Her words hit him like a kick to the ribs. The waver in her voice left no room for doubt. If Samina had said it, then it was true. But Vinay, dead? He was a formidable fighter, one of the most experienced. Yet this same prowess would have made him a target to the pigs, so it made sense that they would have focused all their efforts on bringing him down.
Vinay had been a part of the gang longer than Hasan, had been there when his father had passed away, had been there when his grandfather had neglected his two younger grandsons to train Zeyar. He’d helped him learn responsibility when Rohini had transferred her duties to him. Most men would have been unhappy to take orders from one as young as Hasan, but Vinay had always treated him with deference, advising him gently while respecting his authority. Even now that he had been in charge for a while, Vinay had never hesitated to support him. A lump rose in his throat as he remembered how Vinay had laid a hand on his shoulder the morning they’d learned of Paranjay’s disappearance. No one would be able to bring that steady presence to the gang again.
“Were you able to recover a body?” Hasan asked finally.
Samina grimaced. “Raman found him. They’d shot him in both kneecaps. So when the building burned, he couldn’t run.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying?—and failing?—not to picture it: Vinay, lying in a pool of his own blood, unable to move as the fire?—Hasan’sfire?—caught him, choking on the smell of his own burning flesh.
“Any other casualties?” he forced himself to ask.
“Eleven men, including Vinay.”
Eleven.They had brought over thirty daivyakt fighters, and they had losteleven. Hasan’s head spun. Harithi stood and caught him as he staggered, easing him into a chair. He didn’t struggle as his mother laid one hand against the warm red stain seeping through his shirt.
“You’ve pulled your stitches,” Rohini scolded, but there were no teeth in her tone. She patched the wound up as Zeyar interrogated Samina about the gang and the state of the city.
“I have to return to Marnapur,” Zeyar said. “Tonight. I’ll see to Vinay’s funeral rites and his family, as well as those of the other ten fighters.”
“I agree,” Hasan said. “We have to bury our dead.”
“There’s nowe,” Zeyar corrected. “Iam going.Youare staying here.”
“The fuck I am,” Hasan barked, slamming his fist on the table, ignoring the jolt of pain that echoed in his shoulder. Samina flinched. He winced, apologetic, but his tone remained firm as he demanded, “Give me one good reason why I have to stay behind.”
“Weren’t you listening? Marnapur is under extreme lockdown. The copsknowwhat you look like now, and all of them are looking for you and Poppy.” He shot a pointed look at Hasan’s shoulder. “Besides, you’re injured. It’s too risky.”
Hasan pressed his lips together, unable to refute those points. “I should be the one who goes,” he insisted. “Vinay was one ofmymen. What kind of leader will I be if I hide in the countryside while my own men burn for me?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the unspoken part:He died inmyfire.Vinay could have recovered from his gunshot wounds. Maybe he would have lost his mobility, but he would have beenalive. But the same fire that had saved Hasan had killed Vinay, and for that, he didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself.
Zeyar ran one hand over his hair, closing his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “Hasan, please. Hear me out. It makes more sense for me to go because I control our finances. I can establish a small fund for Vinay’s family while they adjust to the loss.” He softened his tone, pleading. “They’ll understand, Hasan. While I’m sure they’d appreciate your presence, they need the money more.”
“Zeyar is right,” Samina said. “No one will think poorly of you if you stay, Hasan. But if you go and get caught, then people will be upset that you endangered yourself in their time of need. You can’t be a leader if you’re behind bars?—or worse.”
“Vinay would advise you to stay, and you know it.” Zeyar rested his hand on Hasan’s uninjured shoulder. Lowering his voice, he said, “He knew what he was signing up for. He would have traded his life for your freedom without question. Don’t render his sacrifice meaningless by rushing into a trap.”
Hasan couldn’t argue with their logic. “Fine,” he said, though it pained him to say it. “But don’t linger. If you get caught, I won’t forgive you.”
Zeyar lifted the corner of his mouth in a smile. “Careful now. One might almost get the impression that you’ll miss me.”
• • •
Zeyar left after dinner. Their ma had tried to stop him from going, trying everything from ordering him (You cannot go! I won’t allow it!) to threatening him (If you leave, then don’t come crawling back!) to guilt-tripping him (Haven’t you thought about what losing another son would do to your poor mother?), but Zeyar was an unmovable force when his mind had been made up.
“I’ll be back,” he’d said. “Shouldn’t take me longer than two weeks to get everything in order.”
Hasan, Rohini, Samina, and Harithi all stood side by side, watching the red taillights of Zeyar’s car fade into the distance, two dying embers in the night. Afterward, Rohini went to their pantheon to ask the gods for Zeyar’s safe passage through the city. Hasan, on the other hand, went outside with his mother’s old chakrams, which she kept in a velvet-lined case in the dining room cabinet the way most women usually kept silverware or porcelain.
Vinay’s face wouldn’t leave his mind, even as he hurled each disc into the dead tree in their yard. Though he ought to honor Vinay’s memory by remembering his best moments, all he could think of were those last minutes of his life. Had Vinay died choking on smoke? Or had the flames reached him first, devouring what it could before he blacked out from the pain, succumbing to the next life?
He had never feared fire?—why would he when he wielded it as easily as the chakrams stuck in the tree stump? Some Virians thought fire was destructive, the tool of the war god Aganath. But there were some sects who believed that the fertility goddess Rukmini was fire-aligned, rather than earth-aligned. They pointed to the volcano, which had given birth to the island eons ago, her fiery cavern like the warm womb of a mother.
Hasan believed both?—fire could forge, just as it could raze. For the most part, he’d tried to use it to do the former throughout his life, using violence judiciously as a channel to carve out a safe and stable world for himself and his brothers, especially after their father had died.
But Richard? Richard used violence to destroy, to crush others into subservience. The more power he had, the more destructive he became. If he were viceroy, he’d kill them all.
When Zeyar came back, Hasan would have to convince him that backing Poppy was the only viable option. But how could he do that when Zeyar was right? Poppy was the right person to inherit the office, but she was the weaker choice. She didn’t have the support of the nobility, nor did the average Virian care much about her. She couldn’t even use her daivyakhi. Hasan couldn’t fix the former problem.
