It loomed before them. Small at first, on the horizon, then larger and larger still as they drew closer to its walls.
There was a greeting party awaiting them. A handful of Saketan soldiers. No more than that.
“The High Prince knew we were coming,” Malini murmured to Raziya. “Why has he not arranged an appropriate welcome?”
The High Prince was not the first highborn ruler who had been unwilling to bow to Malini. But when they had negotiated their surrender, they had all acknowledged her with ceremony. A proper coterie of warriors and their finest horses. Courtiers. Gifts.
Before her was… almost nothing.
Unease seeped through her.
“I don’t know, Empress,” Raziya said, sounding similarly wary. She looked to her women. Raised her hand in signal. One of them drew closer.
“Warn the others to be watchful,” Raziya ordered.
Malini turned toward Lord Mahesh.
“The High Prince’s negligence concerns me. Something is wrong,” Malini said sharply, pitching her voice to carry over the churning noise of wheels and hooves. He turned his head, meeting her gaze.
“It is wise to be cautious,” Mahesh said. But he did not sound the conch at his belt and call for the attention of his commanders. His chariot continued rolling forward, dust rising in clouds beneath its spoked wheels. “But the High Prince has always been a strange man. I knew him, in our shared youth, and I can assure you he has never cared for pomp or ritual. He will surrender. We must simply wait.”
He has not surrendered yet.
If she ordered Mahesh to halt their forces, would he? Could he? She knew an army had its own momentum and could not be easily stopped in its tracks. She turned her head forward, gazing over the expanse of men before her. Beneath her, her chariot shuddered to a slow stop as they neared the edge of the city. She thought of all the High Prince’s messages—the fear she had read in them, the anxiety knotted through it all. How she wished she had crossed paths with him at least once during her years in the imperial mahal and taken the measure of him herself. Ink, it seemed, was not enough to weigh the heart of a man.
They waited. Silence growing, wind rippling through the flags of Parijatdvipa that hung from chariots.
The gates of the fort slowly yawned open.
No army emerged. Only one man. The sight was so strange that Malini’s own men froze, unmoving, as the gates drew shut once more, barring them from the city.
He was unmistakably a priest. Ash-marked, his expression mild, he crossed the dusty ground that lay before the gates of Saketa. As he walked, a cloud of that same golden dust rose around him, haloing him like motes of light.
Malini’s guards did not move.
Finally, a single commander on horseback made his way forward to greet the priest. The ground was silent for one breath, then two.
The commander rode back to Malini and said, “Empress. He wishes to speak with you. On the High Prince’s behalf.”
“Bring him to me,” said Malini.
A susurration ran through the men, sudden as a rippling breeze, as the priest was brought before her chariot.
He bowed in one graceful motion, then raised his head. He was an old man, gaunt and sun-wizened. But his eyes were fierce.
“You will not be allowed to enter the city, Princess Malini,” the priest said, by way of greeting. His mouth widened into a smile. “And the High Prince will not be leaving his throne to greet you here.”
Ah. So this was a trap.
But what kind of trap? The High Prince was well defended in his city. The fort of Saketa was famed for its complexity, its multiple walls that wound and twisted, covered with watchtowers. It was said that if someone had been able to view the fort from the sky, its structure would resemble a blooming, hundred-petaled lotus. Malini had examined its likeness on her map mere hours ago. To siege the city would be nigh on impossible. To starve out the people within it would cost Malini more than she could afford to give.
If the High Prince had invited her into his palace—if he had surrounded her and her advisors there—then perhaps she would understand the nature of the vise she had been caught within. But this. This, she could not comprehend.
“If the High Prince will not negotiate with me, I can only offer him war,” Malini replied.
The priest inclined his head.
“I am a priest, but I am also a warrior,” the priest said. His eyes were flint. “Emperor Chandra has not waited idly for the betrayal of his blood siblings, Princess Malini. The priesthood has grown. There are those who pray by fire and kneeling, by flowers and funerary rites. And then there are men like me, who have learned a different kind of prayer.”
