“You’re escalating,” said Priya. “You’re going to make everything so much worse. The general is going to kill so many people to compensate for this, Ashok.”
“Hewas the one who escalated,” Ashok said. “All those men and women put to death for—what? An ‘attack’ in which no one died but Meena? Your regent is a fool, or his master is a fool. The emperor needs to understand that they can’t take our language, ban our stories, let us starve, and then outright kill us, without consequences. I don’t regret it, Priya. And neither should you.”
“You’ll see Ahiranya bathed in blood, between you.” She sounded so much like Bhumika then—so disapproving and prim—that he could have laughed.
Instead, he kneeled down, mirroring her.
“Have you found the way to the deathless waters, Pri? If you really want things to be less bloody, that’s what you need to do.”
“If you’re going to lie to me, at least do me the service of making it convincing,” Priya scoffed. “If I give you the deathless waters you’ll use them to build an army, to murder, to—”
“—live,” he finished. “I need the deathless waters to live.”
The blow struck, as he knew it would. He could hear it in the weight of her silence.
“It’s like you’re holding a knife to your own throat to make me obey,” she said finally. “Everything you say feels like a threat.”
“The truth isn’t a threat,” he said gently. “Pri, I never wanted this for you. I set Meena on this task for a purpose. But you’re my only hope now. And I’m not lying. It will be less bloody, if my followers and I have the kind of strength we need to make a strike that snaps Parijatdvipa’s control of Ahiranya at the joints.”
In truth, they needed the waters if they wanted to be sure of success. He had plans. He knew exactly who needed to die to bring Parijatdvipa’s imperial power to its knees. He’d spent a long time considering. Every murder he and his followers made was intended to weaken Parijatdvipa’s control and pluck the weeds of imperial power out at their deepest roots. “You know what they say: in killing, a single blow of a scythe is cleaner than a dozen from the mace.”
With the deathless waters they could be the scythe: stronger than their limited numbers and cobbled together, disparate funds would allow. They could kill accurately and swiftly, cleansing Ahiranya in one fell swoop.
Without the waters, there was little chance of success. They would have to be brutal. They would have to burn and gut Ahiranya, killing their own in order to destroy the empire. There would be no clean plucking of weeds: This would be the kind of war that set whole fields of crops alight, leaving nothing but ash and hunger in its wake. And even then—even after paying in Ahiranyi blood—there would be no guarantee of success. No promise that Ahiranya would be free.
Only Priya could find the waters. Only Priya could coax the way from the Hirana, and bring Ashok and his followers the strength they needed to succeed. Only her.
Priya reached for him, then paused. She drew her hand back reluctantly. Lowered it into the confluence of waters.
“I’m not sure I can give you what you need,” she said finally. There was something vulnerable—almost a question—in her voice. “I’m not sure I can give you the waters. And I’m not sure I can give them to myself either.”
“You agree with Bhumika now, then? You want to bow and scrape before the Parijati for what little they deign to give us? You no longer want us to have what is ours by right?”
“What will you do with that right, Ashok? Whatareyou doing?” she demanded. “What are we meant to be?”
“We could do so much good, Priya,” he told her sincerely. “The thrice-born could manipulate the rot, you know. It was so new then—as were we—but they could control it. You may not like my methods. You don’t have to. But once we rule Ahiranya, we can make our country better. We can see our people put first, fed and cared for as a priority, for once. We can save our culture, our history. Perhaps even end the rot entirely.”
“By becoming monsters?” Priya whispered. “By turning into weapons?”
Yes.
“You’ve killed too,” he said. “There’s no shame in being strong enough to take what is rightfully yours.”
“Maybe there should be,” she said. Another hesitation. Then the words unfurled out of her. “I remember more. The Hirana is beginning to respond to me. Sometimes I smell smoke and it’s as if it’s choking me. I hear screams. I…”
She looked at him, this shadow of her, who was only beginning to remember what he could never forget. “Ashok, can you promise me you won’t… that you’ll only do as much as you need to do, to see Ahiranya free? That you won’t kill every Parijati on our land? I know your anger,” she told him. “I feel it. And your grief. And your—hunger for something better. But can you promise me you won’t drown Ahiranya in blood?”
“I promise to do what is best for Ahiranya.”
“That isn’t an answer,” she said.
“I promise to make us what we once were.”
“That still isn’t an answer,” Priya whispered. “Ashok. Brother. You cannot be trusted with the kind of power we once had.”
Her words were like a slow knife, paring the skin from his ribs.
“I raised you,” he managed to say around the pain of her condemnation.
