by Varsha Ravi
Viro opened his mouth to say something, to reassure him, but found he could not find the words. There was an alarming hollowness in his chest, a concavity that seemed to spread through his body as if it could fully gut him, turn him to dust and shadows. But he kept walking, and then leaned forward, pressing his face into the other boy’s chest. Take it away, he thought. Take away the pain, take away the emptiness.
He did not know to whom he was pleading; the gods had gone silent and the city was razed and dead.
The streets were filled with bodies; a fortunate few watched them pass from their homes. Viro knew there had been people who had survived the massacre in the palace as well, those that had hidden well enough. Marai was not a ghost town, not truly, and yet it was bloated with enough blood that it resembled a corpse, pale and deteriorating.
They found Kiran in the main temple, knelt beside the pool. It had turned crimson from blood, clouds of dark liquid tainting the water. There was somebody with him, another child holding a body in their arms. Viro realized it was the young daughter of the high priestess, hair tied and bound in an intricate bun the way her mother had always braided it. As they approached, sound began to pierce the thick, buzzing silence that surrounded Viro, that suffocating numbness.
The girl was crying, he realized, screaming with pain. She was shaking, holding the body of her mother to her chest with a pained, useless ferocity, as if she could bring her back with sheer willpower.
They walked down the steps and paused beside the pool. Tarak had gone still, the sight of the body an indelible reminder of the dead soldier. Occasionally, a brief, sharp tremor would wrack him, an aftershock of grief, of revulsion.
Kiran looked up at them. His eyes were bloodshot, lips pressed together in a thin line. But there was a weariness to the planes of his face, an old, faded anguish in his gaze.
The sight of him lit a match in Viro’s chest. There was nothing left to burn, and so it simply flickered in the darkness, held in the hands of ashes. “Why did you not save them?”
He tilted his head, bemused.
Viro flung his arms out, gesturing toward the high priestess’s dead body, toward what remained of the palace. Before, he had thought himself incapable of truly feeling the depth of the rage that lined his blood—now it felt as if that was the only thing he could feel, as if the rage had filled in the gaping, corroded chasms in his soul and sharpened him into something new. “What is the use of all your divinity—all your cruel gods—if you cannot save them?”
“I tried,” Kiran whispered, a small, miserable rasp. “I tried to warn them.”
He laughed, humorless and sharp and so, so bitter. “And what was the worth of your warnings? They are still dead. They will never return, and you cannot bring them back.”
Each word bit into the other boy, his agony so palpable that for a moment, Viro feared they would cut through skin, through hearts. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young priestess lay her mother’s body down and rise, but Tarak held her back.
Kiran wrapped his arms around himself, leaning against the edge of the steps and sliding down them so his hands loosely intertwined around his knees. He was still so pale, so shaken.
“Are you not going to say anything?” he demanded, contempt scorching his veins.
He looked up at him then, gaze flat and dark. Where rage had sharpened Viro into a thorn, grief had carved him into something distant and inured, a cold star.
Viro vaguely noticed Tarak tugging at his arm, whispering for him to calm down, to come back. Let us return to the palace, he was saying, but Viro did not want to return to the palace, did not want to return to that silent, blood-soaked lake of hell. Even as the other boy pulled him away, grip tight on his upper arm, he refused to turn away from Kiran. The young priestess knelt beside him, shaking his knees lightly, as if to rouse him from that odd trance he’d fallen into.
“This is your fault!” Viro shouted, unaware of the words even as they left him. They were made of an adamantine anger, borne of a fury he himself could not fathom. “Their blood is on your hands!”
And still, Kiran did not look up from where his gaze rested on the crimson pool, hands palm up in hopeless prayer.
When Suri had returned, it had still been early enough that no one had noticed her, and the few that had hadn’t cared to make an issue of it. Isa and Mohini were still asleep—or perhaps had never come back at all—and so she had slipped back into bed, pulling the covers over her head as if it could erase the previous night from existence.
