The answer was yes, then.
“Let me show you the way,” he said. “I cannot give you his name, Empress. Even here, we call him the faceless son.”
“He is a servant of the faceless mother, then? Like you?”
“Ah, empress,” the man murmured, inclining his head. His face was gray. “He is not like me. That, I can assure you.”
It was simple enough, on their return to the army encampment, to brush aside the concerns of her highborn. To summon Lata to her side, and call for Yogesh, and relay her orders even as she walked across the camp to her own tent, the folds of her sari rippling from the speed of her footsteps.
“You wish to… release him.” The official’s voice was tentative.
Malini simply nodded. She did not have to explain herself to him. There would be plenty of people who could—and would—demand explanations of her later. Best to save her energy.
“Record what needs to be recorded in your ledgers, and see that it’s done,” said Malini.
Yogesh was silent for a moment, still walking beside her.
“Is anything unclear?” Malini asked.
“Ah—Empress.” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps—should I speak—to Lord Mahesh?”
“No,” said Malini. “There is no need for that.”
Malini waited until she was back in her own tent.
Then she opened the box.
Malini had a saber of her own, fashioned to be lighter than a man’s, with a smaller grip so that it would be better suited to her strength, her hands. Its metal was shining silver, its scabbard inlaid with moonstone. Swati brought it to her, and Malini placed the tip of the weapon into the ash. Sifted through it.
The fire rose from the dagger and crawled onto the edge of her saber. Shifted and glowed, flickering and swirling just as it had on the weapons of the priestly soldiers who had turned on her army at the fortress’s gates.
“Be careful, my lady,” Lata said, voice tight. She stood at the edge of the tent. Not as if she planned to run, or even wished to. But as if she feared the fire rising on Malini’s blade.
She was right to. Malini stared into the fire, which bloomed and withered like flowers upon a steel vine, and wondered what it would do.
Would it turn on her? Leap onto her flesh, destructive by nature, and burn her to char? She imagined, as she often had in her darkest hours, being reduced to an agony of ash. She imagined the tent burning and Lata with it.
She held the sword steady and waited. Waited.
Malini moved the fire between two blades—the saber and the dagger—watching as it coiled between them with tendrils like fingers. She watched with careful patience as it grew thinner and weaker. Waited, again.
Using the dagger, she carved a hunk of it away from the whole, and watched it grow dimmer than the rest.
This was not how true fire worked. It was not how mothers’ fire was meant to work, if the Book of Mothers was to be trusted.
She waited long enough that her arm began to tremble. Then Lata walked out of the tent and spoke softly to one of the guards, and returned with water, with food, and the task of watching Malini watch the flame.
Malini waited… and watched the fire begin to die. It withered as if the ash had been its roots. Its color faded, flame turning from gold to blue, to darkness.
Malini thought of the Book of Mothers—of the nature of the mothers’ fire and thought,ah.
A gift after all.
The fire of mothers did not fade. It did not wither. It was unstoppable—a force of destruction that only faded away when the yaksa were dead. But this fire had died before her eyes.
Chandra was not blessed. Not chosen. And now Malini had proof.
She could feel a smile tugging her mouth. She let it overcome her face. Let herself laugh as the fire went out.
