“No need,” Malini said. They were all overwrought.
“If your sage were here she’d give you useful advice,” Sahar went on. “But me, all I can say is…” A sigh. “You’re our empress. Mother chosen. You’ll know what to do. Trust yourself.”
Malini could have laughed. Trustherself? She didn’t even know if she wanted to burn a field of bodies for her own life or throw herself on the flames. She had no reason to trust her own heart.
Finally, even her guards left her alone. If she’d had any faith she would have prayed then. Instead she lay on her bed and closed her eyes and tried to convince herself she could not smell charnel smoke.
She could not pray to the mothers. But.
Alori, she thought. Called, a cry to the dark.Narina. Aditya. If you’re more than gristle and dust, send me a weapon I can use.
I don’t want to die as you did. I don’t want to kill as Chandra did. Please.
Give me a weapon without such a terrible cost, before I must pay with what remains of my rotten heart.
RAO
Rao woke and fell unconscious and woke again. He was being dragged through snow; he was in a tent, surrounded by the smell of warm bodies and smoke; he was being forced to drink something warm and sweet that made the shivers in his body fade and his consciousness fade once more too. When he woke after more time than he cared to think about he saw things in flashes: a circle open to the sky, snow swirling in and smoke rising out; blurred figures in long wool robes; walls of dark canvas. Then he felt the warmth of a body close to his own. The body kneeled.
“Raise your head to the firelight,” a low voice ordered. There was a finger under his chin, gently urging his head up. There was a man in front of him with pale, hawkish eyes. Behind him in the tent a campfire burned.
“Perhaps I imagined it,” the man murmured. His thumb came to rest beneath Rao’s left eye. “I saw two fools in a storm. Strangers in Dwarali clothing. I thought of letting my soldiers shoot them—and then I saw your eyes. I thought they glowed like flame. Was it a trick of moonlight on snow, Prince Rao?”
“Kai Ehsan,” Rao said croakily, dredging the name somehow from his skull—from a fresh memory of snow, moonlight, a lowered bow. “You did not. The nameless god guided me here.”
“And why did your god guide you here?”
“To seek a ruby,” said Rao. There seemed no worth inconcealing the truth. Yelling about his vision had saved his life, after all. “But it may not be a ruby. The nameless showed me—snow, and blood rising from inside it.”
A strange look passed over the man’s face. For a moment he did not speak.
“I believe you,” he said finally. “Only a fool following a god would walk to his death in snow.” He released Rao’s face. “You no longer look like you’re going to perish, Prince Rao. That is good.”
“The woman with me—”
“She is recovering,” said Kai Ehsan. “If you can stand unaided, you can speak to her yourself.”
It wasn’t easy, but Rao rose to his feet. He took a moment to regain his balance and take in his surroundings. His weapons were gone. There were no chakrams at his wrists or daggers at his waist. He was wrapped in a blanket of fur and embroidered wool. One staggering step forward, then another, and he finally saw Sima on the other side of the fire, gray-faced and bundled in a mound of blankets so thick she looked like a swaddled-up infant.
The sight of her gave him the strength to stumble to her side. She mouthed his name, then mouthed a curse so vile that it made him laugh in surprise and then laugh again in relief as he lowered himself to his knees in front of her.
“Sima,” he said, his voice rough. He clasped her hands in his, drawing them out of her cocoon of blankets. They were very cold. “I’m so very sorry.”
“N-no need,” Sima managed. “W-we’re both idiots.”
One of the women clucked at him and batted his hand away.
“Bring your hands closer to the fire,” she instructed Sima, who complied.
“My sisters,” the kai said, nodding to the women. “Bahar, Qutlugh.”
“You’re welcome here, Prince Rao of Alor,” the younger of the two women said. The elder nodded in agreement.
The leader of the Jagatay—that was what the termkaidenoted, or so the scraps of knowledge Rao had gained in the Lal Qila’slibrary had told him—placed a hand on Rao’s shoulder. “Rest,” he said. “My sisters will watch over you.”
“Thank you,” Rao said, looking from the two women to their brother. “For your kindness, and your compassion. I am indebted to you.”
“I do not need thanks,” said Kai Ehsan. “But I will take your debt. When the storm dies and you are recovered, Prince Rao of Alor, I am going to ask you for knowledge. And you will answer honestly.”
