Tucked against her side. Strong and sharp. “Yes,” she said.
They left the caravanserai and received significantly less bother as they did so.
Bhumika did not watch to see if they were followed. To watch would be to reveal that she knew the threat existed at all. That would be like blood to a tiger.
They walked fast, moving off the path into trees. The air smelled of sweet fruit, of fresh rain-churned soil. They walked for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes, before Bhumika murmured, “Four of them.”
Jeevan’s gaze ticked to her, then forward again. He had never questioned her overly sharp hearing—the way she always knew what things lurked in shadows in the dark.
They turned. The men were approaching and making very little effort to hide. She moved to stand behind Jeevan, watching them with careful eyes.
The men held weapons. Chakrams, drawn from wrists. Daggers.
“We have nothing for you to steal,” Jeevan said bluntly. Behind the cover of his body, Bhumika carefully drew her own dagger. Held it steadily. Memory or no memory, her body had an old knowledge of how to wield a short blade.
“You have food,” one said. His expression wasn’t particularly vicious. But he was twisting the chakram between his fingers, waiting to strike.
They had no way to defend themselves from a projectile thrown from a distance. Both she and Jeevan knew it.
Jeevan needed to get into proximity to them before they could act.
She considered what to do as the men and Jeevan traded barbs. He was not witty, her guard—but he knew how to play his role.
How to distract them?
Without overthinking it, she touched a finger to Jeevan’s back.Be ready.
Then she opened her mouth and let out an earsplitting scream.
The men flinched, startled. It was enough of an opening for Jeevan to lurch forward, saber angled, and split the first man at the arm, then the throat. He caught the second in the chest before the other two managed to respond. One moved to stab him and slashed Jeevan on the arm; with lightning speed Jeevan turned on him and met him blow for blow.
Then a strike of ill luck. The last man threw himself bodily at Jeevan, grappling with him. Jeevan’s saber was knocked from his hand, skidding into the soil.
The last man ran to seize it. But she was already moving, light on her feet.
She heaved up Jeevan’s saber, her arms protesting, and angled it just in time for the man to fall upon it. His own momentum made the saber pierce his stomach. She felt the split and the bloody crunch of muscle and flesh as it went through his belly.
Just to be sure he would die, she wrenched the saber out.
She raised her head. The man Jeevan had been grappling with was facedown against the wet ground. He was unconscious, or dead. It didn’t matter to her.
Jeevan was breathing hard. His eye was bruised.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said. Then he corrected himself. “Thank you, Bhumika.”
“Jeevan,” she said, breathless with terror—and relief. “Come. Let me clean your wounds.”
ARAHLI ARA
Taru Ara called to him through flowers. She seeded datura blossoms across the walls of the Hirana and the mahal, flashes of white at the periphery of his vision. One pointedly, viciously, grew its way through his right palm. It grew through blackened, its petals dying. He felt her in them. He understood.
You, her blooms said.Secretly. Not the others.
He drifted easily from the others. They were distracted with exultation. Priya had spoken their names; Priya had wielded Mani Ara’s voice, a lustrous pearl in the ugly shell of her body. While they celebrated, he followed the sound of his kin. Taru Ara was crying pitifully: a sawing of wood sound, a creaking branch in a high wind.
He found her on a veranda carpeted in vines. She lay curved on her side, torso bared to the sunlight. Her cries eased as she felt him approach, as his leaves shadowed the curve of her body, where her wound lay.
Her stomach was seared. The burn upon it was a hole the size of a fist, blistered with heat and pus and the livid quality of mortal flesh. He lowered a hand to it.
