The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 48 Varsha

VARSHA

The priest Mitul had asked Varsha for information. He had not told her what, exactly, she was meant to seek. Whenever she met him in the temple gardens or wrote him letters in the deep night, she told him a string of true tales that to her mind amounted to nothing. Stories of the squabbles between some of the women in the empress’s inner court. The coldness of the empress’s sage, Lata, who cared more for books and administration than she did for the finer things of court. And she told him about the soirees the women held, where they drank wine or sherbet, or smoked their pipes, and gossiped about nothing and everything. Local estates, who had birthed an heir and who had not, and what they thought of the empress’s choices.

Over time, she began to understand what these tales might be worth to him—how they could be mined for truth, raw and powerful, that could be used to shift the balance of power within the empire.

But it was not Mitul who taught her this. It was Deepa.

Deepa assisted Lata. Deepa was a highborn woman—a daughter of Lord Mahesh who served now at the border of Ahiranya. Her father had betrayed the empress once, but Deepa had been loyal to her. As a result, Deepa was a wealthy and powerful woman in her own right.

But she did not wield her power as the empress did—in jewels and swords and cold, knowing eyes. She was mild and gentle, and welcomed Varsha into her company with a smile. She was never annoyed when Varsha brought Vijay with her. Even through his crying or his sickness—and oh, Varsha wished someone had told her how often some babes could vomit—she allowed Varsha to accompany her on her tasks. Often they sat together in Deepa’s study, looking through messages from outlying city-states and from Parijati landowners, as they shared sliced fruit and laughter.

“You are very insightful,” Varsha once said to her. “Very clever indeed.”

Deepa blushed and said, “I was not my father’s favorite. Nor was I pretty. I had to notice things to survive.”

Perhaps Varsha’s life would have been better if she had been less pretty, less powerful, less loved. But she knew better than to say this. Instead she tried to learn by example. She listened, and began to understand the currents of power that flowed through the empire.

Then she heard it. Information like gold, or something more precious still.

She was feeding Vijay, tucked in a corner of Deepa’s study, when Lata entered. The sage did not even glance at her. She kneeled down by Deepa’s desk and began to speak hurriedly, her fingers tapping on the surface. Deepa’s eyes grew steadily more worried.

“… Dwarali land,” Lata was saying. “Lady Raziya will not accept it, Deepa, nor Lord Khalil. They will be at war with the empress before we know it.”

“Land—to the Jagatay?” Deepa frowned. “I can’t believe it. I—”

She stopped as Lata’s gaze fixed finally on Varsha. Varsha pretended not to notice. She brushed a hand gently over Vijay’s hair.

“She’s no trouble,” Deepa murmured.

Varsha did not wait to hear Lata’s response. She lifted Vijay from her breast, arranging her blouse as he fretted. Then she stood, and made her apologies, and left.

Ferment in Dwarali. Displeasure with the empress. Knowledge like gold.

She felt eyes on her back as she left, but she paid no attention to it. Her excitement was too big for such petty concerns.

The priest would want this knowledge from her, she knew.

But why , she thought, should I hand power to the priesthood? To another man in power?

She thought of the empress, and thought of what the empress had—power and allies of her own. In the cage of her life, Varsha clung to this new information, this small power she had… and then she exhaled and began to write.

She sent her letter—with a hefty bribe of jewelry for the courier—to Dwarali at dawn.

She would make her own allies. When the empress was gone, she would be her son’s regent. She would keep him safe.