“For Ambar!” we echo.
Overhead, knocks rap the front door, rattling it in its frame. Silence falls over the room as Ramnik goes upstairs, no one daring to speak. He soon returns, a grim expression on his face.
“That was a thanedar warning us about the curfew tomorrow,” he says. “You should get home as soon as you can.”
“Be well, boy.” Councilor Cama gives me a sharp nod; it’s the only act of civility he will offer and I take it, pressing my hand to my heart in thanks.
The brigadier and I leave the women to sleep in the basement and head upstairs to our tiny room that smells perpetually of stale cooking oil. Soon enough Moolchand falls asleep, his snores filling the space. I lie awake for much longer, recalling everything that has happened over the past couple of days, my body still thrumming from the energy in the basement, hope a steady flame in my chest.
Slowly, I pull the green swarna from my pocket and place it close to my lips.
“Ma?” I whisper. “Tell Raja Amar that I’ll do it. I will lead the specters and non-magi during the war.”
* * *
Dawn rises with the sound of thanedars rattling their lathis against barred storefronts and locked doors. Overhead, a faint drumming penetrates the air, vibrating in my bones.
“Is that the army?” Prerna asks.
“No,” Juhi says, frowning. “The army is summoned by war horns. This is something else altogether.”
Something that makes Juhi withdraw the bag of cowrie shells Ramnik procured for her and start arranging them in a circle on the floor. Amira holds Juhi upright through the scrying session and then long after the latter emerges from her trance.
“It’s her magic,” Amira whispers to me. “It takes a toll on her.”
“Darkness,” Juhi says, sweat beading her dark-brown skin. Her expression is troubled. “I see only darkness.”
Soon, everyone else wakes as well. Despite their sunken eyes, the Sisters look calm. Juhi sits in a corner, a belt with two sheathed swords next to her, while Amira examines the tip of her atashban. The weapons, I learn, arrived a few hours before daybreak, hidden in the milkman’s cart.
Brigadier Moolchand wears a tunic reminiscent of his old army uniform, trimmed with shades of scarlet and brown, and a bright indigo turban that Ramnik carefully ties around his head.
A moment later, a knock sounds on the back door.
It’s a non-magus delegate from the northern tenements, a burly man, who removes the blanket covering his body to reveal a sickle in one hand and a shield strapped to his chest.
“Son of Harkha and Xerxes,” he says, addressing me directly. “Your non-magus army waits for orders outside. There aren’t many of us—only a hundred or so—but we’re eager and willing. It’s an honor to fight under your command.”
I know I should say something in response. But my words have choked in my throat and I simply bow deep to show him my respect. My fingers tighten around the shaft of my spear, one I’m no longer certain I can use. I close my eyes, trying to remember everything Subodh taught me in Tavan. However, all I can see is Gul going through the motions I failed at—Gul, whom I abandoned to chase after General Alizeh.
My breath emerges, rattling and shaky. I can’t be foolish this time. I can’t get caught.
“You won’t get caught,” Ma whispers quietly, reading my thoughts.
“We won’t let you,” two voices say in unison. It’s the father and the son who have accompanied me in the safe house, their gray faces reassuring.
“I’m not the only one who needs protection. The non-magus army will need it, too,” I say. “I want you to help them as much as you can. Make them invisible if you need to.”
“We will,” Ma promises. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“I don’t know why Amar asked me to be a leader,” I say for possibly the hundredth time that week.
“You underestimate yourself, Cavas of the northern tenements,” the older male specter says. “You have survived more than any of us during torture; you have shown grit and guile when everything appeared hopeless. Among non-magi and the living specters, you are regarded as a great warrior.”
“This is true,” the non-magus delegate agrees.
“I’m not!” I protest. “Gul is a better fighter than I ever will be.”
“Oh, don’t bother with him,” another voice says scornfully. I glance up, see Roda pop into visibility before floating down to take a seat beside the older male specter. “He’s too far gone over her. She’s the same over him. So annoying.”
