The Bookweaver's Daughter

by Malavika Kannan

“Reya, please,” said Nina. She was crying now. “Remember what Aisha said? You need to stay alive. If you don't, every Renegade died in vain.”

  I couldn’t tell you what happened next. It’s difficult to describe fractured visions of moments where there’s nothing to make sense of, nothing except cruelty against those who wanted to protect you. It’s like a song you can’t quite remember; occasionally, you hear a rhythm of explosion, a ringing hiss, billows of dust that dissolve like ash.

  I buried my face into Nina’s shoulder, trying my hardest to drown out the noise of the losing battle on the rocks above. “We know that the Bookweaver is traveling with you!” I heard Devendra yell.

  Niam’s voice rang out above the chaos. “We don’t know where she is!” he said. “I’d start by searching under the rocks. Maybe you should’ve checked your aim before you blew up half the damn mountain.”

  Niam knew exactly where we were. He was trying to save our lives.

  “Don’t play with me, Chori.” Devendra’s voice was dangerous. “I’ve spent my life eradicating filthy Renegades. I will not hesitate to scourge you, as well.”

  In spite of everything, Niam laughed.

  “Is that so, little boy?” he said, and I wanted to scream at him to stop goading Devendra, but Nina’s hand was over my mouth. “Tell me, Commander, how’s your dear father? What will he say when he realizes you’ve blown up the Bookweaver?”

  “Shut up,” said Devendra, but his hand was shaking. “Where’s the girl?” He pointed his sword threateningly at Aisha, making the smile disappear from Niam’s face.

  It occurred to me that beneath the face of a sixteen year old boy, Devendra might be completely insane.

  “I don’t know,” spat Niam. “Go ahead, kill us all, you—”

  Devendra punched him across the face before he could finish his sentence.

  For a moment, before Niam was dragged away by the soldiers, our eyes met. His lips formed words that I could barely hear over the shouts—“The Flying Tiger!”

  There was no time to look back—Nina’s voice was in my ear. “We need to run while they’re distracted. Come on.”

  I nodded, struggling to contain the scream rising in my throat. The sunrise sky was blotted with smoke and dust. Our friends about to be taken prisoner by the prince who had dogged us across the country.

  Numbly, I tumbled down the side of the mountain with Nina at my side.

  If the mountains could see, they would open their eyes to behold two desperate strangers, cloaked by horror as red tinged the sky. The mountains, which had observed glorious sunrises long before Jahan’s reign, stood unfeeling. They were irreverent, unconcerned by the battle that had just been lost.

  As I ran, all I could think about was what Nina had said about the mountains being humbling. She was right. I had never felt as small as I did in that minute.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When we finally staggered over the crest of the mountain, Bharata was sprawled before us, branching like veins through the valley. Tears ran freely down Nina’s face, but my eyes remained completely dry. I was numb.

  Or maybe by that point, I was used to loss. I’m not sure.

  At last, Nina spoke. “What do you think Niam was trying to tell us?”

  “What?”

  She sighed. “He said a name before they arrested him. The Flying Tiger. Who is that?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. Maybe it’s a code name. Maybe it’s someone who can help us find the Renegades in Bharata.”

  We couldn’t be sure, of course. Because Niam Chori was gone.

  At last, the trees parted, and before us loomed the gates of Bharata. We melted into the crowd passing through the massive arches, and then we were in.

  In spite of everything, my first thought was this: Bharata is no place for a girl from the Fringes.

  Because Bharata was a city of unthinkable dimensions, stretching wide and dizzyingly high, and I wanted to see it all. A huge bazaar bustled before us, its chaos contrasted by the hulking clock tower of the Red Temple. Purple banners with the Zakirs’ iconic Z waved ominously overhead.

  We waded through the crowded bazaar. Children raced after a tiger cub with a bow around its neck, cutting an empty path through the traffic that was quickly filled by the next surge of people. Nina grabbed me before I could be crushed by a harried-looking woman with a monkey in her arms, a milk jug on her head, and a herd of chickens pecking at her feet.

  “Stay with me,” she whispered. “All of these people are making me anxious.”

  As if on cue, an imperial soldier peered out from the tallest turret of the Red Temple, and my stomach did a little flip. “Don’t look now, but we’ve got company,” I muttered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I pulled my cloak low over my eyes, and Nina did the same. As we shoved our way uptown, I noticed that the city around us was beginning to change: the buildings got shabbier, the sunlight grew shadowed, and rats scurried at the sound of our footsteps. I felt hairs climb the back of my neck in disgust: clearly, this was the part of Bharata that visitors didn’t see.

  “Reya, look at this!” Nina said abruptly.

  I followed her gaze to the wall before us, and my eyes widened.

  Every inch of the wall was painted in thick, colorful strokes. Up close, it looked like a disorderly tangle of lines, but when Nina and I stepped back, a painting bloomed into view. It was unmistakable—bright green eyes, easy smile, flyaway mane of hair—the artist had captured my father perfectly.

  Below his portrait was an inscription. Nina frowned in concentration as she sounded the letters out.