But you do not really want that, a small, mocking voice whispered. You simply wish it to happen again.
There was nothing left to say, no words that could possibly justify her actions. And yet, where she had expected to find a knot of unease building in her chest, she found nothing. She regretted nothing. It was as the voice said—she only mourned the fact that it would not, could not, happen again.
Suri didn’t fully register falling asleep again, but hours later, she woke to the sudden, shuddering feeling of Isa shaking her awake. She scrubbed at her eyes and threw out an arm in a vague, desperate plea to make her stop, then turned to look at her.
Her gaze was strangely somber. “There is someone at the door for you.”
She narrowed her eyes, but Isa simply stepped back, unwilling to say more. Suri picked up a dressing robe from a nearby chair and wrapped it around herself, unlatching the door. A hopeful, naive part of her sunk a little when she saw who it was.
Tarak’s shoulders were hunched, hands intertwined and fidgeting. He looked up when the door opened, offering something she assumed was meant to be a smile. “Council meeting in fifteen minutes.”
She swallowed. “I see.”
Another faint smile, and then he disappeared. Isa opened her mouth to say something, but Suri shook her head. Later. Suri dressed quickly, darting short, infrequent glances at the other adjoining door, but it never opened, and Mohini never appeared.
It had only been a few hours and yet the palace was fully awake, bustling in an oddly hysterical way, the same kind of horror-struck fatigue she had felt in Tarak’s smile. The war room was filled to the brim, dangerous with the spy still on the loose, but perhaps in the midst of the chaos no one had thought to acknowledge their presence. Tarak was not sitting beside the head of the table—he was darting around the room, giving updates, calming people.
The seat at the head was empty, as it always was until the very, very beginning of the meeting. Yet, strangely enough, the seat at the other side of the table was empty, too. Suri took her seat beside it and tried not to let it visibly unsteady her, though she thought that perhaps a bit of a lost cause at this point.
As if the unfamiliar, nightmarish disorder wasn’t enough on its own, Suri did not recognize that the king had arrived until he had sat down at the table. It took several seconds for everyone else to notice as well, not until Tarak stilled, struck by fealty and some unreadable alloy of fear, and went to his own seat silently.
A switch flipped, the rest of the room quieted too, slowly but surely, as people took their seats, and those that did not have seats sat on the floor, and when the floor was a sea of skin and cloth, the remainder leaned against the far wall. And still, no one filled Kiran’s seat; it sat empty, haunting and mocking.
The boy king did not bother with formalities. He was unrecognizable in the early morning, eyes as black as his brother’s. “As of an hour ago, the Najan Army is marching through the borderlands. Within hours, they shall reach the edge of Athri. In days, they will reach Marai.”
He did not look at Suri, oddly enough. His gaze was fixed on a distant, invisible point, as if he were only half here, ripped from the past into the present and back again. He shook his head, a slight, imperceptible movement, and then leaned back in the high-backed chair.
“There have already been reports of attacks on preexisting villages and settlements in the borderlands,” he said tonelessly. “At least three have been burned to the ground, and
two are heavily impacted. I will lead a unit of soldiers to the borderlands to defend the remaining settlements and prevent them from reaching the border.”
Tarak looked at him sharply. From this angle, Suri could not quite see his expression, only the unfiltered terror held in the edge of it. He opened his mouth, and then closed it, but there was something strained about the line of his mouth.
The boy king did not look over, but his hands tightened slightly into fists, as if the effort of keeping himself still was something that emptied him entirely.
The door opened without warning. There was no knock, simply the crack of wood against the back of the poor man who had been leaning against it. A rustling ran through the crowd, a murmur of wonder and fear as they pulled the man away and opened the door fully, revealing Kiran.
Suri sucked in a breath; she recognized the pallor, the flecks of gold in his irises. He had seen something, and it had burned through him, uncaring and searing. Exertion and fever gave his cheeks an unhealthy glow, and his chest was heaving slightly. But still, he did not tear his gaze away from the boy king. There was something faintly terrified in that gaze, a touch of true disbelief.
