Deepa dipped her head and gave a small-voiced explanation of her origins.
Priya had a vague sense, once introductions were done, that they should have bowed to her and she should only have nodded in return. She was the leader of a nation, after all, as ridiculous as that thought still felt. They were the wife of the lord of a fort and the daughter of the general of the imperial army. Though powerful, they were not her equals. She’d learned enough of the cutthroat business of status and political hierarchies in the past year, watching Bhumika deftly manage Ahiranya’s highborn, to recognize the disparities in their status.
But ah, what did it matter if they insulted her in this? What could she rightly do about it? She was still Ahiranyi, and they were still empire. She didn’t know how to cut down a highborn woman with words anyway, not the way Bhumika would have been able to do. So she just smiled.
“This is my advisor Sima,” she said, and Sima sketched out a rather abrupt bow. “Should we sit?”
“Of course,” Raziya said graciously, and they all sat down as the maid lowered her fan and began to arrange refreshments and trays of sweets.
They exchanged pleasantries. Comments on weather. On travel. Deepa spoke haltingly about her family—her sisters and her mother, away from the political troubles in Parijat, safe in a family manse in Alor—then fell silent. Raziya spoke of her own home—of Dwarali’s snows and mountains, and her gladness to be traveling alongside the empress herself.
“I have long claimed to fear no fight, Elder Priya,” Lady Raziya said. “But the last battle the empress faced was unlike any I have seen before. I was injured, though you can see I am now well.” She gestured at her skull, then lowered her hand lightly. “The battle filled me with a certainty that the empress must have stronger allies around her. Allies like you.” There was a challenge in her pale eyes and her smile. “Can you demonstrate your strength to us, Elder Priya? It would gladden us all, I think, to know how you will defend our empress.”
Bhumika would have known how to handle this situation. But Priya… well, she could only be more of what she was. And what she was good at being was—herself. And all the problems that entailed. She settled on downing her wine in one smooth slide. Then, when her mouth still burned pleasantly, and the alcohol hadn’t quite yet warmed her blood, she said, “I’m afraid I can only use my gifts at the empress’s bidding. It is a promise I have made to her, you see. To only act as she desires me to.”
Sima, who was sipping at her own wine, made a curious choking noise into her cup.
“A small demonstration of skill would surely cause no harm,” said Raziya.
“Oh no,” Priya said. “I couldn’t possibly. I know the reputation of my people.” She gave Raziya and Deepa a tight smile of her own. “I must act at the empress’s bidding or not at all.”
“You need not do anything, Elder Priya,” Deepa said, in that same small voice. “If you do not wish to. We are only curious. I have read much of Ahiranya, and I would like very much to learn more.”
“Maybe in the future, if the empress allows it,” Priya said.Or if we meet a battle where Malini needs my help, or she weaves some other complex plot that requires me.That thought shouldn’t have been as fond as it felt, in her own skull. “Although I cannot show you my skills, Lady Raziya, my advisor is an able archer,” Priya said cheerfully. “And I’m sure she’d be happy to demonstrate.”
“An archer? Goodness,” said Lady Raziya, eyebrows raising. “Well, that is a skill highly valued where I come from. I would be glad to match my arrows against your advisor’s if she is willing.”
“She absolutely is,” said Priya firmly.
“I am going to kill you for this,” Sima muttered a little while later, as they stood in a Dwarali practice yard, curious horsemen watching as Raziya strung her bow. A few maids had gathered to the side, and a group of Dwarali women were milling about. They carried bows of their own, and one of them had set herself the task of setting up the target. “Or shave off your eyebrows. Something unpleasant, you wait and see.”
“Think of it this way. You never would have done this as a maidservant.”
“Both eyebrows. And your hair,” hissed Sima, before she took up the bow one of Raziya’s guards was helpfully holding out to her.
Priya moved to stand in the shade with Deepa. A few men began to make surreptitious bets.
The target was the strangest contraption Priya had seen in a long time. In Ahiranya, Jeevan trained people with a simple painted plank of wood. But this, Raziya announced, was a Dwarali artifice, used for archery games: a fish carved from gold, hollow at the eyes, hung precariously from a high pole. The guardswoman who’d raised it up knocked the pole with her foot, and the fish began to twist wildly.
“If we were playing as Dwarali archers do,” Raziya said to Sima, “we would judge where to shoot only looking at the reflection of the target in a basin of water, laid on the ground. But we won’t go so far for a simple game.”
Sima looked at the fish dubiously.
“So I win if I knock it from the pole?”
“Hitting it is considered enough,” Raziya said, drawing her bow and nocking the arrow. “The eye is ideal. Let me demonstrate.”
The arrow flew from her bow, striking the eye of the twisting golden fish, sending it spinning wildly in the opposite direction. There were cheers from the watching crowd. The other Dwarali women, though expressionless, were palpably smug.
Sima squared her shoulders like a woman going to her death, grasped her bow, and stepped forward.
There was no way this was going to end well. Priya was absolutely going to lose her eyebrows.
“Where is Lata now?” Priya asked, turning to Deepa. Deepa startled, as if she hadn’t expected to be spoken to, then went still. “She was the one who summoned us here, and I haven’t seen even a glimpse of her.”
“Oh, with the empress, I expect,” Deepa said, darting a quick look at Priya. “They have meetings all day. Usually we attend alongside her, but sometimes we have responsibilities to our own people.”
“Was I your responsibility today?” Priya asked. Deepa gave her an almost alarmed look, and Priya grinned at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not highborn, Lady Deepa, and I’m an outsider here. I don’t know how best to talk. Am I too blunt?”