  “Amar Kandhari lives on,” she read aloud. She turned to me, eyes shining in wonder. “This is beautiful, Reya,” she said. “It’s a monument to your father.”

  For a minute, I was too stunned to respond.

  “Who would do this?” I said at last. Nina shrugged, but her voice was filled with awe.

  “Niam did say that this place was a stronghold for the resistance,” she said. “But whoever did this has guts. This is propaganda against the king.”

  I looked back at the painting with new eyes. Nina was right: this was a commemoration of my father. People were willing to risk treason to honor him. Because he was no longer just a ghost of my past: he was a symbol of hope. He was a martyr.

  “Wait,” Nina said. “What’s that?”

  I looked closer and noticed what I hadn’t before: the corner of my father’s finger, painted so hastily I had mistaken it for a smudge. It was pointing somewhere behind us.

  Slowly, we turned around to look.

  “Reya,” said Nina suddenly. She pointed, and I turned to see a tiny door on the other side of the street. Above it was small sign, hanging below the broken street lamp. “What does it say?” she asked. “I can’t read the script—”

  I squinted my eyes to read the sign. “The Flying Tiger,” I read softly.

  She gasped, seizing my arm. “The Flying Tiger!”

  Our eyes met. “That’s what Niam was talking about,” Nina hissed. “It’s not a who—it’s a where!”

  “Keep your voice down,” I whispered, but my heart was pounding. We darted across the street and pulled open the door.

  The jarring scents of alcohol and curry hit me all at once.

  I blinked and saw a vast, seedy-looking tavern sprawled before me. It was windowless and dingy, illuminated only by a huge indoor bonfire, filled with ragged people who recoiled like insects in the light.

  I turned to Nina, and her eyes reflected my disappointment. “It’s just a pub,” she said. “Why did Niam mention an old bar in his last words?”

  I shrugged, trying my best to hide my overwhelming sense of anticlimax. “Let’s go inside,” I said. “We’re getting strange looks just standing here.”

  Together, we clambered down the wooden steps into the bowels of the bar. Nina found a secluded table in the back of the tavern. It was so dark that I could only make out the outline of her features, backli
t by the fire.

  An old barman sidled up to us, eyeing me suspiciously. We each ordered a cup of chai so that he’d leave us alone, and I reluctantly pressed one of our few bronze rupams into his palm.

  Nina waited until he had limped out of sight before she spoke.

  “What do we do?” she said anxiously. “This can’t be the right place. I don’t even know why Niam led us to this disgusting bar.”

  She dropped her voice as the old barman returned with the chai, but he heard the last part; he gave her a nasty look, and Nina turned red. We slurped the chai hastily: it didn’t taste like anything, but at least it was warm.

  “Downtown is crawling with imperial soldiers, so we can’t risk going back out there,” she continued, and I remembered the soldier I had seen in the Red Temple. “And the Renegades have clearly been uptown, because of the painting of your dad, but we have no way of finding them.”

  Her despair tugged at me. To my annoyance, tears were burning the back of my eyes—not for my sake, but for hers. Within six hours, Nina had nearly died, then been forced to witness the attack on the Renegades. And now, she was trapped in Bharata, suffering because of me once more.

  “Nina—” I began, and then I succumbed to the tears.

  She reached for my hand, but I tugged it back.

  “This is my fault. First Niam and Aisha, and now you—”

  Her face fell. “Reya, not again,” she said. “This was my choice. Right now, stranded in Bharata, there is no place I’d rather be. You can’t keep blaming yourself.”

  “You think you’re doing the right thing,” I interrupted. She opened her mouth to protest, but I wouldn’t let her. “But every time your life is on the line, it hurts me.”

  Nina closed her eyes. “I’d die for you,” she said quietly, and her words hurt me as much as a physical battering. “Not because you’re the Bookweaver, but because you’re my best friend. Because you are brave and strong and passionate. Because you’d do the same for me,” she added.

  I let out a fresh gasp of tears.

  “Take it back,” I choked out. “You cannot be my martyr. My father, the Renegades—I can’t take anyone else. I need you to promise me that if the situation arises again—and it will—you’ll put yourself first. Please.”

  Nina started to respond, but then her eyes widened, looking at someone behind me. I felt a soft hand on my back, and I looked up.

  “Father?”

  There was no mistaking it. The mane of brown hair, the heart-shaped face, the green eyes, the dimples—

  The man stepped back, and his resemblance to the Bookweaver seemed to lessen with distance. This man was stockier, broader, somehow deeper and softer at the same time.

  He blinked. “I—I’m not your father, but—” He blinked, then froze. His lips silently formed a word of shock.

  “Reya?”

  Nina stood up behind me. “Who are you?” she demanded, but I was the one who answered. Memories were flashing through my head, bathed in the buttery sepia of childhood: two men sitting at a table, laughing, their drinks sloshing merrily—warm hands lifting me in the air—smiling, gentle—

  “Uncle Roshan,” I said softly.

  Before I could formulate more words, we were embracing. It had been seven years since I’d last seen him, but for a moment, it felt like nothing had changed.