“Don’t,” he whispered, so softly that if the room had not gone quiet with anticipation she would not have heard him. He shut his eyes, swallowed, and then opened them again. The gold shone against the black. “You can’t.”
The king’s mouth twisted in a sharp, rancorous imitation of a demure smile. “I cannot do what?”
“You can’t leave,” he said, stepping forward. The people pressed to the side in desperate attempts to get out of his way, as if they could feel the fire in his skin. He took another step, clearing a path to the table, but still he did not sit down, simply leaned forward, palms splayed against the bullet wood. There was something frustratingly abstruse about his words, about the vagueness of them, and a hint of that own frustration flitted across his face. “It is—if you leave, there will be consequences.”
“For who?” the king bit out, narrowing his eyes. “This is not the ambush on Marai, Kiran. This is an invasion, a war set to repeat again and again until we are strong enough to stop it. If I do not go, they will push the border back further, and they will do that with the blood of civilians.”
“What consequences?” Tarak asked quietly. It was the first time he had spoken since the boy king had entered the room. But now he looked at Kiran with a sobering, washed-out fear in his gaze, an old one.
Kiran hesitated, pulling back for a moment. This close, Suri could see that his fingers were trembling on the surface of the table, nails bitten and ragged. He shut his eyes. “I cannot say.”
“You cannot?” the king said softly, a condemnation. “Or you will not?”
Kiran inhaled sharply, pulling his hands back from the table. His wrap was hastily done, the robes ill-fitting and crooked on his shoulders. There was camphor soot on his bare shoulders, streaking up toward his hairline. “Death, somewhere. To someone. I cannot tell you. I do not know.”
“Did you come here thinking that would be enough?” he said disdainfully. “Did you truly expect me to decide the future of the kingdom on a baseless outline of a prophecy?”
The other boy opened his eyes slowly. They were fully black now, but Suri could not forget that gleam of gold, the shine of divinity. It held him up even now, as if his bones were simply fire poured into a skeletal mold. “Perhaps I should not have. Your father did not.”
The room had already been quiet, but now the quiet came alive, turned to something suffocating and thick.
“Leave.” The word was so low, so strangled, that for a moment, Suri thought she had imagined it—that it had been some phantasm of what she’d expected the king to say rather than what he actually had. And yet, his lips were still faintly parted in the echo of the word, head tilted up in a malicious ghost of anger.
Kiran did not insist on staying. He had never sat down, and so he simply stepped away from the table, walked back to the door. He cracked it open, and then glanced back. But the king was not looking at him—he was not looking at anything, his eyes shut and mouth spread in a thin, uneven grimace.
“I will not beg you,” Kiran said, the wind outside tousling his hair, pulling him out and toward it. And then he shut the door behind him and the silence cracked, broke into shards.
In the midst of the chaos, the boy king was strangely still, paralyzed by his own anger. Tarak was the exact opposite, trembling faintly, shaking the king and attempting to tug him to his feet to no avail. Finally, he gave up, letting his hands fall on the upholstered chair. His mouth moved in a question, in a plea, but still the king did not answer. He simply rose from the table and left, eerily quiet.
The people did not notice his exit. It was mostly chiefs and nobles, the former discussing how to adjust for the shift in troops and the latter fretting over how they could avoid the death Kiran had spoken of—Perhaps we should leave for Chaaka? They say it’s beautiful this time of year. The handful of scattered servants, priests, and handmaidens were the only ones silent, having come to an inevitable conclusion—they could not escape. The soldiers would fight, and the rich would flee, but they would die.
Tarak’s hands hung in the air, stretched out to call the boy king back. He glanced up as Suri approached him, bewilderment dulling the fear in his eyes. He looked nearly cadaverous in his shock. He didn’t even try to hide it—he simply stared back, as if there was nothing to say.
