General Alizeh, her gray eyes unclouded, her mouth forming words that promise Queen Shayla my head.
Arrows dissipate when I send them her way; daggers turn to dust.
“Don’t be fooled!” she shouts at her soldiers from behind her glowing shield. “These aren’t Samudravasi soldiers! These are merely Ambari dirt lickers, led by a wounded army, a foolish conjurer, and a teenage girl!”
The men around her blink hard, as if her words are registering, but not quite.
“Shouldn’t have fed them so much tez, General!” I say, throwing up a shield to deflect the red spikes she sends my way.
Unlike her soldiers, Alizeh’s brain isn’t addled. She throws up a wall—no, a circle of fire—that loops around me, locking me in place. No spell I send penetrates it. Soon enough smoke pricks the back of my throat, makes my eyes water, begins stanching the air from my very lungs.
You have magic in you, daughter. My mother’s voice hums within my consciousness, and on pure adrenaline, I spin, shooting the earth around me, forcing lumps of it over the flames. It doesn’t work as well on hardened earth as it did with sand. Finally, a sliver of a passage opens up in the flaming ring, enough for me to slip through, singeing my hair and clothes, but leaving the rest of me unharmed.
The camp is in chaos. Tents topple, many burned to the ground. The specters’ eerie laughs still ring through the air, but there’s no sign of Alizeh or her Sky Warriors. I scan the sea of bodies—in uniform and not, black hair blending with dyed blue—and find an exhausted Kali sitting on the ground, finger-shaped bruises forming on her face and neck.
“She’s gone!” Kali says in a hoarse voice. “General Alizeh. I tried to stop her, but someone caught me from the back and tried choking me to death. They would’ve succeeded if not for Falak Didi.”
I take Kali by the arm, leading her away from the carnage, the fumes everywhere now sinking into my skin, along with the memories of what I’ve done.
I killed so many people.
Outside the camp, cheers rise in the air:
“Justice for the true king!” someone shouts.
“Long live Raja Amar!”
Amar, too, has a wide smile on his face, but up close, I see his yellow eyes are weary, his complexion paler than normal.
“He vomited after his first kill,” Kali tells me in a low voice. “Falak had to take him away from the battle, make sure he recovered.”
Yet, if Amar still feels the aftereffects of a weak stomach, he doesn’t show it to the crowd, facing the sea of torches and raising his hands in the air.
“The Sky Warriors have retreated. The living specters destroyed their food supplies and drained their drinking water. We were successful today, thanks to them—and thanks to you, the people of the southern tenements, who put your lives on the line though many of you didn’t train as soldiers.”
More cheering.
“Yet, though this battle is ours, the war is yet to be won. I am going to need you more than ever as we march to Ambarvadi to challenge the kabzedar rani.”
The crowd roars its approval, buoyed by this victory, though only earlier this evening they were terrified, their hands trembling as they striped their hair with blue.
Sami wraps an arm around Kali’s waist. “His battle skills may be lacking, but the boy sure knows how to give a crowd hope,” Sami comments.
“Maybe hope is what we need right now,” I say.
Maybe that’s all it will take to win this war.
41
CAVAS
“Samudravasi soldiers? Here in Ambar?” the guard says outside my cell, his loud voice ringing in my ears.
“Of course not!” his companion scoffs. “They were only dirt lickers with dyed blue hair. Our own armies were so high on tez that they couldn’t tell the difference. You’d think the guards at the border would have known if a whole army from Samudra suddenly made its way up north.”
“Rani Shayla must have been furious!”
“She was!” The second man sounds gleeful. “I heard her shouting at the general, blaming her for incompetence.”
It explains why General Alizeh hasn’t been in to torture me for the past couple of days. Come to think of it, neither has anyone else. It has given me more time than normal to recover from the consecutives, allowing Vaid Roshan’s healing magic to properly take effect. In the cell next to mine, I pick out the sound of crackling—like fire in a hearth, but not quite. I’m about to slide closer to the wall and ask Juhi if she’s okay when another voice emerges from the passageway.