“You mean you can’t hold on to your resentment anymore,” Ma says, an undercurrent of iron in her pleasant voice.
Roda’s scowling face straightens. “Apologies, Harkha Bai,” she says, sounding strangely meek.
My urge to laugh fades as the sound of conches penetrates the air from south of the city, answered by war horns from the north, where Ambar Fort lies.
“The armies are here,” Juhi says. “Get ready, everyone.”
Swallowing my fear, I turn to the non-magus delegate first. “Follow Juhi ji and the merchant army. Listen to Juhi ji’s instructions and shield yourself as much as possible from any magical attacks.”
“Understood.” The burly man nods his assent.
I turn to the specters.
“I want you to go ahead,” I say, curbing the tremor in my voice. “Scout the area. See what’s happening. I want reports every few minutes or whenever I call you through this.” I hold up the green swarna, which now glows bright, hums in a way it never has before—with the sound of hundreds of specters. “At some point, I will ask you to distract the enemy—to play a little hide-and-seek, if you will—by making our soldiers intermittently visible and invisible. Is that clear?”
I expect smirks or arguments. But there are none.
“Clear, Cavas ji.” The specters’ high voices chorus in perfect unison. They fly out the open door, seconds before I register that someone had added—for the first time—an honorific after my name.
DRUMS IN THE DARK
19th day of the Month of Birds 7 months into Queen Shayla’s reign
46
GUL
The sun rises by the time we enter Ambarvadi, beaming hot on our heads, across shuttered storefronts and padlocked doors. It glints on the spikes of Subodh’s reptilian tail as he walks ahead. The two makara follow closely, their scales gleaming like polished jade. I walk with Kali and fifty warriors from the Legion, spears and shields held close to their sides. Armaiti and the peri fly overhead, keeping watch, the deeper we go in.
Subodh insisted Amar stay at the command center with Falak, Sami, and the remaining troops.
“If you wish to be Ambarnaresh, you cannot be rash with your own life,” he reminded when Amar argued. “If we lose, you take the remaining troops and go back into hiding. As long as you’re alive, Ambar still has hope.”
Sami wasn’t happy about being left behind, either.
“You need to survive this,” Kali told her sharply. “For the both of us.”
The argument led to a frosty silence between the two, lasting an entire day. But at night, as I was falling asleep, I heard Sami creep back into our tent. When I woke this morning, I found her and Kali tangled together, holding on as if they would never let go.
Now, among the winding, eerily empty streets of the capital, I’m glad that neither Sami nor Amar is here. Something feels distinctly off today about Ambarvadi. Strange drumming penetrates the air, hammering the inside of my skull.
“Did the Scorpion decide to use magical war drums to make our ears bleed?” I ask Kali.
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Kali replies, frowning. She reaches out a hand, waves it ahead of her face as if testing an invisible pattern. “But these aren’t drums. Not quite.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s … they sound more like voices. Like chants thrumming the air.”
I frown, her words making me uneasier than before. Now that sh
e’s mentioned this, I pick out patterns in the air that could be words, the most distinct of which sounds like andhiyara, the Vani word for darkness.
“Their advance troops are coming,” Subodh growls, his voice loud in the silence. “Peri Armaiti can see them from above. Around three hundred men.”
An entire battalion of trained soldiers against seventy-five men and women armed with spears and shields.
And the peri, who can swipe out probably ten of those men with a beat of their wings, I remind myself. And Subodh. And Kali.
And you, a voice says in my head. They have you, too, Gul.
A strange feeling goes through me as I turn around, nodding at the women who follow me, watching the strain on their tattooed faces ease. Shadowy figures crest the incline ahead of us and pause there. Amar’s strategy, choosing to invade Ambarvadi, seems to have paid off in one way—we will not fight soldiers on horseback today. It’s difficult for an armed cavalry to navigate the city’s many narrow alleys and roads, let alone fight in them. If they do fight on horseback, they will be limited to the wide thoroughfares that cut Ambarvadi into quarters or be forced off horseback eventually.
