Before her brother had sent her to be imprisoned, isolated, upon the Hirana—where she may contemplate her decisions and the state of her soul, as I have contemplated it, in a place befitting of her fate, the emperor had written—Vikram had seen the princess once, on a visit to the imperial mahal in Parijat itself. She’d been a genial and pretty thing, wrapped in fine silks. Royal daughters did not wear crowns. Instead they wore imperial symbols: jasmine flowers, yellow and white, twined into a halo; marigolds and roses, gold and carnelian, fresh and still touched with dew, bound to the roots and ends of a heavy braid.
The woman he looked upon now did not resemble the flower-wreathed princess of Parijat. She did not even look very much like the princess who had arrived nearly a month ago at his mahal. That girl had been quiet and dour but healthy enough, tall and shapely with severe dark eyes and a wary turn of the mouth.
This woman was thin and dirty, panting hysterically, skin mottled with tears, eyes sunken and red-rimmed.
Mothers of flame protect him, he should have concerned himself far more closely with her welfare than he had, emperor’s orders be damned.
“Princess,” he said, speaking in Dvipan—the formal language of court, and a royal daughter’s mother tongue. “Were you injured?”
“Merely frightened, my lord,” her jailer said quickly.
Vikram looked at the princess, wavering where she kneeled, her face flushed with suffering.
“She requires a physician,” he said.
“She does not, my lord,” said Pramila. “She has a frail constitution. She merely needs rest. Medicine, and rest.”
Vikram was not convinced. Far from it. How could he be, when the princess continued to tremble, her hair as loose and wild about her as a priest’s, her body all gaunt ugliness?
“Princess Malini,” he said once more. “Tell me how you fare.”
He saw the princess swallow. Saw her raise her chin. “An assassin tried to take my life, General,” the princess croaked out, in a voice that wavered like flame. “My imperial brother and master would never have allowed such a thing in his household.”
Ah.
He was conscious of the eyes upon him. The guards that surrounded him, barring Jeevan, were all Santosh’s men and not his own. And Santosh had plenty of reason to report any and all of Vikram’s failures back to the emperor.
Emperor Chandra clearly did not care, overmuch, for the princess’s well-being. He would not have sent her here if he did. But nonetheless she was royal blood, sequestered in Vikram’s care. If she had died at an assassin’s hands imprisoned in Ahiranya, if Vikram had failed to keep her safe, and allowed imperial blood to be spilled on his lands…
Well. Emperor Chandra was not known for his generosity. Vikram again remembered the hunger in his eyes, when he’d asked about the temple children burning. It was not a hunger Vikram could trust.
“I vow to you, daughter of flowers, that every effort will be made to keep you safe as a pearl,” Vikram said.
She shook her head. “It is not enough, General. How can it be enough? Oh, mothers of flame, protect me. I cannot survive here, alone and unloved!”
“Princess,” hissed Pramila. “No. Silence, now.”
“I…” Her face crumpled. “I have nothing here. No attendants. No ladies. No guards that I can trust. I was gently raised, General. I am sure I will die like this.”
“Princess,” he said. He kneeled, then, before her. His knees ached. “Your brother has ordered that you be kept in solitude. In contemplation. I cannot give you the court you once possessed. It would be treason.”
“One attendant would be enough to put my heart at ease,” whispered the princess. “General, the woman who saved my life—can I not have her? She is only a maidservant. No doubt she knows nothing beyond obedience. I doubt she even speaks a civilized tongue. It would be as if you provided me a—a loyal hound. She would not disrupt my contemplation. But perhaps I would feel… safe.”
It was not an unreasonable request.
One maidservant. Well. Surely the emperor would not be wrathful if Vikram provided the princess one simple Ahiranyi girl to sweep her floors and help her sleep at night. Surely Lord Santosh would not object to this measure if Vikram framed it as a way of calming a frightened girl. One maidservant was a small price to pay, to keep the princess biddable. Even now, looking into his eyes, her breath was calming. New color flushed her cheeks.
“What,” Vikram said carefully, graciously, “can I, a humble servant to your family, do but attempt to ease your pain? You will have the maidservant. I promise it, princess.”
After Vikram had spoken to the Hirana guards, the weeping princess, and his closest advisors—and even comforted his wife, who had woken when the conches sounded and begged for news of her precious servants immediately upon his return—he went to his own private chambers, stood upon his shaded balcony, and stared into the distance for a long moment, gripping the wood of the balustrade so tightly it creaked in the vise of his hands. A servant, standing in attendance by the door, asked him tentatively if he wanted to change his garb. His tunic and dhoti, both a silk so dark a blue they were almost black, had grown sodden, darkened with rain and sweat by the journey up and down the Hirana.
“No,” Vikram said shortly. “Arrange a bath for when I return.”
He did not want fresh clothing for this task.
The servant murmured an acknowledgment and withdrew. Vikram left the veranda, returning to the cool interior of the mahal, and made his way deeper and deeper into the building, and deeper still, beyond gates and guards, down to a dark staircase protected by barred doors and men alike.
Santosh was waiting for him there. Vikram had hoped the man had gone to bed. But one of Santosh’s men must have informed him of Vikram’s location.
