I could always pretend it is battle armor. Though we never really did learn to fight with armor during Yudhnatam practice at the Sisterhood. Juhi found this frustrating, but she could hardly place an order at the armorer without drawing massive attention to us.
This is not what Juhi wanted.
But Juhi isn’t here. And by now, Amira and Kali must be gone as well. I told them to leave last night—without me—right after my disaster of a conversation with Cavas. I will stay, I mentally repeat what I told them. I will try to challenge the king to a death duel. For Papa. For Ma. It’s the only chance at revenge that I have now.
“There.” Yukta Didi adds the final touch: a gold-and-pearl-encrusted maang-teeka in the part of my hair, the ornament ending right over the center of my forehead. “Now you look like a princess.”
Delicate and ethereal, my eyes rimmed with surma, my lips stained deep pink with a paste that tastes like honeyweed and beetroot. Only my cheeks remain untouched, bare of the gold dust that will be applied to them every morning after I bind with Sonar. My clean skin reminds me of the girl I was, the girl I still am under this suffocating finery. So do Ma’s silver beads, which rest between my clavicles, above the heavy gold-and-pearl necklace. After brushing my anklet, my attendant’s fingers rise higher under the petticoat to adjust a stray fold of cloth.
“Enough,” I say sharply. “It’s not my binding night yet.”
The girl’s hands drop at once, seconds before they brush the sheaths of the daggers strapped to my thighs. I turn away from her stammered apologies.
“I’m ready,” I tell Yukta Didi.
* * *
The king’s chambers are at the very top of Raj Mahal, in the tallest tower of the palace, which is so reflective that no outsider can look inside, and so heavily guarded by Sky Warriors that getting in would have been impossible without an invitation. Yukta Didi leaves me with a guard in a lobby downstairs, right under a chandelier made of swords, thin longblades jutting out of the floating crystal orb like spikes from a poisoned mace.
Over the chandelier, the glass shifts color, revealing the outlines of a portrait—the sky goddess perfectly etched into the surface, her enormous eyes holding the sun and the two moons, shifting rain clouds and stars.
I breathe deeply, forcing myself to remain outwardly calm, to look happy even though I feel like I might vomit. Walking with a dagger strapped to each thigh, coupled with the heavy ghagra, is awkward, but somehow I climb the flight of glass stairs leading to the king’s apartments without tripping over my own feet and tumbling to an early death.
Outside the king’s door, I find a familiar face. Major Shayla. To my surprise, she doesn’t look at me, only moving aside to allow me entrance before closing the door. You’d think that being surrounded by glass would make the room feel open and full of sunlight at this time in the morning, but it is oddly dark, the air damp instead of dry.
Magic, I think, feeling its suffocating presence. And eucalyptus oil. The room reeks of it: a pungent smell that my mother surrounded me with whenever I was ill. A large, pillared bed dominates the room’s center, while the walls are decorated with scenes from battle, much like the portraits that often hung in our village schoolroom, only the colors here are so vivid that the figures on elephant and horseback look alive. In each panel, the king cuts the tallest and most handsome figure—even though he looks nothing like the paintings in real life.
“The Three-Year War between Ambar and Samudra,” a voice says from behind, and I nearly fall over. I hadn’t heard him sneak up on me. He must have jootis cushioned with rabbit fur. A weathered brown hand traces a picture of a woman being dragged by her hair, a streak of blue running through it. “A fine victory, don’t you think?”
I bite back my fury and greet him with a bow. “Raja Lohar.”
His hands clamp onto my shoulders, push me upright. “Come now, Siya. Why the formality? You are going to be my daughter now. And we are alone.”
His eyes narrow when I move back slightly, nauseated by his closeness.
“You are a fascinating girl, you know. A simple peasant from goddess knows where, controlling a savage Prithvi mammoth that needed to be dosed with sleeprose most of the time. That required a whisperer and three other magi to contain it at the flesh market.”
“Luck favored me, Ambarnaresh.”
