Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  Why does it matter if he’s lying? I ask myself. He saved me from selling myself. From possible abuse at the hands of some unknown minister for years on end. As ready as I was to be auctioned off, a part of me can’t help but feel grateful for his unexpected aid.

  “Come,” he says quietly once most of the crowd has dispersed. “We still have a lot to do.”

  * * *

  The orange-and-yellow ghagra-choli we steal from one of the washing ghats in Ambarvadi has a blouse that’s too loose to be a properly fitted choli and a skirt that’s much longer than the kind of ghagra I usually wear. Thank the goddess for drawstrings.

  “Are you going to have us both arrested after this?” I mutter to Cavas as we slip behind a thick peepul tree.

  Cavas silences me with a finger pressed to his lips and gestures to a bare-chested launderer slamming a few soaking wet clothes against a rock several feet away from where we’re hidden. I’m not sure if the clothes we stole belong to his pile. They certainly aren’t washed, if the smell of sweat in the armpits is any indication. I wrinkle my nose.

  Really, the only thing working in favor of this outfit is the king’s seal embroidered near the hem of the yellow ghagra in dyed blue thread, identifying the wearer as a palace worker. More specifically, a serving girl in Rani Mahal, or the queens’ palace, as Cavas explains.

  “See that?” Cavas points out a pattern running throughout the dupatta: an alternating pair of moons. “When it catches the light, it instantly differentiates the queens’ serving girls from the laundresses or the cooks. Only the supervisors inside the palace wear saris.”

  I glance down at the sari I wore early this morning, tied in its usual kaccha style. It’s not like I will miss it. I rarely wore saris outside the Sisterhood’s house, preferring the ease of a ghagra or a long Jwaliyan tunic and dupatta over leggings.

  “Won’t someone notice the clothes are gone?” I ask Cavas.

  “Probably.” He grimaces. “Which is why you should get dressed quickly so we can leave.”

  Cavas keeps his back turned while I slip into the clothes and toss the matching yellow dupatta over my right shoulder in a practiced motion. A serving girl doesn’t have time for styles that require pins and fussy pleats, so I simply draw the flowing front end of the cloth across my chest and tuck it into the back of my ghagra. As a final touch, I pull the flowing back end of the dupatta over my head and around my ears, allowing the rest to hang behind my left shoulder.

  “How do I look?” I ask him, and try not to blush when he scrutinizes me from head to toe.

  “Acceptable,” he says curtly before turning away. We sneak back onto the street behind the ghats, passing three large bonfires where rubbish is being burnt.

  “Wait,” Cavas says. He grabs hold of my gray novice sari and tosses it into one of the heaps. When he points to my necklace, though, I shake my head, pressing a hand protectively over the three silver beads.

  “Not this.” Never this. I will fight anyone who tries to take my last tangible memory of Ma from me. Perhaps Cavas senses this from my expression, because he simply nods.

  “You will need to have a false name there,” he says. “A false childhood, a false everything.”

  “Siya. From Ambarvadi.” The rest will come later. When he reaches for the bundle holding my daggers, I pull away. “That’s fine.”

  I expect Cavas to take us through the city again, down the broad road leading to the Walled City gates. But Cavas sticks to the back lanes, mostly used by non-magi, where he says there’s a lower chance of our being noticed.

  “I’d rather walk where I’m not stared at or called ‘dirt-licking filth’ for accidentally cutting across a magus’s path,” he mutters under his breath.

  I pause before asking a question: “Does that upset you?”

  “What? That people call me a dirt licker?”

  I wince. “Will you stop saying that?”

  “Get used to it. You’ll hear people say it frequently where we’re going.” He does not sound bitter about this, merely resigned.

  “It’s said that your people tried to steal magic,” I say after a pause, thinking of the scrolls I’ve read. “Years before the Great War.”

  “They did,” he says simply. “They stole elephant-loads of firestones right out of the jewel mines. They were protesting the new land tithe that Rani Megha imposed on us.”

