Niam Chori glanced up at me, admiration in his eyes. “Bookweaver,” he said. “It’s been seven long years. Welcome back.”
Aisha stood up and embraced me. I felt my nerves relax at her touch, but I still felt thoroughly bewildered.
“Niam—why did everyone just—” I indicated the entire body of the Renegades, still kneeling. Niam nodded and the Renegades stood up, resuming their duties with respectful salutes in our direction.
“They’re loyal to you, Bookweaver,” he said quietly. “You’re too young to remember, but the Yogis have long protected the common people in our ranks. To see you, alive and well … to many of us, you’re the first sign of hope in a long time.”
Nina and I followed the Choris through the camp. My mind was overflowing with questions, and I seized onto one at random.
“How have you survived all these years?” I asked. “I had no idea the resistance was still strong under Jahan’s nose.”
Aisha smiled heavily. “We barely survived,” she said. “There was a huge royal crackdown after you escaped, which forced our entire Bharata regiment to go underground. But we owe it to your dad that we even made it this far,” she added, nodding to me. “I’m sorry to hear about him, by the way.”
My breath caught in my throat. “You knew my father?”
Niam nodded. “The Kandharis took care of us during his height of power,” he said. “Amar—and all the Yogis, for that matter—protected the poor. When things got dangerous, while he still could, he smuggled a lot of intelligence that kept us alive. He was a brave man.”
There was a moment of silence, and I was grateful to Nina for filling it, because my throat had choked up.
“What do you know about the king?” she asked. “There’s no way we can escape him without knowing what he’s up to.”
Aisha’s eyebrows contracted. “As of yesterday, there are wanted posters of you in every city. Parts of the Raj are on lockdown,” she said. “The king’s moving fast. We don’t have time to smuggle you out to Indira.”
Nina nodded. “He sent the crown prince on our trail,” she told Aisha, who exchanged troubled glances with her brother.
“Prince Devendra?” she asked, and I nodded. “Do you know him?”
Niam sighed. “Unfortunately, we do. He’s the reason Aran doesn’t have much to say.”
Aran grimaced, and my eyes widened. “But he’s only—“
“Sixteen,” finished Aisha. “I know. But he’s a Zakir. He’s a military genius and the imperial commander of Kasmira, and he’s been ruthless in tracking down insubordination. Always trying to please his twisted father.”
“His father?”
“Word is that Devendra was nearly disowned when he let you escape the Raj,” explained Niam. “Capturing you is the only way he regains royal favor. He will do anything—kill anyone—for it.”
Nina looked at me grimly.
“So what can we do?” I asked. “We need help, but not if it means endangering the Renegades. We’re up against the might of imperial Kasmira, and people could get hurt.”
Niam grinned.
“That’s noble of you,” he said. “But we’ve been evading the king for a very long time. If we can bring you to Bharata, it’ll be pretty hard for Jahan to pin you down.”
Unfamiliar emotions were wrestling inside me—anxiety, joy, gratitude. It took me a moment to identify what I was feeling: relief.
“Thank you,” I managed. “I don’t know how I could repay you for this.”
Aisha’s expression was fierce.
“Just don’t die,” she said. “There are a lot of hopes riding on you, and a lot of people who have been oppressed for far too long. They need you to prove that resistance is still possible.”
Niam gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Onward to Bharata?” he offered, and in spite of everything, I smiled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s hard to express the chasm between loneliness and having allies. It was more than just strength in numbers—there was something about the Renegades that made me feel like my pain could be part of something greater. Like my father’s legacy could mean something at last.
Nina settled in well. When we weren’t on the move, she was busy—sparring with Aisha, helping Aran on scouting trips. I was relieved to see her smile again. I was still taken by surprise, however, when she joined me in our tent one evening, holding my father’s book.
“Reya,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’m finally ready to learn how to read.”
“That’s amazing, Nina,” I said. “But what changed your mind?”
As far as I knew, Nina hated anything intellectual—for her whole life, education had been a luxury she could never afford. Tragic circumstances had caused her to rank literacy far below every other priority for survival.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I’ve just been listening to the Renegades’ stories, and I realized how much we’re exploited because of our ignorance. For the past seven years, I hated Mages like you, just because I didn’t know anything about them. Does that make sense?”
I nodded, and Nina continued. “And I think being able to read will let me make decisions for myself. I won’t be a slave to whatever the king wants me to believe.”
“Okay,” I said. “How are you going to learn?”
For a moment, there was silence, and I realized that Nina was staring at me expectantly.
My cheeks burned. “Wait—me? You want me to teach you?”
Nina rolled her eyes. “Who else?” she said. “But relax. I’m extremely smart, even if you’re a stupid teacher.”
I laughed. “Shut up,” I said. “We’ll start with the alphabet.”
