by Sasha Nanua
Lower. Lesser.
How could I have been so foolish, thinking the servants well cared for? No wonder Aditi keeps her back arched whenever the raja is near, head tilted in reverence. This isn’t a monarchy. It’s a dictatorship.
The infirmary isn’t far. When I spot Aditi, soundly asleep, I’m sure to keep quiet. She looks like she’s found peace, for once.
But the moment I settle on the edge of her cot, Aditi shoots up, tilting her head toward me. “I thought you were her,” she says, shuddering. She sighs in relief.
Her. Amara.
“It’s only me.”
Aditi flings herself into my arms, and I clutch her close, letting her tears fall onto my shoulder. Her hands are wrapped up, bandaged tight, red from all the blood she’s lost. I shut my eyes, willing myself not to think of the scars marring me. Scars from years of hardship. It seems like being in the palace doesn’t stop them.
“What are you doing here?” Aditi asks, pulling away. She tucks her arms tight at her sides, as if bound to keep a rigid posture. With beady eyes, she looks over me, clearly stunned the princess would ever set foot in the servants’ quarters.
“I wanted to check on you,” I say truthfully. “Mouse.”
Aditi doesn’t smile at the nickname. “What if Amara sees us?”
“I highly doubt Amara is going to walk in here.” I give her a confident smile.
Aditi nods, albeit slowly, like she doesn’t fully believe me.
I straighten a bit and continue more boldly, “I don’t care if Amara comes at me with her fingernails. She won’t touch you again.” Every wound on my body tells a story, and the ones she’s given me won’t erase my past. I’ve seen worse than her.
Aditi blinks, eyes widening. “Amara poisoned my food,” she reveals. “I know she did. She told me, you know. About the moment she found you spying on her in the rafters, and how every day after, I’d have to watch my back.” She blinks rapidly, as if to stave off tears.
My voice fills with conviction. With rage. “A true mother, a woman of strength, would never do that.”
Aditi twiddles her thumbs and yanks her green sleeves down over her fists.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
The silence is all I need to hear to know there’s a gap to be filled. Not everything about the girl’s story is clicking together, not with those flitting eyes and rosy cheeks.
“You can tell me anything.” I wanted to tell Amir that, not long after we first met. He was building a fire—not for heat, just for food—after we scored some meat from a nearby shack. I was staring at his scar, unable to look away, as I always did not long after I first met him. My first mistake. Looking too deeply at appearances removed all the more important things that rested in one’s soul.
Aditi’s body wilts. She lets out a frustrated sob, and I take her by the elbow. “I—it’s hard to explain.” Her words are nothing more than a nervous jumble of things, strung together with a low voice.
My heart thuds against my rib cage. “Tell me,” I plead, unsure of what’s about to unfold. “If it’s about Amara—”
“It’s not,” she interrupts. “I was just thinking about how you left for the Vadi Orphanage this morning. Why did you go?”
“I had an important task. You see . . .” I spill a labored breath. “There was someone very important to me who used to live there. Her name was Mama Anita.”
Aditi freezes.
“What is it?”
She gulps, lifts her sleeve. There, bound to her wrist, is a band made of twine.
It takes me less than a moment to recognize it, and I’m sucked back into that memory of Mama Anita and me sharing stories when I was a child. The twine bracelet she wore as she illustrated the Masters’ magics in the air. Then, I think back to when Aditi told me she’d lived in an orphanage.
But not just any. Aditi looks at me curiously. Black hair braided tightly, posture rigid. Signs that she’s labored in the palace longer than she’s been anywhere else.
“How did you get that bracelet?” I breathe.
Aditi’s lips wobble. She’s solemn. All quiet. All unassuming.
“Because I once lived at that orphanage. And I knew Mama Anita.”
34
Rani
The famed Glass Temple rises into the sunset like the palace itself. Clear, domed arches cut through the clouds, marked with gold and silver patterns, drawn with a fine ink. Below us, the horses kick up piles of sand, which crest and fall in miniature dunes.