  A land tithe? I try to think back to what I read in the history scrolls, but I can’t remember anything about such a tax. Then again, the scrolls don’t mention Juhi, either. And while firestones did contain magic and stealing them was considered a crime—

  “There were no kidnappings?” I ask. “No rituals to extract power from the magi?”

  He laughs. “Your people have awfully convenient imaginations. You probably have forgotten or don’t even know of the non-magi children who disappeared and were then found decapitated outside temples as a punishment for stealing the firestones.”

  “They decapitated children for firestones?” My stomach twists. For a moment, I wonder if Cavas is exaggerating, but the bleak look in his eyes tells me otherwise. “What happened to the firestones?” I ask finally.

  “Some say they were lost. Some say they were sold to traders from distant lands across the Yellow Sea. No one really knows. After the non-magus rebellion was crushed, Rani Megha established the tenements and forced us out of our homes. Those who fought were imprisoned or executed. Those who survived—well, we had to choose between our own lives and history being rewritten for us.”

  I’m silent for a long moment. “My father said this wasn’t how Svapnalok was supposed to be. That before the war, magi and non-magi lived in harmony. The old rulers never would have wanted this!”

  “Well, what the old rulers wanted is of no consequence. Now there is no Svapnalok—only Ambar and three other kingdoms that couldn’t care less what happens to us here.”

  My hand automatically goes to clutch the arm where my birthmark is, relieved to find it covered by the somewhat longish sleeves of the blouse. In fact, they cover nearly my entire elbow. The woman this outfit belongs to is clearly taller than I am.

  “Make sure no one sees,” Cavas says now—and I know he’s talking about the birthmark. “If they do—”

  “It won’t be good. I know.” I pause. “My mother buried me in a patch of soil meant for our garden to hide me from them. She was killed right in front of me. So was my father.”

  We both say nothing for a long time, the scrape of our jootis against the unpaved road the only sound breaking the silence.

  “I’m sorry.” It’s the first time today that he speaks to me without contempt. “There was a girl in the tenements. Her name was Bahar. They accused her of magic theft. But I think they took her away because she was also … She was like you.”

  Meaning, she had a birthmark. My stomach clenches habitually, but instead of saying anything, I find myself staring at Cavas’s drawn face. This girl, whoever she was, had been important to him. I march forward, a little ahead of him, my face suffusing with a heat that has nothing to do with the burning sun overhead. Cavas soon catches up with his long stride.

  “How do you plan to get me in?” I keep my voice brisk, strictly business again.

  Cavas frowns, as if confused by my sudden change in tone. “We’ll tell them you lost your identification badge. The guards at the Walled City gates aren’t too bright. They’re easily swayed by a pretty face.”

  I blink. Did he just call me pretty?

  “Also, you will need to be haughtier,” he says. “The queens and their serving ladies act like everyone is beneath them. Not that it should be troublesome for you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I mean a magus like you is used to having servants.”

  “I spent the last two months making fuel out of cow dung. When I wasn’t doing that, I was scrubbing pots or sweeping corridors or cleaning smelly toilets. We had chores to do where I
lived.”

  “There we go.” His face breaks into a sudden grin. “Act exactly like that in front of the guards.”

  He surprises me so much with that smile, I forget to watch where I’m going. A trip and a thud, followed by a roar of laughter that floats overhead.

  I am going to strangle him. I rise to my feet, ignoring the hand he holds out. Whenever I get the chance.

  17

  CAVAS

  The queens’ palace looms ahead, nearly a hundred of its windows facing us, stone and glass laced with magic to form intricate lattices that shield its inhabitants and gleam like jewels in the heat. The king’s palace, which is on the other side of Ambar Fort, has a throne room unlike any he has ever seen before, Govind said—which is the most the secrecy spell will allow him to tell us about Raj Mahal.

