“And how,” he asked, “does that benefit you?”
“Ah, my lord,” said the maid. “I do it for the love and loyalty in my heart alone.”
There was a thread of truth in that quip, he thought. Something in the tilt of her chin, the shape of her mouth as she said the words, told him so. Malini had a way of winning people whether they liked it or not. And yet it wasn’t the entire truth, of course.
“Have you anything I can use to free her?” Rao asked. Prem’s efforts had failed. He had nothing but this—the hope that a maid carried a possibility and an answer. “Any knowledge, any information—any allies I can seek?”
Prem would have laughed at him for asking a maidservant for allies. But people who were invisible to others often knew far more than his highborn kind respected or understood.
“I don’t know.” The maid looked away from him as footsteps sounded in the corridor, then faded. “You shouldn’t try to storm the temple, or anything equally foolish. There’s no easy way up and down the Hirana. Its surface is dangerous. And there are guards, too. You’d have to make your way through the general’s mahal, across the grounds, and climb without taking the safe path marked by the rope. You wouldn’t be able to do all that. Not even with an army.”
“But you can,” Rao said.
A wry smile curled her mouth. “No one notices maids, my lord. And I’m Ahiranyi. I know the Hirana better than you ever could. But the princess cannot climb down the Hirana to her freedom, and I can’t simply walk her out via the gates.”
“She sent nothing for me?”
“Nothing but the information I’ve given you, of her health and her questions.”
“She gives me no way to save her?”
“I believe she hoped you’ll find one on your own. My lord.”
That startled a laugh from him. Her Zaban was coarse, her expression hateful. He found himself liking her and was mildly appalled with himself.
“Would you offer me your name?” he asked.
“Priya,” she said, after a reluctant pause.
Priya. A common name across all of Parijatdvipa. A sweet name for round-cheeked little girls and meek brides alike. This woman was neither.
“Priya,” he repeated. “Thank you for coming to me. Please, give your mistress a message from me in return.” A breath. “Tell her she must hold on to hope. Tell her that her work isn’t yet done. Tell her—I will wait for word from her, and I will continue to try to save her. And tell her…” He blinked, not wishing to show his emotions before this woman. “I am her loyal servant. As I promised her. I have not forgotten, and never will forget, the vow we made over a knife.”
She’d placed the cloth flat first, smoothing it down over the lacquered table with her fingers. The knife had followed. Compared to the table and the muslin, the knife was crude and ugly, unembellished, its edge a sharp and serviceable point.
But it was his knife.
He had not called for wine or tea or tall glasses of lassi or sherbet, dripping condensation on a hot afternoon. There would be no servants to disturb them. He had lived in the imperial mahal ever since he was a boy of eight, sent to foster ties between Alor and Parijat, and in all that time he had never been alone in a room with the imperial princess.
He was now.
They were quiet, for a long moment.
“My father is dead,” said Princess Malini.
He almost jumped, when she spoke.
“I—I know. I’m sorry for your loss, princess.”
“And my brother,” she said. “My kind, honorable brother is gone, where no one can find him. Chandra is the only one left. To light my father’s pyre. To sit upon his throne. I am sure when you took Aditya to the garden of the nameless, you never intended for this to happen.”
“No, princess. I did not. But the ways of the nameless aren’t in mortal control. One way or another, Aditya would have found the garden. And he would have heard our god. It is his fate, written in the stars of his birth.”
“I don’t believe that is the way things are,” said the princess. “That we have no choices. And if fate must be star-burned into us, then I don’t believe we can’t bend to the needs of our times and turn from our prescribed path.” She touched her fingertips to the dull side of the blade. There was still ash on her skin, from where she’d touched her father’s remains, in a final ritual act of mourning. “I want to see Chandra removed from a throne he shouldn’t have. And I want Aditya to rise to it. Can you help me?”