The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 54 Ganam

GANAM

Ever since Priya had vanished, the yaksa had turned into monsters.

“They were always monsters,” Khalida whispered when he told her. She was sorting through the temple children’s laundry. She’d roped one of the youngest into the task of scrubbing, and Pallavi was doing a great job of not washing anything and simply swimming in the bucket.

“They can hear you even if you whisper,” he told her, and she glared at him and vowed not to speak to him again. She broke that vow seconds later, of course.

But the yaksa had become worse. Crueler. When Ganam and the others returned from Alor without Priya, Ganam had groveled. We couldn’t find the yaksa in Alor without her, ancient ones. We looked for her, searched, but she was gone. Please, forgive us. I fought her, I begged her to come home, but she broke my arm, fled from me. I don’t have the strength of a thrice-born; there was nothing I could do.

Please.

And still, the youngest yaksa, dragged free from Srugna’s soil by Priya’s own hands, had taken one of Ganam’s men and torn him apart like an insect. Ganam could still smell the blood, hear the screaming.

He pushed the thought away, and the dark nausea that came with it. He wasn’t much for wallowing, but it was hard to avoid it.

The yaksa often had their eyes on Ganam. Hungry. Desperate, maybe. He was their last twice-born. But he made a good show of his broken arm, telling them he was in pain. He could not fight with a broken arm, and he could not enter the waters again. What did they know of human suffering, human bones? It wasn’t hard to convince them.

When they left him alone, he did what Priya had begged him to and built paths.

It wasn’t easy. It was hard, winding the magic throughout the forest, bending routes that would lead Ahiranyi out of the country. Every attempt left him covered in sweat, nauseated with his mind full of roaring water. But he marked each path carefully, and spread the word with even more care: There were now ways out of Ahiranya. If people were quiet—if they traveled in small groups and took little with them—they stood a chance of escaping.

Common, normal people stood a chance of slipping away beneath the yaksa’s notice. He knew the rest of them didn’t. And yet he looked at the temple children and wanted more for them. He looked at Rukh and Padma and felt his heart turn over, hot like a coal.

It would be nearly impossible to get them away from Ahiranya without the yaksa noticing. He was pondering the problem, staring at the children, when Khalida gently touched his arm with a laundry-damp hand.

“You’re talking to me now?” Ganam asked.

“If you need help, Ganam, you should talk to us,” Khalida said. “To me.”

Fuck. Well, maybe he hadn’t been as subtle as he’d tried to be.

“The yaksa,” he said. “I wasn’t joking, they can see everything, hear everything.” At least when he’d been rebelling against the empire, he’d known when people were spying on him. People, he could spot. A god listening through the leaves was a trickier prospect. “Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t, but I’m not putting you all at risk.”

“I am afraid every day,” Khalida said, voice shaky. “Aren’t we all? If there is something I can do—if you are doing something to defy them—I want to do it. I want to help. Billu has said the same. There are so many of us, Ganam. Let us try.”

Ganam swore under his breath. He didn’t want to say yes, but the truth was he was tired. He needed the help. And who was he to decide who got to fight and who didn’t?

“The next time Billu needs supplies from the bazaar, tell him to get them himself,” he said. “And tell him if he sees anyone who wants out of Ahiranya to take them to the trees to the east—where the banyan grows. Tell them to wait there until nightfall. I’ll do the rest.”

Group after group of people fled Ahiranya through the paths Ganam built. Groups of strangers, thin and frightened, huddling between the trees, flinching when Ganam arrived without even a torch in hand to guide them. He led them to the paths—told them to go without looking back, to walk until they were free.

He wasn’t good at putting people at ease or persuading them to do what he wanted. But they were desperate folk, and even a big man with a broken arm telling them to run into the forest was better than nothing.

He returned one night to find Ashish waiting for him. That temple child, the oldest of them, was trembling.

“Khalida told me to wait for you,” he said, and Ganam cursed Khalida internally. Why was she involving the children? “Ruchi’s dying,” said Ashish. “The yaksa says she’s too weak to become once-born, and they won’t give her any more waters broken from the source. You need to help her.”

