The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 33 Priya

PRIYA

There was no one to bully Priya into taking a palanquin now that Bhumika was gone. The yaksa certainly didn’t care. She walked through the city of Hiranaprastha in her plainest sari. She didn’t need a palanquin or gold or the garb of a temple elder to demonstrate her authority, after all—flowers grew where she walked. She was pretty sure that was enough.

The city was still bustling. It seemed like nothing—not even the return of their gods—could make the people of Ahiranya stop the difficult business of surviving. Priya passed familiar food stalls and homes, pink-lanterned buildings, and families sitting on verandas, shaded from the rising heat of the sun. The crowds parted around her, faces uneasy. Some bowed.

There were many, many more people with rot than there had been before. There were effigies to the yaksa everywhere, surrounded by offerings. Glints of gold, and fruit black with ants. She bowed her head too as she passed. She’d been told to show reverence, and she would.

She reached her destination. The guards at the gates of the haveli clearly recognized her, because one paled and fumbled with his saber, lowering it as he kneeled.

“I’m here to speak with Lord Chetan,” she said. “Get him for me.”

They did. The first guard ran ahead to warn the household. By the time Priya had crossed the relatively small courtyard and was inside the open hall of the house, where a pool of flowers-in-water sat beneath colonnades open to the sky, there were maidservants bowing, and offers of sherbet or wine. The highborn lord of the house was hurrying out, adjusting his brocade jacket into place. She must have woken him from rest.

He didn’t look well. There were great shadows under his eyes. And his arms—partially concealed under his jacket—were so rot-riven they were more fern and vine than flesh. He swallowed, visibly frightened, his eyes all black pupil.

“High Elder,” he said, sweeping a bow. “How can my household assist you?”

Priya felt supremely uncomfortable. She tried not to let it show.

“Lord Chetan,” she said. “I need your help.”

He ushered her to a seat. She told him what she required: more warriors and guards. Anything his household could spare. Weapons. Money. Assistance in maintaining some semblance of government. He poured her sherbet, and a small glass for himself. They both left them untouched.

“Elder, anything you require, I will give. Anything the yaksa need I will hand over wholeheartedly. The yaksa allowed me to live, when my loyalty was lax. I will not fail them again.” His hands, in his lap, were trembling. “All my fellow highborn will feel the same. I can assure you. If you wish me to speak to them on your behalf…”

“I’d be grateful,” Priya said, a wave of relief washing over her. Bhumika had told her, once, about the connections Lord Chetan had. This was exactly what Priya had been hoping for. “I’m pleased, Lord Chetan,” Priya said to him earnestly. “I know the yaksa will be too. They won’t allow your rot to progress further. In fact… will you give me your hand?”

He held it out, and she took it. Closed her eyes. She felt for the rot in him—that blooming kernel.

She opened her eyes.

“The yaksa have frozen its course,” she said. “Nothing new grows.”

“Thank you, Elder,” he said, and withdrew his arm. Visibly, he hesitated. Then said, “There is a boy in your—care. A temple child. My son, Ashish.”

A dark feeling shuddered through Priya. Oh.

Temple children were meant to have no family but the temple. But she didn’t tell him so, only nodded her head, clasping her own hands now.

“Is… is he well, Elder? His mother worries for him.” His voice wavered. “I know the yaksa may use him as they see fit…”

“He is well,” Priya said softly. “He’s a smart boy. Stubborn. He’s good with the younger children. He’s well taken care of, Lord Chetan.”

The man blinked rapidly, his eyes wet.

“Thank you,” he said, then cleared his throat. “If I may ask. I beg of you, Elder—one small favor.”

Rukh found her. She was sitting in the empty storage room that had been her sickroom again. She’d left her bedding in there. Sometimes her rooms just felt a little too crowded and she liked to come here and be alone. Rukh always knew where to find her, though, and he turned up soon enough.

“You look sorry for yourself,” he said. “Very grim. Like a proper war leader.”

“Shut up,” she said. “How did you find me?”

“People are always watching you,” he said with a shrug. “I just asked. What’s wrong?”

She met his gaze; his eyebrows were furrowed, his face serious. He was so young still—it felt wrong to pour her problems into his ear. She wished Sima were here. She missed her so much it was like an ache.

