“And the special exhibit?” He lowered his voice as he slid the money across the counter. “How many crowns?”
Arvind couldn’t hide the way his forehead creased as he replied, “None, sir.”
Hasan’s frown mirrored Arvind’s.None of the officers are here?“Are you sure?” he pressed. “I was informed it would cost me twelve extra.”
Arvind shook his head insistently, ripping two tickets from the roll. “It’s only the thirty for entry.”
“Thank you.” Hasan accepted the tickets, unsettled. To Poppy, he said, “Let’s go.”
Poppy’s heels clicked rapidly, echoes of his own hurried footsteps, as the two of them pushed into the foyer of the museum. He could hear her voice, stammering away, but he tuned her out, orienting himself in his new environment. He had never been to the museum. What was the need? It wasn’t so much educational as it was egotistical, a narrative built by the Welks to sanitize the tale of their colonization of the Virians. For one thing, there were no exhibits or artifacts from the eras before the first Welkish settlers arrived?—and not for a lack of recordkeeping.
Hasan and Poppy walked deeper into the museum, directly into the shadow of a two-story statue of a broad-shouldered man, made entirely of marble save for a thick velvet cape that tumbled down his back. Hasan knew who it was, even without the placard at the bottom: Charles Sutherland, Duke of Cloudcliff, and the leader of the Welkish expedition that had first landed on Viryana’s shores. In his hands, he held a pair of crossed gold scepters. A circular chandelier hung just above his head, illuminating his serene expression, bathing him in a heroic light. The sight made Hasan’s stomach turn.
He forced himself to look away, scanning the corners and shadows of the room, holding his breath.There?—the security guard by the potted plant. Though his cap was pulled low over his face, Hasan recognized Raman. He tilted his gaze up, searching the second-floor balcony that overlooked the foyer.Thereandthere, two more daivyakt gang members, dressed as a custodian and a repairman, respectively. His crew was here.
So why weren’t the police?
“Excuse me.”
Hasan and Poppy both jumped as a stout old man appeared in front of them, peering up at their faces through wire-rimmed glasses. “Are you Mr....?”
“Jackal,” Hasan informed him brusquely, aware of the way Poppy’s grip flexed around his hand, her curiosity piqued. “You can drop theMr.”
“Very well,” the old man sniffed. “Are you interested in the special exhibit?”
Hasan relaxed a fraction. Richard indicated in his letter that he would arrange for a curator to take them somewhere private. “The new exhibit,” Hasan said, parroting Richard’s instructions. “A History of Rose Gardening in Viryana.”
Satisfied, the curator inclined his head. “If you’d both follow me.”
He led them through the foyer into the west wing, which contained two exhibits about life in early colonial Viryana, detailing the work that the settlers had done to put down roots in their new home. In one of the display cases, the museum had installed a life-sized recreation of one of the first deep-water wells, built by the Welkish people to draw water from the island’s natural aquifers. Hasan knew from his grandfather’s lessons that the Welkish settlers hadn’t been the first foreigners to stop on the island, but they had been the first to draw water independently. They’d used that water like bait in a trap during dry seasons, manipulating vasudhakt peoples into coming to drink for free if they renounced the gods of Viryana and embraced the Founder.
Of course, that was not how the museum curators had framed it?—they made it seem like they were rescuing the vasudhakt, or, as the placards said, “uplifting the island’s natural population, who had long been suppressed by the tyrannical regime of magic-wielders.” Hasan wasn’t surprised to see that the rest of the exhibit only detailed what life was like for the colonizers, either skirting around the dark realities that the native residents had endured or blaming the suffering on the royal daivyakt families of old. Though any artifact that testified to the crimes of the Welks had been destroyed, the atrocities committed had been passed on in an oral tradition, parent to child.
It occurred to Hasan that Poppy had likely never heard the true history. Did she believe what she was seeing, then, or did she have her doubts? He glanced down at her, but she wasn’t looking at the exhibits. She was staring straight ahead, eyes unseeing, her cheeks pinched as though she were biting their insides.
He squeezed her hand, getting her attention. “What were you trying to tell me, earlier?” he asked. “Outside the museum.”
Her gaze zigzagged to the curator, then to his face, then forward again. “I don’t recall.”
He understood immediately. What could she possibly have to say that she wouldn’t want overheard by the curator? He shifted through his memories of the day the pipe had burst.You know something, don’t you?he’d asked. She’d never answered him. Ice collected in his stomach. She knew something. She knew why the police weren’t here when they said they’d be?—she must. He cursed silently, wishing he’d pushed her that day in the cell.
The two of them followed the curator up the stairs to the third floor, where he then led them down another hallway of exhibits. They passed a cleaning woman pushing a bucket and a mop. Her dark curls were tucked under her uniform cap, but when she turned to see who was coming, her hazel eyes flashed in recognition.
Harithi ducked her head, but it was too late. “You,” Poppy gasped. “What are?—”
Hasan squeezed her hand sharply, silencing her before she drew the curator’s attention.
Finally, he showed them to a cordoned-off room, instructing them to wait there. Once he’d left, Hasan rounded on Poppy, his eyes narrowed.
“You know why your fiancé hasn’t come, don’t you?” he demanded, his heart racing. She dropped her gaze, and it was all the confirmation he needed. He closed the door, blocking the exit. “If you want to go home, you’ll tell me what you know, right here, right now.”
Poppy lifted her gaze back up. “I do know. But I’ll tell you only if you give me something in return.”
• • •
Samina and her team stood on the roof, out of sight of any passerby, but close enough to the edge that she could watch the roads. Up here, the air was insufferably still, no breeze to relieve her from the heat. She traced her left thumb over the brass knuckles on her right hand, a nervous tic she hadn’t been able to beat. A trickle of sweat traveled down the nape of her neck, one that the heat was only half accountable for. The Marnapur police should have arrived twenty minutes ago to complete the deal, and yet there was not a single cop car in sight.
Hasan had already arrived, five minutes prior, with Poppy in tow. Samina’s chest tightened when she’d seen the woman she had once calledfriendheaded up the stairs, pristine and untouchable in a secondhand white dress. Poppy hadn’t told anyone about her visit to her cell?—of that Samina was certain. If Hasan or Harithi had known, she would have already been reprimanded. But why not? Perhaps Poppy felt guilty for what she’d done, both to Samina’s mother and to Samina herself. It didn’t matter what Poppy felt. Samina would never forgive her for any of it?—for the orphanage she’d been sent to after her arrest, for the years of abuse she had endured there, for dangling false hope in front of her on a gold chain.