Yet … as I squint against the haze in the air, I realize something isn’t quite right. It might be magic, or perhaps the heat itself that is blurring my vision. But the troops that stand before us don’t appear Ambari, aren’t dressed in the infantry’s brown-and-red uniform. Instead, they wear identical sand-colored turbans, tunics, and trousers, their sun-darkened faces obscured by wide silver blades. Heading them is a man in black, his face shadowed by a mask.
“Looks like the rumors about the Brimmish mercenaries were right,” Kali comments, her words grim. “Rani Shayla has sold her kingdom to the highest bidder.”
The drumming in the air grows louder, turns into a chant in high Vani that I can’t understand, except for that single word: andhiyara.
“Lightorbs!” Subodh hollers at Kali. “As many as you can!”
Kali shoots sparks into the air, molding to form one, then two, then four lightorbs that spin over our heads, their too-bright glow competing with the sun, hurting my head and my eyes.
The light, I think. It’s far too much.
Someone must have been listening to my stupid thought, because for one moment the sun still hangs in the sky.
And then, it doesn’t.
* * *
Our lightorbs fizzle out, leaving behind a darkness so absolute that I think I’ve lost my vision.
But then the drumming starts again. Voices chanting: “Andhiyara. Andhiyara.” Old Vani for utter, impenetrable darkness—the kind caused by a solar eclipse.
Overhead, I hear Armaiti shouting for control among the peri until her voice gets cut off by an awful scream. The ground before us shakes as a body falls from the air, spraying our faces with gravel and drops of mud. Or what I think is mud until I smell it.
Blood. Peri blood, I guess, by the feather I pull from my hair.
“Armaiti says she can’t do anything without vision,” Subodh says urgently over the war cries of the mercenaries. “We need lightorbs! Or another magical light source. Non-magical fires will not be visible during a suryagrahan.”
“I’m trying!” Kali cries out. “But my magic keeps dying out for some reason! Gul, you try!”
But I have never been able to create lightorbs, and this doesn’t miraculously change now. “It’s not working!” I exclaim. “What kind of suryagrahan is this?”
“An abomination of the worst kind,” Subodh says, his voice grim. “Be careful. Your magic may not work the way it normally does.”
It’s the last bit of advice he can give before his voice gets drowned out by thundering feet. I aim my seaglass daggers in the distance, from where I think the enemy approaches, and shoot a spell. Something crumbles ahead—the side of a building? An abandoned fruit stall? I’m not sure. I can feel the heat of my weapons, but I don’t see them glow. I can’t tell if the spells I aim are any good.
Something stings the side of my ear, forcing me to duck to the ground. Blood trickles down my burning lobe as screams rise around me, juxtaposing with guttural laughs. Red spots swirl before my eyes as someone kicks me in the face. I slash out, forcing myself to move despite the burning pain in my nostrils, hearing the satisfying sound of a man cursing me in another tongue before someone else kicks me in the stomach.
They can see us, I realize. Even though we can’t see them.
I shoot a spell upward, where I think a chin should be, and feel a retaliating kick to my spine. The pain from this hit is so crushing that I lose my grip on my daggers.
Use me, the death magic inside me demands. Kill them.
Yet how do I use my magic in darkness like this, when I could very well hit a friend instead of a foe?
The enemy senses my hesitation, and soon enough, I find myself wrestled to the ground, daggerless, thick hands gripping my wrists and ankles, pulling hard on my arms and legs.
“Let’s see what you can do now, little witch,” someone snarls in my ear in the Common Tongue. My body seizes, frozen, as a rough hand moves up my left calf and then my thigh, leaving bruises in its wake.
Do something, Gul!
As thick fingers grip hold of the waistband of my trousers, another scream pierces the air.
No. You will not touch Kali!
I turn sideways and lean, biting the nearest bit of flesh I can find. Tasting blood.
The man’s curse fades before my newly freed hands, heat coursing down my right arm, explode in a burst of vivid orange light that lets me see their terrified faces, shouting at one another, raising their wide talwars to bring them over my head.
