There were many stories about Empress Malini.
People did not tell stories about Vijay, but that was because he was a boy of fifteen. He was crown prince, but he was agreen boy, as his sage would scoff, smiling with affection in her eyes.But I’ve trained green boys before, Prince Vijay. Never fear.
On his fifteenth birthday he sought out the empress in her gardens. He told her about his training, not with the measured grandeur he’d been advised to, but straightforwardly. Swords were fine. He didn’t want to discuss swords. He liked ships, he said. He had studied the mechanisms required in shipwright work. He would like to travel the seas and see what lay in the world beyond. What, he asked, did the empress think of that?
“Did your mother not tell you to fear me?” The empress sounded amused.
In truth, his mother told him that spies watched her constantly, and watched him also. It had frightened him when he was a boy, but now he was a man, or near enough to being one.
Besides, he had also been told other stories. By Dwarali’s sultana, an older woman with a proud bearing and a graceful mien, and her husband the sultan, who was gruff and humorous and traveled everywhere by horse because of an injury he’d gained in the war. Their stories had been of the empress’s grand adventures and heroism, but he’d heard smaller, more revealing stories fromthe empress’s advisors. Some of those advisors were utterly unapproachable, but Lady Deepa always had a ready smile and a tale of the empress’s kindness. When he had been younger, she’d always let him drink sherbet or eat sugarcane sweets in her office when he wanted to hide from saber practice. His sage Lata had disapproved and scolded Deepa constantly for it.
“I am not a child anymore,” he said now to the empress. His days of sugarcane and sherbet were long gone.
“You are still a boy,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. Her eyes were dark and cold. He had wished, often, that he had inherited the imperial look, but everyone said he was his mother’s boy, and his Saketan blood shone through strong: brown eyes and a short stature. If he had anything from the imperial line, it was his curling hair and that alone. “You won’t have the privilege of being a young boy for long.”
“I won’t?”
“No,” said the empress. “But you have wise and able advisors. Trust them and all will be well.”
The empress was not… notyoung, exactly. She looked young, of course, but everyone said that was because she was a living mother of flame, and her light made her appear eternal. But she wasn’t old, either. It was strange for her to speak so, as if she would die.
The jasmine flowers fluttered in the breeze around them. The empress’s eyes crinkled into a smile.
“You do not have the heart to rule,” she said kindly.
“I do,” he protested.
She shook her head.
“Let me offer you advice I know you will not take, Vijay: When I am dead and gone, learn to lie. You will need many masks to survive.”
MALINI
Priya,
Think of my delay as my love letter to you. My final love letter. If I find nothing of you and cannot seek you out—I have nonetheless done what you would have wanted from me. I have made sure Ahiranya is safe, and it will survive. I have made an ally of your sister.
I have counted each year. I remember your arms around me in the Hirana. The smell of you—water and lotus flowers, the things that reach through the darkness and survive.
I know you live.
You will never see this, or you will. I wrote you letters once that you were never meant to see, and still you did. So I must trust that you will find a way. You were always stubborn enough, my love.
Priya, the world is vast and strange, and it is mine. I have the kind of power men die for, and yet I tire of it. I remember a dream of garlanding you and I think—
—I think it is more powerful and strange than any crown. To live without masks. To swim through rage and grief and rise, alive, on the other side.
Priya.
I am coming.
In the night, she woke and found flowers growing through the walls of her chambers. She lifted a lamp and saw them—the black of them, the way they bloomed joyously at the sight of her. She lowered the lamp and laughed and wept, smiling.
She knew it was time.
She had ruled as well as she could. She had built her court around her, and filled it with clever, cunning women. They would give Vijay wise counsel if he was willing to accept it.
She met Lata now, once again, on a veranda as the sun rose. Lata watched the light thoughtfully. Then she turned her eyes onto Malini.
