Bhumika nodded, and he kneeled down and offered Padma his hands. Bhumika released her daughter and she teetered forward, grasping onto him with an ear-piercing shriek of what Bhumika could only assume was happiness. He held Padma steady, his eyes on her, and said, “Lord Chetan is waiting for you.”
Chetan was a highborn Ahiranyi. He’d tried to seek her out at the festival of the dark of the moon, full of concerns and questions, and she had diplomatically put him off. Now, here he was again. Apparently.
“Is he,” Bhumika said neutrally. “I didn’t request him.”
“He claimed you had planned to meet.”
“No.” Bhumika pursed her lips. “Khalida has a record of all my arranged meetings.”
“I haven’t seen Khalida this morning, my lady.”
Sometimes she missed the ease with which the household had run before—before. But now all her servants were also her advisors and her soldiers. All her soldiers were her allies. She did not have the structure and support of an empire to back her rule, as her husband had. Just as her mahal was half broken, held together by luck and magic, so was her government.
“I’ll find her,” Bhumika said. She kneeled down, and Jeevan nudged Padma until she was clinging to her mother’s hands instead.
“Have one of the girls serve him refreshments.”
“My lady,” he said, and bowed once more before striding away.
Bhumika walked into her own chambers and found Khalida waiting. Khalida looked sweaty, harangued.
“The roof came down on one of the rice stores,” Khalida said grimly.
“Is anyone injured?”
Khalida shook her head.
“Have any stocks been lost?”
“Some,” Khalida said shortly, which meant that a handful of servants were still working their way through the wreckage and making an accounting of the damage. Bhumika winced internally. They could not afford to lose any supplies.
A hand tugged at her sari.
“Up,” Padma demanded.
“You’re a terror,” Bhumika said, with utter fondness, and swept her daughter up into her arms. She kissed Padma’s face and over and over again until Padma shrieked and kicked her little legs furiously.
“My lady,” Khalida said impatiently. “Hand her to me and go.”
Bhumika did, with one further kiss. It felt good to briefly relish this: the smell of her daughter’s hair, the soft riot of her curls; the sheer, joyous fury with which she greeted the world.
Khalida thought Bhumika overindulged her child. That was fine. That was a mother’s prerogative. Let her daughter be a terror, at least for a time.
Some believed they could ready a child for the cruelties of the world with punishment and unkindness, callousing the heart before the world could set its knives upon it. But Bhumika was raised a temple child—taught to excise her softness and weakness, and to face the world with her teeth bared. And still, every loss she had experienced had hurt her. Still, she carried the scars of her own choices, and the choices made by others.
She wanted a different path for her daughter. Perhaps all lives became brimful of pain, eventually. Well, then. Let her daughter’s start painlessly, in joy. Let her have at least that.
“My apologies for the delay,” Bhumika said, sweeping into the room. “I was tending to my daughter.”
Chetan nodded stiffly. He was seated by a low table, under a latticed window, in the only relatively unscathed receiving room of the mahal. A gouge in the wall had been carefully concealed behind silk curtains. There were perfumed flowers in bowls, at intervals across the room, and a single maid holding a plate of delicacies. She remained by the door, eyes lowered demurely, as Bhumika crossed the room and kneeled down across the table from the highborn lord.
“How old is she now?” Chetan asked.
Quintessential small talk, but not without purpose. It allowed Bhumika the opportunity to smile, and wave over the girl to pour out tea and offer pastries. Chetan accepted the tea, but declined the rest.
“She has passed her first year,” said Bhumika. “You have children of your own, don’t you?”
“I do,” Chetan agreed. “Two boys. The eldest will soon be fourteen.”
