“Where do you want me to go?”
“Dwarali,” she replied. “I want you to go beyond the Lal Qila. Beyond Parijatdvipa, where the tribes of the Jagatay and Babure dwell. Lata will tell you more, if you choose to go.”
Silence. She saw his forehead crease, his jaw tense. Then, carefully, he said, “I had hoped to go home. To Alor.”
“You cannot go yet.”
“Lord Khalil or Lady Raziya. If you spoke to them—”
“Lord Khalil must remain here to assist in my war. Lady Raziya will go to the sultan’s court with a portion of my army,” said Malini. “I promised her husband the sultan’s throne, you see. By law it is not mine to give, but the sultan is old, and he has no heirs but a distant cousin. Raziya has my permission to ensure that power transitions smoothly into Lord Khalil’s hands.”
“That sounds a little like murder.”
“Does it? How strange.”
“Malini.”
“I thought we were beyond your judgment, Rao,” Malini said, baring her teeth into a smile. “You’re missing the most important truth: I trust you more than I trust them. I know the price of their loyalty, and I know the source of yours. It lies in your sister’s pyre, and my brother’s. I know the strength of that grief. I trust you, perhaps, more than I trust anyone.”
“Do you?” His gaze fixed on her. Sharpened. “Or are you sending me on a fool’s errand? Perhaps you don’t feel I am a fit general for your army any longer. I wouldn’t blame you, Malini. I know what I am.”
There can be more than one truth.
She didn’t say the words. Didn’t speak of Lata’s troubled gaze,the way she’d whispered to Malini about him.All I desire is for him to have peace.
“This is no punishment,” she said gently. “And no fool’s errand. If distance provides you ease or respite… I would be glad. But I hope you will return with answers, Rao. And even if you do not, I hope you will return to be my general and my advisor again.”
Vulnerability flashed across his half-shadowed face.
“I want to take Sima with me,” he said. “Lata placed her in my care on your behalf, but I won’t act without your permission.”
“Do you not trust me to keep her safe?”
“I know you will only stay in Harsinghar until Lady Varsha’s child is born,” he replied. “Then you will go to war again. She can’t be your priority.”
“Is she yours?”
“She is a good person, or so I believe,” Rao said quietly. “I’d like to make sure one good person survives this war.”
“Do not return to me and tell me you’ve misplaced her,” she said.
“I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
She felt nothing about Sima but an echo of her feelings for Priya.
But Rao. Well.
She didn’t tell him what she knew. Sima’s guards replaced with newer, kinder men; the efforts to arrange better food. The nighttime visits. The list of small kindnesses and intimacies revealed his partiality to her. If another man had been so attentive, Malini would have wondered if he’d fallen in love or lust with his prisoner. But with Rao, she was not sure such concerns were necessary. She knew where his heart lay, and it was in ashes, not in Sima’s bed.
“Remember what she is,” said Malini. “She may be good-natured, she may listen to you and be kind enough, but she is Ahiranyi. She comes from our enemies, and no matter what she may say, her heart belongs with them. Remember she is a prisoner with good reason, and treat her as such.”
RAO
After seeing Malini, he returned to his old rooms. He bathed, and tried to eat a meal, and tried to sleep. Only the bathing was successful.
He was wounded. He’d made no useful efforts to hide the truth of it. Did everyone know how much he drank? Did they distrust him for it?
He settled on lighting a pipe and sitting out on his veranda, where he could watch the sun lower in the sky, and the gold of dusk bleed over Harsinghar, turning the white city bloody.
