The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 13 Malini

MALINI

They moved her to the back of the army—to the wall of tents, behind a defense of elephant and horse cavalry and armed men. Safe.

Prakash kneeled before her, grim.

“You should not have risked yourself so utterly, Empress,” he said. “If you die, what will become of Parijatdvipa? You are the last of your family. The empire stands and falls with you.”

Raziya and Lata were watching Malini with disapproving—and worried—faces.

“My emperor father would have led his army into battle,” Malini said crisply. “As his father would have before him. I must live up to their example, not cower behind my warriors.”

She tried to hide how she was swaying. Her chest throbbed, and the ache had moved through her like mist, rising to fill her skull. It was so thick she felt as if it should have fogged her eyes, clouded her like a full cup of steaming water.

“There is no denying Ahiranya’s cursed power,” Lord Narayan said, his voice tentative. “And though we have faced defeat, we—”

“The battle was not lost,” Malini said to him.

“Empress—”

“Surely you must accept, at this point, that I know something of war.” She smiled around her words, pressing absolute faith into her voice. She was glad it was a sunlit day, the sky blue and expansive and the dust golden beneath it. It made it easier for her to sound confident and unshaken by what they had encountered, and how she had responded to it. “We knew the fire may not save us, Lord Narayan. We had to move swiftly to test its strength. Now we know, and we are prepared for the war ahead.”

He inclined his head, but his expression was still troubled.

She didn’t wait for him to speak. She already knew the shapes of his fears: mothers’ fire, and yaksa, and battles or ambushes that could fall upon them anywhere, everywhere. She shook her head and said to him, “No more. You’ll have chance enough to voice your views when I hold council. For now, see to your men.”

“When will we meet, Empress?”

“This evening,” she said, even as she turned. “So prepare yourself. We will speak then.”

Raziya and Lata both moved to follow her, but she shook her head.

“Later,” she said to them. Some of her pain must have leaked through her voice or her face, because Lata’s gaze narrowed. She nodded and touched a hand to Lady Raziya’s arm, silencing the protest that was already forming on Raziya’s lips.

She couldn’t banish Sahar and her other guards until she was safely ensconced in her own tent, so the guardswomen were there when Malini finally stepped into the cool shade of the fabric and exhaustion hit her like an arrow through the stomach. Numbness and fire began in her abdomen, radiating outward. Her legs felt weak.

“Leave me,” she said to Sahar, and to Swati, who had been waiting for her. “I will rest.”

Swati and Sahar shared a look. But the maid only nodded, and Sahar said, “I’ll be just beyond the curtain, Empress.” And then Malini was alone.

A bed beneath her. The smell of cedar around her, and the rising sweetness of sandalwood, from the incense left lit by Swati. There were thin curtains around her, clouds of frothing white. She closed her eyes and felt the coolness of the bedding beneath her.

Closed her eyes, and found herself dragged forcefully into sleep.

She walked directly into a dream.

She dreamt that she was crossing the court of the imperial mahal again. The marble was colder than the bed and suddenly gave way to wetness. Water was running over the floor, softening the stone to sand. Above her the roof had vanished, leaving her surrounded by sky, trees, soil.

The fire at the heart of the court was still burning, blooming its flowers of flame. And Priya was lying next to it, her hair loose, dark tendrils fanned out around her, saturated with water.

Perhaps in this dream I will kill her before she can kill me , Malini thought, feeling oddly detached. She walked closer to Priya, taking in the shape of her—the lines of her body, the arm flung out, the head tilted away.

She looked at Priya’s face and saw… not Priya’s face.

Instead she saw a face carved of wood, so close to Priya’s that it was almost perfect. If Malini had not known her, known her skin, perhaps she would have been fooled. The carved face was peaceful, strangely beautiful, haloed by roses.

Perhaps the person lying on the ground was not Priya at all. Perhaps it was a statue—as empty and lifeless as the wooden effigy of Aditya in the imperial temple.

Malini’s footsteps faltered at the thought. In the silence, the figure on the ground stirred.

Malini had been mistaken, or her dreaming eyes had lied to her. Priya’s face was not wood. She was wearing a mask. At its edges her real skin was visible. The eyes that stared back at Malini through the mask’s sockets were warm brown, familiar and hazy with sleep. They fixed on Malini. Focused.

“Malini,” Priya whispered.

Rage came over Malini like a tide. She kneeled over Priya, her knees and hands against wet stone. Those eyes through hollows of wood looked up at her in sorrow.

Why did she dream Priya sorrowful? What a cruel lie to gift herself. It made her angrier still.

“I felt you in the trees,” Malini said, her voice shaky with anger. “You should have faced me. Isn’t that my right? After what you did to me, after you stabbed me with a thorn knife, don’t I deserve the right to aim a saber of fire at your heart in return?”

“You did hurt me,” Priya said. She said it like she wanted to soothe Malini. As if any promise of Priya’s pain could be a comfort . “Malini, you did. I was in the trees and you reached me, your soul to mine, piercing me through.”

A wild fear ran through Malini. That she had burned Priya’s skin away. That beneath that mask there was nothing, only gristle, or only flowers.

“Show me your face,” Malini demanded. “Don’t hide beneath masks. Show me.”

Priya was moving too slowly, hands rising gently, skimming close to Malini’s arms. So Malini reached for the mask herself.

