by Varsha Ravi
“You’re surprisingly competent,” she allowed. “Especially considering I’m not compensating you for this. You must want something in return.”
“I’m a man of faith,” he said, mild and unreadable, the smooth blue reflection of a depthless lake. “I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart, nothing more.”
“I’m sure.”
“You wound me,” he said, prompting her to roll her eyes before nudging her into the jewelry shop beside them. Inside, the air smelled of metal and polish, and Suri wrinkled her nose. The jeweler, eyes shining with barely restrained impatience, led her through an assortment of necklaces. She absorbed none of it.
Spending every afternoon he could spare with the princess was surprisingly pleasant, when it wasn’t painful.
She bore little resemblance to her dead body, certainly—the tilt of her mouth all wrong, the defiant glint in her eyes dulled to a glossy shine. It was easy enough, at times, to pretend he was just accompanying her for simple reasons—fears of treason, a vested interest in his queen, et cetera. She stiffened enough when he mentioned the former for it to hold weight and pull his actions away from the vague area of suspicion that would come naturally to anyone who knew how uncharacteristic they were.
The vision still haunted him, in daylight and in shadows. He had meant to tell Viro of it, but that had been before the princess had arrived, before it had become clear the other boy would seize upon any opportunity to break the engagement.
The boldness of what Kiran meant to do—evade death, evade fate, save the princess and the city somehow—made itself clear to him until it was nearly impossible to think of anything else. You cannot really mean to do this, a voice whispered in brief, rare moments of silence, when he was too tired to force it out. It sounded too much like Viro for it to be easy to stomach.
As if turning their backs on him and his reckless, doomed attempt at steering the princess away from death, the gods had gone silent. And by that Kiran meant that Avya had gone silent. The others spoke to him rarely, if at all. A connection of formality, out of respect for a sham prophet borne from error. Avya had always been there, even when Kiran had not wanted him around. But he had left, too. The altar had burned silently for fifteen days and sixteen nights.
Nearly sixteen nights. He had knelt on the smooth stone of the temple since dusk, cupping the flames with hands that trembled from exhaustion more than reverence, and still his chest felt empty. The sun would come up in less than an hour, if that. And then he would have to perform a simple service to the empty mountainside and early morning breeze.
Kiran let the fire fall from his hands, into the golden bowl in the center of the altar, and turned to look at the shadowed city. Even the moon had disappeared, Nila hidden where Kiran could not beg to even her.
It was odd, going into the city with Suri. An old, half-decayed sensation twinged in his chest every time he saw its streets; unrequited love that had bloomed into existence the very first moment he had been brought here, a silent child in a world that never quieted. It was not what he would call pleasant, but it couldn’t have been truly horrible, not if he sought it again and again, as if it were a poorly made cure to a heartache that never ceased.
The princess had never asked about it, but he thought maybe she noticed. She was not as easy to read as he would have assumed—then again, his only taste of nobility, apart from fleeting functions in distant lands, had always been Viro, and he had never been able to hide anything. Kiran wasn’t sure if Suri’s carefully constructed indifference sat comfortably at the baseline, or if it might be a clue he was dangerously ignoring.
Of course, he thought bitterly, her true intentions matter even less than your excuses to keep an eye on her. Short of escaping and returning with the full force of the Najan armies at Athrian borders in retaliation for his contrived suspicions, there was little she would be able to do in the long run. Unless he pulled this off; something apparently even his subconscious doubted the possibility of.
It had been so much easier to think of death when it was something that only touched him, a door that led out to a place he had seen so many times before. A half-burned field, his faceless parents standing on the steps of a cottage with no roof. Aswathi sitting on the edge of the pool at the center of the main temple, leaned forward so her fingers brushed the silver-blue water. An empty, glittering temple, and a rudimentary clay pot standing where a carved stone bird was meant to stand.
A palace drenched in blood; a city shattered by it.
And yet it wasn’t, not anymore. Kiran traced the scar over his heart absentmindedly. Is this why you’ve left me? he thought, less a prayer and more a question, a request presented to an empty room that smelled of smoke. Because you know how this will end?
Kiran knew better, but he could not help the faint stab of disappointment he felt at the ensuing silence.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. The only truly surprising part about it all, really, was that Suri had held out for so long. Against the burn in her chest, the slowly constricting bonds around her heart.
Kiran’s presence didn’t help in the slightest. There were moments, brief ones, when she would forget her responsibility—and how he played into keeping her from fulfilling it. Pleasant moments. But they always gave way. She felt like something large and formless in her own skin.
Isa had asked her once why she never refused a single mission her parents gave her. Suri couldn’t remember what she had said in response—something about how even if she did refuse, it wasn’t as if they would accept it. And that was true enough—she was locked into this, with only a vague suggestion of free will to satiate her. But she had been weaned on this—late nights in foreign cities, the tang of metal against rain-stained air, the stomach-drop sensation that came with human contact. It was a kind of hunger in itself, an appetite for something far cruder than victuals. Fist to face, repeat.