It seems impossible that such a grand temple could remain so hidden. Yet the scratches along my arms and legs tell another story—we’ve ducked through brambles, led the horses through narrow jungle passages, all to get to our destination.
Amir’s hands stiffen on my waist at the sight of it. It’s been just two days since our kiss, and yet I continue to feel like a fool. A fool for lying to Amir, a fool for keeping up this charade of pretending to be my sister, a fool for telling him the truth and thinking he would understand. Shame burns my cheeks. I am back in the palace, following Mother’s orders. Twirl, bow; twirl, bow.
I am a doll. Twirl, bow; twirl, bow. I am a liar. Twirl, bow; twirl, bow. I am no one.
We dismount our horses. No one else seems to know my secret, which means Amir hasn’t told anyone. Or perhaps, even though he knows I’m not Ria, he doesn’t want to believe my true identity.
I stare at his clothes, a dark shade of hunter green that, a lifetime ago, meant subservience. An ode to Father and Mother, a marker of the rich against poor. Now green means no such thing. Now green is more than a servant’s color. Green is a marker of those who fight for this kingdom, for its people, more than I ever have.
Smoke drifts my way, and I sniff the air, my snake-magicked senses heightening. It smells like the heat of high summer, punctured by the funereal scent of ash. As if we’re in a place of Death instead of life.
The smoke wreaths our ankles, making my feet disappear from sight, and the sky darkens. As if it is angry at Father’s wrath. His hunger to destroy.
His hunger for war.
“Let’s keep moving,” says Jas, sweeping her way next to me. I smile when her gaze finds mine, her very presence calming and healing me. She is the inverse of Sanya right now, who looks like a bundle of nerves. It reminds me of Ria, how unalike we both are, yet no different skin-deep. We are sisters. We are branches from one tree, and though we’ve grown in opposing directions, we will always share the same roots.
It takes mere minutes to reach the gated entrance to the Glass Temple. The gate is made of shimmering gold, with distinctive patterns making up the barrier. I find six unique symbols inscribed in the gate: a snake, an eye, a flame, a swirl, a mountain, and a wave.
The symbols of the six Masters of Magic.
But there is something else—a gaping hole in the ground before the gate.
“Look.” Amir points to the hole. That’s when I spot a flash of red underneath the heavy fog. At first I believe it to be blood. Instead, as I lean closer, I make out a flurry of gold fringes, sashes, buttons that declare noble status.
Jackets. Ones belonging to the Charts. And below that, a gruesome mass of flesh and bone.
I fall back and pray I won’t retch.
“Their bodies are already decomposing,” Jas says. “These have been here a while.”
Irfan frowns when he peers down, his eyes flashing with recognition. “They’re torn limb from limb.”
The smoke curls around our calves, as if inching higher. It tickles softly, like lapping waves, lulling me into a false sense of assurance. But I won’t be fooled.
Something is stopping people from entering the Temple.
Without warning, a sharp object whizzes past me. Lightning fast, Amir shoves me away from the next projectile. Then come the sounds, like a hundred birdcalls, sharp and insistent, and wings flapping overhead. I duck, arms covering my head, until a moment later, the sounds halt. I gaze upward.
A few beady-eyed birds st
are back from their perch on the gate. Shivering, I take in their midnight-black feathers, their knife-sharp beaks.
Jungle crows.
Mother told me enough stories about these birds when I was a child for them to seep into my nightmares. Their feathers are like fine needles, almost razor-like, sharp enough to pierce one’s soul. And the birds are rare, hardly ever seen in the skies.
They’re believed to be an omen of war.
Irfan pulls out his bow and arrow, nocking it without releasing. Before he can let one of his arrows fly, the birds shift their necks, and in one swoop, soar over us, their movements precise. My gaze follows their ascent behind the darkened clouds. What are they flying toward? Or worse . . . flying from?
“I—I think I might know what killed those Charts,” Amir says, adding a muffled curse, eyes fastened on something behind me. At his words, the back of my neck prickles.
I begin to turn my head toward the gate when I hear it.
A tiger’s growl.
“Raja’s beard,” Sanya curses under her breath.
