“Yes?”
He lowered his gaze. “Nothing. The camp is packing up. Shall the men arrange you a palanquin?”
She shook her head.
“No need,” she said. “I’ll walk.”
As they neared the end of the seeker’s path, sunlight bled through the trees, untainted by the strange rain-like wash of night.
“No candles,” one of the men was barking at the others. “No pipe smoking, men. Don’t forget that.”
At first glance, the lacquer gardens of Srugna were a grand valley monastery, an ideal worship ground for the nameless. The valley walls were covered in a delicate, rich profusion of leaves of deep green and burnished yellow. The ground was rolling grass and meadow flowers: purple, pink, blue, as small as beads. Between them were trees, delicate and long-limbed, heavy with the weight of fruit and young leaves, berry dark.
But none of it was real. The weather in Srugna was not suitable for the meadow flowers of Dwarali, the sweet grasses found in parts of Alor.
Malini looked at the high tree-ringed slopes that surrounded the gardens, encircled by a vast reservoir of water; the narrow entry across a bridge of woven root and vine. The monastery was both well protected from invasion and terribly vulnerable.
She felt that knife-edge balance keenly when she crossed the bridge. Beneath her lay a chasm, sharp-rocked. The bridge itself was a fragile weft, rocking alarmingly with the motion of their bodies crossing its surface.
Once they were across, Aditya fell into step beside her. “The garden was carved—built—according to the vision of the first Srugani priest of the nameless. He was told to ‘go to the valley of the lotus, and build within its heart a palace to me, a place of lac.’ So he did.”
Aditya took her hand. He led her to the fine, gem-hung trees surrounding the entrance to the monastery. Placed her hand against the surface of the bark.
Lac. Lacquer. Sweet, resinous.
Not simply a name after all.
She drew back her hand.
“Anyone,” she said, “could burn this place to the ground, by error or design. You know that, don’t you? It would take barely a spark.”
“No more than one candle,” a new voice agreed. A priest approached them, clad in the blue robes of the nameless, his voice and his expression tranquil. “But we are priests of the nameless, princess, and we surrender ourselves to fate. It is our calling.”
“Come,” Aditya said, gently urging her forward. “Let me show you your new chambers.”
A simple room. A bed. These luxuries, after so long, should have overwhelmed her.
She sat on the ground and quite carefully resisted the urge to scream.
They lived willingly within an unlit pyre, the fools. She felt the knowledge close over her skull like a vise.
Fire. Burning. It was lucky she did not believe in fate, because these things seemed to be following her. Waiting for her.
“Princess Malini,” said a voice. It was quiet but warm. “I am so glad you live.”
She turned her head to the door. Her old teacher’s favorite disciple stood before her. Like all sages, Lata was austere. She wore her hair in tight braids, bound in a corona against her skull. Her sari, covered by a gray shawl, was pristine.
“Lata! I did not expect to see you,” said Malini in surprise.
“I accompanied the Aloran prince,” murmured Lata. “As you asked me to.”
Malini was lucky some of her many messages, sent during her confinement before she was meant to burn, or hastily written and paid for with bribes of jewels before her imprisonment in Ahiranya, had reached their targets after all.
“I am so very glad you did,” said Malini warmly, though her heart felt cold. “Please. Come and sit.”
Lata sat down by her side.
“How shall I begin, princess?” Lata said, cocking her head to one side. Those were the words of a sage—a kind of rote offering. “What knowledge do you seek?”
