She stopped before him.
“I must speak to your head priest,” Malini said. She could hear footsteps behind her. Three pairs, their tread too light to be those of her armed men. As Priya’s, Sima’s, and Lata’s shadows mingled with her own on the marble stairs, she said, “When we have made our offerings, tell him his empress requests a private meeting.”
“Y-yes. Empress.” The young priest bowed jerkily. Left them.
They were ushered into the temple, directly to the worship hall.
The marble was cool beneath her bare feet. Priests stood or kneeled along the edges of the room. There was no sound but the crackling of torches. Lata motioned to another priest, spoke to him in a low voice. No doubt discussing the money that Malini had brought as a gift of devotion to the temple.
She strode forward, Priya matching her steps. Malini let her arm gently graze against Priya’s own, and felt the briefest brush of skin and warmth. She felt Priya’s head turn; felt soft breath against her cheek.
“You must bow,” Malini murmured. “That is all. I promise, Priya.”
“I hope you know how much I do not want to do this,” Priya whispered in return. Her body was taut as a bow string. She was clearly out of her element in a temple of the mothers—surrounded on all sides by the forces that had annihilated her own nation’s glory.
Malini could not respond. The lords had entered behind them, and she could not risk being overheard. Instead she held her own feelings in a close, anxious fist in her chest and walked a few more steps forward to the altar. She kept her gaze fixed on the statue of the faceless mother in her graceful lengha of rich flame, a dupatta of smoke coiling around her empty face.
It was a tale her teacher had told her once, many years ago. That poor worshippers who could not afford to keep idols of all the mothers would often keep a single crude effigy in their home—faceless, smoke-veiled, intended to stand for all the mothers at once. In the generations since, Saketan commoners had begun to worship the mothers as one: the faceless mother, who was all and none of them at once, a figure who stood for all the mothers of flame who had been or who would be.
The temple’s head priest approached. Ash-marked at forehead and chin, he held out flowers on a beaten copper tray. His wrists were inked—names in scrolling script that wound together in whorls and knots. “Empress,” he said, lowering his eyes. “We are honored.”
“It is my honor,” Malini said, taking the flowers from him, and the needle-darted thread that lay by their side. “Any opportunity to venerate the mothers brings me joy.”
She pressed the needle through the first flower as the priests began to pray. Began to weave a garland, the scent of roses and marigolds rich on her fingertips.
Priya walked forward.
There was a moment, a pause like the brief silence before a rising storm. And then Priya bowed, pressing her head to the ground before the mothers. Witnessed by Malini’s own loyal men. She held the position for two heartbeats. Three. Four.
Good.
Then she stood once more, preparing—at the behest of the priest murmuring into her ear, Malini saw—to bow to Malini, too. A gesture of her obedience to Parijatdvipa.
Malini turned to mirror her. Without hesitation, without thought, Malini took Priya by the arm, stopping her motion. The garland was crushed between them, bruised and richly fragrant. “It is the mothers who must be venerated,” Malini said. “Here, within this temple, their worship supersedes all else.”
Hopefully the words were pretty and politic enough to hide the instinctual nature of her action—her desire to sayI will not shame you, not you, not like this.
Priya nodded her head without lowering her eyes. Perhaps she understood. Perhaps.
“Empress,” the temple’s head priest murmured then. “Would you do me the honor of speaking to me alone?”
There was some bristling of the lords, but not much. Malini inclined her head. She turned, and bowed to the altar, and lowered the finished garland at the feet of the mothers. Then she rose to her feet. Lata followed her, a quiet chaperone.
The head priest led Malini and Lata to a study, a room with high windows and ancient manuscripts bound in silk and palm leaf stored on stone shelves. It was quiet and empty, distant enough from the worship hall that Malini could only hear the faintest strains of voices.
The priest was watching her warily. Before he could fall upon niceties—offer her a tea or sherbet, and stretch out this whole business interminably—Malini seated herself on the cushions arrayed on the floor. Lata moved to stand by the door, hands clasped before her. Lata was not barring the door—certainly not. But she was a deterrent, and a message for the high priest: The empress wishes for you to remain here.
From his silence and his stillness, Malini was sure he understood.
She waited for him to sit. After a moment, he did.
“You have heard, I’m sure, that the High Prince has allied with my brother in Harsinghar,” Malini said, with no further preamble. “That soldiers from Harsinghar have carried what appears to be mother-blessed magical fire with them and have turned it upon my men. One of them, a Parijati priest, turned it directly upon me.” A pause. The priest before her gave no reaction; no nod, no negating shake of his head. He merely watched her—eyes wide, unblinking, as if he were staring at a mirage, liable to flicker and fade. “I would have died when the fires fell,” Malini went on. “But another man saved me. Another priest. A priest of the faceless mother. One of your own.”
Silence, again.
“You should speak,” Malini said. “I will not leave until we have been honest with one another.”
The man’s gaze flickered.