“Luck? Luck, my dear, has nothing to do with it. My father, the old fool, believed in it. Believed in the gods. But I know better. There is no luck. There are no gods.” He smiles at me. “So why don’t you get along with what you’ve wanted to do and challenge me about your binding?”
The blood drains from my cheeks, leaving them cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you? After everything my son said about challenging me to a death duel?” He laughs. “Did you really think I would allow such an antiquated rule to remain after I came into power? Regicide is regicide, regardless of how it happens.”
The back of my throat tastes sour. Amar played me. How could I have been such a fool? “You’re mistaken, Raja Lohar.”
“Mistaken, am I? But then perhaps there are other ways to make you talk.” The king claps his hands twice, and the door bursts open.
Major Shayla comes in, pulling along with her—to my shock—my attendant. “You called, Ambarnaresh?”
“Tell me, girl. What did you see?” he asks my attendant. “Quickly now.”
Shayla pulls out a small dagger and presses it into my attendant’s neck. The serving girl’s eyes are wide, terrified. “It’s on her right arm, the birthmark! I accidentally saw it yesterday morning when she was getting dressed. I swear I’m loyal, Raja Lo—” Her voice cuts off as Shayla presses the dagger harder against her skin, drawing blood.
My heart rises, feels like a stone in my throat. He knows. Knew about my birthmark before he called me to him today.
“Are you loyal, girl?” There’s a cruel smile on the king’s face. “Perhaps not loyal enough. You see, you waited a whole day to tell one of your supervisors about the cursed mark, when you should have gone to her at once. Shayla.” He nods at the Sky Warrior.
“Ambarnaresh, please,” the girl pleads. Tears run down her face, and I can’t help but pity her, even though she just threw me to a pair of dustwolves.
“Let her go, Raja Lohar,” I say, forcing myself out of my own stupor. Why does it matter that she told the king? So what if he knows I’m here to kill him? I curse myself for my lack of foresight, wishing I had strapped my daggers to my calves instead of my thighs. “You have me, now. So why don’t you—”
My voice dies. The girl’s mouth opens, sputters blood. With another twist of the dagger, Major Shayla sighs, and the girl falls to the floor with a thud. Her body jerks for a moment, her eyes on me, and then goes still. I didn’t even know what her name was. A buzzing sound fills my ears. I don’t know if it’s from their laughter or if I’m simply going to faint.
“Arrest this fool and have her tossed into the dungeons!” I hear the king say, as if from a distance. “I will relish seeing the magic drained out of her.”
“Ambarnaresh,” Major Shayla says.
It happens in a matter of eyeblinks.
The major grabs me by the hair and throws me to the floor. A shadow rises over me, followed by a loud cry. King Lohar looks even more surprised than I do by the blood seeping from the cut in his throat. He sways in place for a brief moment and then collapses after the second thrust of the dagger in Shayla’s hand.
* * *
“You killed him,” I sputter, my voice a wheeze instead of a shout. “Y-you—”
“Don’t bore me, stupid girl.” Major Shayla turns to me, tossing the dagger aside. “No one can hear us. For now.”
The buzzing in my ears. That must be the sound barrier she put up. There’s no guarantee that I will be quick enough to grab the daggers strapped to my thighs—not with the major eyeing my every move.
“Look at you,” she says now, her voice
as soft, as melodious as I heard it the first time. “A girl who is both fool and simpleton, yet was so close to stealing away everything I’ve worked for. My legacy. My birthright.”
Birthright?
I stare at her face: the cropped gray hair, the angular features, the full cruel lips. It doesn’t seem possible. There is no similarity between the two, but …
“You’re the king’s daughter?”
“I? Lohar’s daughter?” She laughs. “I am Megha-putri Shayla, the only daughter and heir of Ambar’s last and greatest queen. Lohar was no more than a usurper, the son of the fool my mother bound with, a man whose blood was no more royal than a dirt licker’s. My mother would have wanted me if she had known I was a girl. She always wanted a female heir. She would have raised me at the raj darbar itself. But my father had other ideas. He didn’t want me under my mother’s influence. Called her cruel. He paid the vaid to lie to her, to tell her I’d been born a boy. She wasn’t interested in male heirs, so she let him have me without looking at my face even once.”
