An arrow embedded itself in the ground to Raziya’s right. The horse reared.
“Steady,” Malini called out, as the charioteer held the reins—as if her order had any kind of power to change the course of what was happening around her. Raziya went down to her knees, holding the chariot’s edge, swearing again. And Malini ground her feet into the base of the chariot. And prayed she would not fall.
She tilted her head back. Brought the conch to her lips.
Three sharp, wailing calls punctured the air:
Retreat. Retreat. Retreat.
PRIYA
I wish they wouldn’t bow to me, Priya thought. Even in her own head, she sounded embarrassed.
The waiting crowd of villagers, huddled together at the edge of the forest and already bending forward into genuflections of respect, was large. Priya tried to keep her face impassive. She straightened her shoulders and held up her chin, trying to look proud, ready. But it was difficult, perched as she was in an unveiled palanquin, her legs crossed beneath her, her back straight, as if she were some noble lady instead of—well. Herself.
She hated the palanquin. Alighting from it always felt like an embarrassing affair. There were always eyes on her, and cheers. Sometimes fresh petals were scattered on the path before her. Today, there was an older woman with a basin at the ready, who offered to bathe Priya’s feet as a gesture of respect. Priya rejected the offer with as much as grace as she could muster, which wasn’t much.
Spirits, she hated politics. Hated smiling sweetly, and pretending she wasn’t sweating through her fine, pale sari. She adjusted one of the wood and gold enameled cuffs on her upper arms, resisting the urge to fidget with the seam of her blouse. It was getting tight. She’d developed new muscle in the last months, ever since she’d started training in earnest alongside her sister’s guards. She’d have to let the seam out, or get one of the maids to unpick and resew it for her.
Ganam’s ungainly jump down from his own palanquin blessedly distracted the crowd’s attention from Priya. He straightened up awkwardly, offering the villagers a stilted greeting. This was his first time accompanying her, and as soon as he’d found out about the palanquins, he’d desperately tried to avoid riding in one.
“You want those poor men to carry a big ox like me?” he’d asked, when it had been brought to him at the mahal’s entrance. He’d gestured at the guards waiting by the palanquin—all of them smaller than him by far. “Why torture them when I can walk?”
“Because we have to present a certain image,” Priya had said. “We need to look grand.”
Ganam’s expression had been skeptical.
“I think,” he’d said slowly, “that packing my body into that little palanquin won’t make me look grand. People will laugh.”
“They wouldn’t dare,” Priya said. And then, with a sidelong glance at some of the watching guards, she’d raised her voice and said, “But if you refuse the palanquin, I suppose we can both walk—”
“Absolutely not.” The voice had come from one of the latticed windows above them. Through the bands of wood, Priya had seen her sister’s face, narrow-eyed, staring down at them. “Priya, you’re taking the palanquin.” A pause. “Both of you.”
Ganam had grimaced, even as Priya had smiled in return, all teeth.
Sometimes—often—she forgot that she wasn’t meant to like him.
“Well, Elder Bhumika has spoken,” Priya had said cheerfully. “Cheer up, Ganam. Maybe if you keep on accompanying me, someone will build you a bigger palanquin.”
Now, Ganam moved to stand beside her. He let her lead, allowing her to greet the chiefs of the village and accept the sparse garlands they offered, and the cups of sweetened milk, covered in a thin filigree of saffron. He let Priya nod and smile and pretend at grandness. And when she said, “Will you show us to the fields?”—Ganam heaved a small sigh of relief and followed behind her.
Niceties were excruciating. But work—and the rot—they both understood.
The field they were led to was half marsh, and laden with deep, green water rippling with algal plant life, insect larvae, and small, strange, darting fish, glimmers of onyx and silver in the dark. The croak of frogs sounded in the air. The water smelled stagnant: both bloody and sweet as sugar, a honeyed and unnatural scent.
One of the village elders told them, with some anxiety, that the field had long served them well. Their village sat not far from it, the houses perched on stilts to keep them clear from the regular floods. There were families that had cared for this land and its waters for generations. The insect larvae were a delicacy, and exquisite when fried in oil and dipped in sweet tamarind. In other circumstances, the elders would have offered the finest of them to Priya and Ganam, as respected guests.
But of course, nothing from the marsh could be eaten right now. Nothing could safely be touched, for that matter. One of the village girls who regularly set her nets in the water had returned home with a rash on her arm. Overnight, it had burst into small white flowers. The rot was in the marsh: in the plants, in the green algae on the water.
That was why Priya had come, of course. To put it right.
Well. Totryto put it right.
“Has anyone else become infected?” Priya asked one of the village leaders. He shook his head.
“No, elder,” he said—and Priya, mindful as ever of her grandness, bit down on her tongue to avoid laughing at the absurdity of a man at least thirty years her senior calling herelder. “We’ve been careful. We have other fields.”
Thefor nowwent unsaid.