  We broke apart, and that’s when I noticed that he was older and sadder than when I had last seen him.

  Of course, he probably felt the same way about me.

  Roshan sat down beside me at the table. “Reya,” he said. “We got word from the other Renegades that you were on the run from Jahan. I can only assume—Amar?” His voice cracked.

  I nodded quietly. “He died three weeks ago,” I said, and something seemed to break within my uncle’s expression.

  “I hate that I wasn’t there for him,” Roshan said. “I hate that I couldn’t speak to him. How could I not know where you were? How couldn’t I feel it?” He looked agonized, and I pretended not to notice as he grabbed a dingy napkin to wipe his eyes. “Amar needed me, and I wasn’t there for him. I wasn’t there for you.”

  I shrugged sadly. “I didn’t even know you were still alive,” I said. “We’d been living in the Raj for so long, I almost forgot I had a family in Bharata. What—what happened to everyone?”

  Roshan bowed his head. “You and I are the last Kandharis,” he said, and his words sent a shiver of horror down my spine.

  Had it really been that long? Already my mother’s voice was hazy in my mind, and my lost grandparents and cousins already nameless, faceless—my worst fear was that my father, too, would be forgotten, a legacy turned to ashes, like everything else I had left behind.

  My uncle seemed to read my thoughts. “I joined the Renegades in Bharata seven years ago so that I could protect you and your father,” he said. “We heard that the king sent his son after you. How did you make it here?”

  I sighed. “It’s a very long story, Uncle Roshan,” I said. “Is this a safe place to talk?”

  Roshan nodded. “The Flying Tiger has been the unofficial headquarters of the Renegades for years,” he said. “Here is as safe as anywhere else.”

  For the better part of an hour, I told the story of the past seven years. Nina supported me, supplying details where memory failed me or where I was too overcome by emotion. Roshan clenched his fists when I told him about the fate of Niam’s Renegades.

  “Niam was a good man,” Roshan said. “The Renegades have suffered a huge loss.”

  When we had finished, however, my uncle’s face was quite steady.

  “Reya, Nina,” he said. “You’ve both been through a great deal.” He smiled fleetingly at me. “I think I can speak for my brother when I say that Amar would have been so proud of you.”

  I smiled, and his voice grew serious. “But we need to get you safely out of the city before nightfall. Things in Bharata are about to get dangerous, and I can’t let you get hurt.”

  Nina and I looked at each other. “What do you mean?” Nina asked. “What’s happening tonight?”

  My uncle hesitated, looking torn.

  “Uncle Roshan?” I pressed.

  He sighed, just like my father used to do when he was about to cave.

  “Tonight, the Renegades are launching a coup,” he told us. “It’s been in the works for months. We’re going to take back our city, or die trying.”

  I felt my heart racing. “You’re going to take on the imperial army,” I said.

  It was not a statement; it was a plea for him to tell me that I was wrong, that he was not about to risk his life fighting the Zakir dynasty. But Roshan nodded grimly.

  “We’re severely outnumbered, but it’s now or never,” he said. “We’ve waited far too long to let anyone else die.”

  I knew he was referring to my father when he said that, but I still wasn’t convinced.

  “It’s going to be so dangerous,” I said. “I’ve seen first-hand how ruthless Jahan can be. You could lose everything.”

  Roshan shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But we’ve already lost everything, Reya. At some point, you have to stop lying down and taking it. You have to fight, because your life doesn’t mean anything if they have your dignity.”

  In that moment, he sounded so much like my father that it hurt.

  My voice shook. “If you're fighting, I’m not leaving this city.” Next to me, Nina nodded her approval. “I want to stay.”

  I could see the opposition in my uncle’s face, but before he could speak, I pressed on. “I just found you. I’m not losing you again,” I said. “There’s no way I’m running away while you risk everything.”

  Roshan sighed. “In that case, I had better introduce you both to the rest of the resistance,” he said.

  —

  Roshan led us down a set of crooked stone steps in the back of the tavern. “Bharata is the only city that never really bowed down to Jahan,” he explained. “I guess you could say that the
rebellious streak is in our blood.”

  We followed him through a dimly lit passage.

  “After you escaped, Jahan has cracked down on us harder than ever. There are soldiers everywhere and they started rationing food, keeping Bharata hungry and cautious. It forced the Renegades to go underground.”

  He stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. Roshan knocked twice, and it opened. We followed him inside to see a huge table covered in diagrams, notes, and weapons—war plans.

  Around the table stood almost a dozen Renegades, listening to a woman who was holding a map.

  The woman glanced at us. “Roshan,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve brought more mouths to feed off the Flying Tiger’s hospitality.”

  I looked to my uncle, but Roshan merely laughed. “Not just any mouths,” he said. “I brought the most wanted mouths in Kasmira.”

  The woman finally took a good look at my face, and I saw the map flutter from her hand.

  “Reya Kandhari,” she said, to nobody in particular. “Now I’ve seen it all.”

  An old man at the back of the room looked up excitedly. “She looks just like her father,” he said. I felt my cheeks redden as the entire room turned to stare at me.