I can.
Whether or not people could live here, they were certainly making their best efforts. The rooms that lined the corridors had been turned into makeshift bedchambers and prayer rooms, and there were more people around by far than there should have been. It took her a long moment to mark the beads of sacred woods at different wrists and throats. The vials of deathless water, broken from the source, strung at waists. Worshippers. So many of them, and many of them armed.
No one noticed her at first. She probably looked no different from the rot-riven. Then she saw an older woman striding along the corridor and felt a breathless shock of recognition.
Kritika, leader of the mask-keepers, saw her in return. Kritika’s face went tight, as if shock and fear had both caught her unaware, neither gaining the advantage on her face, leaving her expression a rictus.
“Elder Priya,” she said, her voice a rasp. “Are you… are you,you?”
Priya nodded, wordless. Her lungs felt empty, her mouth useless.
Kritika bowed low. When she raised herself up, her eyes were shining with tears, her expression determined.
“The yaksa have brought you back to us,” she said, voice trembling. “I am so glad, Elder.”
Funny. Priya had never thought Kritika particularly liked her. But Kritika was looking at her now, hopeful, eager, and Priya… Priya had to say something profound, didn’t she? She racked her brain.
“I’m really hungry,” Priya said, her voice cracking.
Billu fed her.
Kritika led her to the kitchen. Guiding her, like Priya wouldn’t know where the kitchen was anymore, even though she’d once visited it multiple times a day. In the open courtyard, by the ovens and the ever-simmering vat of tea—that vat was likely to survive longer than any of them—Priya stood and ate, and drank nearly a whole jugful of water on her own. She ate like a feral thing, a starving animal, because her body was animal and hungry and she had no energy to conceal it.
The household gathered around her: Billu, who ruled the kitchens; Khalida and the maids, who had become the household’s masters in the time since Ahiranya’s independence; ex–imperial guards—but no Jeevan; and finally Ganam and the other mask-keepers, who were clustered around Kritika like children. She recognized them all. And recognized that they were all watching her, curious and wary-eyed, as if she were a hawk in a cage, or a serpent caught on the end of a stick, beautiful but liable to attack if provoked.
“Where have you been?” one mask-keeper finally blurted out. That broke the tension. Immediately, one of the laundresses added, “You look so thin, Priya. Were you with the empress’s army this whole time? Did you come back here alone?”
“You haven’t heard,” Priya said numbly. She looked from face to face. “None of you have. Have you?”
“Heard what?”
“Our borders are shut,” Ganam said flatly. “Anyone who tries to leave or enter dies. We know what’s happened in Ahiranya. Nothing beyond that.”
The food turned to nausea in her stomach. They didn’t know.
The yaksa hadn’t even spoken of it directly. It was Priya who’d said to them that she had cut out her own heart. She remembered it now, in sickening flashes: Malini, and the trust in her black eyes; the way they looked when that same trust snapped, a string brutally cut.
“I stabbed the empress,” Priya said, more calmly than she’d thought she was capable of.
A beat of shocked silence.
“Does… does she still live, Elder?” Kritika finally asked.
“Yes,” Priya said. But what followed was a fist of dread that gripped her straight round the heart, her lungs, making her air small.
How could she know if Malini had lived or died? She couldn’t know. She knew how wounds could fester, even with the best care. She knew how fiercely, too, that Malini wanted to live. Was desire enough?
She breathed through her feelings and bullied the fear down. She took another mouthful of food. She chewed hard on her roti, the bread grinding down to soft pulp between her teeth, giving herself time to recover, to think. To be silent.
“Why did you do it?” a maid asked.
Priya swallowed and said simply, “The yaksa asked it of me.”
“Then it was deserved,” Kritika said determinedly. “And it was necessary. We must trust the yaksa,” she stressed, as if the others had argued this point with her.
They didn’t reply, and neither did Priya. She wasn’t sure she needed to. She swallowed a mouthful of tea instead, blistering hot.
“I know Bhumika isn’t here,” she said instead. Her voice shook only a little.
