Priya could guess what kind of knife had carved her.
Her gaze dropped to the dagger she’d pulled free from Ganam’s skin, lying on the ground near them.
The blade was wet with Ganam’s blood, but even through the sheen of viscera, Priya could see the black stone of the blade.
She crouched on her palms and peered closely at it. The stone almost seemed to swallow the light.
She looked away from it.
“We’re returning to Ahiranya.”
“We haven’t found the sleeping yaksa,” Ruchi said in a thin voice, her eyes fervent despite her blood loss—or perhaps because of it. “We can’t simply leave.”
“We can,” snapped Priya. “Ganam is injured.”And I havepower I never had before. And the empire has a weapon we can’t fight. Too many things have changed, and I won’t risk you all.“Help me with Ganam. I must see the yaksa.”
They rushed over to pick him up.
They were carrying Ganam toward the new path. They weren’t looking at her.
Her hand was still wrapped in Ganam’s torn tunic, wet with blood. She bit down on her own tongue, wrapped her hand tighter, and picked up the blade that had stabbed him and taken his strength away.
It was, in a way, no different from handling sacred wood. Although it did not burn, as sacred wood could, its coldness was a different kind of fire—a numbness against the skin. The cloth provided a barrier to its power, but an imperfect one. Even through cloth, it cleared Mani Ara’s memories from her head like dissipating smoke—and left her weak and trembling on the dirt, more human than she’d been in a long time.
But the new path would get them home. She didn’t need her strength right now. What she needed was to keep this weapon—this thing that could negate a yaksa’s power—close, until she could work out how to use it to her own ends.
She tucked the weapon into her kameez. Then she stood and followed them.
She could feel the yaksa waiting for her on the Hirana. Priya, at the end of the seeker’s path beneath the bower of bones, looked at her warriors and decided the yaksa could wait a little longer.
“Go,” she said to the warriors. “Take Ganam to the sickroom, and Ruchi too. I’ll be there soon.”
“Where are you going?” Ganam asked.
“To the Hirana,” she said. “I’ll talk to the yaksa alone.”
When the warriors had left her, she buried the knife. She didn’t know what purpose it would serve yet—she didn’t know if she would speak of it to the yaksa. They’d been dismissive of mothers’ fire, butthis—this was an unknown.
She climbed the Hirana, stone melding together beneath her feet, all its rough edges, its carvings, turning to steps beneath her, making her ascent smooth.
In the triveni, open to the sky, the yaksa waited. Priya kneeled smoothly in front of them.
“We fought the Parijatdvipans,” Priya said evenly, her head lowered. “They ambushed us. In the process, your only twice-born elder, Ganam, was injured. A warrior who drank the deathless waters broken from the source was injured, too. But the Parijatdvipans are dead, and I will return to Srugna to save your sleeping kin. Iwillbe there when they awaken. The fault was all mine, but I can fix it, and I will. If anyone has to be punished it’s me.” She raised her head, steeling herself for their cruelty and disapproval.
That was when she saw the smiles on their mouths.
“Oh, look at you,” breathed Sanjana. She drew Priya to her, fingernails sharp. “You carved a path. You brought yourself home.”
“You killed so many men, and so swiftly,” Bhisa Ara said. She sounded proud. Pleased. “Finally. You grow stronger.”
“Of course war is a good medicine,” Avan Ara piped up. “War and cruelty.”
“Mani Ara will want you,” Bhisa Ara said. They were speaking over each other so swiftly, a song like birds. “You must go to her.”
“I’ll seek her in the sangam,” Priya said, hoping she could grasp a little time before she sought out the first yaksa again.
“You must seek her near the deathless waters,” urged Vata Ara. “You will be closest to her there, in body and in your soul.”
What could she do? They were watching her with such hunger.
