“Dwarali, then,” he said. “And a future where you’ll live. That’s what I promise you.”
PRIYA
Priya knew she was dreaming. But this time she wasn’t lying on the ground with Malini’s hands on her face, her hair. She was standing and Malini was standing ahead of her.
Malini’s back was to her. Blue light haloed her, veiling her body in shadow. But Priya knew the shape of Malini’s body. She knew her narrow, firmly held shoulders and straight spine; the height of her, and the slimness, and the way she held her head—haughty, gaze direct, as sharp as an arrow.
Priya knew it all, and knew better than to approach her.
She did it anyway.
Just a dream, with her feet moving of their own accord across green-veined marble, the stone cold and grainy with river silt beneath her. Just a dream as she reached out a hand and pressed her fingertips to Malini’s spine.
Malini stiffened under her hand. Priya felt the movement of her muscles. The sharp rivulets between the joints of her spine. She was marble-stone and ivory and a riverbed. She was a force of life under Priya’s hand.
“Priya,” Malini murmured. She said her name like a curse. Began to turn her head—
“Elder Priya.” Priya opened her eyes. Her blurred vision cleared as she sat up in bed blinking. A mask-keeper, mask hooked at her waist, was standing at the doorway. It wasn’t morning yet. Theroom was nearly black with shadow.
“What is it?” Priya asked, keeping her voice low. She didn’t want to wake Rukh and Padma if she didn’t have to.
The mask-keeper took another step into the room, her expression grave.
“There are people, High Elder. Strangers.”
Fear ignited through her blood.
“Have the Parijatdvipan soldiers found a way into Ahiranya?” Priya demanded.
The mask-keeper shook her head frantically. “No, no. Not the soldiers. Normal people. Rot-riven. On the edge of the forest. They’re—they’re begging to be let in. We don’t know what to do.”
Priya stared at her, mouth open. She felt like a landed fish.
“They brought offerings,” the mask-keeper said, sounding as confused as Priya felt. “They’re kneeling. Some have weapons, but they’ve left them on the ground by the trees. I think—wethink, those of us who were on patrol, Elder—that they’re worshippers.”
Priya rose to her feet, fumbling in the process of trying to tighten her sari. “Worshippers?” she repeated. “From—outside Ahiranya? Not our people?”
“No,” said the mask-keeper. “What should we do with them?”
More mouths to feed. Outsiders. There was a voice that sounded distinctly like Bhumika’s warning her that Hiranaprastha could not manage more people, and the mahal could certainly hold no more pilgrims. But Bhumika wasn’t here, and Priya had always been too softhearted and lacking in sense to manage this kind of shit on her own.
“I’ll see them myself,” she said.
The mask-keepers who’d been on night patrol were waiting for her at the very edge of Ahiranya, where trees rich with rot grew thickly, and thorns like spears lined the rolling green of the ground that was once a track used by farmers traveling to and fro. They had their masks on, but she could feel how unsure they were. Their faces turned toward her as she strode toward them.
“Where are they?” Priya asked.
“Close,” one mask-keeper said. He pointed outward.
Priya walked a few more steps and saw them. Maybe a hundred kneeling figures. Some young, some old. There were children among them. The people had no torches, and their faces were gray and frightened in the semidark.
There were Parijatdvipan soldiers in a perimeter all around Ahiranya. Priya had felt them in the green. Malini had left them behind. She didn’t know how this group of people had managed to evade them, and it made her stomach knot trying to imagine it.
“Have you spoken to them?”
“A little,” one mask-keeper said. “We told them not to get closer.”
She swallowed. “Good,” she said. “That’s good.”