The creature paws the ground. Eyes like dark pearls. Fur white and rough, streaks of obsidian striping its body with fearful symmetry. Its eyes lock onto mine as it paces back and forth before the gate of the Temple, blocking any of us from entering.
Fiery needles fill my lungs, and I can barely breathe at the sight in front of me. The tiger looks impossibly formed, moving like a wisp of smoke—no, a swirl of sand.
“The sandtiger,” Jas whispers.
I nearly forgot about the creature, first taught to me from one of Mother’s bedtime stories. Some say the tiger was born in Retan and forged from the kingdom’s sands, with the ability to shoot scorching flames from its maw. A companion to the Fire Master during the Great Masters’ Battle.
The sandtiger guarded the Glass Temple, at least in the legend.
Irfan prepares to fire his arrow, but I block him. “Wait!”
“What’re you doing?” Irfan retorts.
“Saving your life,” I tell him. “The tiger will only attack if we do.”
Slowly, Irfan lowers his bow, but beside him, Sanya is far from happy. Amir looks too afraid to form a sentence.
“The sandtiger protects the Temple from those without true and good intentions. . . .” I recite Mother’s words—the story of the legend she told me. “We just need to prove to the tiger that we’re here for selfless reasons. Good reasons.”
“And how exactly will we communicate that to a tiger?” Sanya asks me, her voice sharp as the daggers at her belt. Her eyes widen as the tiger growls, low and insistent. The beast is fearsome, its eyes glittering with promise.
The promise of death.
If I don’t figure out what to do, we’ll end up in this tiger’s version of the Pit. In this chasm of death.
Think, Rani. How can I show the tiger our true intentions?
You have magic, a voice tells me. Channel it.
The tiger growls again. I clutch my hands to stop them from shaking. Fear only breaks your connection to the world around you, Father once told me. The last time I was allowed to show fear was the first time I saw the Pit open. The day I met Shima.
I take Father’s advice and shove my fear aside, staring into the sandtiger’s eyes. I force myself to imagine them as Shima’s. Though I cannot hear her, I channel my mind into hers, gripping that snake bond we created during the Bonding Ceremony. I pull out the compartment holding my connection to her. I take one step closer, then another, until I stand nearly at the rim of the chasm. My magic calls to the tiger, forming a link between our minds, and I tell the creature I am the future rani of Abai, a girl who wants more for her people.
For people like Ria. For people who don’t have a chance.
I feel myself growing closer to the sandtiger. I inch nearer, focus on our connection. But the next instant, my foot slips at the hole’s edge and I stumble back. One glance down at the gaping hole and I remember the Pit, the snakes, the death. Too quickly, the bond snaps. The tiger turns to Irfan, growling as flames spark out of its mouth and turn to smoke.
It’s angry now. Ready to leap.
I rush to cover Irfan. “Wait!” I turn to him. “Take off your coat. The tiger’s afraid. It thinks you’re a Chart. Don’t you see? The sandtiger will only let those with good intentions pass the gates—not the king’s soldiers.”
My voice is steady, the way a princess’s should be. The way I’ve been taught all my life.
I won’t let those lessons fail me now.
“How do you—” Irfan starts, but he halts at the tiger’s look. He tears off the coat and waits.
I turn to face the tiger, and I can practically feel the beast being put at ease. I close my eyes and fuse my mind with the tiger’s until we are one—one being, one purpose. I think of every moment I spent with Tutor, every wish he ever told me, the last words that hung on his lips. I think of how badly he wanted the Bloodstone. How badly he needed it.
A sudden wind blows through, and dust particles float before my eyes. No—sand. It’s the sandtiger, changing form before me. But its eyes remain on mine until the last moment, sharp and golden and unrelenting, even as the tiger begins to fade, tiny grains of sands shifting into the wind.
I am watching a myth come to life before my eyes. The sand disperses until the particles reach the sky and disappear.
We all watch in shock as the hole disappears and the gate clicks open.
Something heavy forms in my palm. I turn my wrist and find a shimmering golden object resting there. I turn it in the waning light.
“That must be a gift from the sandtiger,” Jas remarks.
