“Priya.”
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
A pause. His voice was low.
“Like Bhumika left.”
“No. Maybe.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why or how Bhumika left. I don’t know if she’s even alive anymore. But I’mleaving because if I stay, the yaksa will win and we’ll die.” She clenched her hands into fists. Grounding herself. “I need you to take care of them all when I’m gone,” she said. “The children. Our fighters. Everyone.”
“Priya.” His voice was harder. “I can’t let you do that.”
A deep breath left her. “You can’t stop me, Ganam.”
“The yaksa won’t let you go,” he said. “And… shit, Priya. I’ll be honest. We all need you. What would they do without us? Without you?” His voice softened, cajoling. “Don’t do anything stupid. Please. Let’s talk about this.”
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
She told him what Mani Ara intended for her. She told him what the world would become.
He listened, and under moonlight she saw his face grow grayer and grayer.
In the end, he said, “What do you need from me?”
“I need to make it clear that you’re loyal,” she said. “That you didn’t help me.”
She bound him by the legs and throat to a tree with thick roots. “The others will find you in the morning,” she muttered, working. “By then I’ll be gone. As far as they’ll know, you’re loyal to the yaksa. And that’s what the yaksa will know too.”
“Where will you run to?” Ganam asked, watching her. “Where can you go that the yaksa won’t find you?”
She shook her head. “It’s better you don’t know.”
She tightened his bonds.
“I’m not going to awaken the yaksa sleeping in Alor, and neither are you,” said Priya. Then she leaned back and swallowed, reaching for the iron in her spine. “This is going to hurt,” she told him. “I’m going to break a bone. If you’re too injured to move through Alor or go through the deathless waters, it will give you time. And save your life, I hope.”
His mouth thinned into a grim line.
“Give me a cloth to bite on,” he said. She grabbed one. Pressed it between his teeth.
“Build paths,” she urged, circling his arm, upper and lower, with her hands. Gripping him firmly. “Build them secretly. Make them small. The yaksa won’t notice immediately—there are too many paths already for that. And then help our people get out. If they want to run, help them run. I know it’s a lot to ask for. I’msosorry, Ganam. But you and I, we’re all there is.”
He nodded as far as his bonds allowed.Do it, his eyes said.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He fainted when she broke his arm.
VARSHA
The priest Mitul had asked Varsha for information. He had not told her what, exactly, she was meant to seek. Whenever she met him in the temple gardens or wrote him letters in the deep night, she told him a string of true tales that to her mind amounted to nothing. Stories of the squabbles between some of the women in the empress’s inner court. The coldness of the empress’s sage, Lata, who cared more for books and administration than she did for the finer things of court. And she told him about the soirees the women held, where they drank wine or sherbet, or smoked their pipes, and gossiped about nothing and everything. Local estates, who had birthed an heir and who had not, and what they thought of the empress’s choices.
Over time, she began to understand what these tales might be worth to him—how they could be mined for truth, raw and powerful, that could be used to shift the balance of power within the empire.
But it was not Mitul who taught her this. It was Deepa.
Deepa assisted Lata. Deepa was a highborn woman—a daughter of Lord Mahesh who served now at the border of Ahiranya. Her father had betrayed the empress once, but Deepa had been loyal to her. As a result, Deepa was a wealthy and powerful woman in her own right.
But she did not wield her power as the empress did—in jewelsand swords and cold, knowing eyes. She was mild and gentle, and welcomed Varsha into her company with a smile. She was never annoyed when Varsha brought Vijay with her. Even through his crying or his sickness—and oh, Varsha wished someone had told her how often some babes could vomit—she allowed Varsha to accompany her on her tasks. Often they sat together in Deepa’s study, looking through messages from outlying city-states and from Parijati landowners, as they shared sliced fruit and laughter.
