Sanjana paused. Turned, and took in the look in his face, and shook her head.
“You worry for them? How like you. How sweet.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. They’re beloved. Necessary. But notus. The dead we wear are shells. Carapaces. But your sisters are soil seeded with flowers. They bloom into something new.”
“The rot—”
“Shh,” she murmured. Tender. “The whole world is ours to hollow,Ashok. And ours to grow into—to wear and remold. Rot isn’t a good name for it. Call it new life. Call it blooming, if you like.” She shrugged, and lightly began to walk away again. “You’ll remember eventually,” she told him.
“It kills people,” he called out after her.
“Just people,” she agreed, in an airy voice. “But not us.”
He didn’t really need to sleep. So at night he walked the mahal in darkness.
Rivers. Sacrifice. Cosmos to green, green to flesh. The story rattled strange through his skull. Contemplating it too closely made him feel sick; made him feel as if his mind were filling with water formed of knowledge and poison, steadily drowning his own thoughts out.
But there was no escaping those waters. He walked, and walked, and felt the pulse of the whole of Ahiranya around him, like a fist grasping his lungs. He could feel the rot-riven—the people, the fields. He could feel Bhumika, and somewhere, like a pulse of starlight, too far to touch, Priya. He felt more than any mortal man should have felt.
A scuff of heavy footsteps on the floor. A sudden silence.
“Ashok,” a voice said. Male and low, relief shot through it. “I’m so glad you’re back,” Ganam said, approaching. “Can I walk with you?”
Ashok nodded jerkily. And Ganam came to his side. He was carrying a scythe at his back. He was perhaps on night guard duty.
“I couldn’t believe it when you returned,” Ganam said. “Couldn’t believe my eyes. But there you were. And the magic in me—it went wild.” He thumped a hand against his chest for emphasis. “I’d never felt the like of it. You’ve been missed, Ashok.”
Wherever Ashok had been, he had missed no one.
“Elder Bhumika and Elder Priya, they’ve been doing their best,” Ganam was saying. “A good job. You’ll be glad to know that.”
Ah, this made him feel more like himself.
“Better than I would have done?”
An infinitesimal pause. Then Ganam said, haltingly, “No. It’s different. Frustrating. Slower. Not bad, but…” A huff of breath, head lowering, though his eyes never truly left Ashok’s face. “I miss how decisive you were, my friend. Even if our goal of a free Ahiranya was distant, we never stopped moving. Now there’s too much stillness. Now there’s just fighting and fighting, and we don’t even know what freedom should look like anymore.” He took a step closer. “Ashok, what do you want of us? What are we meant to do?”
Careful words. Cunning words, under a cover of artless friendship. Ganam had never been a good liar.
Ashok felt his sister’s hand in this.
“I don’t know,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know what I want.”
He took a step away. Stopped and turned and said, “It may be best if you leave me be. For the rest of the night.”
Silence.
“Of course,” Ganam said finally. “But if you ever want to talk again, you’ll find me, won’t you?”
I never will, Ashok thought. But he nodded all the same.
MALINI
“Father.” Deepa’s voice from beyond the tent walls was pitched high enough that it could be heard even through the drumlike billow of the canvas in the fire-feeding winds. “Please. You must see her.”
“Her men must see her, not I,” Mahesh replied. His voice was gruffer than ever, made hoarse by smoke. Malini did not need to see him in the flesh to know he wore ash residue on his hair and his armor, or that his face was set into grim lines that ran from his jaw to his furrowed brow. “Bid her to emerge, and I’ll accompany her to the war council.”
“Would you have them see her weep?” Deepa asked. Malini was impressed by the waver in her voice. She sounded convincingly overwrought. “Please. Father, I don’t know what else to do. I told you—all the women are afraid. If you could only advise the empress to be calm, perhaps… oh, that would surely help.”
“There is no time for this,” he said impatiently.
