Trust me, her face said.
That was the problem with making allies. At some point, inevitably, there came a moment when a decision had to be made: Could this one be trusted? Had their loyalty been won? Was their generosity a façade for a hidden knife?
Malini made her choice. It was easier than it should have been.
“Do you?” Malini said, with equal softness. “Well. As it happens, so do I.”
She met Priya’s eyes. Without breaking their shared gaze, she took the carafe and drank deep.
RAO
After Rao heard about the executions and the women who were burned, he sat with Prem and worked through three bottles of wine grimly, methodically.
He was painfully relieved that Prem did not mock him for it; only poured out his glasses, and allowed Rao to lean on him, and told him rambling stories of their youth, to which Rao could only manage slurred responses.
“Remember,” Prem said, “when you and Aditya tried to learn to dance for my aunt’s wedding? Remember that?” Prem had long since stopped drinking, and was smoking his pipe, his face wreathed in a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. “You were truly shit. Both of you. I couldn’t believe it when Aditya gave you a black eye.”
“It was a traditional Saketan dance,” Rao managed to grumble out, even as the room kept on spinning dizzyingly around him. “We’d never danced with sticks before.”
“Not much different from using sabers, is it? You should have been fine.”
It hadn’t been like using sabers at all. That had been the problem. They had both been clumsy, awkward, more used to scholarship and weapons than dance. And Adityahadtried to fling his twin dancing staves like sabers. That was how he’d thwacked Rao in the face.
Aditya had apologized profusely about the black eye.I should have shown more sense, he’d said, in that martyred, earnest way of his.Sorry, Rao. I need to practice harder.A pause.On my own, probably.
Rao told Prem as much, as he rested his head on Prem’s shawl-cloaked arm, feeling the rise and fall of Prem’s shoulder beneath him, moving in time with his breath. Prem hummed and laughed in all the right places, and Rao finally went quiet, closing his eyes. The room was still spinning. He was probably going to be sick later, he realized. He didn’t care.
“How is he?” Lata’s voice.
“Oh, fine, I suppose.” Prem’s voice was as light as ever. “He’ll be asleep soon.”
Lata sat down—he heard the rustle of her clothes, the thump of her body—and she and Prem began to speak in low voices, as Rao drifted in and out of consciousness.
“… the sacred wood,” Prem was saying. His voice sounded muted. Rao heard the tap of his pipe, as Prem cleared it of ash. “Tell me if you believe it’s true.”
“The Ahiranyi believe that when the yaksa died, their sacrifice made those trees,” Lata said, after a moment. “They believe its wood is imbued with the yaksa’s power. As for what I believe—who can know for sure what it can do?”
He’d never taken Prem for a man interested in the faiths of others, Rao thought drowsily. Maybe one day, when this was all over, he would have to take Prem to the most ancient holy gardens in Alor—the ones where you could read old fates carved into the living trunks of trees. Maybe Prem would like that. Rao would have to ask him.
Then sleep took him, and he heard no more.
The next day he woke with a throbbing head and a woolly tongue, none of it unexpected. He allowed himself to feel sick for one morning, and one morning only.
Then he returned to the task of trying to see Malini freed.
Prem stared at him in silent judgment as he dressed like a Saketan lord, in clothes borrowed from Prem himself, all of it in pale greens and blues. As he tucked a shawl around his shoulders, Prem said, “At least take a blade whip with you. You can borrow one from one of my men, if you like.” He gestured at the two guards standing at the door, neither of whom looked as though they welcomed the idea.
Rao shook his head.
“No Saketan highborn would go anywhere without his weapon,” Prem said.
No Aloran prince went anywhere without his weapons either, as a rule. But Rao had put aside his chakrams and his daggers for the sake of subtlety. He didn’t say so to Prem, who knew that perfectly well, and was just seeking to needle Rao.
“Anywhere?” Rao repeated, tying his sash. “The amount you drink, I’m surprise you still have all your limbs, then.”
“We’re trained to handle battle in any situation,” Prem said, with mock affront. “Including inebriation.”
“Well, I’d still rather not carry one. I’m more likely to cut my own hand off than defend myself with it, sober or not.”
