice in his mind sounded like his commander’s—a low, derisive rumble of judgment.They were always going to kill you. Fool lad.
“It will take you a while to die from that,” said the woman. She stepped over him.
But as the two rebels approached the rose palace, a rain of arrows was upon them suddenly—from the roof, the windows. They cursed and leapt, with terrifying swiftness, between the arrow-fall. It was like a dance.
And then the ground… shifted.
Flowers, jagged as glass. Thorns burrowing out of the earth, sharp as knives. As teeth.
He heard them as if through water. Saw them wavering, shifting as his vision failed.
The earth was swallowing the woman’s feet. She screamed, fighting it, but the gentle expanse of flowers the Lady Bhumika had planted with her own hands, long ago, had somehow consumed her up to the ankles. The ground was bloody around her.
Something green speared through the male rebel’s chest.
It will take you a while to die from that too, Mithunan wanted to crow. But he had no words left in him. Everything had seeped out of him.
The darkness enfolded him like a cloak.
MALINI
They made their way to the triveni. Here, Malini could smell smoke. Hear far-off sounds—like voices, wailing.
“I can guide you down,” said Priya.
Malini looked down at the Hirana, over the edge of the triveni. The surface was uneven, all slick edges, sharp crags. The last time she’d climbed the Hirana, she’d had a guiding rope and guards to keep her alive. But the parts of the Hirana below her had no rope. Even with Priya beside her, she felt a nauseous swoop in her stomach.
“I suppose there’s no other way,” she murmured.
“No,” said Priya. “Not anymore.”
Malini steeled herself. She had to do this, if she wanted to be free. And to die by a fall rather than by poison or fire would be—novel. At least there was that.
She let Priya take her hand. Her first step was on ground that was treacherous and fragile. She felt as if she stood on a broken shell with nothing but a void beneath it. Then the surface steadied beneath her feet. Moss seeped up between her toes. She swallowed, and fixed her eyes on Priya’s face.
“Tell me where to place my feet.”
“Just follow me,” Priya said. “That’s it. Just like that.”
The breeze swirled around them. On it she smelled burning once more.
