Priya left them both, went to the maids’ dormitory, where she hastily daubed the worst of the mud and dirt from her frankly grimy sari, and headed to the kitchen. She tried to make up for her lateness by stopping at the stepwell on the way and collecting two brimming buckets of water. There was never a time when water was not useful in a busy palace kitchen, after all.
To her surprise, no one seemed to have noticed her absence. Although the large clay ovens were hot, and a few servants bustled in and out, the majority of the kitchen staff were huddled by the tea stove.
Mithunan, one of the younger guards, was standing by the stewing pot of tea, drinking from a clay cup held in one hand as he gesticulated wildly with the other. All the servants were listening to him intently.
“… only one advance rider,” he was saying. “One horse. You could tell he’d come all the way from Parijat. His accent was pure court, and the watch captain said he was carrying the imperial token.” Mithunan took a sip of tea. “I thought the captain would faint, he was so shocked.”
Priya put the buckets down and drew closer.
Billu looked over at her. “Good to finally see you,” he said dryly.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The princess is arrivingtoday,” one of the maidservants said, in the kind of hushed and excited tone reserved for the best gossip.
“She wasn’t meant to arrive for at least another week,” Mithunan added with a shake of his head. “We weren’t even told to look out for her on watch. But she hasn’t got a retinue with her, the rider said, so she’s moving fast.”
“No retinue,” Priya repeated. “Are you sure?”
Every royal from every city-state in Parijatdvipa traveled with a vast and mostly useless array of followers: servants, guards, entertainers, favored nobles. For the sister of the emperor to travel with anything less than a small army was an absurd concept.
Mithunan shrugged. “I only know what the rider told us,” he said awkwardly. “But maybe the rules are different when—well, you know. In the circumstances.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I was sent to bring some food back with me. We had a double shift and we might need to stay on for a third. The men are hungry.”
“Where are the day shift guards?” Billu asked, already moving to pile a basket full of food.
“Out in the city,” said Mithunan. “Captain said the regent wants everything safely shut down before the princess makes it here. Brother Billu, do you have any more tea? Or sugarcane? Anything to keep us all awake…”
Priya quietly slipped away as they continued talking, filching one paratha from the basket by the ovens as she went and stuffing it wholesale into her mouth. Sima would have called her a mannerless beast if she were here, but she wasn’t, so Priya was free to be as uncouth as she liked.
She’d been wrong to assume someone had been murdered. There had been no throats cut or bodies laid outside temples. No rebel killings.
Just a princess, arriving early for her imprisonment.
After her work was done, Priya plucked Rukh from Khalida’s care and guided him to the dormitory where the children slept. Once she’d found him a spare sleeping mat, she took him with her to her own dormitory, shared by eight other maids. Beneath the cover of the plain canopied veranda that surrounded it, ringed by fresh falling rain, she kneeled down, wrapped her hands in her pallu, and started carving the sacred wood down into a bead.
The burn of the wood through cloth was strong enough to make her swear. She bit down on her tongue for a moment, one pain to distract her from another, and kept on whittling, hands steady and sure. She could handle a lot more pain than this.
“Come and sit next to me,” she said to Rukh, who was still standing in the rainfall, visibly overwhelmed by the direction his day had taken. He stepped onto the veranda. Kneeled down beside her. “Hand me one of those,” she added, pointing to the small pile of ribbon and thread spooled on the ground next to her. He picked one up. She lowered the knife and took it from him.
“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked timidly, as she threaded the bead neatly onto the string.
“You could tell me how you’re finding your new life so far,” she said. “What work has Khalida set for you?”
“Cleaning latrines,” he said. “It’s fine. No, it’s—really, really good. A bed and food is… is…” He trailed off with a helpless shake of his head.
“I know,” she said. She really did. “Go on.”
“I said I’d do anything and I will,” Rukh said, all in a rush. “I’m very grateful, ma’am.”
“I told you to call me Priya.”
“Priya,” he said obediently. “Thank you.”
She didn’t know what to do with his gratitude except ignore it, so she simply nodded and pressed the bead of wood against her own skin. The bead was small enough that instead of burning her, it merely warmed her wrist, its magic seeping through her flesh and into her nerves, her blood. She held the bead there for a moment, ensuring that it wouldn’t be strong enough to harm Rukh but would still be strong enough to help him, and watched his face. He’d lowered his chin, gaze fixed on the raindrops splashing against soil. He still looked overwhelmed.
She remembered how she’d felt when she’d first come to the regent’s mahal. She’d cried every night that first week, folding her sleeping mat over her face to muffle the sound of her own tears so she wouldn’t wake the other girls.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” she said to him lightly. He lifted his head and looked at her, curious. “Have you heard the one about the cunning yaksa who tricked a Srugani prince into marrying an Ahiranyi washerwoman?”
