She wondered, sometimes, if the sage loved him. How tragic if she did—a prince would surely have no place in his life for a wife who was a sage with no highborn blood in her.
It was hard to think of Lata as a romantic figure when she was looking at Deepa as she was now. Lata’s jaw was tight, her brow furrowed. “Lady Deepa,” she said. Then stopped. She crossed the room and sat down next to her. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Deepa asked stupidly.
“Your father,” Lata said, “has failed in his duties. He ordered that the fort be sieged, against my better judgment, and the judgment of the empress. And now men are dying. You can hear it, can’t you?”
Lata went silent, and in the silence, Deepa heard the hiss of the flames—smelled the smoke of them again, all anew, on the air. “Yes,” she said, voice small. “I can.”
Lata nodded.
“Your father cannot remain the general of the empress’s army. But your family need not suffer. Plainly, you have a choice to make, Lady Deepa: your father, or the empress?”
Deepa felt suddenly dizzy.
She thought of all the secret things she had told the empress about her father. All the things she had heard said in his tent. Everything she had read when she rifled through his correspondence.
“I made my choice a long time ago,” Deepa said, with more steadiness than she’d known she was capable of. “I made a promise to the empress. I wasn’t planning to break it.”
“I know,” said Lata. “But choices so large must be made and remade over and over again. That’s how paths are carved, Lady Deepa. That is how you decide your future.”
Deepa nodded. She thought of her mother and sisters, and thought, finally, of herself. Of the life she wanted and had never been offered. Of being something more than invisible, something better than not good enough. Of taking something for herself.
“I’m loyal to the empress,” she said. “I’ll always be loyal to the empress. Tell me what I need to do.”
ASHOK
He had thought that eventually it would stop feeling as if he were trapped in a strange dream, his skin hollowed out and uneasy over his bones, his consciousness tripping numbly through it all: the arrival at the mahal. Reuniting with Bhumika. Seeing her face—the look upon it—as if through water. Everything distorted. There were things he was meant to feel. And yet somehow, he could not.
He’d felt things very strongly, once.
Kritika had wept when they were finally alone. Gazed at him, and whispered his name with reverence, and said, “The others won’t believe it. They won’t, they won’t. You’re back.”
Was he?
“The yaksa,” he managed to say.
But Kritika was nodding and smiling through her tears. “They brought you back. They took so many of us, butyou.” She’d grasped his hands. Her skin, soft, paper and pulp to the carved bone and flesh of his own limbs. “You, you are a gift.”
She told him his rebels had survived. Ruled Ahiranya, under the purview of Bhumika, who was thrice-born and Priya—
Priya, who had lived too. A distant feeling ran through him. It felt… golden.
He met his rebels—who named themselves mask-keepers, now. Tried to smile where it was appropriate to smile. Tried to remember what it meant to be human.
He’d been under the water for so long. It wouldn’t come easily.
He found that the orchard was a good place to be alone.
He liked to lie down, among the trees. There was one that called to him particularly: a great, strong thing that reminded him of the tree that had birthed the first yaksa he’d found.
The longer he lay under it, the more it changed. Wood, softening with rot. He plucked one of the ripe fruits from the tree. Opened it curiously, almost absently. It had the marbled quality of fat.
He heard a voice.
The yaksa he’d drawn from the tree—the yaksa who had called him, drawn him to her—was calling again. He turned, and there she was, gliding toward him. She brought the child yaksa with her. He was quiet, his eyes gleaming like fish scales.
“Should I still call you Ashok?” she asked, when she was near enough to speak.
