“A novice found something interesting when she went in to clean your dormitory today,” Kali says, interrupting my thoughts.
“Oh?” I keep my voice casual, unaffected.
“Yes. She found a map of Ambarvadi and Ambar Fort tucked inside the pillow on your cot.”
“That old thing? I got it at the village fair last year.”
“Indeed.” Kali holds up the scroll I designed with slow, painstaking care. “With details about the queens’ palace: the entrances and exits, notes on the number of Sky Warriors in Raja Lohar’s army down to the number of courtesans he employs. There’s also an empty square drawn in for the king’s palace. Interesting. Where did you hear about that?”
From Papa. From eavesdropping on Kali and Juhi. From the palace guards who occasionally get drunk on orange liquor at the Javeribad inn, blurting out secrets to girls with veiled faces and pretty laughs. It was the first thing Kali taught me when I began to pickpocket: how to laugh pretty.
Though Kali can’t read my thoughts unless she’s touching me, I am careful not to laugh now or tell her anything of what I know. Not that I know much when it comes to Raj Mahal. The palace guards grew abruptly tight-lipped when asked about that, which made me wonder if there is some kind of magic binding them to secrecy.
“So you found the plot of the story I’m working on,” I say with a shrug.
She raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re writing a story?”
It’s such a poor lie that I want to kick myself for it. I’ve never been the sort to live in dreams. Not when there are days when my own memories fail me and I forget my mother’s favorite sweet. Or wonder if there really was a mole on the side of my father’s cheek.
Except in the nightmares that shake me awake sweating, my mouth bloody, my cheeks sore from being bitten. In nightmare, at least, I can remember every detail about my parents and the day they died. The silver thread running through the weave of Papa’s green tunic. The rabdi Ma made that morning, garnished with fried cashews and raisins. The tale of the two moons that Papa recited every Chandni Raat as carefully as a spell.
Instinctively, I reach for the three silver beads that I always wear around my neck. What if Papa had never answered the door when the Sky Warriors had knocked? Would the three of us have had time to escape? Would I still have my parents with me?
“We always wonder about these things, don’t we?” Kali says softly. “The what-ifs?”
I bite my tongue. I must have spoken my last thought out loud, because Kali hasn’t touched me at all.
“I’ll have to shackle you to the house, you know.” There’s a hint of regret in Kali’s voice. Her hands glow blue.
“I know.”
I may have escaped the shackle for breaking the rules to leave the house tonight. Kali could chalk that up to a bored girl wanting to enjoy a festive evening. But the map is another matter altogether. Sneaking out to find a way into Ambar Fort could not only potentially get me arrested, it could reveal the location of the Sisters and endanger them as well. And Kali can’t ignore that.
I don’t try to run. Or argue. I am no match for Kali in close combat, especially not when she uses magic. I offer her my hands, wrists turned up, and then my feet. The spell burns my skin like a hot splash of oil, even though it leaves no marks. A shackle effectively confines you within a space of the spellcaster’s choosing—in this case, the four walls of the orphanage—the magic forming an invisible barrier against every door and window, even against the ground if you try to dig your way out. I know. I’ve tried.
“You’ll tell Juhi about this, won’t you?” I ask.
“You know I have to.”
I sigh. Juhi’s anger is always ten times worse than anyone else’s, mostly because of the heavy disappointment she attacks you with first.
“Sleep well, pretty girl.” Kali gives me a wry smile.
“I will.” I force myself to smile back.
I will sleep well—once I get into the palace, to the demon king, and sink a dagger deep into his heart.
6
CAVAS
I was twelve years old when I first entered the palace stables, when coincidence—or perhaps the sky goddess herself—put me directly in the path of General Tahmasp, unofficially called the Spider in the palace for his intricately spun battle plans. Officially, the general is the commander of the king’s army, which also makes him head of the Sky Warriors.
As a young boy, though, I did not know who he was. If I had, I might not have had the courage to do what I did then—to reach out and stop him from brushing against a shrub a few feet away from the stable door and getting bitten by a venomous grass snake protecting her eggs.
