“The Jagatay have promised to make their vows to me,” said Malini. “They will not join our empire without solemn promises of loyalty to the empire.”
The clink of Raziya’s glass against the table was overly loud. “Elder Priya kneeled before you in a temple of the mothers,”Raziya said. “She did not vow to serve the empire, but she vowed to serveyou. And still, she harmed you.” There was compassion in Raziya’s voice, despite the harshness of her words.
“The vows that made us as an empire are holy,” Raziya continued, gaze unflinching. “The Age of Flowers, the burning of the mothers, shaped vows between us that cannot be sundered. A vow made from fear, or for the sake of power or political gain—even a vow made for love—cannot compare. The Jagatay will be traitors one day. No matter how closely they are watched, they will turn on you, and you will be forced to break them. It is inevitable, and in the nature of humankind. It is an endless wheel, Empress. You cannot change it, nor can you stop it turning.”
If Malini flinched, no one could blame her for it. She bit her own tongue. Sharp, but not enough for blood or even true pain. A simple grounding.
“It is lucky that you will watch the Jagatay carefully,” Malini said. “I am indebted to you.”
“Indeed,” Raziya said. “You are. And I come with other news.”
She drew a missive from her jacket and laid it before Malini.
“Your brother’s widow seeks to commit treason,” she said. “She couches it beautifully, Empress, in carefully tailored words. But nonetheless it remains true. She assumed or guessed I would be angry. She tried to make an ally of me, and of Dwarali, to support her son’s early rightful claim to the throne.”
Malini took the missive.
“Empress,” Raziya said. “You’re testing the limits of your power. The very vows it rests on. The enemy we seek to destroy. People like Lady Varsha will test your throne accordingly. She may be a fool, but you will face wiser and cannier enemies. You must be careful.” She was silent for a moment, watching Malini with something like grief in her eyes. “It is a hard road you walk, as empress,” she said finally. “What friends can you have, when you must always place the empire above the very people who have bled for you, fought for you, wept for you? I do not envy you.”
She rose to her feet.
“Khalil will continue to serve in your army,” Raziya said. “And I… I will return to Dwarali, to make sure his throne is ready for him. I know the scale of the war that lies ahead of you. I know you fight an enemy we have not seen since the Age of Flowers. But I must protect my own, Empress. And I have done my duty. On the vow made by my ancestors to yours, I always shall.”
VARSHA
Her son had been washed and fed, wrapped in cotton, and cooed over by his mother and by a maid with a little silver rattle-drum, who shook it over his head as he tried to grasp it with clumsy little hands. “When he is older, he’ll be strong, my lady,” the youngest maid marveled. She was watching with a sweet smile on her face as little Vijay grasped Varsha’s finger. “Look how tight he holds on!”
“He can’t even grab the rattle properly,” Varsha protested, but she was pleased. She wanted her son to be special. She knew her son was special. He had to be worth the trouble she had gone through for him: the physical agony of her changed body, the grief-lash of her marriage, the loneliness of her widowhood.
He had to be worth all her loss.
“He’s far too small yet,” one of the older nursemaids said comfortingly. “You’ll see, my lady. He’ll grow into a fine prince.”
Crown prince, she thought. She held him tighter.
When he refused to sleep, fussing, his nursemaids placed him in his cradle and rocked him to sleep. She watched from her own bed as the older maid placed her foot to the cradle’s lever, making it swing softly; as the younger one, Parul, sang a Parijati lullaby. It was some nonsense about hunting golden deer, and a tiger with a belly full of jewels, slit from throat to tail by a clever hunter with a sharp sword. A good song for her son. Something to daub his sleeping mind in the promise of glory.
She would sing him her own lullabies, she told herself. She closed her eyes, exhausted by the heat and little Vijay’s demands upon her—and, always, the dull shroud of her grief. But the grief was lighter than it had been in all the long months since her brother and father had perished, and through it she grasped that small, shining possibility: Saketan lullabies for her son. Lessons hidden in small tales. The chance to shape him into an heir who would make Parijatdvipa better than the cruel thing it had become under Divyanshi’s scions.
She was woken by the sound of a voice calling her name.
“Varsha,” the voice said. “Sister. Wake up.”
Even in the grip of sleep, Varsha knew that voice was not her brother’s. She woke with her heart pounding, sweat on her skin. That voice belonged to Empress Malini, who had come in unannounced. She was sitting in Varsha’s favorite chair by a low lattice window, where songbirds often came to her, flitting around in bright comfort.
There was no one else in the room. Varsha made a sound—a low, heaving thing she couldn’t restrain—and scrambled up onto her feet.
“Where is my son? Where is—”
“Prince Vijay is with his nursemaids,” Malini said calmly. “Walking the corridors. They are going to take him to the orchid garden, where they will show him the flowers and sit with him in the shade. I’ve instructed a servant to take them sherbet.” The empress was entirely still in her seat, her sari a sweep of ivory and silver around her, the light carving her face into facets of brown and effigy gold. “He won’t be harmed. Sit, Varsha.”
Varsha, trembling, sat. She grasped for a semblance of calm. But she struggled to find it. Something was wrong. She knew something was wrong. What she did not yet know was how much danger she was in.
The empress looked unchanged. Still thin, and hollow beneath the eyes, as if exhaustion had carved itself into her flesh and bones—but also elegant, in her pale silk, her crown of whitejasmine, the gleaming weight of gold draped from her ears and throat. Vaguely, Varsha had thought war would make something harsher of her, that she would return to Harsinghar in armor, smelling of blood and smoke.
But blood and smoke could be washed away, of course. And armor could be removed.
What could not be changed was the iron in Malini’s eyes. Her gaze was unflinching, her mouth firm and unsmiling. There had been no softness in her voice when she’d spoken. And there continued to be no softness when she said, “You should have trusted me.”
