“… impassable borders,” another man was murmuring. Rao turned his head, following the voice. One of the Srugani. Rao did not recognize him, and had no interest in recognizing him, but he noted the sweat on the man’s forehead and the tension in his jaw with a disinterested eye, just for the sake of something to do apartfrom thinking of flame, and flame, and flame. “We sent warriors to Ahiranya, but the trees consumed them. Like teeth in the maw of a beast. You will not believe me, my brothers, but if I were asked to choose between the jaws of a tiger or Ahiranya’s forest…” He shook his head. “I would choose the tiger,” he said heavily.
I believe it, Rao thought. He’d seen what Ahiranya’s forest was like firsthand. He’d seen what the rot could do to a body.
He said nothing. The highborn around him shifted uneasily on their bolster pillows. There was a clink, as more liquor was opened and shared.
Mourning meant no liquor, no gambling, no sex until the ritual of grieving was done. The empress and her court of loyal women prayed still by the smoking ashes of flowers. He hadn’t gone to the funeral—he would rather have cut out his own eyes than watch an empty pyre burn in Aditya’s name—but he’d heard florid descriptions of Malini’s noble misery as she kneeled by the flowers, and her gray face, and her white grief clothes, bleached like sun-touched bones. A perfect mourner. She had to be cajoled to even eat.
And yet here were her men in a dark room with the shutters closed and the curtains drawn and candles burning, drinking their way through the finest liquors in Parijat and eating their fill as they pondered the doom ahead of them.
“The priests claim the yaksa will return,” a young Parijati noble said. His voice trembled a little.
A murmur of unease. One man laughed.
“Impossible,” he said.
“If the priests say it, then it must be so,” another man said. There was a ripple of disagreement.
The yaksa are returning, Rao thought. He’d seen a yaksa’s severed arm, a relic of the Age of Flowers, blooming with new life. He’d seen a vision from the nameless god in a pool of water.A coming. An inevitable coming.
He’d seen Aditya’s eyes when Rao had shown him the severed arm. He’d seen the moment when Aditya had made his choice:when Aditya had decided the nameless had a purpose for him, that it was time to burn—
Rao stood abruptly, knocking over a cup of wine in the process. The man next to him swore as it pooled messily on his lap.
“Apologies,” Rao said shortly. The man opened his mouth to say something—but when he met Rao’s eyes, it abruptly snapped shut.
Rao turned and left the room. No one made any effort to stop him.
For days, Rao had been possessed by a vague but urgent desire to vanish into the anonymity of a pleasure house and drown himself in a vat of cheap wine surrounded by strangers, but the time he’d spent in the presence of his fellow highborn had made clear to him that he wasn’t fit for company.
That was fine. He’d be alone instead. He bribed one of the guards for drink and kept on walking.
There were a few low-roofed chambers overlooking a garden of lotus ponds. He climbed up to the lowest of them, swinging up one-armed, his other arm cradling three flasks of arrack—his least favorite liquor. As soon as his legs were on firm roof-stone, he pried open a flask and set the rim to his lips. Bitter, fiery liquor burned against the roof of his mouth. He swallowed fast, letting the fire run right through him.
He wanted to drink until he couldn’t feel his own skin; until he was a blank, buzzing, nauseated void of a man, all the grief scooped out of him.
Another swig. And two, and three. He leaned back on his elbows and stared out at Harsinghar.
From here, the city was a night sky laid out on the earth, dark and formless and flecked here and there with light. It looked almost peaceful. From here, he couldn’t see the mourners still crying and praying outside the walls of the mahal. He couldn’t hear them, either. It was a relief to hear nothing but the wind—to feel nothing but liquor and the sharp bite of the night’s breeze against his face, turned up at the sky.
But, ah. If he could still feel his face, well—then he had more drinking to do.
So he drank more, until even the darkness had softened. When he heard a clatter—and felt a stone bash sharply against his leg—he swore with surprise, and the flask slipped from his drink-dulled grip. It rolled, spilling all the arrack left in it, which wasn’t much.
“Rao?” a voice called. “It’s me.”
“Lata?” He sat up. “Why did you throw that? Come up.”
“I can’t climb to you,” she replied, voice small in the dark—small and far away. “I’ve already tried. Didn’t you hear me?”
“No,” he said.Slurred, more like. “But I’ve had a great deal to drink. I’d climb down to you, but I’d probably break my neck.”
He didn’t have to hear her to know she was sighing and shaking her head, that her forehead had creased a little, the way it did when she was lost in thought or thoroughly vexed.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” she said.
A punch of grief through his chest. The funeral. The funeral.
“Did Malini notice?” Rao asked.
