The Bookweaver's Daughter

by Malavika Kannan

  I saw Nina’s shoulders tighten.

  “You’re asking me to sell out all the people who ever believed in the resistance,” she said softly. “This isn’t about me. You want to make an example. You want a symbol.”

  Devendra rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he said. “You can jump off a sinking ship and live to see another day, or you can drown. This is the choice my father has given you. You should be grateful, Nadeer.”

  For a moment, Nina was quiet, and even I couldn’t fathom what must have been running through her head.

  “Why doesn’t he ask me himself?” she said at last.

  A gasp rippled through the courtroom, just as a soft cough came from high above.

  I looked up so fast I cricked my neck, but I still couldn’t see the king. Jahan’s voice was quiet, barely audible from behind the curtain. Perhaps I was just imagining that I could see a hint of the purple flicker in his eyes.

  “Nina Nadeer,” he said.

  I still can’t forget his voice. There was a soothing cadence to the way it shaped Nina’s name, caressing every syllable. It was enticing, even understanding. It made me want to trust him. It made me want to obey him with every fiber of my being.

  “You’re a very special girl, Nina,” Jahan breathed, and the familiarity of his compliment made my skin crawl. “Miss Kandhari chose well.”

  He paused, and I felt the audience’s eyes turn on me. “The Bookweaver has made the right choice again. She has joined me, you know. You can, too.”

  Nina turned to face me, the betrayal sparkling in her eyes. I felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath me—I wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, that I was still hers, but my mouth wouldn’t move.

  I could see her hesitating. And all at once, I realized that this might be my only chance to undo all the pain that I had caused her over the last seven years.

  My heart felt like it was being crushed into a million pieces, but I forced myself to look in her direction.

  “Please, Nina,” I said, and my voice cracked. I couldn’t meet her eyes—could she see their torment from so far away, read my mind as well as she’d always been able to? “All I want is for you to be safe. We had a good run, but it’s over.”

  I took a deep breath. “Save yourself. Please.”

  I couldn’t get out any more, because my throat had closed up. I couldn’t read her face. It had been just weeks, but already, she looked more and more like a stranger.

  There was a long, painful silence.

  Nina’s voice was low. “What happened to you, Reya?”

  Each word was a punch to my gut, because each carried the enormity of my betrayal to her. I had dragged her out of a cave to cast her into deeper, darker recesses, and to her, that was unforgivable.

  “Nina, nothing happened to me,” I insisted. “I’m still me. I still want the best for—”

  Nina turned her back on me. “No,” she snarled at Jahan, interrupting me mid-sentence. “No can do. I’m never joining you, your Majesty. So you can shove your deal up your—”

  Devendra pounded his fist as the entire court erupted, but it could not be silenced. He looked beyond furious: he looked unhinged.

  “Then you will never see the sun!” he screamed, before his voice was drowned out by howls and jeers. The soldiers converged on Nina, and my own servants stepped in front of me protectively, blocking me from view.

  I caught sight of her before she was dragged away, no longer struggling. She looked up at me, eyes on fire, mouthing words I could barely hear: “Don’t give up!”

  She was being forced through the door, but I could see her dark head bobbing in and out of view as she turned back frantically towards me—“Do not let them break you!”

  The doors slammed with a bone-jarring tremor, her voice still ringing my head. Even as she called out to me, I knew deep down that it was too late. I had already been broken.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In every way that counted, I had failed her.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Nina’s eyes, deep and dark as dying embers. They seared my failure into my mind, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get her out of my head.

  I could feel my failure permeating the mahal, as well. Nobles dropped their gaze when they saw me, their hands lingering uneasily at their swords. Through the library window, I watched blacksmiths cast bolts on all the gates and soldiers line the minarets. It was almost as if Nina’s final stand had threatened every semblance of peace left in the palace. There was no denying it—the Zakir crown was preparing for war.

  The only person who seemed unaffected by fear was Lady Sharati. She resumed my training with a vengeance, even though we hadn’t received any messages from the king. While the Spider’s curse did not prevent me from practicing magic under her watchful eye, I could feel it like a parasite in my veins, a constant omen of evil. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch.

  The fire flickered dimly as I paced my chambers, poring over the endless text of Bhasa Pratana. The runes seemed to blur before my eyes, but I was grateful for the distraction, even if I could never entirely escape what I had done.

  Ink Soul lay open on the desk like a hungering mouth, as if begging for more words. But I had none to feed it, at least not tonight. Because to write was to think, and to think was to feel. And to feel just wasn’t an option.

  Someone knocked on the door—too soft to be Naveen. “Kira?” I called, but there was no reply.

  I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the little peephole, but the darkened hallway was empty. My gaze dropped to my feet. At first, it was just my bare feet against the carpet. And there—so small I almost missed it—was a tiny purple envelope, jammed haphazardly beneath the door.

  I bent over and picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  My voice echoed in the hallway like a ghostly chorus—hello? Hello? Hello?

  Despite myself, my fingers were shaking as I ripped the envelope apart. Inside, I found a card the size of my thumb, still warm with the sender’s heat. The handwriting tugged at the back of my mind. For a moment, as I stared at the rounded edges, I thought I was looking at my own writing. But it couldn’t have been—the grip was too tight, the lines too thin.