I still recall the shocked sound the general made when I touched him, the way he stared at the prints my dirty fingers had left behind on his sleeve, the mud that had splattered the front of his pristine white uniform. I remember the hard grip of my father’s hands on my shoulders as he pulled me back, his profuse apologies to the general.
“What in Svapnalok did you do that for, boy?” General Tahmasp asked me in a stern voice. “Did you find it amusing to soil my uniform?”
I swallowed the stone in my throat and explained myself, even though I was sure that I would be imprisoned and that my father, too, would be punished for bringing me with him to work.
Instead, General Tahmasp looked at Papa and said, “Don’t you work in the palace stables? Keep this boy there with you, and train him. If he stays out of trouble, perhaps, in a couple of years, he can be your assistant.”
My father hasn’t stepped into the stables for four years now. But the horses know me. They recognize my smell, the sound of my voice, even the most difficult of Jwaliyan mares, who nuzzle my hand, their rough tongues licking up the lumps of sugar I offer.
“You’re late today.”
I feel my shoulders stiffen at the sound of stable master Govind’s voice. “Papa was ill,” I say—not really a lie.
Govind frowns. “It’s a marvel he’s lived this long through the Fever. Some stable boys have wondered how he’s doing so without proper medicine. I deflected them by giving them more work.”
“Thank you,” I say, grateful for the warning. I know people talk about such things at the palace when they’re idle. But I also know I can count on Govind to back me up. Despite being a magus himself, Govind has always been on Papa’s side.
“I knew your father as a boy,” Govind told me once when I asked why. “Long before non-magi were segregated into tenements, your father and I were neighbors. Friends.”
Though they haven’t seen each other since Papa was struck by Tenement Fever, Govind always asks after Papa and looks out for us when he can. When Papa’s illness took a turn for the worse a year earlier, it was Govind who arranged my first meeting with Latif. “There is a man,” Govind said. “His name is Latif. He used to work at the palace before as head gardener. He can help you get medicine for your father in exchange for a price.”
“What kind of price?” I asked, feeling uneasy.
“He didn’t tell me in his letter.” Govind’s lips grew thin. “Be careful around him, Cavas. Don’t agree to anything that makes you uncomfortable. I would go to the meeting with you, but Latif and I didn’t part on good terms. Either way, I know he’d want to meet in private.”
To my surprise, Govind pressed a swarna into my hand. A coin no different from any other, except this one was a bright, shimmering green instead of gold. “Rub the green swarna, and whisper Latif’s name when you’re alone. He will be there.”
Govind is aware of my monthly meetings with Latif even though he does not know where we always meet. He’s also aware of the herbs I buy with Latif’s swarnas, though he doesn’t know what I’m offering Latif in exchange for the money.
The medicine isn’t a cure, of course, and the woman selling it at the black market warned me as much. There is no cure for Tenement Fever for those who continue to live there, so close to the pits that accumulate the city’s
wastewater, to the stench and dust from the firestone mines.
“Tell me if you need a day off,” Govind tells me now. “I can try and make arrangements.”
I nod, even though I know I won’t. A day off from work can very well mean a day General Tahmasp returns—a chance lost to give Latif the information he needs and get coin for Papa’s medicine.
“How is the new foal?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Running through the pasture outside, nibbling on grass. Happier than his mother, at any rate. She’s still not letting anyone near him. She grew agitated last night and then again early this morning when General Tahmasp came in to see his horse.”
The mother, a wild Jwaliyan mare, mated with a palace stallion the previous year and birthed a foal a couple of days ago. But it’s the other piece of information that makes me grow still. General Tahmasp wasn’t supposed to be here for at least a fortnight—according to what I heard the stable boys say. But Govind is definitely a more reliable source of information. If he said the general was at the palace this morning, then it is true.
In the years since I began working in the stables, I’ve learned to track people’s movements by their horses—if they’d been anywhere dry and dusty, or if the journey had been long. The general, however, has always made tracking difficult, appearing and disappearing with a finesse that can rival Latif’s.
