Rao was taken aback by her directness. “Who asks?”
“My… mistress asks,” she said haltingly, pausing before mistress, as if struggling to find the word she wished to use. “Are you Lord Rajan?”
“I am,” he said. “Tell me the name of your mistress.”
The Ahiranyi woman shook her head. “She told me to tell you that long ago she stole your knife. Not your dagger. Your knife.” The maid repeated this as if she’d learned it by rote. “And she wanted me to tell you that she was glad when you returned it to your sister and to her. The weapon gave her hope.” She met his eyes, the look ever so intent. “Perhaps you know my mistress now?”
“Come with me,” he said quietly, and pushed open the first door that came to hand. She followed him into a bathing chamber and he shut the door firmly behind them.
“How do I know you’re truly from her?” Rao asked roughly. Hope had cut his voice to shreds.
The maid shrugged, a single rise and fall of her shoulders. “I don’t know. Does anyone else know the tale I told you?”
Rao swallowed. “No one else living,” he managed. “But torture could have taken that story from her.”
“Well, it didn’t,” the maid said tersely. “And I don’t have long. I have to return to her, and I have questions for which she needs answers.”
“Tell me.”
“Can you save her?” the maid asked bluntly. “Can you get her out? Are you trying?”
“Trying, yes,” said Rao. “But the need for secrecy has made success… challenging. I am not sure I can free her,” he admitted with difficulty. “But I will continue to attempt to do so.”
“Fine. Prince Aditya,” she said. “He still lives? He’s well?”
“As far as the reports I have tell me,” said Rao. “He’s alive and well.”
“Does he have many supporters around him?”
“Maybe more than she hoped,” Rao said. “I did my best to guide all those who were trustworthy to where they needed to be.”
He did not mention his father’s painstaking work to unite the kingdoms of Parijatdvipa against the emperor, in Malini’s absence. Before the pyre, in the time when she’d first laid the groundwork for her machinations, she had written King Viraj a letter in fluent Aloran begging his help; had met with him in secret, with Alori’s assistance and Rao’s own, discussing her hopes and fears for rule under Aditya. His father had been nearly the first convert to her cause.
After Alori had burned, after Malini was imprisoned, his father had taken up the work. As had Rao, in his own small way.
But all of that was more than the maid needed to hear. He did not know if the woman was aware he was truly a prince of Alor—but frankly, he did not want her to be.
She was leaning forward, urgent now. “Who? Titles, at least, if not names.”
“Lords from Parijat itself. Several low princes from Saketa, though the high prince has not been approached, or his closest favorites. Their men took the long way to Srugna, skirting the imperial borders. There’s no sign they were spotted. You be sure to tell her that. She’ll want to know.”
“Who else? There must be more.”
“Are you sure you’ll remember this?”
“I’ll remember,” the maid said, an edge of impatience to her voice. “Go on, my lord.”
“Dwarali’s sultan has sent emissaries on his behalf, with their own horsemen.” And hadn’t they been conspicuous, on their pure white mounts with saddles of blood red. But the maid did not need to know about that either. “We have strong numbers. And Srugna’s own king has thrown his lot in with us.”
If the maid was impressed or alarmed by any of this, if she understood the implications of what he was telling her, she showed none of it on her face. He admired her impassivity. “Fine. I’ll tell her so.”
“And how is she? How does she fare?” Rao asked, and hoped he did not sound as he felt, in his heart.
The maid gave him a measured look. “She is not well. She’s been sick for a long time.”
“Has General Vikram arranged her a physician?”
The maid gave him a tight smile and shook her head. “The general has limited power over her care. On the emperor’s orders, I’m told. Besides, it’s her medicine that is killing her. She knows it’s so.”
“And who are you to her?”
“Her only attendant, my lord. And the one ensuring her poisoning does not continue.”