The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 9 Malini

MALINI

On the day she left Harsinghar, Malini finally visited her sister-in-law.

The High Priest had blessed her that dawn for battle, garlanding her as priests sang prayers for her. Victory for Parijatdvipa; the favor of the mothers for their empire; victory for the empress of flame. She still wore the garland of fresh jasmine at her throat. She had to play at piety, so the garland would remain around her neck until dusk fell.

The corridor leading to Varsha’s chambers was deathly silent. Malini could hear the rustle of the flowers at her throat. Even her own breath seemed as noisy as a drumbeat. She was not nervous, she reminded herself. There was nothing to be nervous of.

She had all the power here.

Guards opened the doors, announcing Malini’s arrival. No voice greeted her from within. But she was empress, and this was her mahal. It was her right to enter, so she did.

Varsha’s rooms were not a prison. They were the same chambers that had been granted to her when she had wed Chandra: wide, expansive rooms with warm ivory-tiled floors and silk-knot rugs, basins of water to cool the air, and curtains of gauze studded with embroidered flowers. They were comfortable chambers, well-suited to the wife of an emperor. But now that Chandra was dead and disgraced, the walls of her chambers had become a shroud.

Varsha had refused to attend both Chandra’s ignoble funeral, and Aditya’s grander one. Her maidservants—who reported directly to Deepa and Lata—claimed she did not even explore the garden that had been granted to her for her private use.

She’s quiet, apparently , Lata had told her. Deep in her grief. She barely speaks to anyone. They worry about her. She won’t cause trouble.

But she did not have to try to cause trouble. She carried trouble—and possibility—within her.

Varsha was dressed in clothes as blindingly white as Malini’s, as was appropriate and expected for a recent widow. Even though Malini had been announced, Varsha had not risen to bow to her. She was seated, watching the birds outside the window. She had shredded a little of her roti and scattered it on the ledge, drawing the birds in, and was watching as their small bodies flitted back and forth, pecking through the lattice for bread, their shadows flickering against the stone like lamplight in a breeze. Her hair was in a long, loose braid, visible beneath her gauzy white dupatta.

“Sister,” Malini said, and watched as Varsha turned her head and made a desultory effort to rise to her feet. “There’s no need. Sit.”

“Thank you, Empress,” Varsha said thinly, settling back.

The swell of her belly was very visible, now.

Chandra’s child. An heir, perhaps, for the empire.

An opportunity. Or a threat.

“You must forgive me for disturbing your mourning,” Malini said, sweeping closer to her. She did not attempt to sit across from Varsha. She stood, instead. Hands clasped neatly behind her, her back straight. “I will be leaving for battle in Ahiranya.”

A beat of silence.

Malini did not know how much Varsha knew of the political sea changes that had roiled over Parijatdvipa. She would have told Varsha, if Varsha had asked.

“I pray you will be well,” Varsha said instead.

“The High Priest and I prayed this morning,” said Malini. “He and I made offerings to the mothers of flame. We asked for them to guide me in the coming war. I feel them close to me. I know I will return safely.”

How practiced she had become at telling lies about her own faith and the fervor in her own heart. She spoke the words without guilt—with utter conviction—and watched Varsha’s face carefully as she did so.

“I am glad, Empress,” Varsha said, her voice small but steady. Her eyes were lowered. She had her hands clasped over the swell of her belly—not exactly protectively, but as if she could create a circle with her hands and her body that was inviolate, a line that Malini could not cross.

Malini did not want Varsha to fear or hate her.

There were things she could do, perhaps, to win Varsha’s trust and even her friendship. But the thought of doing them made bitterness coat her tongue. She knew what it was like to be imprisoned. She knew the dignity of anger.

And worse still, Varsha was right to fear her. Malini knew what she was capable of.

“I’ve arranged a female physician for you,” she said. “Midwives, also. No matter how long this campaign may last, no matter how long I am away—you will be protected.” She softened her voice. “There are women,” she said, “who would counsel and comfort you if you allowed it. Many have joined my court in the last weeks. Not all of them will travel to war with me. Seek them out.”

If you will not talk to me honestly, talk to them.

Perhaps Varsha understood.

“You are kind, Empress,” she replied, bowing her head. “I am sorry to trouble you so.”

“It’s no trouble,” Malini said softly. “We are kin. Your child will be my heir.”

Varsha’s gaze flickered. Perhaps she had not realized.

You’re safe now , Malini thought of saying. In another time, another life, they would have been truly akin to sisters to one another—bound into family by marriage. But Malini stood beyond that now. Empresshood had made something new of her, and widowhood had done the same to Varsha. They were strangers to one another, at best.