  Written on the card’s face were three words.

  Bharata, take two.

  I flipped it over.

  Be ready.

  I was aware of my heartbeat in my throat as I ripped the note into shreds. Because although the message was short, the meaning was clear. Enough of the Renegades had survived, and they were coming in for a second blow. Straight to the mahal.

  Even as I closed my eyes, I could sense the door locked before me and the innumerable hallways wrapped around that, and the massive gates around that, and the palace hill, sprawling city, and Jungle around that. We’d have to break through all of that to even have a fighting chance. It was going to be incredibly risky. All of us could die.

  It occurred to me that we were all going to die anyways.

  I jumped when I heard another knock, but this time, Naveen was standing in the doorway. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I blinked. “Ready for what?”

  Naveen frowned. “Remember how you nearly killed me and then blackmailed me into teaching you magic every night in exchange for your unconditional secrecy?”

  His tone was easy enough, but he couldn’t hide his concern. I glanced at myself in the mirror and understood why—I looked like I’d just seen a ghost.

  “Vividly,” I said, as casually as I could. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’m just going to go to bed—”

  I stopped mid-sentence, because Naveen’s eyes were no longer on mine. They had fallen on the desk behind me. He was looking at Ink Soul.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  I felt my stomach plunge.

  “That’s nothing—” I began, but before I could stop him, Naveen had crossed the room and picked up the book. I watched his eyes fly over the first page, the
one about the kingdom over blue waters—the one I had never managed to finish.

  Naveen looked up at me, his eyes alight with an expression I couldn’t decipher. “Did you write this?” he asked at last.

  I looked down. “Yes,” I heard myself say. “But you can’t tell anybody about it. It could be treasonous.”

  His brows furrowed. “Oh yeah, I can see that. This is an act of rebellion.”

  I balled my hands into fists and paced the room as Naveen turned the pages. His eyes travelled rapidly down the paragraphs and poems and fits and bursts of words, all the way until the end of the book.

  “It’s my Ink Soul,” I told him, breaking the unbearable silence. “It’s not much, but it keeps me sane. Writing helps me find myself. It…”

  I trailed off, because Ink Soul felt so intimate, I couldn’t imagine anyone else reading it, except maybe Nina. It wasn’t so much a novel as it was a journey—one that was raw and honest, sometimes vile and unflattering. If it wasn’t for the fact that Naveen had already seen me at my worst and saved me from myself, I would have ripped it from his hands.

  “The girl carried a piece of a dead man’s heart inside of her,” Naveen read aloud. “She was filled with scraps of wisdom gained from the spaces between his words—the moments when he wasn’t trying to teach her anything except how to live.”

  He set down the book. “That passage was about yourself,” he said matter-of-factly. “The Bookweaver’s daughter.”

  I stared at my feet. “I think so,” I said, realizing it was true as I said it. “Look, even I don’t understand my words sometimes. I’m not eloquent, not the way my father was—”

  “I wasn’t going to say that at all,” said Naveen, surprising me. “You’re good with words. Sometimes even incredible.” He gave me a placating half-smile. “Why didn’t you finish it, though?”

  I shrugged, feeling painfully self-conscious. “Because it’s not my story any more,” I said at last. “Look. You heard what I had to say to Nina at the trial. What we wanted, what we fought for— it can’t happen.”

  I could see something in Naveen’s eyes, and it gutted me. I’d seen him laughing, snarling, smiling, and I’d think I knew him, but occasionally he’d do something that made me suspect that there was another universe locked away inside of him. I’d seen glimpses of that universe before—when he talked about Kira. When he took my hand and anchored me. And now again, as his fingers tapped the cover of Ink Soul.

  “Say something,” I begged.

  He pulled a hand through his vivid brown hair, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him.

  “I wish things could be better,” Naveen said finally. “Whenever I talk to you, I see an entire world that could be better. And then I remember that I work for the Zakir dynasty, and the fantasy pops like a bubble.”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Why don’t you do something, then?” I asked. “You’re a Mage. You’re on the inside. You have a chance to change things for the better.”

  I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but Naveen’s face fell visibly.

  “Because of Kira,” he said, and he said it like an apology. “Because when I’m silent, Kira is safe.”

  As much as I wanted to deny it, I understood. Wasn’t that exactly why I was sitting here, learning to perform vayati, prepared to let the world burn as long as Nina survived unscathed?

  “In another life, we could have been friends,” I said, after a long pause. “Actual friends. We might’ve learned magic together from a guru. We would’ve grown into Mages, and I would’ve been the Bookweaver.”

  “You could’ve finished your book,” said Naveen wistfully. “Kira could become a healer.”

  “Nina would be an architect,” I added quietly. “My father would be alive, and so would my mother and my grandparents and the entire city of Bharata. God, I—” I was annoyed to feel tears in my eyes, and I wiped them before Naveen could notice.

  “Do you believe in fate?” he asked me, dutifully looking away until my eyes were dry. I frowned at him, and he said, “Not that our futures are dictated by the ancestors or ruled by karma or mapped out in the stars, not any of that. But that everything happens for a reason.”

