“As I did you?”
“I was glad to be in your debt,” he said quietly, after a moment. “That was your strength. You made people glad to be ruled by you.” The rainfall was growing fiercer. Cold water poured down on them, blurring the trees. “You are still the same woman, Bhumika.”
She shook her head.
“I have nothing to offer anyone now,” she said, staring down at her own empty hands and the rain on them. “I have no way to compel those priests. What do I have now, Jeevan? I’m powerless. I feel it in me, that absence—IknowI had power once. But it is gone, and my knowledge is nothing if no one will receive it from me!”
Her voice trembled, raised on those last words. Then she fell silent, clenching her jaw, turning from him.
“You could wield your own knowledge,” he said, after a moment. “If this truth you carry requires someone powerful, someone who will be heard—that is you.”
“I can’t,” she said, voice cracking. She had considered it. Amassing her own followers, sharing her knowledge before it drowned her. But those dreams were the desires of a ghost. She could not fulfill them. She was nothing but a painful, overfull skull. She was nothing but the ache of grief for something she couldn’t remember. She was nothing but a hollow shaped by the endless push of an ancient tide. “I am nothing,” she said.
“You have never beennothing. You could lead armies, Bhumika,” he said, his voice full with such feeling it was like the sun. “Share your words, and people will follow. They always have.”
Bitter grief curled through her veins regardless—and jealousy,for the woman she had once been. Perhaps that woman had been worthy of such love.
“Not anymore,” she said.
She paused, staring into the distance. She thought of the younger priest’s dark eyes that had seen her truth.
There was still hope. Her knowledge had brought her here. She would trust in it for now. There was nothing else she could do.
“We should find shelter,” she said finally, blinking rain from her eyes. “Rest. I will have to try again, but first I need to—tothink. If they say no once more, I will walk to Harsinghar and beg the Parijatdvipan empress directly to hear me.”
The empress would kill her, of course. But at least Bhumika would have done all she could.
The rain did not stop, and the trees provided limited shelter. Under their feet, in a matter of moments, the ground turned to wet mud, then to ankle-deep water. At first Bhumika thought it was another illusion from her watchers. But then Jeevan gripped her arm and cursed. She followed the tilt of his head and saw, as he already had, that a river cut through the trees ahead of them. It was so high that it had flooded its banks.
“We need to find higher ground,” Jeevan said, and Bhumika nodded her agreement. They turned away from the river.
The monastery had been on higher ground, but they couldn’t return there now. Instead they tried to find their way back to the road.
The water was still rising when they heard voices crying out, arguing. Young voices. It took only a shared look for both of them to turn and follow the noise, wading through the sodden ground until they found two children, a boy and a girl, arguing outside a dilapidated hut. As Bhumika drew closer, she realized they were not arguing with each other but with an old woman standing inside the hut’s doorway, who was clutching a blanket around her shoulders with one hand. The other hand was holding on to the older boy’s wrist.
“What is happening here?” Bhumika asked in Aloran, as Jeevan stepped ahead of her.
The arguing died into abrupt silence. Three pairs of eyes turned on them warily.
“Old Auntie’s refusing to come to our village,” the girl said after a moment, darting nervous looks between Jeevan and Bhumika. “She’s a widow. She lives alone here. But with the water—she can’tstay.”
“She won’t leave her wedding quilt,” the older boy said, still gripping the old woman’s hand tightly. “But she must. I keep trying to explain it to her, but she won’t listen.”
“What is her name?”
“Gulnar,” the girl said.
“Auntie,” Bhumika said. “Aunt Gulnar.”
Something in her voice made the older woman meet her eyes.
“The young ones will carry your quilt for you,” she said, carefully shaping the Aloran words. “And the man with me will carry you safely to your village.” She looked at the boy. “Where is your village?”
The boy swallowed. “Across the river.”
“The river isn’t safe to cross,” said Jeevan.
“There’s a bridge,” the boy protested. “It’s safe enough. Safer than staying here. You can come with us. If you help—that would be enough thanks, wouldn’t it?”