But Varsha had spared Malini from the task of ensuring that Parijatdvipa would have an heir. The very thought of begetting a child made Malini’s skin hot and cold all at once with horror. She could not, would not, say so. Not to a woman she did not trust, with the eyes and ears of maids and guards on them both. But she could give Varsha some small assurance of safety and power.

“This is not my brother Chandra’s court any longer,” said Malini. “This is mine. Things will not be as they were.”

A heartbeat of time passed, and another, and Varsha exhaled a shaky breath that sounded like a sob.

“Thank you,” Varsha said. “Thank you, Empress. Sister.” She looked away, as if overwhelmed or abashed, turning back to the lattice.

Malini waited a long moment. But there were no more words from Varsha.

She nodded in farewell and departed, leaving nothing but Varsha’s silence and the faint rustle of hungry songbirds behind her.

Her retinue was ready to depart.

The war against Chandra had been only recently won, and she could see the lingering scars in the absences in her army: the Saketan warriors lost at the Veri river. The Dwarali cavalry that died in fire at the walls of Harsinghar, before the imperial mahal fell finally into Malini’s hands. Hundreds of men, dead or wounded. There should have been a respite from war, now that she had her throne.

Still, her army was a formidable force.

If only we were facing an army of men, instead of myths and ghosts and monsters , Malini thought, bitter amusement coursing through her.

She went to her chariot, surrounded by the wall of guards that accompanied her everywhere now, with Sahar at the lead. Sahar had been the head of Lady Raziya’s guard, but Raziya had insisted on placing her in Malini’s service when Malini had been recovering from her knife wound. “She will protect you as I would, if I had half her arm strength or skill with killing,” Raziya had said, eyes gleaming with tears, a smile on her mouth as she’d sat at Malini’s bedside and clutched Malini’s hand in her own. “Please. Take her.”

Malini was glad of Sahar’s steady presence at her side. Sahar barked orders, forcing back the warriors and highborn thronged near her chariot, until Malini was nearly alone.

Nearly.

Hemanth waited by her chariot. He no longer wore the benevolent, calm-eyed look he’d worn at the dawn blessing. His face was hard, his chin raised. His hands were clasped around a black chest.

“Empress,” he greeted her, bowing his head. His eyes never left her own. “A cart has been packed with all the fire that remains.” He held the box forward, like an offering.

“Thank you, High Priest,” Malini replied, offering him a smile. She took the box from his hands. The surface was warm under her palms.

His unsmiling face said, This fire will not win your war. You fool.

“You have released the imprisoned priests,” he said. “You take them with you to war.”

His words were not questions, but Malini nodded regardless.

“The priests erred, but I know the priesthood are my natural allies,” Malini replied. “We all love the mothers, after all. I must trust in their wisdom.”

If anything, his jaw grew tighter.

Malini climbed into her chariot. Sahar, acting as her temporary charioteer, took the reins of the horse and led them away from Hemanth and into the heart of Malini’s army.

The beast of her army lumbered along, across the rot-scarred expanse of Parijat.

Lady Raziya and Lata both shared her chariot with her.

Her generals rode alongside on horseback or in chariots, at their own preference. Lord Prakash from Srugna and Lord Narayan of Saketa largely remained seated under the cover of canopies, jolting with the movement of their chariots’ wheels as they sweated in the heat. Lord Khalil preferred to ride.

Rao was unpredictable. Uncharitably, Malini thought it depended on how much he’d drunk the night before, and that seemed as changeable as the wind.

On a horseback day, he drew his mount within shouting distance of her chariot, signaling at her and calling out over the clatter of horses’ hooves and churning wheels, “If we need to travel faster—we can exchange horses at a coming estate of a lord—”

“No need,” Malini interrupted, calling back. “We are not racing to Ahiranya.”

There was a rustle of attention from her generals: a turning of heads, a hunching of shoulders.

She knew that her generals, like Lata, believed she was rushing headlong into combat without enough preparation. That this was reckless. But she had meant what she said to Lata: The fire was the only weapon she knew could work against the magic of Ahiranya.

The fire had burned Priya when she had stabbed Malini. Malini still remembered the smell of flesh viscerally—the sight of Priya’s face, traitorous and loved. The pain in it.

“There are other warriors joining us for battle,” she continued. “We must give them time to do so.”

Rao’s mouth had thinned. He nodded, and with a respectful murmur of her title, he rode away from her toward the blue horizon ahead of them.

His physical distance gave her an odd pang.