“Adult problems,” she said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Why don’t you have a drink?”

“Don’t tell me to have a drink!” She reached out to play-act at cuffing his ear and let him leap out of the way.

He grinned at her. “What about Billu’s hashish?”

“Shhh. I can’t do any of that and you know it.”

“Why not?”

“I might be needed, Rukh.” She sighed and drew her knees up so she could prop her forehead on them and groan in a proper dramatic fashion. “I’m always needed.”

She heard the scuff of his footsteps. He sat on the ground beside her, mirroring her. When she raised her head his own knees were drawn up, his chin on his hands.

“What are you holding?” Rukh asked.

Priya unclasped her fist. It felt stiff. She’d been grinding her fingers down tight all the way back from the haveli, across Hiranaprastha.

In her palm lay a little ribbon—a knot of red and orange cloth, bound with a bead shaped like an eye. Just large enough to be hooked around a wrist and tied tight. “It’s a good-luck charm,” she said. “Made by a boy’s mother to keep him safe.”

It was from the father too. Maybe he’d made it and lied to her. She didn’t know. But she’d seen the grief and fear in his eyes.

“It’s pretty,” Rukh observed.

“It is.” She ran her thumb over it: the soft cloth, the knots in it. “Maybe it would be better not to give it to him at all. Maybe it would be better to… to let him focus on getting strong. This might just visit hurt on him. Remind him of the family he can’t go back to.”

Rukh pressed a hand over her own. The roots under his skin were a sharp pinprick that made her breathe deeper, feeling the heat of the air in her lungs. She raised her head properly and looked at him.

“You need to do it,” he said. “Whatever hurt that boy feels… he’s going to have to be strong enough to stand it, isn’t he? If he’s a temple child.”

“And if he’s not strong enough?” Priya whispered.

“Then you’ll be here,” Rukh said. “You’ll protect him. As you’ve protected me.”

Priya huffed a laugh. “When did you get so grown up?”

“When you were away,” he said, his smile a little lopsided. “And maybe a little when you got back, too.” He drew away his hand, sprawling out against the wall. “I’m really glad you’re back, Priya.”

She brushed a hand over his hair. He let her.

“Me too,” she said.

She gave Ashish the braided thread. Then she kissed Padma goodbye and ordered the other children to listen to Khalida. “Or I’ll do something awful to punish you,” she’d said. “Like shave your eyebrows off.”

“You’d never,” Pallavi said stoutly. Her fear had worn off fast. Behind her, still seated on his bedding, Ashish was watching quietly, clutching the braid of ribbon around his own wrist.

Priya rolled her eyes.

“Just behave .”

Priya had dressed in a serviceable salwar kameez. She bound her hair back in a tight knot, so tight it made her head ache a little. She appreciated the pain, though. It was grounding.

There was a yaksa being reborn in Srugna. It was time for Priya to find her, as Mani Ara had bid her to.

She and Ganam walked together to the bower of bones, a cadre of soldiers following behind them. One carried a box of vials for her, each glowing blue with water broken from the source. Many were guards and warriors who’d been trained by Jeevan, and ex-maidservants with arrows and scythes. And there, at the very edge of the group, were a few of the rot-riven outsiders who now lived in the mahal.

“We’ve lost nearly all of our mask-keepers,” Priya said. “Only Ganam remains. I am the only temple elder left. We need more strength. More power. And this is the weapon we have.” She held up a vial of deathless waters.

She explained the deathless waters to them, and what drinking them broken from the source would mean.

“When you’re a temple child like I am and you survive passing through the waters, you gain strength and magic,” said Priya. “But surviving’s not promised.”

Murmurs and lowered heads, from her listening crowd. They knew how many had died trying to pass through the waters and rise.

“When you drink water broken from the source,” Priya went on, “you gain some of that strength. For a while. But it’s poison. Eventually it kills you. Unless you become once-born, there’s no chance of living out your full life. I won’t force you to drink. But if you’re willing to—you have the chance to carry this with you. To drink it when you need strength.”

A deep breath. “And if you must drink… this is your chance to grow strong and pass through the deathless waters. To perhaps become thrice-born, one day, like me. I promise you that chance, even if I can’t promise you your life.”