She smiles bitterly. “I’ve learned since then that it’s the nature of men to look upon powerful women with suspicion. It took me years to find out who my mother was. By the time I did, she was already dead. But it no longer matters, does it? It will only be a matter of time before I have what I want—before the people see who the true heir is and this nonsense about the Star Warrior is put to rest.”
I’m bending, reaching for the daggers bound to my thighs. But Shayla is quicker. A red web erupts from her atashban, binding my hands together. My birthmark begins burning. A pain unlike any other climbs up my limbs. Worse than a dagger, a hundred daggers, it makes my bones ache and my vision blur. There’s screaming in the distance; I realize it’s me. Shayla raises my body into the air and slams me against the wall a couple of times before dropping me to the floor.
“Do you feel that, girl?” Shayla asks softly. “I don’t even need to break your limbs, extract your nails, or peel away your skin. It is worse than anything you have imagined because this is what it feels like to have your magic drained from you, what we do to the girls we take to the labor camps. A pity that I must do the same to you, but sacrifices must be made when fools become kings. Perhaps you will still be useful after I’m done with you. Perhaps not. Come now, Star Warrior. Fight me, if you can.”
I barely raise my head before the pain strikes again, going all the way to my eardrums. I can no longer hear my voice, even though my throat burns from screaming.
I’m going to die, I think. Oh Goddess, let me die. For a brief moment, I think I get my wish. Everything gets wiped away. There is no pain. No feeling. Nothing except endless waves of black and, within that, a floating golden egg. Voices, at once familiar and not, whisper in the darkness.
Am I going to meet the goddess tonight, Ma?
No, daughter. You will not let our sacrifice go in vain.
You must be a leader when all hope is lost.
The egg glows, brighter and brighter, spilling light over the darkened water. Over me. In the distance, a shadow raises an atashban in the air.
Use your mind, princess, a voice says.
So I raise my right arm and do exactly that.
A crack. A burst of light. Air rushes back into my lungs, my bones snapping back into place. My vision clears for the first time, and I see Major Shayla’s gritted teeth, a strange sort of fear in her pale-brown eyes. Her silver armor reflects the light coming from me. All of me. She presses harder and harder; even through the shield, I feel the force of the atashban’s spell. My feet tremble, pain creeping up the toes. Any moment now and I’ll lose my balance … I need to push. I grit my teeth. Harder.
Fire erupts. Shayla is blasted off her feet. The smell of burning flesh rises in the air, and I realize it’s the king’s corpse. Shayla’s anguished scream rings in my ears.
“Regicide!” she cries out. “The sky has fallen!”
34
CAVAS
I wake up with a start.
It’s a little before dawn in the tenements—the night has barely passed since Gul came to see me in the stables, her words haunting my thoughts even though I want nothing to do with them. I couldn’t escape her even in dreams, surrounded by gray spirits, my eyes seeking out the sharp angles of her face, the determined jut of her dented chin. Without really thinking, I reach out to feel the space between my ribs, the spot where Gul’s spell hit me last night, leaving a round red bruise. Forcing myself off the cot, I pick up our empty bucket and head off to fill it at the reservoir—an enormous, oblong body of water made by the tenement dwellers, with cleverly designed catchments to channel rainwater during the Month of Tears. With careful rationing, the water lasts for nearly a year, except during periods of drought, when we rely on the government’s mercy—and its magic—for replenishment.
A light fog has settled over the houses. Most people are still asleep and will not venture out until daybreak, which is exactly why I choose to go out now. I place my lantern on the reservoir’s edge, dipping my bucket carefully into the calm water. To my surprise, I see something solid floating near the top of the reservoir and nearly gag when I realize what it is: the bloated corpse of a stray dog.