The bruises Suri gained from the fighting house were of little importance. She was skilled enough that they were small, easily hidden with makeup or explained away by excuses of clumsiness. The money, however, was a bigger problem.
She was good—she knew that. Distantly, she had been aware of the fact that being in the fights would give her a reasonable amount of money and a dangerous amount of infamy prior to ever entering the building. Back then, it had seemed unimportant in the face of the gnawing hunger. But now the money was piling up, and once it outgrew the space under the loose floorboards in her closet, she was going to have to explain it. Short of kleptomania or bartering her belongings away, there was little reasoning that could feasibly do the job.
But Suri had learned avoidance early, from the silence of her family and the harsh, uncaring world of mercenary work. She had learned to push away issues until it was impossible to hold them off anymore, and so she pulled up another floorboard, and kept fighting, and did not tell anyone.
Isa would have suspected—might have—but even she was silent. Sometimes Suri caught her watching, as if examining Suri’s expression would loosen her secrets from where they lay, tight and coiled, in the space below her sternum. She pretended not to notice, if only because confronting it might cause Isa to question her—and if she did, then Suri knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from telling her everything.
Kiran was too distracted to notice—not the bruises, not the smudges on her cloak, not the circles under her eyes. He looked worse every time he showed up to take her into the city, if he even came at all. His skin had become pallid and drawn, the fine bones of his face jutting out eerily. Dark circles ringed his black eyes, his skin bruised mauve. Even his hair was a mess, the tangled, dark curls tied up in a stubby knot with odd pieces of string and bent metal.
Suri was hesitant to ask if anything was wrong—it was true enough that she was afraid of him questioning her own late-night adventures, but more than that, she didn’t want to push him too far. When he spoke, if at all, his voice was distant, brittle. Only once did she give in; she had
asked tentatively, “Is there anything wrong in the temple? You look tired.”
His expression had sharpened immediately, detached thoughtfulness resolving into something shrewd and heavy. He had reminded her, faintly, of the boy king. “Nothing,” he’d said, gaze scraping across her face. “Nothing at all.”
At any rate, the risks never came close to dissuading Suri from returning. There was something of muscle memory in it, of addiction. It itched at her skin, unsteadied her in jagged, obvious ways. Every morning, she returned to her rooms sated and ashamed. She’d taken advantage of Kiran’s distraction and sent her last letter, dense and useless—she hadn’t been able to recover any good information on military movements. But now she could think only of the next.
The ghosts of her past never left her, save for the few moments of aching relief she had in the ring. And soon enough, the ring would be gone—the city itself would be gone, the citizens nothing but ink smudged numbers in a ledger and an addition to the accusatory voices in the back of her head.
Frustration hollowed her out. Someone called her name, one she had invented for the lower city—Kazha, the mother goddess of the earth. It was not uncommon, but she knew it didn’t suit her, nor her fire. She tugged her cloth mask over the lower half of her face and pulled herself up and into the ring, replacing the flap of fabric that wrapped around the perimeter behind her. She pulled off her hood, and the crowd roared once they caught sight of her familiar braided hair, messy but pulled away from her features. Her opponent’s name was announced and the shouts intensified in response, but it felt distant.
All that mattered was this; her wrapped fists and the heavyset young man on the other side of the ring. He smiled unkindly, but Suri didn’t recognize him. She bit back a smile—he probably thought her underprepared, some unsteady maiden tossed into the ring on a dare with her face masked to save her dignity.
She was good at that, being underestimated.
Suri dodged his first hit, a clumsy thing, and caught his arm, twisting it back and pushing him to the floor. Her blood thudded in her ears, hot and electric. He kicked back, catching her in the leg, and she stumbled away as he pushed to his feet. This time, she didn’t give him a moment to breathe, catching him across the face and holding him in place against the wire supports of the ring. He caught her fist after the third hit, pushing her back and flipping her against the ring. She rolled with the movement, backing away to the other side. Her hip was sore, but she could feel no pain, not now. It all faded away in the face of this euphoric buzz.
The young man’s cheek was red with blood, breaths coming heavy. He glanced up at her, confidence dissipating away, replaced with a surprised wariness. She smiled under her mask, for herself and herself only.
Only then, she caught a glimpse of something gold and glittering in the crowds surrounding them.
A bird, she thought at first, bemused in the heat of the fight. But it was not a bird, or a person. It was a pin, slender and golden, bright against the base of the hood of a thin, black cloak. It was rare to find something golden in this part of Marai—gold was something saved up for and treasured. The wealthy soaked in it and the poor indulged in it, kept it safe and locked away.
The figure was moving through the crowds too quickly to track, the only constant that pin against their hood. But even from this distance, Suri knew what it was. A circle of gold, with a flame within.
The young man came at her again after a few moments and she evaded him, let the momentum knock him into the edge of the ring. He swore in pain, glancing over at her with a red-hot anger, an anger she knew better than she knew herself. But it made him too predictable, and she punched him once more across the face before drawing up her knee against his groin. He groaned and leaned back against the edge, glaring back at her through hooded eyes.
