“All of you. Lower your weapons,” the head of the monastery said. And Jeevan did, slowly. The guards around them slid their own knives away. Bhumika, her dagger still safely tucked in her sleeve, bowed to him through the wall of guards.
“Thank you, priest,” she said, infusing her voice with the appropriate gratitude.
The look the priest gave her was severe—empty of any compassion.
“I do not know why you have brought wild tales of yaksa to my monastery,” he said. “If you are seeking food and shelter, we cannot provide these to you. If you seek to trick coin out of my young priests with sobbing and falsehoods, I will not allow it. But if you leave now, all will be forgiven and forgotten.” He gestured with a hand, and the guards drew aside, leaving a gap for Bhumika and Jeevan to walk away from the monastery.
Neither of them moved.
“You think I am a beggar woman spinning falsehoods?” Bhumika shook her head. “Priest, if I sought your pity, I promise you I would tell a better story. If I were lying for coin, I would have run when your guards arrived. Only true conviction would make me face their blades.”
“You are mad,” he said.
“Determined,” she corrected. “And ready to bare my neck to the mercy of your wisdom.”
One of the guards made a noise of annoyance and reached for her, trying to encourage her to move away. She threw herself to the ground in a deep bow, hands to the earth—and in the process flung herself free from their reaching hands.
“Forgive me. You are head priest of the grandest monastery in Alor,” Bhumika said loudly. “Men may forget why your monastery is great and grand. They do not know what you once were. But you have a grand holy purpose: tolisten, as the nameless bid. So I beg you to listen to me. I come with a way to save you from the yaksa. I carry the knowledge in the empty vessel of my body and my heart. If you will sit with me, if you will take my burden from me, and tell your fellow priests—”
“Do not address our head priest, woman,” another guard snapped.
She closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids she saw them again—her watchers, holding bowls of spilling water, bloodied and green and gold. Her body was overfull with truth, but there was more to be had.
Will you drink?
Not yet, she thought.Not yet.
“This is what I know.” Knowledge roared like a tumult of water in her skull. And she, beneath it, was a stone worn smooth down to her purpose alone. Her voice left her mouth sonorous, strange—rich with power. “Long ago a woman came here, when your monastery was a hovel, a mere shell of stone. And she kneeled and she prayed and begged for a way to see the yaksa dead—and somethinganswered.
“Divyanshi, first of the mothers of flame, came here and learned how the yaksa may die. The knowledge is gone along with her; the voice she sought has not returned.
“But even if the door to the void is broken and lost, a trace of its magic remains here. So you—and your priests—who live and breathe in this place, who seek the nameless god, must know I speak true. You must hear the truth in my voice. You have the authority and power to spread my knowledge. To beheard. Doyou not hear the truth in me, priest? I seek someone to carry my burden. Is it you? It must be you.”
She raised her head.
“Let me show you how it may help you kill the yaksa. Let me help you set all of us—Parijatdvipa and Ahiranya alike—free.”
The young priest who had greeted them—and brought guards to remove them—was staring at her with wide eyes. Dark as the pools of water those priests used to seek the nameless god.
But the blue-robed leader of the monastery was still unsmiling and furious. No awe had softened his face. Her stomach plummeted. No matter how hard she hoped, or looked, none of that same dark knowing reflected back at her in his eyes.
“Old village tales,” he said, with a curl of disgust to his mouth. “Leave here, woman. Wailing before our monastery will not help you.”
You look into your pools of water and see nothing. I understand now. You don’t refuse me because you think I am false. You refuse because you do not know your nameless god. You feel nothing, hear nothing.
“You do not hear the nameless,” she said. She should not have spoken. She knew that. But she saw him flinch and at least knew, grimly, that she was correct.
She bowed her head and said, “I will return, priest. I promise it.” And then she lifted Jeevan’s saber from the ground before any guards could stop her, and grasped his arm, and strode away in defeat.
The rain began to fall again, bitterly cold.
“I should have known they would not listen to me,” Bhumika said.
“You paid a high price for the knowledge you carry,” Jeevan said, not disagreeing. “It should be given to people grateful to have it.”
“I managed that badly,” Bhumika said. She was angry—with them, and with herself. “I should not have been so honest or so forthright. Men with power do not respond to it. Especially from women.” She closed her eyes and steadied herself, forcing the fireof her anger to quell. “What was I like before I chose this path, Jeevan? Was I wiser?”
“You were careful with your words,” Jeevan said after a moment. “You would cajole. Mediate. For many years men with power did not listen to you. So you placed people in your debt, knowing they would help you not from fear but from gratitude.”