He went to the yaksa first. They were often on the Hirana, or in the Hirana, and today the waters of the sangam led him to the remains of the orchard. Three of the yaksa stood together. A fourth was kneeling, her body bare. The sight made him pause. He could see the shape of it—the curve of breasts, and the angles of hips and chest—and didn’t want to see any more, especially if he’d be gutted for it. But there was something strange about her torso. A redness; a sap more red than green.

“… fire,” one was saying, and the word made the trees shudder, recoiling.

“Felt the death…”

“What do I care of fire? Look what has become of me,” the woman yaksa was wailing, her voice jagged. “And it will come for you all, I know it. We changed the world for us, but the world is changing us back, and I cannot —”

The leaves rustled around him. Ganam froze.

“Leave,” said the yaksa with Ashok’s face. His gaze was flatter than ever—cold. “You are not welcome here.”

Ganam bowed his head. The yaksa glided past.

As soon as the yaksa was gone, he fled.

He had not asked for a vial of deathless water.

Too late now. There was no point begging the yaksa. He ran to Bhumika’s study and searched the room, clumsy and one-handed, until to his relief he found the last of the vials Priya had hidden, a cracked and half-full thing. It would have to do.

He went to the sickroom. Khalida and Shyam were by the woman’s bedside. Ruchi’s head rolled as she tried to look at him, so he walked into her line of sight.

“I have something for you, Ruchi,” Ganam said.

She tried to speak. Her mouth made no sound.

When he’d been a rebel against the empire, he’d seen other rebels die from the broken waters. Many had reached the point where no water could save them.

That was how Ruchi, hazy-eyed with pain, looked to him.

But he kneeled down by her charpoy anyway, gently raised her head in the cradle of his palm, and fed her the vial of deathless water.

“There,” he said, lowering her head. “Rest.”

Shyam leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on Ruchi. His face was bleak. Khalida stroked Ruchi’s hair. Ganam watched the oil lamp on the window. The flicker of the flame.

Ruchi was gone before the light died.

They were all running out of time. He knew that.

It wouldn’t be long until the yaksa flung him into the waters again. And he’d die. He was sure of it. Then the yaksa would turn to the children—fling them into the waters to see who’d rise and who’d drown. They would kill so many, and there would be no one left to protect them.

He caught Rukh alone.

“You know I’ve been building paths out,” he said. Rukh looked away. “Rukh, don’t lie. I know you’ve followed me.”

“I thought I was better at spying,” Rukh muttered.

“I’m afraid you’re shit at it,” Ganam said a little gruffly, to hide how he wanted to bury his face in his hands and never move again. Fuck the yaksa. And fuck Priya too for leaving this mess to him.

“Rukh,” he said. “It’s not going to be long until it isn’t safe here. You have to go. Take Padma.” Rukh opened his mouth, and he gripped Rukh’s arm with his good hand. Let his desperation bleed through. “Do it for Padma,” he said. “Survive. There’s no hope here.”

“How are we going to survive outside Ahiranya?” Rukh asked. “I’ve got rot. And Padma’s so small. We’ll die.”

“You’re stronger than you realize,” Ganam said. “I believe in you. Priya believed in you. Hold on to that, boy. You’ll make it through.”

“You’re just saying that to make me go,” said Rukh. “You don’t really think that. What about the others? Ashish? And the smaller ones? They should come too.”

Ganam shook his head.

“The yaksa watch them more closely than they watch you and her. You’re not temple children. Use that in your favor.”

Rukh frowned.

“We’ll go when we’ve got no choice,” said Rukh. “Not a second before. You can’t force me to run, Ganam. I won’t leave them. I’ve got to help them. They miss their families and they’re not strong yet, you know? Not like Priya is—was. They need me.”

“When I tell you that it’s time—”

“I’ll go,” Rukh said. “But not before.”

“Fine,” Ganam said. “Fuck. Fine.”

There was a blade still buried near the bower of bones. Something that could, perhaps, hurt the yaksa. Something that had hurt him.

He’d dig it out tomorrow. He’d ask Billu to carry it for him. It wouldn’t hurt Billu like it had hurt him. Rukh and the others were going to need all the protection they could get.