The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 4 Bhumika

BHUMIKA

She felt as if she were being carried along by water. Her body swayed out of her control. She could not find her breath easily and when she did, she cried out, begging for something or someone she’d lost. The ache of grief yawned open in her like a chasm, and the voice that shushed her, growing steadily more frantic, was not the one she sought.

Her head ached, a storm in the cup of her skull.

“Breathe,” the voice said. A man’s voice. The man begged her, “Tell me what hurts.”

I named her for a flower. I named her. I left her. I left her. I left her—

“Fever,” the man’s voice said. And then he made a noise that had no words but might have been a choked sob. “Shit,” he said. Then he cursed again. The world tipped as he did so, and she felt breath on her hair. The water in her ears sounded suddenly like a heartbeat.

She wasn’t being carried by water, she realized. It was flesh that guided her. Arms were cradling her. The wind roared, biting at her face. It hurt.

“Hold on,” he said. “Hold on, my lady.”

She held on. Even as the waters rose, as a storm tried to swallow her, she held on. Time passed and then she was still again, the whine of insects in her ears.

“Please.” She heard the man’s voice, ragged with exhaustion. “Auntie, I need help. My wife is sick.”

With great effort, she managed to peel open her eyes. Her vision was a half-moon, a soft blur of dusk-gray sky fading into black earth. A stooped figure stood ahead of them, framed by a door. Silver hair, a sari.

“You’re Ahiranyi,” the figure said warily.

The man shifted her in his arms.

“By birth,” he said. He sounded apologetic. Desperate. “But we moved to Srugna years ago, long before we wed. We were driven out from our village. Please, aunt. Don’t drive us away too.”

“What makes you think you’ll be welcome here?”

“Hope,” he said. “We’ve got no rot on us. I promise. Please.”

The woman told him, eventually, that they could sleep behind the house. The man thanked her.

She felt a shawl being drawn over her. Water at her lips. Hard ground at her back; something soft tucked beneath her head by warm hands. Then nothing, for a long time.

She drifted in and out of consciousness. Every time she rose out of the waters of sleep, she caught snatches of conversation, strange in her ears, tangles of nonsense.

“It’s a poor business.” The old woman’s anger was gone. Her voice held only pity. “Families split in two, parents separated from their children and their elderly by whatever evil has changed Ahiranya’s borders. Did you lose anyone?”

“Her brother and sister.” The familiar man’s voice. “I had no other family.”

A sigh. “Ahiranya is cursed. I am sorry for my caution, with you and your poor wife, but you understand—”

“I’m grateful.” A hand on her forehead. A thumb brushing back her sweat-damp hair. “Thank you.”

Sleep.

This time when she woke, the waters of her mind and her heart had settled around her. She’d been drowning, and now she was not. She could breathe. She wasn’t burning. She opened her eyes, which were gritty with sleep and sickness. It was night.

The man was sitting against the wall of the house, upright, legs crossed. He was asleep, a sword across his knees. She could hear his quiet breath. Inside the house a lamp was burning. In the grass and trees around them, she could hear a noise—a steady rhythmic dripping of water. She turned her head slowly.

There were people watching her. Water-drenched cloth was draped across their faces, tumbling in folds to the floor before them at their feet. They held bowls in their hands—bowls that streamed strange river water to the soil. Green water, gold, and red.

Their numbers shifted as she watched them—a dozen, then ten, then a blur of faces too vast for her to swiftly count. But she saw adults. Children.

“Who are you?” she whispered. Her voice came out a croak. She was thirsty, depleted.

Silence. Then, with a rustling sigh, one water-veiled girl stepped forward and kneeled. She held out her green bowl.

“Will you drink?”

She looked at that water. A strange sense came over her—a knowing. A part of her lay in the water swirling in that bowl: knowledge that her skull, already aching, storm-full, could not carry without help.

If she drank, she would know something huge and terrible.

She reached out a hand—and the man stirred behind her. The figures were gone.

“How do you feel?” he asked. “Do you need water? Food?”

She stared up at him. Dark hair, a sharp jaw beneath the shadow of stubble. He looked tired.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am Jeevan,” he said, voice low.

That wasn’t the name he had offered their helper.

“You are not my husband,” she said, lowering her voice to match his. She did not want to be overheard.

“No, my lady,” he said.

My lady. It jarred through her like a knock to the bone, so strange it barely resembled pain.

“If you have told these people you’re my husband, you must not call me that again,” she said. “What is my name?”

“Bhumika,” he said.

Bhumika. The name felt like nothing. It did not slot neatly into her heart. She did not know who Bhumika was.

“Call me that, then,” she said.

In the morning, the man swept their helper’s steps and washed them clean. He brought the older woman firewood and uttered a terse but heartfelt thanks. The woman had clearly softened to him.

“You have a good husband, my dear,” she said. “I hope you find a safe home together.”

“As do I,” said Bhumika.

Their helper clasped her hands. “I am sorry about your brother and sister,” she said sympathetically. “I’ll pray to the mothers that our empress will set them free from Ahiranya one day.”

Her head was pounding. She thought of the watchers in their veils.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I would not have survived without you.”

The man named Jeevan walked with her away from the forest, through undergrowth under the palely rising sun. He turned to her.

“Where will you go?”

She had someone to find.

She was a vessel for knowledge. She needed someone else to carry it. Someone who could see far; someone with the power to be heard.

In the swirl of knowledge inside her lay an image: a lake. A holy place that trained its people to listen to the voices beyond the mortal world. That was where a seeker had learned how to end the Age of Flowers and kill the yaksa long ago. A seeker would return there again.

She turned to the watchers who stood in the distance. The dirt road to them was shining like a river: a twining, beckoning thing. She pointed a hand toward them. Her mouth tasted of silt, of water-smooth stone. The taste of stolen knowledge.

“To Alor,” she said.