“Very perceptive. I am. The texts of my own teacher.”
“What does it mean—irrational artifice?”
She raised her head, squinting against the sun.
“You’ll see for yourself, soon enough,” she said. “Look.”
Ahead of them stood a gorge, and across it lay a bridge of root, carved between walls of mountain rock. Through the path, he could see a temple garden. A great monastery.
They had reached Srugna. They’d found the lacquer gardens, where Aditya awaited. There were men, watching for them at the top of the path. Not soldiers of Parijatdvipa, in imperial white and gold. Dwarali horsemen. Saketan liegemen. Even Aloran warriors. His father’s men, sent to ensure that Aditya would take the throne.
Rao looked at them all and thought of the words he would have to say.
The low prince of Saketa is dead. Prince Prem is dead. But I am here, Aditya. I’m here.
CHANDNI
Sendhil entered the hut, removing the hood from his head. Without it, the patches on his skull where moss had formed were entirely visible. He kneeled down, holding his gnarled hands loose before him.
“You should have killed her.”
“Mm.”
“Should have let me do it, if you couldn’t.”
“There would have been no point,” Chandni replied. “Nothing we’ve done can put a stop to it now. Besides, she isn’t the only one who survived.”
Sendhil gave a grunt in response. He’d been so eloquent once. So incisive. She remembered still walking beside him and all her fellow elders, a mixture of children who had grown up alongside her and the people who had raised them, dressed in their fine silks with the wind that wound through the Hirana on their skin.
All of them, gone now.
She looked down at her own hands. Her fingertips were whorled like the heart of a tree. In her veins was an ichor, a poisonous sap, and soon enough it would kill her. Soon enough her face would stop being her own.
She thought of Priya’s face, twisted into a rictus of hate.
You can have a child, and hold that child against your own skin, and raise it.
You can betray yourself and your values for that child. You can let the child escape, even though you know it should die—know, no matter how strong and firm its hand is in yours, that it is a blight and must be hollowed from the world to give the world chance enough to survive.
And that child can look at you, with fury and contempt, and leave you to die.
She and Sendhil sat, wordless for a long time. Then Sendhil exhaled, low and slow, and said, “I can hear people coming.”
Chandni thought of the agony it would cause if she stood, forcing all her bark-whorled joints to creak into motion. So she did not rise. When men and women entered the hut, she was still crouched on the floor. She could hear more of them surrounding the outside. Counted the footsteps. At least twenty.
She looked up and met Ashok’s eyes.
“She’s long gone,” she said to him. “But you know that.”
He kneeled down. “So. You live.”
Chandni inclined her head. She wondered if he would strike her then, or simply gouge her neck through with the fine scythe in his right hand. Behind him, his people were exploring the hut, some walking out and toward the treacherous garden and the tree of flesh. None of them were children she’d taught or raised.
That, at least, she was glad of.
“What did you do to her?” Ashok asked.
“I nursed her to health, after the waters sickened her,” Chandni said levelly. “And when she was well, she left. I know no more.”