Suri had heard, distantly, of the attacks on Marai. She had been in Dauri when it had occurred, sent to assassinate a state official who had been funding a rebellion. To that small, hardened child, it had seemed insignificant—another battle in a war, another sea of dead in an ocean of blood. And yet the aftershocks of it still hung in the air, written into the cracks of this broken city. The war was over, but it still lived on in all of them—in Tarak’s odd, trembling shock, in Kiran’s flame-soaked terror, in the king’s barbed, bloody fury.
Suri lifted a hand, meaning to put it on his shoulder. But this was no time for comfort. She jerked her head toward the door. “Go to him. I’ll clear out the room.”
Tarak blinked at her, a haze clearing in his expression. He shot her a small, grateful look before leaving, shutting the door hard behind him. Suri turned to survey the crowded, panicked room—it had been sympathy, bravado, that had pushed her to speak. She knew the people would not care what she had to say, not with her treason-stained hands and the enemy blood that coursed through her veins.
But when she rang the bell at the center of the table, the chatter began to fade, slow but true. And when she spoke, they listened.
The knock was neat, careful, but it fractured Viro’s patience nonetheless. There was no reprieve—he hadn’t expected one, of course, but a childish part of him had wished for it. If I am to die, at least give me the time to prepare.
Tarak stood, head ducked in a faraway, thoughtful gesture. His shoulders heaved—Viro realized he was panting. He had run, for him. To stop him, to save him.
Clouds gathered behind him in the spaces between the pillars of the open colonnade. The sky was black with thunder and rain, sunlight a distant, unreal thing in the face of this oncoming storm.
“Let me in,” he said, and so Viro did, stepping aside for yet another storm. He shut the door behind him and turned to look at the other boy, who wandered around the room aimlessly, as if saying goodbye. Finally, he took a seat on the white bed, spreading his hands on the blankets. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse with old screams. “I don’t suppose you would listen if I asked you to stay.”
Viro tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, but gave up, offering a flat, humorless laugh. “I do appreciate the attempt.”
Tarak looked up, eyes shining with an ancient fear, a soft, lasting sadness. He crossed the room and sat beside him on the plunging, too-soft bed, put his hands over his. Finally, he spoke, gaze still on their fingers, calloused with age and loss. “Kiran does not lie. You know he does n
ot.”
“If it were real, would he have stayed and tried to convince me?” he mused, too afraid to look up.
He shook his head. “He does not lie, and he does not beg. Think what it must be like, to see catastrophe twice before it happens, to be ignored both times.”
“And by the same blood, too,” Viro noted. He exhaled, pulled away from Tarak’s hands. They were not soft—they had long since been weathered by life. But there was a certain warmth to them; it was difficult to forsake life when he knew he was forsaking this. He forced himself to meet Tarak’s gaze, and the other boy was already looking back, mouth twisted with a shadow of fated grief. “Perhaps my father made a mistake. Perhaps I am repeating it. Perhaps that is what all humans are fated to do—fall into old, familiar outlines and prepared graves.
“But I cannot let them invade on the basis of protecting my own life,” he said, looking down. “If I allow this, then I will die soon enough, at enemy hands, no less. And there is always the chance that Kiran is wrong.”
Tarak made a choked-off, strangled noise of bitter, fearful humor. He raised his hands, as if to embrace him or to slap him, but finally rested them on Viro’s shoulders. It seemed as though Tarak was always doing that—always tethering him, another, sweeter heartbeat around his own. “You know he is not, you know—” he cut off, exhausted by the effort of trying to convince him his own life was worth something.
Viro shook his head, chest tight with spite. “Kiran will never face the effects of his actions, of his prophecies. He can play the saint all he wants, die his unsullied death and raise his hands to the heavens, professing he did all he could to protect this nation, to love it. But he will leave behind those that still suffer—they will no longer be his responsibility. And when he does, I am the one who will have to protect them.”
“Do you really think he does not care for them?”