She had not allowed herself to see clearly how their shared grief had carved them into different shapes and cleaved them from one another. He had sat by her bedside as she’d healed, had wept with her, the scent of liquor on his skin and hair, his mouth an ugly twist of grief. But they’d exchanged no words that mattered, no words of real mourning or blame, and the liquor had stayed as the closeness vanished. Now it seemed they had no words of any worth left at all.

The dust was rising in a cloud around her army—churned from gray to gold as it ate sunlight on its rise toward the sky. Malini watched him vanish into it.

Four nights on the road, she dreamt of Priya. She dreamt of Priya standing in the court of the imperial mahal; dreamt firelight casting flowers on her face, her throat. Dreamt the fire dripping like gold, hollowing Priya’s throat like a gourd as she wept and wept. I had no choice, Malini. Malini, I’m sorry, I had no choice—

Her chest ached as if the knife were burrowing into it all over again. As if the knife had left something there, seeded something.

Priya was in her head. In her wound. She could not seek help. She could not speak of it. But in Ahiranya, by the mothers—and by her own fucking fury—Malini would learn the truth.

On the fifth night she paced her tent until the entire camp was still, hushed with deep nighttime silence. She paced until she heard the noise of soldiers rising to swap shifts on watch, and the air was filled with low, muted voices and the thud of boots. When she slept, it was when pure exhaustion forcibly dragged her under, down to somewhere black and blessedly dreamless.

If Priya followed her there, she did not feel it.

The soldiers she was waiting for met her two weeks into the journey, on a sun-blasted road leading like an arrow to Ahiranya. One of her own warriors announced them—not by sounding his conch, which would have alerted her forces to danger, but by crying out, a high piercing cry that carried across the slow procession of cavalry.

“Parijati ahead!”

“Send a rider and archers,” Khalil commanded. “Then report.”

“My lord,” one of the Dwarali soldiers replied. He bowed his head, then rode off swiftly.

Malini did not have to wait long in her chariot before the news arrived: The soldiers ahead of them were indeed Parijati. They were the men she had been waiting for. Gladness rushed through her.

“So Lord Mahesh finally joins us,” she murmured. She turned to Rao. “Are we due to make camp?”

“Before nightfall,” he said. “We could travel for a few hours more, if you order it.”

She was tempted. Only reaching Ahiranya would put an end to the nightmares plaguing her. But there were shadows under Rao’s eyes, and even Lord Khalil looked exhausted where he sat on his mount. “Send out the order,” she said. “We rest until dawn. And have Lord Mahesh brought to me.”

Her tent was swiftly erected but still in partial disarray when she entered. Her maid Swati hastily lit a set of lamps. Guardswomen arranged themselves discreetly around the edges of the room, half concealed in shadow.

And Malini stood, hands clasped before her, and waited as the tent flap was raised and Lord Mahesh’s name was announced.

He entered and immediately bowed low to the floor. His armor was stained with dust from the road; his bared neck and his hands were dark from the sun and ruddy from exposure to wind and sand.

“Stand,” she told him. And he did so, meeting her eyes briefly before lowering them again.

“Empress,” he said. “You summoned me.”

“I thought you would join us sooner,” she remarked.

“There were—problems—upon the road here, Empress,” he said. “I apologize.”

“The High Prince’s fort is safely in Saketan hands?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice heavy. “My work in Saketa is done. But I will serve you however you require of me, Empress.”

After the end of the war for Malini’s throne, Mahesh had returned to Saketa to hold the deceased High Prince’s fort on her behalf. She had sent him there, unwilling to keep a highborn who had betrayed her at her side. But he had gone willingly enough and had, she had heard, raised a shrine there to the memory of Aditya.

He’d been there when Aditya had burned. Had watched him die; had watched him, and made vows to him.

I intend to keep my vow, Empress , Mahesh had written to her. Lata had read the letter to Malini—her own eyes narrowed, critical and thoughtful, as she repeated, I swear it, upon my faith .

That was why—despite the low, thrumming dislike she felt for him—she could not end his life. He and the soldiers who had watched Aditya die had willingly and fervently spread the tale of her brother’s death, and of the promise Aditya had exacted.

Prince Aditya died for Parijatdvipa. And as he died, we vowed to him we would serve Empress Malini, the true heir to Parijatdvipa.

So we vowed. And so all loyal Parijatdvipans should vow.

Malini did not discard useful things. She did not have to like him to make use of him again. The myth that had grown around her—this unbreakable myth, with its own breath and its own lungs—had begun with him. Better he lived to share it than die for her own petty satisfaction.

But still. Still.

“You vowed to serve me once, Lord Mahesh,” Malini said. “You vowed it when Prince Rao kneeled down and named me—and revealed to me my destiny. And still, eventually you turned from me. You were not the general my army needed, and not the loyal general I needed. How can I be sure anything has truly changed?”

