Rao gave Mahesh a tight smile.
“Not at all,” said Rao. “I’m only—concerned—that fear makes liars of people. As does pain. They’ll say anything to put an end to it.”
“I do not believe he was lying,” Mahesh said. He had good reason to know. He had watched alongside Rao, unflinching, as Kunal was tortured. As each piece of information was pried out of him, bloody and screaming. “We have a way to access the fort. A route through its maze. We will face the High Prince and put an end to this.”
Rao was not convinced. But before he could speak, Aditya did.
“We will,” Aditya agreed. “And we will lead the men. Lord Mahesh and I.”
“As you say,” Mahesh murmured, bowing his head.
“Aditya,” Rao said sharply, once Mahesh had departed. He knew how his own voice sounded. Rough. A little angry. But Aditya’s eyes on him were tranquil, forgiving him—as if Rao’s anger was not justified. As if this was not utter madness. “You don’t send princes or generals into a fortress—not in this kind of battle.”
“Who must be sent, then?”
There were politic answers that Rao could have reached for. Men with the skills for subtle warfare. Spies who could move subtly through a grand fortress city without being caught.
“Men your sister can afford to lose,” he said bluntly. “Who will lead the men here if you die foolishly of an arrow to the throat?”
“We have no such men. We cannot afford to lose anyone.” Aditya’s voice was calm. “In this battle, the life of every soldier has value.”
“Aditya, I admire your goodness, your morality, but—”
“Those are my ethics,” Aditya acknowledged, cutting through Rao’s words. “But I simply mean it in a practical sense. We’ve lost too many, Rao. You don’t need to read any ledgers of rice or grain or weaponry or—or death tallies to see it.”
“I’ve brought myself,” Rao said. “That must count for something.”
“You would have me risk you?” Aditya asked. “Send you to your death, and not myself?”
Rao swallowed. His heart was thudding, his body nauseated with fear for Aditya. And perhaps… perhaps also for himself.
“When my father sent me to the imperial palace as a child, he sent me to build bonds with the crown prince,” Rao said. “He sent me to be yours. As a friend. As a hostage, of a kind. If I must fight for you…” Rao shrugged. “It wouldn’t be so bad. It would be—right.”
“You showed me the sign,” said Aditya calmly. “The sign I was waiting for. A yaksa’s severed arm with life breathed into it. A portent placed straight into my hands. Every dark and terrible thing the nameless showed me will come to pass. Is coming to pass, right now. And I am here, and I feel it. A knowing inside me. For once, I’m sure.” He touched a fist to his breastbone. “I must fight the High Prince. I must go where the war carries me. And if this siege has a tide, Rao, a—a natural order, like a monsoon, like sunrise, like the waning of the moon—then it is guiding me to the fortress. To the end of the High Prince’s defiance, and my sister’s success.”
“If that’s your path,” Rao said, “then you have to take it. But so do I.” He looked at Aditya and thought of Lata’s words, long ago. He thought of how, in the end, the nameless had brought Rao back here: to Aditya’s side, to share Aditya’s purpose. “Wherever you go,” he said, “I go with you.”
They timed their efforts to enter the fortress city not around any advice from Kunal, wrenched out of him by pain, but by using their own knowledge. Mahesh’s handpicked men had watched the change of patrols on the walls and decided when it would be safest to approach.
Mahesh was a good general when he wasn’t trying to sabotage the ruler he followed. Rao tried not to think of all that Mahesh could have done on behalf of Malini’s cause if he had placed half as much faith in her as he did in Aditya.
Much to Rao’s relief, Kunal’s directions clearly hadn’t all been the desperate lies of a man under duress. They found the entrance into the fortress just as Kunal had described: a perforation in the stone walls, only accessible from a ledge large enough for a man to carefully approach sidelong. Rao examined it. Murmured to Aditya, “It’s low in height.”
Aditya nodded in understanding. Behind him, Mahesh looked grim. Low doors were a sensible architectural feature in any building likely to be sieged: place a guard discreetly on the other side with a sharp blade to hand, and you could simply wait for your enemy to enter with their neck helpfully presented for the cut.
“You’ll go first,” Rao said to Kunal. He held out a hand to him.
Kunal stared back, gray-faced. He didn’t move.
“No further harm will come to you,” Aditya said with noble earnestness. It wasn’t a promise he could keep, and from the look on Kunal’s face—and the wary eyes he kept fixed on Rao—Kunal knew it.
Rao looked back steadily.
“You are our ally in this,” Rao said. “And the brother of the empress herself has promised you your safety if you help us wholeheartedly. You have nothing to fear.”
Unless a trap lies in wait, Rao did not say.Unless you’re attempting to trick and condemn us. Then you die with us.
Kunal’s jaw tightened. He stepped forward, ignoring Rao’s hand, and slipped through the gap. Rao followed swiftly behind him, no distance between them. He felt a tug of something at his feet in the darkness—a cobweb, or vegetation growing through the ground, he didn’t know—and kept on walking.