I empty my bucket at once. It will be contaminated now, the tenements’ only source of safe drinking water. It will be days before someone from the Ministry of Health comes in, even more days before whatever medicine they sprinkle in to clean the water takes effect. Until then, we will be forced to trek around two miles north to bring water from the reservoir next to the firestone mines.
To be poisoned by a dog or to be poisoned by mine waste?
I think again about what Gul said. What if she’s right? What if she isn’t mistaken, and the Sky Warriors come for me and Papa? What if, after all my efforts to keep him alive, Papa doesn’t die from disease but gets killed because I was seen with the wrong person?
A part of me wants to blame Gul for the latter—she’s the reason I got dragged into this whole mess. Yet a larger, more honest part admits that she wouldn’t have been here if not for me in the first place. If I hadn’t stopped her from selling herself at the flesh market. If I hadn’t sneaked her into the palace. If I hadn’t … I stop myself right there. I don’t want to think about what happened between us inside Chand Mahal. The tug of her magic, the power that seeped out of me and into her.
Half magus. The phrase sends a chill down my spine. Half magus thanks to my real father. A tall figure in white appears in my mind, disappearing before I can identify who it is.
I tamp down my rising anxiety and head back home. It is too late to go to the reservoir now if I intend to get to the stables on time. We must make do with the water we already have.
When I step into our house, I find Papa sitting upright on his cot, quenching his thirst with nearly half of it.
He wipes his mouth. “What happened?”
I put the empty bucket to the side. “Dead dog in the tenement reservoir.”
Papa grimaces. “I shouldn’t have drunk our water.”
“You should have,” I say more forcefully than normal. “I’ll head to the reservoir near the mines this evening.”
Papa is silent for a long moment. “You shouldn’t have to do this. If only I wasn’t ill.”
“I’ll be in the army soon. I’ll work hard. Send you coin.” Spoken out loud, the words sound hollower than they did in my head.
“So you’ll let Gul die, then.”
I suddenly feel the way I do whenever I sit in one position for too long, my legs growing numb. Only this time, the feeling seems to have crept over my entire body—including my tongue. I shake it off. “What do you mean? What do you know about Gul?”
Papa holds up a scroll and, with it, a green swarna. “You think your old papa knows nothing about what you’re doing or whom you’re talking to outside the house.”
“You mean, Latif told you,” I say, staring at the swarna. “Have you been talking to him this whole time?”
“No. I spoke to him for the first time yesterday, after many years. The last time I met him was a couple of years after you were born; he was already a specter by then, so I only heard his voice. Govind was the one who put us in touch again. He wrote to me yesterday after you both argued.” Papa holds up the green swarna, which looks like a jewel even in the dim light of our house. “Govind is the only person I know who can make these swarnas. Ruhani Kaki brought it to me last night after you fell asleep, along with his letter.”
So Ruhani Kaki probably knows about Latif as well. Yet, for some reason, I can’t quite direct my anger the same way at her as I can at the man sitting before me. A man who should have told me the truth about myself. About everything.
“Did you and Latif have a good laugh about how little I know?” I ask. “About how Latif can, with a little vow, make me dance like a puppet on strings?”
“Cavas, we never—”
“Did Latif tell you what he promised me if I could get Gul into the palace? How he took advantage of our desperation and lied?”
“Did he really lie, Cavas? Or did you simply choose not to believe him when he asked you to wait a little longer to get us out of here?”
“You don’t understand!” I snap. “If I try to save Gul, then the Sky Warriors will come after me. After you. I don’t care about myself, but if anything happens to you—”
“Then what? Will you stop living? You can’t let your fear for me shackle you into this position, son. I am your father, not your jailer.”
I want to argue back, tell him how wrong he is, but every retort that comes to my mind feels weak, fades before the compassion in his eyes.
“In this scroll, Govind described the argument you both had,” Papa continues. “He wrote about how he couldn’t tell you more about why Latif died. But don’t blame Govind, my son. He has a family, and he’s afraid. Don’t blame Latif, either. Blame me. I’m the one who remains at fault for your ignorance—I made Govind and Latif promise not to tell you.”
Hunted by the Sky Page 28