Protect.
The steel hits my shield and melts, forcing the mercenaries back a couple of steps. I make out a few figures garbed in sandy brown, their eyes glowing green—probably with magic that allows them to see in the eclipse. It should be difficult to do two spells at the same time. But Subodh was right when he said my magic wouldn’t work the way it normally does. It grows stronger, more sensitive to my brain’s commands, the dagger in my right hand expelling a steady orange flame—both light and shield—remaining completely independent of my left hand, which slashes the air, a pair of bright-green chakras erupting from the blade, splitting the skulls, throats, and very centers of the two mercenaries who assaulted me.
Sounds grow warbled in my ears. Movements slow, everything shifting in a way that it hadn’t since Tavan. Since Cavas got captured. It’s odd, this sthirta, allowing me to be brutally efficient about dispatching the other soldiers who throw themselves at me. I leave behind a slew of bodies to reach Kali, my shield glowing to reveal her pale face and bloody daggers, the severed head of her tormentor lying on the ground beside her. Kali’s gaze finds mine, her mouth and body trembling.
But before I can ask if she’s all right, my attention gets drawn to another sound—Subodh’s familiar roar as he battles the masked man in black, the latter’s movements quick, almost airy in contrast with the rest of his soldiers, who continue moving at a sluggish pace.
Realization strikes a moment later: Of course. He’s meditating.
The leader of the mercenaries emits the same sort of glow from his body as Subodh and I do, his eye sockets completely white. Yet while the man in black looks like he’s just getting started, Subodh is already panting, his fur like hammered silver in this light.
The mercenary leader leaps in the air, like Juhi demonstrating her deadliest Yudhnatam stances, and brings down his arm. I’ve begun shouting seconds before Subodh closes his brilliant eyes, seconds before the mercenary severs his head, and the rest of us watch it roll across the ground. It pauses at the foot of another mercenary, who skewers it with his sword, lifting it high in the air.
“No!” My throat is raw from screaming. “NO!”
On any other day, my cries would have broken my meditative trance. But today, for whatever reason, they do not, adding to my horror as I watch everything unfold in slow motion.
Subodh isn’t dead, my heart insists. He can’t be! This is just a horrible dream.
But even my worst dreams rarely feature this sort of detail: the smell of acrid spellfire and burning flesh, the pressure building in my gut at the sight of blood dripping from the Pashu king’s severed head.
Overhead, the peri sing their despair, a sound that cuts deeper than what I just saw. My limbs tremble. This pain will eat me whole if I let it. And I can’t. Not now.
“Where are you, sky goddess?” I call out, allowing rage to push aside my grief. “Help us!”
“I am right with you, daughter.”
The sky goddess materializes before me—trident in hand, her hair and eyes as black as the eclipse itself. Her body remains a strange vivid blue, the shade of the sky beyond the dark. Around us, people and objects grow still. A falling soldier freezes a few feet from the ground, his body diagonal, his eyes glassy, drops of blood suspended around him like rubies.
“Then why don’t you help us?” I demand. “Why don’t you get rid of the eclipse?”
“I cannot,” she says dispassionately. “The gods are not allowed to meddle in human wars. We can influence them, yes. We can make prophecies; we can send our own children into the mortal world to serve a specific purpose. But we can do no more. The eclipse stands as is at the moment.”
“This is not a real eclipse. They’re meddling with nature! With your realm! It’s an abomination!”
“Yes, it is. Humans often indulge in abominations, and the gods let them. But nature has its own ways of correcting abominations. While this suryagrahan has been detrimental to you, the magic it has unleashed will also favor you in ways that your enemies do not expect.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Subodh is dead!” I cry out, tears pouring down my face. “He’s dead now, and the Legion will die as well if you don’t do something!”
I point toward the people around me: a mercenary ready to plunge his talwar into a Legion soldier lying prone on the ground; Kali fighting not one but two Brimlanders at once, her left leg raised in the air, paused midspin.
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