I’ve often heard jokes that compare General Tahmasp to a living specter—a spirit that remains chained to our world partly due to an inclination to remain alive and partly due to an unfulfilled wish. Though I laugh at these jokes, my humor is often forced. I don’t like to remember how, as a boy of five, I had imagined seeing my mother in the tenements, how I thought she had turned into a living specter just to come and see me.
“You can hear a living specter, but you won’t ever see one,” Papa said firmly when I asked him about it. “The only people capable of seeing specters are the half magi: people who have both magus and non-magus blood in them. Your mother died a long time ago, Cavas. If she were a living specter, she would have tried to contact you long before today. And you would have only heard her.”
I didn’t believe Papa at first. I even dragged him to the spot where I thought I saw my mother wandering. I called out for her over and over again. But she didn’t answer. No one did.
Papa’s strong arms held me when I cried.
“There are days when I wish I could see your mother, too,” he said softly. “But you’re a non-magus, Cavas. You can not see the spirits of the dead. In fact, neither can any of the magi. It’s why some people turn themselves invisible during the moon festival and play pranks on others by pretending to be specters. It does not help to dwell on dreams, my boy.”
I now push aside the memory and force myself to focus on the matter at hand: General Tahmasp.
“Will the general be riding Raat tonight?” I ask Govind casually.
“Not tonight,” Govind says. “The stallion needs some rest.”
I nod. So the general is staying at Ambar Fort—at least for now.
“Also, Cavas, I could use one of your concoctions on the mare to calm her down. Get her to sleep.”
“Of course.” It is what I do best, why Govind has kept me here for so long instead of replacing me with another stable hand with magic in their veins. Though, most days, I rarely ever use sleeprose on animals. Not only do they sense it and refuse, but too many doses of the herb can be dangerous in the long run. It was the first thing Papa taught me on the job: Never do something just because it’s convenient.
“We could have used you last night with the mare,” Govind muses, eyeing me. “Remember what I told you, Cavas. Be—”
“—careful with Latif,” I finish. “I know. I am.”
Govind nods. “You’re a good boy.”
I push aside the twinge of guilt that sometimes comes from lying to Govind. But the truth is a luxury I can no longer afford. Govind might bend the palace rules here and there, but he will never overlook something as big as leaking palace secrets. And lawbreaker or not, Latif’s money is the only thing keeping Papa alive.
I get to work, first by cleaning out a few stalls and then checking in on the mare.
I don’t approach Tahmasp’s horse until the mare and her foal are calm and settled, and until Govind and the other stable hand are nowhere to be seen.
“Shubhsaver, Raat,” I say upon entering the stallion’s stall. Good morning, Night. The greeting never fails to amuse me. I think Raat finds it funny, too, because he always whinnies when I say the words, as if acknowledging a private joke. He whinnies now, and I grin. “How are you doing today?”
I reach out with a carrot in my hand and get a rough lick in return before Raat nibbles down the offering. The affectionate gesture is a rare one, reserved for General Tahmasp and, over the past five years, me. Most of the other hands are terrified of Raat, a stallion bred for war, powerful muscles rippling in his thighs and haunches, his mane and coat as black as his namesake. Today, when I go through the motions of grooming him, though, I note iridescent white sand on the back of his hooves, mixed in with the red mud of Ambarvadi.
I frown. I scrape off a bit of the sand, lift it close to my nose. A ticklish sensation curls through my belly, and I curb a laugh just in time. So not sand, then, I think, carefully wiping my hand with a rag. I don’t know why I didn’t guess before. During my earliest meetings with Latif, I’d seen enough men and women inhaling lines of the powdery Dream Dust in Ambarvadi’s seediest inns. Found only on the southern edges of Ambar, deep in the Desert of Dreams, the dust is so difficult to obtain that a tiny vial of it goes for close to twenty swarnas on the streets.
