Rao was watching her. Priya met his eyes, feeling oddly defiant.
“Prince Rao,” she said. “Is something amiss?”
He shook his head slowly.
“You’re friends with Malini,” he said, voice lowered.
Friends.Was there special emphasis on that word? She wasn’t sure, but she nodded. “Of a kind.”
He hummed in acknowledgment. “You’re not very like her,” he said. “That’s all. You’re very—forthright.”
Oh, I am like her, thought Priya, even as she said nothing, even as she stared at the opposite bank—at the spindles of distant trees, and the lush fronds dipping into the eddying water.I just wear my anger on the outside.
The water was definitely less turbulent here—one of Ashutosh’s men had dived in and confirmed there was no hidden undertow to concern them. One small islet, barely large enough for a handful of men but covered with vine-draped trees, acted as a natural resting point and a place where they could conceal themselves. If they moved slowly, with care, they’d be able to cross more or less invisibly.
Priya stood by the water’s edge for a long moment, feeling the humming song of the green around her, the weight and motion of the water against the riverbed and the things that grew from it. She began to reach out subtly to reshape the world around them. But the water here didn’t have the stillness of the Ahiranya marshland, or the strange magic of the deathless waters it was—it was powerful, full of energy and its own will, and trying to shift it made her head pound.
Priya left Rao with Narayan, who had arrived with a throng of archers. They waited, watchful, as Ashutosh and his men stripped off the weightiest parts of their armor, tying the metal into oilskin sacking. They waded into the water until they were chest deep, dragging the boats full of supplies in deeper after themselves. Priya was reluctantly impressed to see that Ashutosh was as willing to enter the water as any of his men.
As they moved farther into the current, Priya crouched by the edge of the water. She let her breathing go slow and deep—not deep enough for her to slip into the sangam, but far enough for her to stretch the limbs of her magic. It took her an embarrassingly long time for her power to drift across—to feel the weft of living things growing from the silt of the riverbed, and the tangled fringe of plants breathing on the shoreline.
To feel what was waiting on the opposite bank.
Oh. Oh,shit.
She jerked up and stumbled over nothing. Over her own feet.
“Sima,” she said. Gripped Sima’s arm. “You need to get back. Find somewhere to hide.”
“Why?” Sima’s eyes were dark with concern. “Pri, what’s happened?”
“There are men waiting,” she managed. She forced herself to let go of Sima. Turned. “Hide, please.”
“Priya, wait!”
But Priya couldn’t wait. She ran to Rao and Narayan, forcing her way through the throng of men surrounding them. “There are enemies waiting to ambush us on the opposite bank!”
Rao gaped at her.
“What?”
“There are—”
“I heard you,” Rao said. “Show me.”
She swung an arm wildly out, and Rao crouched a little, following the line of her finger. Behind him, Narayan was murmuring to the men, directing them to draw their arrows, to ready their shields and line the bank, and signal to Low Prince Ashutosh, if they could. Just in case. Just in case.
“I see nothing,” said Rao.
And perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps there was nothing visible, there, to the naked mortal eye. But Priya could feel the soft grass crushed beneath the boots; the shift of their feet just slightly beyond the reach of her strength.
“Look again,” she said. This time she watched him.
She saw the moment his eyes widened. His expression went suddenly tight. Priya didn’t have to know him particularly well to read that look as panic.
“Signal them back,” he bit out. “Narayan. Signal Prince Ashutosh—”
“He’s too far already,” Narayan said. He was dragging off his armor, clumsy with panic. “I will follow him, tell him—”