“Nothing to heal here, Vaid ji,” one of the guards says in a sneering voice. But he does nothing to stop Vaid Roshan from entering my cell. A healer’s presence in prison usually means torture is bound to follow. I instinctively long to grow smaller.
“Don’t worry,” the healer tells me. “I only came to check on you today. No special orders.”
I sag against the wall. Vaid Roshan hangs up his fanas and crouches to check my fingers, toes, and ribs.
“The bones are healing nicely,” he says. His fingers lightly brush the wound on my forehead. “The scarring will fade with time. But you’ll always have that mark on your forehead. Atashban wounds can be difficult to cure.”
“Will it drive away the girls?”
A brief smile illuminates Vaid Roshan’s face, making him appear younger, boyish even.
“Not with that sense of humor, it won’t,” he says, rising to his feet. “Though I believe one girl might mind if you started considering others.”
We hear the guards speaking again, this time cursing the old soldier in his cell.
“Ayye, you! Get up!” the first guard calls out.
“Forget it. The old bastard can’t hear you,” the second guard comments.
“Let’s kick his ears back in his head then.”
“I’ll see you,” Vaid Roshan says, frowning in the direction of the guards. “Be well. Now let me see if I can stop those idiots.”
The conversation reminds me of words Papa had spoken long ago, though I no longer remember the circumstances surrounding them: People who hate often see little except for their own hatred. There are people like these guards. But there are those like Vaid Roshan as well. Even Govind, who, despite what happened between us in the past, still seems to be on my side.
Once the vaid is gone, I press the green swarna to my mouth and whisper for my mother again. “Ma, can you hear me?” I think I feel the swarna heat up a little, but perhaps that’s only wishful thinking.
Vaid Roshan must have succeeded in distracting the guards, because the conversation between them now shifts to the letter Amar sent out.
“Do you think we should switch sides if the rani loses?” A smack follows, making the guard shout. “Ayye! What was that for?”
“Not so loud, fool! And not here!”
Their voices turn to inaudible whispers, but the words make my brain work faster, hope rising in my chest. Could it be? Men like these guards are mercenary by nature—not exactly the kind of allies we need. But if they’re considering defection, it’s possible that success may be closer than we think.
The crackling inside Juhi’s cell pricks my ears again. A boom follows, sending tremors through the ground under my shackled legs.
“What in Svapnalok—what are you doing, old woman?” the first guard snarls.
A horrible sound rises from the cell next to mine—Juhi, crying out in a language I don’t understand, but one that makes me think of the sea.
“By Zaal, she’s broken the shackles around her ankles! How did she—”
“How would I know? I’m as new at this job as you are! Get them back on her before someone sees! She’s as mad as a blood bat!”
They enter Juhi’s cell amid sounds of screeching metal doors and wails, their shouts cutting off with an abrupt thud. After all this time in the kalkothri, I can now tell what it sounds like when a human body falls to the floor.
Moments later, a ragged, blue-haired figure st
ands before my cell, keys hanging from a ring on the littlest finger of her still-shackled left hand.
“H-how?” I stutter.
“Basic Yudhnatam split kick,” Juhi says, her voice hoarse. “Knocks them out every time. Oh, my shackles, you mean? I used this.”
Something glistens in her hands—a green piece of glass shaped like a dagger blade.
“They never should have left seaglass embedded in my palm—even if they were using it to mangle my tattoo.” A tremor enters her voice, her black eyes hardening as she reveals the injured hand. The tattoo she’s talking about—the golden lotus of the Sisterhood—is no longer visible among the mass of barely healed scars.
She points the shard at her wrists, the seaglass crackling against the glowing blue of the shackles, followed by a small explosion of light and the booming sound I heard before. Carefully tucking the shard in the pocket of her ragged tunic, Juhi unlocks my cell, struggling with the stack of keys in her hands. Smoke begins rising around her—from the agnijal in the channels dividing our cells from the passage.
“Let’s hope I can get us out before this kalkothri gets consumed by fire,” Juhi says. “Can you stand? I need to get close enough to remove your shackles.”