She held the vial out. “You don’t need to decide now. But you can carry the waters with you.”

“Elder.” A rough voice. One of the outsiders. A man, she remembered, called Shyam. “Would you trust those of us who came from beyond Ahiranya with this?”

A rumble of unease from the crowd. Priya met his eyes.

“I want to,” she said. “But tell me why I should.”

“I fought in the war,” Shyam replied. “I saw what you did. You’re stronger than the empire.” He said it bluntly, fiercely. Like he believed it. “I’d rather risk my life for the home you’ve given my family than side with an empire that left us to die.”

“That’s enough for me,” Priya said.

“If you turn on us, we’ll kill you, of course,” Ganam added. Priya had to work very hard not to roll her eyes.

They took the vials from her.

She led them to the seeker’s path. Above them, the bones on their ribbons wavered and spun. Some, absurdly, had sprouted flowers. It was like being in a macabre highborn lady’s garden.

Priya met Ganam’s gaze.

“How does it feel to be twice-born?” Priya asked.

“Terrible,” Ganam replied quietly. “The price was too high.”

“Ganam,” she said. He stopped, then turned, a questioning look in his eyes. “You don’t have to try to become thrice-born.”

“I do,” he said. “For Kritika. For all of them. I have to try. They’d want me to.”

“And what do you want?”

He shook his head.

“What good is wanting going to do either of us? Come on, Priya. Walk with me. Let’s talk about other shit until we get to Srugna.”

All these new paths, and here they were following the oldest of them.

“Can you feel any Srugani?” Priya asked Ganam, after a time. Parijatdvipa had left armed forces at Ahiranya’s borders. There were many in Srugna’s forests, too.

She could feel them. But she wanted to give Ganam the chance to test his own skill.

“I can feel mosquitoes biting me,” Ganam said, hacking his way through the snarl of branches that riddled their path. Once, he would have needed a hand scythe for that work. But now he only needed the sweep of his hand. His twice-born magic made the branches wither and splinter around him, parting to allow the two of them to pass. “That’s what I can feel.”

Priya rolled her eyes. He couldn’t see it, but that wasn’t the point. Derision bled into her voice when she said, “Can you feel the warriors waiting for us?”

“Not the way you can,” he said. “So maybe you do the seeing for both of us. I’ll focus on clearing the way.”

She could have cleared the blockage with a breath, with a single brush of her mind, bending the green on the path around them to her will. But Ganam’s shoulders were bunched with tension, and she was pretty sure he needed this: an outlet, a focus. Something to home in on that wasn’t the fight that lay ahead of them.

“Fine,” she said. “But don’t exhaust yourself, all right? Your strength is going to be needed.”

A crash. A rumble. A tree fell to the side, vanishing through the haze that edged the seeker’s path—where time melted and changed before returning to its normal shape.

“You’ll be fine,” Ganam said. “You don’t need my brawn. I’ve seen you in a fight, Priya.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

She could hear the warriors behind her, clutching their scythes and sabers. Some of them were shivering with fear. Others looked nothing but determined. None of them had drunk from their vials yet.

She closed her eyes for a single breath, feeling the song and swell of the green. “A whole contingent of Srugani warriors,” she murmured. “Armed with maces, mostly. But some have sabers. And some have arrows. And others… fire. But not mothers’ fire.”

“Fire’s fire,” Ganam muttered. “We could wait here until the patrol passes.”

Priya shook her head.

“They’re not moving,” she said. “Their camp is at the end of the seeker’s path. We’ll need to go through them.”

They were nearing the end of the path—near Srugna itself, where the forest receded and its power began to gently ebb. She could feel the warriors arrayed, waiting for them.

Behind her, one of her soldiers took a step forward. She was timid, square-faced and strong but trembling.

“Elder,” the woman—the girl —whispered. “What do we do now?”

Priya could hear everything, feel everything. The uneasy shifting from foot to foot of her own soldiers; the creak of hands on scythe handles and bows; the drag of heavy boots from beyond the forest. The grunt from a throat as someone hefted a mace. The eyes watching the forest. Waiting.

“We start,” she said, addressing the people huddled close around her—trying to sound authoritative. Trying to sound ready. “By pretending to be prey.”