“I could have.”
“You hardly have the time,” she said. “Besides, I don’t mind.”
Priya looked up.
“I told Bhumika,” Priya said, “that I’d take you with me.”
“Me?” Sima blinked at her, mouth parted. “Why?”
“Don’t you want to come?”
“I… who else? Just me?”
“Jeevan said he could spare a few men. So them. You. And that messenger Yogesh’s men.”
Sima was staring at her, still holding the sari in her hands.
“Why?” Sima asked again.
Priya hesitated. She didn’t know how to say the truth. That she saw how their changed positions galled Sima, at least a little. That Priya could feel the rift between them. That she didn’t blame Sima for it. That it was okay to want more. And that if Priya could give it to her—give her the opportunities and dangers she craved, give her a path to move forward upon—then she would.
“It would be good to have a friend with me,” Priya said instead. “If… if you want to come. It might be an adventure.”
“An adventure,” Sima said flatly. “It’s war, Pri. It’s going to be a nightmare.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Going with you would be… Pri, you shouldn’t have asked me.”
“But I have,” Priya said. “And I mean it. If you want to come—there’s a place for you. I just can’t promise it’s a safe one.”
For a moment, Sima was silent. Then she sighed and bowed her head.
Priya could see the new looseness in her shoulders, and the smile growing on her mouth. Then Sima straightened up and abruptly began to walk away. “You can finish your own packing,” she said. “I’ve got my own to sort out now. Spirits, Pri, you could have given mesomenotice.”
“I’m sorry!” Priya called at her back.
“No you’re not!”
Priya grinned. No. She wasn’t.
PARUL
The key to surviving as a servant in the imperial mahal was to go unnoticed. Invisibility was as much a skill as arranging a highborn lady’s hair, or cleaning lustrous, delicately embroidered silk, or gracefully serving during banquets, as Parul did.
As a child, born to palace servants, she had been taught her mother’s work: the skill of artfully pouring wine, of moving easily through a hall carrying plates laden with pearly rice and steaming sabzis. She had also been taught to be efficient but not too swift or too graceful. To do your work too ill or too well will draw attention, her mother had warned her.And no attention is good for a girl of your standing, Parul.
Her mother had once told her a tale of two little hares. Sisters. One that liked to race, and one that liked to burrow. The racing one was charming, beautiful, loved by many. Her beauty caught the eye of many evil creatures: snakes and birds with a taste for flesh, all of whom wantedherflesh. But she did not fear them. “She thought she was too fast to be caught. Too quick for any snake to strike her!” Her mother had paused—her voice faltering when she pressed on, and said, with false lightness, “But she was wrong, my dove. Learn from her example.”
Parul had learned. Every year she grew older, taller, prettier—she was pragmatic enough to acknowledge her own beauty, and the problems it could cause her—and survived life in the palace more or less unscathed. She had seen every tumultuous change that had rippled through the imperial mahal: Prince Aditya’s departure to become a priest of the nameless, and Prince Chandra’s rise to emperor; the imperial princess’s refusal to burn, and all the awful burnings of other women that had followed, and never ceased; and all through it, she had been the hare that liked to burrow. The one that survived. Hidden, careful. Watching without being watched in return.
But the aftermath of the wedding had made her careless. Queen Varsha had gifted the high-ranking female servants of the palace trinkets, thin bracelets wrought of silver, and gauzy saris to celebrate her new marriage. Parul was not a high-ranked servant, of course, but she and the others had all thoroughly enjoyed wine and arrack left over from the many nights of banquets, and the little sweets lacquered in silver sugar, and one of the old aunties from the kitchens had painted Parul’s hands with henna: looping, swirling birds and flowers, and a large jasmine flower right at the center of each of Parul’s wrists.
Relaxed from celebrations, and perhaps a little merrier with alcohol than she should have been, Parul allowed her wariness to slip. Instead of taking the narrow servants’ corridors to the servants’ dormitories, she walked along the main corridors of the mahal. It was a small pleasure, and she thought it was surely safe enough. It was late night, and the residents of the mahal were either feasting or sound asleep. She was paying no particular attention to anything—simply enjoying the warm numbness of a night’s drinking and celebrating—when she heard male voices. She froze, her heart in her throat.
She was near a doorway. And through it, she could see a corridor with pillars carved with looping designs. And moonlight, too much moonlight, from ceilings that were deliberately open to the sky, letting sun and stars and rain in unimpeded.
Oh, mothers save her. She knew where she was. Only one archway door separated her from a place she never dared to go.