The mask blistered her fingers. Not a mask of plain wood, or even a mask of sacred wood, but a mask of fire—

Her hands were burning. She was screaming, weeping, and Priya was whispering her name—strange, sweet whispering that was not wanted and yet terribly wanted, that cut harsher than any blade because of its softness, the way it was a balm. Malini could not stand it. Could not. She said more words, poisonous, furious words.

“You did this to me,” she gasped. “You’ve changed me. What rot have you forced between my ribs? Why do I dream of you?”

“I don’t know,” Priya said, tender, tender. “I don’t know. Forget me, Malini. Forget me—”

“How could I?” Malini snapped. Heart pounding, a wild bird caged in her chest. “How dare you be here in my dreams, and not under my hands, not where I can really hurt you?”

The mask was gone, and she could see Priya’s face again. Priya’s eyes held no guilt, no shame, not even sorrow anymore—only implacable determination, hard as stone.

“Malini,” Priya said again. “If there had been any other way, I wish, but there wasn’t —”

Malini pressed a hand roughly against her mouth, her nose, to silence her. Priya struggled—her teeth snagged against Malini’s palm, then bit deeper. The pain was so bright it made Malini hiss out a breath and draw back her hand. Priya’s mouth was red.

“I don’t regret it,” Priya said, defiant now. “I’m sorry. I love you. I would do it again.”

Malini took her fiery hands and grasped Priya’s scalp, drew her up. Whispered against her lips—

She woke.

It was still daylight. She could see the sunlight pouring in through a gap in the tent curtain. Distantly, she heard Sahar’s voice in muted conversation. The air was heavy with the heat that gathered and settled after midday. It would break by evening.

She clenched her hands in front of her, pressed them to her eyes. She heard her own voice. Poison.

I can hurt you. I love to hurt you. Can’t you feel it? All I want is your throat under my hands.

One day, I will take great joy in seeing you dead.

That was good. That, at least, was good.

“You cannot act so impetuously,” Raziya said, her voice infuriatingly calm. “Lord Prakash was correct. If an emperor stood in your place, rather than an empress, he would have been offered the same counsel.”

“In any normal war I would agree,” Malini said. “But this is no normal war.”

“In the battle against your brother Chandra you allowed yourself to become his prisoner,” Lata said helpfully. “You could have died.”

“That was also no normal war,” Malini said.

“Tell me the shape of a normal war so I can ensure I recognize one when we meet it, Empress,” Raziya murmured. She touched a hand to her creased forehead, then lowered it. “I am sorry for my rudeness, but you cannot risk your life in this manner again.”

“Elder Priya has the power of the yaksa,” Malini said calmly. “I was sure she would recognize me and attempt to harm me through the forest itself. I was proved correct, and it allowed me to inflict harm in return. Sometimes a calculated risk is necessary.”

Raziya still looked unconvinced, but there was no more time to argue. One of the guards—a new Parijati addition named Sanvi—announced that Malini’s advisors were all arrayed in the council tent and waiting to receive her.

Malini had barely seated herself on her dais in the council tent when a single soldier rushed in. Her guards moved to protect her, but there was no need; he was Parijati, in her own colors, smoke and blood on his tunic, turning the white a dull rust in patches.

His eyes were wild and bloodshot. He was breathing shallowly, rapidly. For a moment his mouth moved without making any sound. Then finally, the words emerged.

“There are bodies,” he said. “And—something else.”

“Something else?” One of her military advisors had his brow furrowed. “Boy, what do you mean, something else ?”

“Things are growing,” the soldier said helplessly. “Please. I only know what I saw.”

Malini heard the distant sound of a conch. She rose to her feet.

“Show us,” she said.

To put Raziya’s worries to rest, she allowed Lord Khalil and his warriors to provide her an extra layer of defense as she approached Ahiranya’s forest. When she saw what waited for them, she was—despite herself—glad she had.

Soldiers had been impaled beyond the lines of trees.

Hundreds of bodies. She did not try to count them all. Even through thick soil and growing vines, their Parijati white-and-gold armor was visible. They hung skewered on living stakes of wood like festival flags—wavering, just slightly, in a breeze Malini could not feel.

One of their commanders had been pinned to a tree near the border of the forest, where fire had splintered a dozen trees to ruin. His body still wore his helm, but the face beneath it wasn’t visible. Leaves were growing from his eye sockets, lush and green. Where his jaw should have been were strangely pale ashoka flowers.

“Careful,” murmured Khalil. He tilted his head sharply to the right. Malini followed the line of his gaze.

There, the forest had grown thicker, darker, more expansive. Before her eyes, new trees emerged—narrow, twisted things.

Even from a distance she could see the rot on them. They were flesh-and-wood—their stench was carried on the breeze.

To touch them, to move through them, was to court the rot and a terrible death.

She could not send her soldiers in. She was not sure anything could compel them to go. No faith could blot out the carrion stink of blood and meat.

There could be no real siege of Ahiranya. Not with the weapons they had. Clearly no fire could burn the forest faster than Ahiranya could regrow and overgrow, flourishing with violent speed.

They needed better weapons. And if Malini wanted to save Parijatdvipa—if Malini wanted to not burn on a pyre of faith—she would need to find them.