The smoke has grown thick by the time the door slides open. I’ve managed to get to my knees, but my legs are trembling now, from nerves and lack of use. Juhi kneels, taking my hands in her glowing ones, and the blue shackles crack open, falling off my wrists. She then does the same for my ankles before helping me stand.
“Amira’s cell is at the end. Are you okay?” she asks when I begin coughing.
“Yes,” I lie.
I have to be.
A clanging sound begins overhead, interspersed by terrible screeching and fires erupting everywhere.
“The doors,” Juhi says. “Run!”
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
But I do run, as fast as possible, my breath a pained knot in my side. Ahead, Juhi begins coughing as well, her hands glowing over us.
Air. Blessed air.
Stale and cool, blocked by the shield Juhi has thrown up, urging me forward with her voice.
“The shield won’t hold forever!” Juhi’s voice tightens. “Come on, Cavas! A little farther!”
A few steps.
Some more.
What feels like a hundred steps later, we pause before a cell already thick with smoke. Shooting a few spells, Juhi disperses it, revealing a figure hunched in the corner: Amira.
“Amira!” I hear Juhi’s voice through a fog. “Amira!”
Slowly, painfully, Amira raises her head. Her cheeks are sunken, her body almost skeletal from starvation, atashban burns patching her arms and bare legs.
“I’m getting you out of here!” Juhi shouts. “I’m getting us all out!”
This time, things go much faster, with the keys, with the magic breaking Amira’s shackles. Amira is worse off than I am; Juhi and I have to help her to her feet.
“Wait.” Amira’s voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper, but it makes us both pause. “The brigadier … in the cell next to me. We need to get him out.”
“Amira, you can’t be serious.” If Juhi had energy, I’m sure she would have shouted the words. “I can’t save everyone in this prison!”
“There isn’t anyone else except for him. And the shadowlynx that ate his arm.”
As if summoned by her words, caterwauling erupts from somewhere nearby. I spin around to see a fire-lined creature rolling on itself, howling in pain, its spiraling horns eerily reminiscent of the daggers Gul uses. I feel myself lurch forward—to do what, I’m not sure—when a strong hand grips my shoulder.
“We can’t save it,” Juhi says sharply. “Agnijal is designed to burn through any living creature. It is ten times stronger than fire, a substance that Lohar himself used in the design of his atashban. And we can’t save that soldier, either, Amira!”
“Not even if he can help us in the war?” the other woman challenges. Her dark eyes flash, and for a moment, I’m reminded of something Gul once told me. Juhi may be head of the Sisterhood, but Amira is tougher than anyone else—the only one capable of wielding an atashban.
“What do you mean?”
“No time to explain.” Amira coughs. “We need to get him out. Now!”
There is no time. The part of the prison from where Juhi and I came from is now completely engulfed in flames.
“Brigadier Moolchand, can you hear me?” Amira shakes the unconscious man none too gently. “By Zaal, do you think he’s dead?”
“Hang on,” Juhi says, bending over. She presses a glowing hand to his mouth and murmurs a few words. Seconds later, the man blinks, his brown eyes foggy, unfocused.
“Can you hear us?” Amira shouts as Juhi simultaneously unshackles him with startling speed. “We need to get out of here!”
The man winces, as if the idea of having to save his own life feels too exhausting at the moment. Then, with an effort that can only be due to years of training as a soldier, he rises to his feet.
I scan the passage ahead. Smoke still rises from the channels, but the agnijal isn’t yet fully active.
“This way,” I tell the women and the still-drowsy man. “The side leading to Raj Mahal had a patch of Prithvi Stone blocking the exit,” I say, suddenly remembering the awful, drowsy feeling. “Do you think there might be something similar here?”
“Probably something worse,” Juhi says grimly. She turns to Amira. “Grab a weapon.”
Amira holds up a piece of metal—the distinctive top of a guard’s spear tipped white with sangemarmar and red with dried blood. “Already did.”