“It could be dangerous,” Irfan warns. He examines it, Sanya joining in tandem.
“Let me look,” Amir finally says, recklessly picking up the object with his slim fingers. He turns it left, then right.
“It looks like an amulet,” Jas says.
“Or a compass,” replies Sanya.
“Or the Fire Master’s talisman,” a voice says. My head whips around.
The voice comes from the entrance to the Temple. I turn. Several sets of curious eyes peer out from the door.
“Are those . . .” Shadows multiply until there is a whole horde of people in front of us, lit by the waxing moonlight.
Children. Clothed in loose crimson robes and wearing curious expressions. A man dressed in fine red vestments exits the front entrance of the Temple and heads down the steps, past the cluster of children, until he is just before us. He holds a spear deftly in hand, red-tipped and as tall as the man himself. I know just by looking at him—he knows how to use it.
“You have opened the gates and received the compass—the talisman.” Both a statement and an inquiry.
More children appear, though they cluster together, the mehendi drawn on their hands swirling in the shape of flames.
“The mehendi,” I say, eyes widening. “It’s moving.”
A magic I’ve never seen before. A magic I thought to be gone.
Jas and the rest of the group take notice. Then she turns her attention back to the man. “You are the leader of the ancient guard?”
The man purses his lips. “You are very wise to know such things. And yet you travel with a Chart. No soldier has ever gotten past the sandtiger.” The man eyes Irfan’s coat, lying in the dirt.
“Ex-Chart,” Irfan clarifies. He tells his story, and behind him the children’s eyes widen, whispers breaking out among them.
The man only grunts, apparently unsatisfied with the answer. He works his jaw. “How did you learn of this place, and our people?” His gaze pins on Irfan’s again. “Did the raja send you?”
“No,” Irfan says. “If I were truly a Chart, I wouldn’t have made it this close to the Temple.” He points at the bodies, skeletons decomposing ways behind us.
“Only those with true and good intentions make it to our dwelling,” the man confirms. “The Temple warned us of your arrival. Amran sends a sign when people near. But . .
.” He hesitates. “I know a group of impostors when I see one.”
Impostors! I nearly shout. How dare someone speak to a princess like that? Then I remember. I am pretending to be someone I’m not. I am a charlatan. And outrage will not solve anything.
“We are simple voyagers who followed the fountain’s prophecy,” Jas begins. “‘Seek the place of stone and glass . . .’”
She recites the prophecy word for word. The man cannot contain his surprise; I see it in the twitch of his jaw.
Jas doesn’t look at me, and steps ever closer to the red-clad leader. “My husband knew of you, the ancient guard. But he hadn’t realized—we hadn’t realized—that you might be . . .”
Whispers swirl through the air. “Flametalkers,” I gasp. I glance at those markings again, at the red-tipped spear the man holds, their crimson clothes. Descendants of the Fire Master were thought to live in Retan, and yet here they are. “We mean no harm,” Jas repeats. “We wish to find the Bloodstone and use it for good, and we believe it to be here. Protected by an ancient guard . . . the Fire Master’s descendants.”
The man straightens his stance, staring at each one of us in turn with great intensity. “We are indeed of the Fire Master’s blood. But we do not speak of the Bloodstone.”
“Why not?” Sanya questions.
“We do not wish to be involved with the bloodshed that caused the Masters’ very disappearance.”
I exchange a rigid glance with Irfan. “But we thought—” I begin.
“You thought incorrectly,” the man says. “Some might believe the stone is here, but they are wrong. We guard the spiritual, not the material.”
“I see,” Jas responds, crestfallen. I mirror her gaze. This entire time, we were led astray, following the prophecy in hopes that the ancient guard had been protecting the Bloodstone. Had we falsely interpreted the prophecy all along?
Despite the hope crumbling inside me, I step forward. “What, exactly, do you guard?”
The man narrows his eyes. “This is not information we give away freely.”
“The sandtiger trusted us, and so can you.” I reach out. The gold chain unspools in the emerging moonlight, and in my palm, the compass glints. The one the sandtiger offered us, the tiger known to be an ally of the Fire Master.