  I take his word for it: Govind does not speak in hyperbole. Besides, it’s not like I will ever see the inside of either palace. The king might allow the palace to hire non-magi, but no one without magic is allowed to enter the buildings that make up the private residence of the royal family. Inauspicious, the high priest calls it. An insult to the gods—even though it was the gods who supposedly made everyone.

  As a boy of four, I would ask Papa about Ma and where she had gone after giving birth to me—and my father always said that she went to live with the gods among the stars. Now, at age seventeen, I’m no longer convinced about the existence of deities. Or the stories Papa told me about Ma’s laughter and her courage. Fire burns in my gut when I remember what Bahar’s father called her. Though I refuse to believe that as well, the word sticks, stains whatever memories I have of her. Beside me, Gul walks quickly, matching my pace, two for one. From time to time, I find myself turning to catch quick glimpses of her: the sharp angles of her face, her small, compact frame. After that meeting with her and Juhi yesterday, I was sure I would never see her again.

  But last night, before I went to bed, the green swarna in my pocket grew warm. After checking to make sure Papa was already asleep, I slipped outside our house and found Latif waiting for me.

  “Bring her to the palace,” Latif said. “That girl you saw this morning.”

  “Why?” I demanded. “What does she have to do with you?”

  “What she has to do with me is not important. What she has to do with you is. It’s exactly why I told you to remember what she looks like.”

  I vehemently shook my head. “No amount of swarnas will entice me this time.”

  “I’m not offering swarnas. I’m offering you a way out of these tenements. For good. Perhaps as early as the end of this month.”

  A long silence. “That’s impossible. General Tahmasp said the only way to get out was to—”

  “Join the army, isn’t it?” Latif shrugged. “He isn’t exactly wrong. You could join. Stay a few years. If you don’t break your back loadbearing, the army may let you fight. Perhaps they’ll make you a captain. Even give you a house. But a simple perhaps isn’t enough—and you know it.”

  “You were spying on me?” I asked furiously.

  “I don’t need to, boy. The general makes the same pitch to every potential non-magus recruit every year. He’s been doing it for two decades.”

  “Well, I don’t see what you can do that the commander of the armies can’t!”

  “I have my ways. You’ll have to trust me.”

  I don’t, I wanted to say. Govind implied that I shouldn’t trust Latif completely—and I knew he was right. But I thought of Papa sleeping inside. What if Latif can get us out? Will saying no mean that I’m throwing away my father’s last chance of surviving the Fever? Of getting cured?

  “What must I do?” I found myself asking Latif.

  “Get the girl into the palace, and I’ll get you out of there as well.”

  “But how do I find her? I don’t even know where she lives!”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll know soon enough.”

  The message came in the midst of saddling one of the royal horses this morning, when Govind told me to drop everything and go to the flesh market to bid on a horse.

  “Our usual bidder fell ill this morning. Food poisoning,” Govind said, frowning. “You go instead, Cavas. You’ve been to the market before. You know how it works.”

  I did not need to talk to Latif to know that he had something to do with the bidder’s sudden illness.

  Now I steal another quick glance at Gul. She is not Bahar. If Bahar were a gentle breeze, then Gul is a hurricane, a storm constantly brewing in her glorious eyes. I’m quite sure that if I hadn’t been there to stop her, she would have sold herself at the flesh market without thinking once of the consequences.

  So why did I tell her she reminded me of Bahar?

  Gul squints against the morning sun now, as if in deep thought. She’s had the same expression ever since she tripped and fell and I laughed at her and she refused to be helped up. I wonder now if I should apologize and then shrug it off. She needs to develop thicker skin. Or a better sense of humor. There’s a natural haughtiness in her disposition—meant for queening over people or kingdoms. Or maybe it’s not haughtiness at all. Maybe she’s just shy.