I’m breathing fumes by now, the air so thick with smoke that it’s impossible to avoid despite Juhi’s shielding us from the worst of it. The soldier Amira insisted on taking with us finds it difficult to move more than a few steps at a time, and his right arm ends in a bandaged stump.
“Moolchand ji!” Amira calls to him. “Moolchand ji, you’ve got to keep moving!”
We’re reaching the end of the corridor, a few feet away from a door barred with iron. Juhi and Amira raise their hands in unison. Red light blasts the door, making it erupt in vivid green flames. Screams echo around us, the kind that don’t seem entirely human.
The man next to me swears. “There’s a protection spell embedded in the door!”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
I get my answer seconds later from the fire itself: forming serpents, shadowlynxes, dustwolves, and a terrifying simurgh that looks nothing like Queen Sarayu.
“Move!” Amira shouts, her haggard face gray in the fire’s reflected light.
We start inching backward, away from the spreading green flames—only to meet more smoke pouring in from behind us.
Death by smoke inhalation, or death by fire demons.
I’m contemplating which is worse when a rumbling sound to the left catches my attention.
“Stand back,” Juhi says, pushing us behind her.
The smooth stone making up the passage walls crumbles, the bricks spinning sideways to form the arch to a darkened doorway, a shadowy figure emerging from within.
“Don’t just stand there!” Queen Amba glares at our shocked faces. “Get in before the flames consume us all!”
42
CAVAS
Fiery green heads poke through the doorway and sever with a hiss as the bricks re-form, sealing once more into a smooth stone wall. Queen Amba’s face glows under a lightorb, her yellow eyes as hard as the firestones she wears around her neck and in the part of her hair.
“Rani Amba.” Juhi is the first of us to find her voice. “It’s been long.”
Amba raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Don’t bother with formalities, princess of Samudra. I saved you for the singular purpose of helping my son in this war.”
Juhi smiles. “Always a princess, never a queen. Isn’t that what you told me the day I first came here? But I was not meant to be a princess, either,
Amba. I never competed with you for power or for Lohar’s affection—if he had any to give.”
Amba does not acknowledge the comment except with a narrowed gaze. “We are safe here for now. This passage—or the Way of Blood, as my ancestors called it—remains protected from the agnijal’s fire. Only a descendent of the Chand gharana can access it; it requires our blood as sacrifice.” Amba holds up a hand, revealing a gleaming red cut. “The passage will lead you out into the Walled City.”
Juhi stares at the wound on the queen’s hand. “Why don’t you come with us, Amba?”
“I don’t run from my troubles, Balram-putri Juhi. Ambar Fort is still my home. I did not leave when the man my family bound me with turned out cruel instead of kind. I certainly will not leave it in the hands of a false queen,” Amba says. “Go now. The agnijal will soon burn away the protective spells that my ancestors placed to disguise the passage entrance. It will not take the Sky Warriors long to blast through the rock.”
“What about Rajkumari Malti?” I ask. “Is she all right?”
The queen’s cold yellow eyes soften. “Malti is safe. She misses her brother. She will be happy once you return him to her.”
The pointed statement makes me bite back a smile, and Amira openly rolls her eyes.
“Your son will return to you himself, Amba,” Juhi says. “And he will return wiser. Stronger. With the sky goddess’s blessings, he will bring back the Ambar where everyone is treated with honor and respect, regardless of the magic in their blood.”
“Amar is no warrior,” Queen Amba says, her voice raw. “He never has been.”
“He doesn’t need to be—with Gul by his side,” Amira says. “I should know. I’ve trained her myself.”
Only days earlier, the comment would have sent my mind on a twisted, poisonous track. Now, I’m grateful that Gul is still out there. Alive and fighting.
“We will fight for the true king, as well.” The soldier who had been quiet thus far, finally speaks. “Brigadier Moolchand,” he says, pressing his hand to his heart, when Rani Amba turns to face him. “I was posted at the Amirgarh cantonment. I know my soldiers are still loyal to me and Raja Amar, regardless of the puppet brigadier the kabzedar rani has put in my place.”
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