“So you went to the desert,” I murmur into Raat’s ear. “Did you see the fabled city of Tavan?”
Raat, of course, does not answer, except with another lick.
As a young boy, on the days when Papa and I had nothing to eat except what we could conjure in dreams, I would imagine our leaving the tenements behind and heading into the desert—to mythical Tavan, a city that began as a pit stop for weary travelers. In Tavan, it was said that firestones grew like fruit on trees, the streets were paved with gold, and the air always smelled like flowers and rain. It was a place where humans and animals wandered the streets and soared the skies unchained, where magic did not divide people the way it did in Ambarvadi.
Outside the stables, I reach into the pocket of my tunic and touch the green swarna lying there. Latif told me to use it whenever I had any information about the general. But before I can do anything with the coin, my ears pick out the sound of approaching footsteps, followed shortly by the word Ambarnaresh.
I freeze in place. There is only one person in the kingdom who can be referred to by that title, and that is Ambar’s ruler—King Lohar.
“Your restraint only led you back here to the Ambarnaresh, empty-handed.” The woman’s voice is familiar, angry. “If I were there—”
“You’d have had our heads delivered to the king on a platter.” It’s General Tahmasp. But it’s the woman’s voice that makes my hands both clammy and chilly at once. There is no way I can escape without either of them noticing, so I kneel to the ground, pretending to clean the dirt on my jooti. “Our western neighbors are not like the Jwaliyans, Shayla. The Brimlanders might be our allies now that Raja Lohar has made their princess one of his queens, but they are still wary of us politically. They will not bow to our every whim. I had to proceed with caution.”
His voice is so smooth that I nearly believe the lie myself.
“Some would say your speech is traitorous, General. Even disrespectful of the Ambarnaresh.” The threat in Major Shayla’s words makes my skin crawl.
“Rest assured that Raja Lohar knows my thoughts,” Tahmasp tells her calmly. “You are not privy to our every conversation.”
The rivalry between the two isn’t that surprising. Major Shayla has never been secretive about her disdain for Tahmasp or her ambition to be general herself. Some sa
y that Shayla’s gender is the only barrier that has kept her from being promoted. But I also sense that it’s more to do with her cruelty, which, unlike Tahmasp, is not calculated, and the terror she inspires in some of the king’s own ministers. You cannot predict what Shayla will do at any point in time.
“You are not—” Shayla’s voice breaks off abruptly as she notices me.
I rise to my feet and bow, pressing a hand to my heart.
“Boy. What are you doing here?” Tahmasp’s voice is sharp, and there’s no hint of recognition on his face. The blank expression is unsettling. Even though the general and I have not really spoken since the day I saved him from the snake five years ago, he knows who I am and has, several times, given me direct instructions to saddle or unsaddle his horse.
“I was only cleaning out my shoe, General.” I lower my voice until it’s soft, even a little terrified, which isn’t entirely difficult in front of the kingdom’s two most powerful Sky Warriors.
“A dirt licker.” The tip of an atashban raises my chin, forcing me to look directly into Major Shayla’s pale-brown eyes. “A handsome one at that.”
Major Shayla is nearly as tall as I am, her graying hair cropped to her skull. The hair is the only concession she has made to fit in with the mostly male contingent of Sky Warriors, most of whom she outranks as indicated by the four red atashbans embroidered on the front of her uniform. Unlike the other women, she does not make any attempt to flatten her curves; if anything, Shayla’s uniform emphasizes her form, her cheeks bronzed by the sun, her full lips painted the color of blood. My gaze wanders to the top of her left ear, where three tiny firestones blink against the auricle.
“Didn’t know you liked rolling in the muck with the filth.” General Tahmasp’s voice is calm. He looks older than he did when I first saw him—especially around the eyes and the mouth—a weariness that emerges from things other than time. Unlike Shayla, who wears the sky-blue tunic and narrow trousers of a Sky Warrior, Tahmasp has a uniform as white as a cloud in sunlight, a simple lightning bolt threaded in silver over his heart.
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