I found a piece of parchment in my bag, rolled around my father’s delicate silver quill. Carefully, I inked a clear letter A on the page.
“See this?” I asked Nina. She stared at it with almost painful concentration, like she was trying to imprint it into her eyelids. “It looks like an arrow head,” she noted.
“Actually, yeah,” I said, surprised. “A is the first letter in arrow.”
She took the quill and drew a rickety A on the sheet. Her hand shook slightly, and she looked to me for approval.
“A dying mongoose could do better,” I admitted, “but you’ll get there.” I reached out and corrected her grip on the nib.
Nina flexed her wrist experimentally.
“This feels weird,” she said. “It feels like a weapon, even though it’s so fragile. It’s beautiful.”
She gave me a fleeting grin, and I looked at the new A she had produced. It was firm and hard, the kind no enemy wants to be shot with.
The days wore by far sooner than I’d expected. Daylight hours were spent on the march, and we got used to carrying our belongings as we walked, Renegade-style. Nina and I wove words by candlelight, Bharata looming closer with each successive night.
Two nights later, we were reading beside the campfire when a group of Renegades returned from their scouting trip. Their voices were quiet, of course—fugitives do not have the luxury of loudness—but there was something heavy in the air.
Niam raised a hand, and the conversations died at once. “I have news,” he said.
Nina and I turned to face Niam. Although he couldn’t have been older than thirty, he looked ancient in the firelight, which did not treat him kindly—it accentuated the scars of hardship on his face, making him look leaner, tougher, harsh.
He sighed. “We just learned that our brothers and sisters in Tahore were discovered by imperial soldiers last night. I don’t know exactly what happened to them, but we lost nearly forty comrades.”
The camp was silent except for the crackling of the flames. Niam pulled a flask from the depths of his cloak and drank. Then he passed it to me.
The alcohol burned as it slid down my throat, but I swallowed hard and it went down. Immediately I felt invigorated, a little warmer. I passed the flask to Nina.
I liste
ned quietly as Niam spoke, watching the flask go around the fire. There was something about him that reminded me of my father, and I took another strong swig to loosen the lump in my throat.
“There are many ways to be brave today,” he said. “It can mean giving up what you love for your cause. It can mean sacrificing your life for something greater than you, like our friends in Tahore.” He paused, and I could hear the rawness in his silence.
“But tonight, bravery is none of those things. Tonight is about holding our tears, clenching our fists, and marching forward despite the pain. That—” Niam’s voice broke. “That is the bravery we need tonight while we mourn.”
Aisha opened her mouth, and following her lead, the Renegades began to sing softly. It was an alluring, heroic song, echoed in all layers of voices, gritty and light. It was a song of joy and poetry, jarring strangely with the weight of grief.
Afterwards, the Renegades left, one by one, until only Nina and I sat around the dying fire with the Choris. Niam drank alone, Aisha’s hand gentle on his shoulder. For the first time, he looked nothing like the strong, capable leader I’d known him to be.
Cautiously, Nina spoke. “That was a beautiful song, Aisha.”
Aisha nodded. “It’s a Kasmiri funeral song we used to sing when I was in the army—that is, before the army was filled with mindless slaves of the Zakirs.”
“But it’s so happy,” I said, before I could stop myself.
For the first time that evening, Aisha smiled.
“It’s not the words that make it a funeral song, Reya,” she said. “It’s remembering who you used to sing it with. Eventually, you’ll understand.”
I found my voice again. “I know that being a Renegade is dangerous,” I said. Niam glanced at me. “Of course,” he replied.
I took a deep breath.
“Niam, you’re going through a lot, and I put you in more danger every day. If you wanted to split up, I’d understand. I don’t want to hurt any of you.”
Next to me, Nina nodded, affirming my words. I felt a rush of affection towards her.
It was a moment before Niam spoke again.
“I’m going to let you in on a trade secret, Bookweaver,” he said. “There’s no space for fear or regret if you’re going to be a warrior. Fighting a battle is like winning a game of mancala. From the moment you move the first shell, every move is deliberate. You cannot feel.”
He hesitated. “Not with your head, anyways. You feel what you’re fighting for—you feel that in your heart.”
Niam finally looked away from the flames to meet my eyes. “So no, we’re not leaving you. Our duty is to protect you. It would be poor repayment to Tahore’s sacrifice if we abandoned you now.”
We subsided into comfortable silence. Grief over my father was hitting me in waves, but somehow, it felt as though being part of the Renegades was holding it at bay. Even if they couldn’t touch my individual agony, they had felt something that cut just as deeply. In our pain, we were united.
CHAPTER eight
The next day, we were on the move once more.
