“Okay,” Zeyar cut in, putting a hand on Harithi’s shoulder. “We’re not going to make any headway when emotions are running high.”
Harithi rolled her shoulder sharply, dislodging Zeyar’s hand. Her chair screeched back. Tossing her thick mane of curls over one shoulder, she stalked out of the office.
Hasan sighed, pushing his hand into his hair. His temper cooled, but the flash fire of his anger had burned up the rest of his patience. This meeting was pointless when none of them had anything worthwhile to share. “Unless someone here has anout-of-the-boxidea, I suggest you leave too.”
The others exchanged glances, but eventually, they got up and left, one by one. Vinay patted Hasan’s back gently. “You’ll find a way,” he said, then disappeared into the night.
When it was just the two of them, Zeyar said, “That was unwise. We can’t be divided now, else we’ll never get Paranjay back.”
“We’ve been divided in our approach from the beginning,” Hasan pointed out. “Splitting into two groups, investigating two different plans.”
“And look how far that got us,” Zeyar said, gesturing outwardly. “Look. I know we don’t see eye to eye. But we challenge each other, and that’s the only way either of us is going to come up with a solution outside of our usual methodology. We can’t waste any more time or energy fighting each other.”
Hasan sighed. Though he wanted to hit something, his brother was right?—all their effort had to go into rescuing Paranjay. “We wouldn’t fight so much if you tried to see things my way.”
“Ihavetried to see things your way,” Zeyar said. “The issue is, your world is one of absolutes. Black and white. Enemy and ally. Right and wrong. You push your own ideals on everything. You can’t divide the world into fixed categories.”
Hasan’s brows knit as he tried to come up with a rebuttal. The best he could do was “And you don’t?”
“The only categories in my world are useful and useless, and I reevaluate them constantly.” Zeyar shrugged. “Whenever something fails to serve my objectives, it falls into the second category.”
Hasan paused, fiddling with a pen as he considered that. He liked having a firm platform to stand on, a fixed set of rules that made the world make sense. Zeyar’s method of living?—where enemy could become ally on a whim?—made him uneasy, like the ground beneath his feet was constantly shifting, throwing off his balance. Maybe Zeyar was right about him and the way he viewed the world.
“Very well,” he said. “I see your point. I will be more open-minded?—as long as you do the same. I want my ideas heard.”
“Fine,” Zeyar said, “as long as you bring your ideas to mebeforeyou enact them, instead ofafter. We need to make decisions together?—not based on your personal moral code.”
“Deal.” Hasan took Zeyar’s outstretched hand, shaking it once firmly. Though they were objectively no closer to saving Paranjay than they’d been that morning, Hasan couldn’t help but feel like they had made a little progress, after all.
Chapter Eight
A Famished Nation
Though the viceroy’s doctors had ordered him to ease his workload, Poppy caught her father in his office early one morning, half hidden behind a mountain of paperwork.
“You’re not meant to be overworking yourself,” she chided, stepping into the office. The space had not changed much while she’d been gone. The magnificent desk sat on the same carpet, the same curios and leather-bound books lined the glossy wooden shelves, and the tiger pelt hanging on the wall remained bright and glossy. Still, the room felt different, inexplicably smaller. She took a slow turn about the room, stopping in front of the framed map of the empire on the wall. It had changed marginally since her girlhood?—primarily, the shift in borders as the empire inexorably expanded its reach.
Her father glanced up over his spectacles. “The colony won’t run itself, Poppy.”
“Let me help you, at least,” she said. She sat in front of his desk, turning a stack of the papers to face her. She half expected him to shoo her off, insisting this was no work for a woman, but he let her stay, so she sorted his correspondence and skimmed reports.
As she examined the bookkeeping, something about one of the tables gave her pause. It was a summary of agricultural exports from the previous month, but the figures seemed too high for one month. She read the list again:Cotton, pulses, rice, sugar, tea leaves...
The list cataloged the number of pounds that had been exported, as well as the companies that had exported them. She was no expert in trade, but these numbers were double what she would have expected for an island of their size, even if they’d had an unusually bountiful season. If so much raw material had left the island, then what on earth had been left for the local population? There had to be a mistake.
She cleared her throat. “Father.”
“Hm?” He looked up from his paper. “What is it?”
“This report.” She flipped it around so he could see. “There must be some mistake. The figures are too high.”
He took the paper from her, peering down his nose at the numbers. After a minute or two, he grunted, shoving the sheet back. “It’s correct.”
She stared at him. “But how? The agricultural amounts are too large, given the amount of farmland and the size of our population. How do we have space to grow enough crops for domestic consumptionandsupport this volume of commercial exports?”
Her father smiled, derailing Poppy momentarily. “Look at you,” he said affectionately. “Analyzing the figures, thinking critically and holistically about how they fit into the bigger picture. You remind me of myself, at your age.”
Despite herself, she brightened at his praise, sitting up straighter. “Thank you, Father. But that still doesn’t answer my question. Why is there such a high volume of raw agricultural exports?”