“Prince Aditya,” he said simply. His eyes were clear, his gaze straightforward. “I may be honest now, Empress, as I could not have been in that time of war. I wished for Prince Aditya to take the throne. I wished to serve him.”

“And now?” Malini prompted.

“Now I understand the truth. I see now what I did not then: that the mothers led my heart to Prince Aditya because they wished for me to witness his rise to immortality and carry his message with me. My betrayal was never true betrayal,” he told her, fervent, earnest. “It led me to fight at his side. It led me to witness his death. It led me to a true and deep and unshakable vow. I love him, Empress, as I love the mothers. And for that son of flame, I will serve you to my death, and beyond it.”

Son of flame. She had heard the term before, but it struck as it always did—a lash to the heart that made her want to howl . And perhaps she did not hide her feelings as well as she should have, because Mahesh reached for the saber at his waist—and as the guards in the shadows reared forward, he removed it and laid it on the ground before him. And kneeled once more.

The guards melted back at Malini’s sharp look.

“Lord Mahesh,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Empress, if you wish me to die for my actions against you—my life is yours to take.” He lowered his head, a conscious baring of his neck. He held his hands open at his sides, not touching the saber on the ground before him. It was a gesture of pure vulnerability. “Not all crimes are forgivable. I understand the weight of the duties upon your shoulders. Do as you must.”

She stepped forward and leaned down to lift the saber. It was not like her narrow blade, honed to fit her hands and her strength. It was heavy and brutal, oiled to sharpness. With a sharp breath, she raised it—and offered it to him.

“I will not give you your family holdings or your old honor,” she told him levelly, as he carefully took the blade from her hands. “Those your daughter Lady Deepa earned with her bravery and unfailing loyalty. But I can provide you another future: of war and of service. And if you serve me wholeheartedly, I can promise that you shall be remembered as one of the great men who severed the bloom of a new Age of Flowers in its infancy.”

“Empress,” he said, reverent and low. “Tell me what I must do.”

“Lord Mahesh isn’t wasting his time,” Lata observed, when she joined Malini outdoors some hours later. The dusk was casting bloody gold light across the makeshift training ground between the tents. Malini stood without a parasol to cover her and watched the men train.

“He wants to demonstrate his eagerness,” Malini said. She held a hand against her forehead, shading her eyes, as she watched Mahesh heft up his saber again, barking orders. In front of him the priestly warriors moved into formation as ordered—their faces carved into grim lines by the fading light, their eyes black and fervent.

“Lady Deepa…”

“Will not have to part with what she has rightly earned,” Malini replied, when it became clear Lata would not say more, was hesitating over her words. “But it’s sweet that you care about her well-being.”

“We’ve been working closely together these past few months,” Lata said. “Of course I care.”

There was a thud as a man was shoved to the ground. He spat dirt, then rose back up, his gaze fixed on Mahesh.

“You’ve placed two sets of traitors together,” Lata went on. But she didn’t sound accusatory. She sounded thoughtful.

“Lord Mahesh’s desires make him loyal.”

“Do they?”

“What Lord Mahesh wants is to be remembered as a great and loyal servant of the mothers,” Malini said softly, after a moment. “Not riches. Not a title. He will train these men, and fight the yaksa for me, and his name will be revered.”

“And—the priests?” Lata’s tone was skeptical. She’d made no secret of her feelings about the priestly warriors.

“Ah. They want to kill for their faith,” Malini said. “And die for it. I can give them that. And if they turn on me, Mahesh and his men will deal with them. There’s no trust there. I warned Lord Mahesh of their nature. He’ll see them dead before they harm me.”

All these traitors—these men who had chosen her brothers over her, time and time again—would serve her now. There should have been joy in that—that utter victory. But the satisfaction was muted. Her heart was steel and cold. She watched a moment longer, then turned on her heel, returning to her tent. The only thing that made her heart kindle with something like feeling waited for her there.

A black stone box was set at her bedside. A guard was on watch beside it. She departed at Malini’s word.

Malini placed her hand on the box’s stone surface.

One box of fire. One for her; a dozen for her army. What a paltry number. That was all that remained, from the hundreds if not thousands of women who had died on Chandra’s pyres.

Soon she would see Ahiranya. She would set her army against its woods. Let them hack the trees, if nothing else. There’d be absurd satisfaction in that.

If she could, she would gut Ahiranya. She would kill Priya herself.

And if she could not… at least she could test the last of the fire she had. Women had burned unwilling for this at Chandra’s hands. She’d find out if it had any use. Whatever she could destroy, she would. She would .

With a deep, steadying breath, Malini unlatched the lid.