The valley of the Aharyas at sunrise was like nothing I had ever imagined. Cool gold sunrays suffused the treetops, and rosy light deepened across the valleys, as though the mountains themselves were kindling.
Next to me, Aisha looked entranced. “In the mountains, nothing is ever as it seems,” she told me. “I’ve been traveling these paths for seven years, but the Aharyas seem to change a little every time.”
Nina’s eyes were wide as she took in the sunrise. She, too, looked more carefree than I had ever seen her.
“I feel like Jahan has been around for so long, I forgot what life was like before him,” Nina said. “I forgot that there was something before him, and there will be something after.”
She was right. As the sun rose higher in the sky, spiky purple shadows crept across the crags of the Aharyas. There was something rapt, religious about the scene that left me completely dizzied.
“Mountains help you remember,” I noted quietly. “They force you to realize how fleeting your problems are by confronting you with massive spans of time.”
“It makes you question your own mortality, doesn’t it?” Nina said, smiling a little. “It’s humbling.”
Aisha laughed. “You’re awfully philosophical for a pair of fugitives,” she said.
Abruptly, she stopped, and I immediately realized why.
Blocking the winding path before us was an enormous wave of fallen rocks and uprooted trees. The Renegades slowed to a halt, crowding along the path.
Niam joined us. “Just our luck,” he said. “A landslide. These must have been uprooted by last week’s monsoon. It’s going to take half the day to clear the rocks.”
The other Renegades put down their travel packs and set to work. Aran joined us, looking worried. Niam patted his arm reassuringly. “It’s only a minor setback,” he said. “We haven’t seen the royal soldiers in a week.” Aran still looked uneasy, but he turned to help with the clearing effort. Nina and I followed him.
A knot of Renegades was hauling a massive tree trunk off the path. I marveled at the efficiency at which they worked together, coordinating their movements, like soldiers in a well-trained army. Aran silently passed me a machete, pointing to a large cluster of branches beyond.
I took the machete and started sawing at the gnarliest branch, Nina holding it taut for me. To my surprise, the branch was rubbery soft; green sap spewed from beneath the blade. I stopped and frowned, wiping my brow.
“What’s wrong?” Nina asked.
“It’s just—I’ve been working on trees for the past seven years,” I said. “See this green sap? It means this is a healthy tree. There’s no way it was uprooted by last week’s monsoon.”
Nina’s eyes widened, and without warning, she released the branch, causing it to snap back into my face. “Nina!” I snarled, but she was already running.
I followed her to the base of the tree, which was being lifted onto a harness by the Renegades. And there, at the bottom of the tree, were the unmistakable sap-filled grooves, as if carved from my very machete.
These trees hadn’t been uprooted last week. They had been cut, and not too long ago.
Nina and I stared at each other, and the enormity of our discovery caused my stomach to plunge. Without another word, we were running back to where Niam and Aisha stood, surveying the damage.
“We need to get out of here,” I panted. “This wasn’t a landslide. Someone cut the trees and blocked the path. They’re trying to trap us on the mountainside. The king knows where we’re headed.”
Niam’s eyes widened, and he scrambled to collect his things. “I should’ve known,” he hissed. He raised his voice, calling out to the Renegades who were scattered around the rubble. “Everyone, abandon the effort!” he shouted. “We’ve been compromised. Let’s go!”
His words were drowned out by an awful explosion that sent me stumbling backwards into Nina.
For a second, all I could see was the blinding flash imprinted into my eyes—then my feet left the ground and I was hurtling backwards as the impact took its toll.
We rolled out of sight into the brush below the path, and Niam glanced back at us, miraculously still standing, his eyes wide in horror. I struggled to get up, despite my dizziness, but I couldn’t—Nina had landed on top of me. Instead, I could only look up helplessly at the avalanche of boulders that had been blasted out of the mountain, crushing the path before our eyes.
I glanced up to see Devendra Zakir silhouetted against the rocks, and my fists clenched with hatred.
“Niam and Aisha Chori,” he said coldly. “Your time has come.”
As he spoke, figures emerged from the smoky gloom, until he was flanked by a full battalion of soldiers, armed with explosives and weapons. They descended from the cliff, surrounding the Renegades.
I felt my heart pulsing in my throat. We’d been ambushed.
Nina helped me to my feet. From within th
e brush, we saw the remaining Renegades struggling to regroup, pulling their weapons out of the rubble, helping up their wounded comrades. But it was painfully clear that they were already overwhelmed—the battle had already been lost.
I started to climb out of the brush, but Nina caught my arm. Her eyes were glazed with tears. “Don’t, Reya,” she whispered. “They’re going to be defeated. The only way you survive is if you stay hidden.”
I tugged against her grasp, but she wouldn’t budge. “I can’t stand and watch the Renegades die!” I hissed.
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