Then, nothing.
MALINI
With Chandra her prisoner, and the priesthood her allies, there was no need to siege Harsinghar, as Saketa’s fortress city had been sieged. The gates could simply be opened.
The priests and their own warriors were accommodating. They welcomed Malini’s army. Bowed their loyalty to her, before a makeshift audience. The servants—terrified at first—soon found some semblance of calm when Malini ordered that they be left unharmed. She asked for a feast to be prepared, and the mahal was soon bustling with the noise of impending celebration.
“Your brother is imprisoned in a cell,” Kartik said, with great priestly calm, once the pomp and ceremony was done with. “Do you wish to be taken to him?”
“Of course,” said Malini. “I would be very grateful.”
Once, she’d wanted to give him a slow death. She’d wanted to see him humiliated before all his peers: before kings and princes, highborn and warriors—and her court of women, who would never have been equals in his eyes but would stand above him from now on. For so long, she had comforted herself with the vicious thought of how it would feel to rip his false sense of self, his overblown pride, to pieces.
But she’d had a taste of that victory when the priests had turned on him, and it had done nothing to slake her rage. Now, she simply wanted him gone.
Chandra had been chained, but his prison cell was sumptuous. There was a fine bed. A carafe of wine. It was far more than he deserved.
He watched her with ugly, barely banked fury as she entered the room.
“I went to my old chambers,” she said casually, and gestured at her own clothing—the shining silk of her sari, the gold at her wrists and her waist. The saber clinking against her hip. “I hadn’t expected them to remain untouched.”
He was silent, eyes narrowed.
“I considered what must be done with you,” she said. “I don’t think you fear being powerless. I don’t think you have ever considered how it would feel, to be small, to be helpless with a knife at your neck. You think there is natural order to the world. Arightness. But there is not, Chandra.”
“If you kill me, your name will be tarnished,” he said evenly. “Everyone will know you are the impure woman who murdered her own brother.”
“Chandra,” she said. “Brother. Nothing would give me greater joy than driving this sword through your body myself. I am not a strong woman; nor am I well-trained in use of a blade. I would do a poor job of it. It would, I think, take you a long time to die.
“Nowyou,” she went on, filling the silence he’d left. “You know how to use a saber. I think if you are brave enough, you could run yourself through now and save yourself the indignity of the slow, unpleasant,humiliatingdeath I am going to give you. Let me tell you about it.”
She took a bottle from her waist chain.
The bottle was small. Its contents were dark, almost oily. She placed it on the table beside his bed with an audible clink.
“Needle-flower tincture,” she said. “A dose like this would kill you. Small doses, over time, will destroy you. And there will be doses, brother. To be placed in your wine. Your meals. You will die in slow increments, your mind rotting in your skull. The poison will kill you unhurriedly, and by the time you face the kings and warriors of Parijatdvipa—by the time I drag you before the court—you will be a shadow of your old self.” She leaned forward. “I will allow you your old princely finery, so that all the men who once bowed to you will be able to see how emaciated you have become. You will look a pitiable sight, I promise you, stumbling into the court in your gold and your turban, with your skin sticking to your ribs. I will ask you to plead your case, and all those men will hear you stumble over your words. They willlaughat you, brother. I will steal everything from you, as you tried to steal it from me.”
His throat worked. He said nothing.
“I would never, in the normal course of things, condemn any being to such a fate,” said Malini. “But you condemned me to it. You condemned me to public shame. You dragged me into the court to be broken and killed before all the powerful highborn men of our empire. You tried to murder me, and when I would not die at your bidding, you tried to take my mind from me. Oh, you may shake your head now. You may have convinced yourself you acted for a higher purpose, for Parijatdvipa, but you know the truth.”
“You have a monstrous mind, sister,” he said. His voice dripped with disgust, but there was a hunted look to his face—to the way his hands shook in their manacles, as if he could barely contain the urge to get his fingers around her throat. “If I could live my life again, I would take yours from you when you were a girl. I would spare the world your tarnish. I would tell our mother to whelp a better daughter.”
“Would you kill me now, if you could?” She cocked her head, inspecting him as if he were dirt. She hoped he felt it—that he would remember being nothing but dirt in her eyes.
“The only worth you have is in your death. Even the priests see it. You are just a tool to them,” he spat out, savage. “They just want to use you. Mark my words, Malini, you’ll burn as I wanted, whether I am here to watch it or not. It is your purpose, your fate. It was written in the stars of your birth.”
“Ah, but I’ll burn for my own glory, not yours,” she said, baring her teeth in a feral smile. “And I will be remembered as a mother, a goddess, and you—you will not be remembered at all.”
She stepped away from him.
“You have a choice, brother,” she said, kindly now. She could afford to be kind. “The needle-flower lies beside you. Do what you will.”
Then she turned and left him behind. Locked the door behind her.
And pressed her back against the wall. And waited.
CHANDRA
