They stood or sat around her and watched her. Waiting for her to speak.
“You know by now what has been done to the highborn who attended the feast,” Bhumika said. “The yaksa have told them they will live, if they are obedient. And if they are not, the rot will take them. And the yaksa have toldmethat they seek a war. They have told me they desire a new Age of Flowers. The highborn will now have no choice but to help them.” A pause. Then, “You know they keep my daughter from me.”
Khalida let out a low sob.
“I never imagined the yaksa returning,” Billu said, from his place by the pots. “But if I had, I’d have thought they’d make Ahiranya better. Make the world respect us. I’d have thought they’d treat us well.” He savagely poked at the flames. Firelight running fingers across his face. “Seems to me, they’re no different from the empire,” he said. “We’ve lost one tyrant and gained another.”
“At least they’re ours,” someone said.
“Are they? No one told me when I was a boy that the yaksa I grew up praying to would like sickening people. Hurting children,” Billu replied. “I would have gone and prayed to the nameless instead if they had. At least one’s not likely to move in and poison the guests.”
“So what do we do? Fight them? How’sthatgoing to end?”
“I am not asking you to raise your voices and weapons against them,” Bhumika said. “Far from it.”
“Are you asking us to obey them? If I wanted to serve them,” Ganam said, “I’d be sitting with Kritika right now, you understand, Elder Bhumika? I wouldn’t be here of all places, with people who barely like me.”
“Even Kritika’s not sure if she wants to worship them anymore,” said a soldier.
“As Billu rightly pointed out,” Bhumika said calmly, “our people have survived oppression and mistreatment before. We know we have the strength to do so if we must.”
“But we shouldn’t have to again,” one of the maids said. Her voice trembled. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“It isn’t fair,” someone else said.
More voices clamored up, rising and tripping over one another. There was a thud. Bhumika turned, and saw that Jeevan had knocked his saber pommel hard against the wall, making a noise loud enough to silence them.
“Elder Bhumika,” he said. “You were saying.”
“It isn’t fair,” Bhumika said. “And I am… grief-stricken. I had so many hopes for Ahiranya. As you all did. I know. But I also have faith in all of you. I have faith you will survive. I have faith you can bend to monstrous forces, and still hold pride in your hearts. And I know if the opportunity arises, you will set yourselves free.”
“And you?” Ganam asked. Eyes on her, assessing. “What will you do, Elder Bhumika? Lead their wars for them?”
She would do whatever they asked of her, butonlywhat they asked of her. She would weave her way around their orders, finding hairline fractures in their control, weakening their grip on Ahiranya and its people. She would do what she had always done: play at obedience, while ever sharpening her knives. Waiting for a chance. Only a chance.
The thought made her to want to wither. She understood their frustration; their hopelessness. It was hers too.
“I will remember what we are,” she said. “I will keep the thought alight in my heart, like a candle. And when our lives darken, I will use it to guide me through. I will remember that we are not what is done to us. We are, and always have been, more than that.” Her voice softened as they stared back at her—grief and rage and something like hope in their faces. “That is what I will do.
“We will not die bravely and needlessly,” she said. “But we will not lose hope. That is what it means to be Ahiranyi, whether the yaksa know it or not. When they destroy us, somehow we will always grow anew. Have faith in that.”
She felt Ashok before she saw him. The green sang and writhed in her head, a warning and a call. And there he was. Waiting for her beyond the kitchen courtyard.
“Keep the others in the kitchen,” she said softly to Jeevan. “Keep them safe.” He hesitated, clearly unwilling to leave her alone—but at her urging, he abruptly nodded and walked away.
The spirit wearing her brother’s face wavered on his feet. Stood on the dusty ground of the yard and looked at her with her brother’s sullen eyes, always displeased, always demanding more than she could give. She stared back.
“I heard you talking,” he said. “To the others.”
“Then you know I counseled obedience.”
“There’s a tale I want to tell you,” he said. His voice echoed through the dark. “A child’s tale. Though you won’t find the whole of it in any book. Only fragments.”
That did not sound like Ashok’s voice.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Once,” he replied. “There was a yaksa. A yaksa who came after Mani Ara to this world. Like her, he made himself part of Ahiranya. He became a green thing. Flowers in him. But it was humans he loved best. He took in orphans. He raised them like his own.