  “No,” I said automatically. “No. If that were true, none of us would be in so much pain. There could no reason for it.”

  “No?” echoed Naveen. “Because the way I see it, there’s usually a thousand layers to every moment we live, every decision we make. And while we can’t discern every layer or how it overlaps with the rest of the world, it’s comforting to know that there’s a common reason to all of our experiences, that we’re not all just shouting into chasms.”

  He said this all in one run-on breath, like he was afraid I would stop him.

  I didn’t, because I had seen it again—that unexpected glimpse of his universe. And for the first time, I viewed the world through Naveen Chadav’s eyes.

  I imagined being on the winning side of things and finding myself among strangers. I imagined looking around and realizing that I was incompatible with everything I thought I knew, the only exception to my own beliefs. And I thought that maybe I understood his need to find reason in the conflict that was his life.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I can’t let myself believe in anything greater than myself. Because then I can’t own my guilt and pain. I can’t hold myself accountable for everything I’ve done.”

  Naveen’s eyes were too sympathetic.

  “You don’t have to constantly punish yourself, Reya,” he said. “You can believe in your purpose and forgive yourself. You can— ”

  “Naveen,” I interrupted. My pulse pounded wildly as I tugged Ink Soul away from him. “What I hope you never have to understand is the raw, living guilt of having ruined lives.”

  I took a breath. “I am so irredeemable that I cannot be a part of your greater purpose. I’d ruin it.”

  I could tell he was longing to cut across, but I ignored him.

  “Here’s how it really works,” I said. “There’s no reason for anything that happens in this awful, miserable universe. But we all have a choice. We can make something beautiful out of it, or we can set it all on fire. We all have a choice, and mine has been to burn down everything in my path, every time, without fail.”

  Without realizing it, I’d shredded the corner of my shirt, and the lace was unraveling in my fingers. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  Naveen sighed. “Reya, you’re not irredeemable,” he said. “Nobody is.”

  “Then you don’t know me,” I said, with more coldness than I’d intended.

  He looked a little shocked, and the sight of his face brought the words to my lips. Before I could stop myself, I had seized his hand and turned to face him.

  “Listen, Naveen.” The words tumbled out in a rush. “You’ve been a good friend, so I am going to warn you now—take Kira and leave the mahal tonight. I can’t tell you any more than that, but you need to get out safely.”

  Naveen frowned, but did not remove his hand from my grip. “What are you talking about?” he said. “Reya, why should I— ”

  My fury was back—an ember glowing in the back of my mind. “Because I cannot be responsible for your pain!” I snarled. “You and Kira have shown nothing but kindness to me. I’m trying to repay the favor here and save your life.”

  All I could think about was my anger: anger against everyone who had ever cared for me, loved me, offered me a kind word. Every one of the suicidal Renegades, Nina included, who were prepared to put everything on the line again—to die for me, again. Anger against Naveen, who couldn’t get his head out of his perfect purposeful universe to see me as the killer I was.

  “Reya,” Naveen was saying. “If something dangerous is happening soon, how will you protect yourself? Why are you so bent on letting yourself burn?”

  Without entirely meaning to, I shoved Naveen onto the floor.

  As he staggered to his feet, I said in one angry breath, “Nav
een, you have everything I don’t have. You have family and freedom and hope for a future. Do not drag yourself into all of my pain. Do not try to fight an enemy you barely understand. Do not make the same mistakes I did.”

  My voice broke as I ran out of air. With all the certainty I could muster, I added, “We all have a choice. And my choice is to save your life.”

  Naveen looked like he wanted to argue, but he hesitated. Without another word, he walked away, slamming the door a little too hard behind him. The lock crashed into place with a rattle I felt in my bones.

  —

  Ink Soul Chapter VIII

  The pearl reminded me of a teardrop the day my father gave it to me.

  “What is it, Father?” I said, running my fingers over it. It was small enough to conceal in a child’s palm, not perfectly spherical yet— it would take seven years of nervous rubbing until it assumed the roundness it had the day it cracked. “It looks like a beetle egg. Or a sad lady’s tears.”

  “It’s a pearl, Reya,” my father told me. “Do you know what a pearl is?”

  “Yes. This,” I answered, and my father laughed, tousling my soft brown hair. “Wait until you grow up,” he said. “You’ll make Kasmira’s wittiest sages shake in fear.”

  “No,” I countered. “When I’m grown up, I’ll be just like you. I’ll be a Bookweaver.”

  I was too young to register the agony that flashed across my father’s face, although perhaps he hid it well. “Reya,” he said quietly, “you know you’re not supposed to say that. It’s a secret.”

  “A secret,” I repeated. It was an exciting word, full of mystery, reminding me of days spent reading past my bedtime, hidden under the covers so that my mother wouldn’t see. It felt like sneaking into the kitchen when my father’s back was turned and swiping mangoes off the table. Just when I’d thought I’d gotten away, he’d whirl around and sweep me up, tickling me until I confessed. He’d peel the mangoes and we’d eat them together. They were delicious, juicy secrets.