She was almost at the edge of the camp when she heard a voice.
“Pri.” A whisper. “Stop.”
She turned. Sima was behind her.
“How did you find me?” Priya whispered back, as Sima drew closer.
“You were sleeping in the empress’s tent, so I was sleeping outside it,” Sima said with a shrug. “Those guards were useless. They didn’t even move when you left.”
“I did dig my way out,” Priya said. A small application of a knife and her gifts had done the job for her. Hopefully Malini wouldn’t notice the damage to the corner of her extremely large and luxurious movable manse.
Sima sniffed. “Still.” She stopped walking. Placed a hand on Priya’s arm. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” said Priya.
“What?” Her voice was shocked, gaze searching. “Why?”
Priya thought of the yaksa, and the horror of Bhumika’s face changing, of realizing her sister was a mask and nothing more than a mask. Her throat felt dry. Her whole body ached from battle, and ached with heartsickness. She didn’t know how to explain it.
“Bhumika,” she managed to say. And then abruptly began to cry. “Oh fuck,” she gasped, and put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she garbled out beneath her hand. “I’m so—so tired. That… my magic…”
“Pri! Shit, look, don’t be sorry. Be quiet.” Sima embraced her bone-crushingly tight. “What happened to Elder Bhumika? Is she hurt? Don’t sob, someone will come and if we need to go, we don’t want that.” Her grip tightened another increment. “Priya,” she said with dawning, angry realization. “Were you going to go without me?”
“Let me explain,” Priya gasped.
“Please do.”
“As soon as I stop crying—give me a minute.”
She managed to make herself stop. Wiped her face with the back of her arm. And haltingly explained it all to Sima—the sangam. The yaksa. Bhumika’s stolen face, and Bhumika’s silence.
“Everyone at home,” Sima said in a thin voice when Priya had finished. “Anything could have happened to them.”
“That’s why I have to go,” Priya said, voice still thick with tears. “You see? Why it’s not safe for anyone but me?”
Sima was silent for a long moment. She gripped Priya’s shoulder tight, some dark thing flitting across her face, through her eyes. Then she said, “What if you stay? Stay here in the empress’s army?”
“What?” Priya asked, shocked. “How… how can I?”
“If they’re in danger, if something has happened—what can you do alone?” Sima’s expression was conflicted. But it was growing more resolute. In a determined voice, she said, “We came here because Ahiranya needs allies. So get allies. Let’s get your empress on a throne so that if… if something awful has happened, we can… do something. Fix it.”
“I have my magic,” Priya said.
“Your magic almost killed you,” Sima said.
“If I stay, it won’t be for allies,” Priya admitted, her voice all rough from crying, from the raw feeling inside her. “That’s… that’s not why I’d stay.”
It would be for Malini. For this selfish, desperate thing Priya felt that she’d confessed in all its awfulness and ugliness to Malini, lying in her arms with flowers growing through her skin.
“You can stay for more than one thing, Pri,” Sima said. “It doesn’t make you a bad person if that’s true. Besides, I’m not staying just for allies, or an army.”
“No?”
“No.” Sima rubbed the back of her own hand over Priya’s tear-stained cheek. Her expression was as tender. “I’m also staying for you. Now, let’s see if we can sneak as easily back into the tent as you got out.”
The army was soon on the move again. This time, Priya traveled in Malini’s own chariot, wrapped in a heavy shawl that Malini carefully tucked around her shoulders and throat herself. When Lata made a mild comment on the arrangement—quite rightly pointing out that the generals and their men would notice and talk—Malini simply said that Priya had done them a great service and suffered greatly as a result. If the generals of her army were displeased with the actions of their empress, they were welcome to come and tell her themselves.
None of them did. And Priya endured the jolting of the carriage, curled on her side, and traced the shape of the embroidery sewn onto the shawl in sinewy thread. Flowers upon flowers, twined together by flourishes of vine that wound upon themselves in whorls, knots, clearly embroidered by a delicate and skilled hand. She could follow them for hours, probably, and not find the place where the thread began or ended.