But Suri was not looking at him. In the crowd, the figure stilled, looking up at her. The hood cast his face in shadow, but Suri had seen it far too many times—in dreams, in nightmares—for that to be important. The cloth of the hood creased as he cocked his head, a silent question.
She jerked her head toward the door, or what passed for it. Leave. This isn’t any of your business.
Suri knew what he would say, how he would say it. All dry amusement and faint scorn. Isn’t it?
He straightened up and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Suri just enough time to dodge a hit. It still caught her on the side of her face, knuckles against the edge of her jaw. The young man’s expression tightened, and he lunged forward to hit her again. She twisted out of his reach and delivered a kick to his side, dancing back out of his reach the first moment she could. He howled low with anger and drew his fist back to hit her face.
It never made it there.
He’d climbed up and ducked under the ring—quickly enough that she hadn’t noticed, that not even the referee had. The blow had knocked off his hood, and he swayed in front of her, close enough that she could smell wood ash and vetiver incense. But he did not stumble.
From here, she could not see his expression, only his hair, dark and tangled and stained with ash. Yet, past him, the blood had drained from the young man’s face. His fist hung loosely in the air until he pulled it down sharply, trembling.
The shouts had all quieted, silenced in a matter of seconds. The room was empty of sound; this was the hush of a crowd bowing before execution, the choked quiet of the silent river of souls that knotted through the earth.
The young man had become so pale, so afraid, that Suri could see his fingers individually shaking. He ducked his head in a quick bow, tentative, before foregoing the moderate show of fealty and dropping to his knees. He pressed his face to the sweaty, blood-stained canvas mats, trembling still.
Kiran had not moved since the blow had hit, carefully still in front of her. But there was nothing calm, nothing gentle, about his stance. Suri remembered what Mohini had told her when she had first noticed the temple. He is not a criminal. But he is dangerous all the same.
When she had seen him tending to the shrine, there had been a brief bite of surprise, not because of his youth and size, but more so because of his demeanor, surprising in a servant of a fire god. Level-headed and calm, if a little distant. Even when he had begun to smile at her, and crack small, rare jokes, she had never seen a fire in him. Not the way she saw it in the boy king; not the way she saw it in herself.
He glanced back at her, for just a moment. His gaze burned. Her breath caught, but he didn’t notice it, turning back to deal with the young man folded on the floor.
“Rise,” he said softly. A rustling sound came, and as the boy rose from the floor, so did the crowd. Suri had not noticed it in the midst of her confusion, but every person in the room had knelt, a wave of motion and fear and awe.
Even though the young man had stood, his head was still bowed, gaze focused on the ground below them. Like eye contact was akin to signing his own death warrant—like it would offend Kiran, and that was dangerous.
“Speak,” he said, and—as if by magic—the young man did.
“T-Thyvasi,” he started, but the honorific came out strangled, choked with terror. “I wouldn’t have—If I had known—If I had known she was—”
If you had known I was what? she thought bitterly. If being under Kiran’s protection was enough to result in this, she wondered how they’d react if they knew who she really was.
She wondered if Kiran would tell them.
Suri could not know the lengths he would go to. He had not looked back at her since that first, cursory glance, simple and scorching.
Kiran cocked his head, and when he spoke, his voice was death-soft. “You couldn’t have. My friend here… is far too good at hiding for that.”
There was a faint bite to his last words. The young man paled further, though Suri hadn’t thought it possible. “I will pull out of the fight—”
“There is no need for that,” he said airily. He turned back to look at Suri, stepping out of the way so they could fu
lly take each other in. His smile was humorless and barbed. “Isn’t that right, Kazha?”
Her heart throbbed in her chest. He didn’t reveal my identity. She held his gaze, searching for some shred of an explanation. His expression gave away nothing, still carefully neutral save for the mock-pleasant, disdainful tilt of his mouth. She exhaled into the dead air. “Right.”
“Then,” Kiran said, holding out his hand, “We’ll take our leave. Collect your winnings as you see fit.”
Suri did not entirely want to take it—a vague, juvenile part of her shied away from what was sure to be punishment. But his tone brooked no argument, and she was not in a position to disagree with him, at least not in full view of the fighters. She laced her fingers through his, startling briefly at the heat of them, and followed him out of the ring.
The crowd parted for him, silent apart from the rustling of fabric as people pressed against each other in their hurry to clear a path. Kiran didn’t look at the crowd, though it seemed less out of superiority than out of the effort of keeping a hold over himself. He did not speak, did not look at her—their only point of contact was the tight, bruising grip he had on her hand.
They ducked out of the boarded-up building and Suri faltered for a moment, wondering if he would stop. He glanced back for a moment, that same harsh and searing look, and then led her down a hidden side street. It was exhilarating, to know she still knew so little of the city, that it still held untold wonders.
After slipping down another narrow road, they found themselves near the edge of the markets. The night market had not yet opened, but in the distance, Suri could see the bottom of the steps that led up to the upper city.
Kiran let go of her hand and twisted back to face her. In the wan lamplight, Suri could properly take him in. There were the beginnings of a purpling bruise on the side of his cheek, and his lip was split and swollen. But beyond that, there was his expression.