He hadn’t known that Priya had told her to remain, but now did not seem the time to say so. Instead, he placed an arm around her shoulder. Let her weep.
When she’d quieted he said, “I… I have some bad news. I’m sorry.”
He told her.
“You’re leaving me behind.” Her expression was shuttered, but it was the exact absence of expression on her face that told him how hurt she truly was.
“I have to go home,” he said. “I… I have to go to a monastery and reach for the nameless god again. I can’t continue like this, Sima. I have to talk to the nameless god. I need a priest to guide me.”I need to know if the voice inside me is the nameless god at all.
“Insist on taking me with you, then.”
“The empress will take you back to Parijat with her. Lata will protect you then.”
She scoffed.
“Go then. Listen to your god. But I think you should listen to your own heart a little more, and your god a little less,” said Sima.
“I’m afraid,” Rao said quietly, “that I don’t know my own heart.”
“You do. You listened to it in the snow, when we almost froze. You told me what your heart said.” She stepped abruptly away from him, arms crossed. “You won’t find your answers in Alor or with the nameless god. But I can’t stop you. Go, Rao. Just go.”
ARAHLI ARA
Priya was the one to build the path. He could feel her in the sangam—as she could likely feel him, if she dared to reach out. But she had no interest in him. She guided the way, walking forward as he followed.
In Srugna, they kneeled on the earth and watched a yaksa peel their way from the dirt. A yaksa, baring her teeth, breathing as if she had mortal lungs.
Distantly, he knew that Ashok would have known the face that rose from the soil—that face that tipped toward the sunlight, catching its fading rays like a flower in bloom. But it also felt wrong to think of Ashok in this moment.Riti, Ashok’s voice whispered in him. He banished it. A mortal had no place in this, the birth and return of one of their own.
“Cira Ara,” Priya said tenderly. “You live again.”
“There was fire,” the yaksa whispered. “And then a long sleep, where I saw nothing and dreamt nothing. If I thought, it was of soil and darkness.” Her eyes were all strange sclera. “What did I give up in order to return here?”
You will become more and more flesh, thought Arahli.Your heart will beat strangely in your chest. You will feel, as you have never felt before. Small, encompassing emotions, born of the body, but so vast they could have drifted with us out of the cosmos.
But Priya said none of the ugly things drifting through his head.
She held Arahli’s sister with her hands. Cradled her. A hand to the skull. A hand to the cheek. She looked at Cira with all the infinite love and strangeness of Mani Ara.
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “You’re here now.”
She glowed as darkly as his mother, as if her skin were a paper lantern to the starlit void of Mani Ara. It was like a cold hand passing over him, witnessing it. Ashok grieved, horrified. But Arahli felt something sharp-edged and beautiful. He felt hope.
MALINI
She wanted only her most trusted people for this negotiation, but she couldn’t wait to summon Lata. She took her Parijati warriors and Rao’s forces along with her. She directed Lord Narayan and Low Prince Ashutosh to return to Parijat.
Lord Prakash she left in Srugna. He would counsel King Lakshan on her behalf.
The kai’s sister waited in an encampment on the road from Srugna. Rao had left her with a significant number of his men, guarded in her own tent. She bowed immediately when Malini entered.
“Lady Qutlugh,” Malini greeted. “Please. Stand.”
She raised her head. Qutlugh was fairer skinned than Malini, with thick black hair bound in a braid. She wore the kind of clothes typical of Dwarali, with its bitterly cold winters and mild summers: a salwar kameez and jacket and shawl, thick fur-lined boots. On her wrists, ears, and throat she wore heavy golden jewelry, and her eyes were lined with kohl.
“Prince Rao has told me what your brother and your people desire,” Malini said, without pleasantries. “I’d like to hear it from you.”
“We desire a home, Empress,” Qutlugh said. Her accent was thick, musical—but she knew court Dvipan, the language of the empire’s highborn, and wielded it now instead of the commonZaban that Malini had used. Her choice of language said,I am highborn. I was born to power, just like you.“Land that is ours. In return, we offer heart’s shell.”