  I snort at the last thought. She glances at me, her frown deepening into a scowl. Well, she isn’t wrong about whom I’m laughing at. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want her sold—to anyone. Unlike non-magi, who are born powerless, indentured magi are bound to their buyers by a deadly magical contract, unable to use any of their own powers to protect themselves, forced to submit to their buyers’ every whim. As the old Vani saying goes: None more wretched than the non-magus, save the indentured. It’s the sort of life I wouldn’t wish on an enemy.

  I glance at her once more. No, Gul isn’t my enemy. What she is, however, is a question I won’t be answering anytime soon.

  * * *

  The back roads leading up to the palace are rough and unpaved. Gul, to my surprise, does not complain, even when we navigate a patch of sharp stones, one catching the hem of her too-long ghagra, nearly tearing it. She doesn’t allow me to carry her bundle for her, either.

  “Don’t trust me?” I ask.

  She scowls and pulls up the cotton dupatta that keeps slipping off her head. “And give you an opportunity to say that I’m another magus who can’t carry her own burdens?”

  It is exactly what I would say, but I refuse to admit this. “Burdens lessen when they are shared.”

  “I am not as weak as you think.”

  We both walk in silence for a long time after that.

  “Weakness is not always a terrible thing,” I tell her finally. “It can be used as a shield to hide your true strength.”

  I can tell she doesn’t believe me, even though she says nothing in response. It makes me feel … disappointed. A part of me wants her to argue back and tell me I’m wrong, do anything to break this strange tension simmering between the two of us.

  I focus on the path ahead, where we reach the peak of the steep incline and then begin walking downward again, making the long trek to the gates of the Walled City: Ninety feet of solid teak from the Jwaliyan forests interwoven with iron, with two armed guards to check our identification. Overhead, a Sky Warrior watches from a tower, ready with an atashban in case anyone tries to force their way in.

  “Remember what I said,” I tell Gul, feeling my shoulders tense as we close the distance with our feet. “You are a queen’s serving girl, and you lost your badge while shopping in the bazaar this morning. And when they ask for your name, make sure to add Rani-putri to it. By tradition, the queens’ maids must use Rani-putri to replace their own family names, showing full dedication to the queen they have been chosen to serve.”

  Gul nods curtly, not speaking until we’re at the gate. I tuck in my shoulders, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible, while Gul squares hers, an act that thrusts out her breasts.

  I feel my face flush.

  The guard leers when she approaches, taking her in with his greedy gaze—until it reach
es her face—the hard disapproval etched in every muscle, forcing his grin to dissipate.

  “Name and identification,” he says.

  “Rani-putri Siya,” Gul replies, her voice cool, the consonants sharp the way they are here in the city, her village accent completely gone. “I lost my badge in the market this morning.”

  The guard frowns, his brown pupils sharpening in their yellow eye-beds—as if noticing for the first time the too-long sleeves of Gul’s blouse, the skirt that drags across the ground ever so slightly. “What do you mean you lost it? I can’t let you in without a badge!”

  “Don’t let me in and the rani will hear about it,” she replies with a perfect touch of arrogance, cleverly avoiding mention of a specific queen’s name. “Ask him if I’m lying.” Sharply angling her head to the side, she gestures me forward. “You! Come here!”

  I wince, not having to pretend the discomfort that creeps up my spine when the guard’s attention falls on me.

  “What do you know about this?” I see him eyeing my turban pin.

  “She works for the palace.” I am careful to keep my own answer as vague as Gul’s. “She lost her badge in the market.”

  “O ho!” His sneer becomes more pronounced. “Which rani does she work for?”

  “You will know that answer once I tell her you were the reason I couldn’t reach her on time,” Gul cuts in.

  The guard’s face, likely bloated from gorging on kachoris during every break, reddens. “If you went to the market, where are your packages? Show me what’s in there!” he demands, grabbing for her bundle.

  Gul smartly steps out of reach, giving him a sneer that could rival Major Shayla’s. “The rani’s packages are her own business. Surely you don’t mean to intervene in her private matters?”

  “Hold on.” Another guard joins the first one and murmurs something in his ear.