She managed to enter the palace of illusions easily enough. All it took was approaching the servants’ entrance confidently with a broom in hand—stolen from the veranda of an unfortunate household—and she was allowed in by the disinterested guards. After that, she was just another unnoticed maidservant slipping through corridors as distant sitars played and women warbled love songs.
Lord Rajan—or Rao, or the nameless prince, or whatever Malini wanted to call him—came to meet her. She’d asked one of the men for him—guards, she assumed, though they smoked and slumped outside his door far more calmly than any guards on duty she’d seen before—and he’d come, dragging on his jacket, as if he’d stumbled straight out of bed.
“What is it? What did she say?”
Priya told him. At the end, he gave her an incredulous look.
“I can’t simply leave her.”
“It’s what she wants you to do. She said Aditya needs you.”
Rao assessed her, his gaze taking her face in, as if he could read something in the look she wore, in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her mouth. “Yes,” he said finally. “He does. But he needs her, too. Aditya is… not like her.”
She didn’t know what she’d expected of a man living in a brothel. But Rao was like a doe: gentle-eyed, but not without reflexive cunning.
“I told you she’s sick,” Priya said. “I… truthfully, I was afraid she’d die. And I am still not sure she won’t. She can’t help you. She doesn’t have the strength to escape. And she has no one she can trust in her prison but me.”
I could help her escape, Priya thought, as Rao’s face crumpled a little and he brought a hand to his forehead. I could bring her here to this man. It wouldn’t be easy to get her down the Hirana, not as she is. But I could do it. Maybe—certainly—she’d be safer.
But Priya’s first loyalty wasn’t to Malini. It was to herself, and to Bhumika, and to Ahiranya.
Rao’s throat worked. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as someone can be.”
“I cannot leave her to risk death alone,” he said.
“She’s not alone,” said Priya. “She has me.”
The prince bowed his head. “It’s not enough.”
“It’s more than most people get,” said Priya. “But… I promise, for what it’s worth, that I’ll do everything I can to keep her alive. I’ll use what I have to help her survive until you or your prince can return for her.”
It was more of a promise than she should have made—more feeling and more debt than she wanted to give Malini—but could Priya really leave her now, when she’d stayed up two nights watching her sleep, terrified the fool woman would die?
“I’ve done my duty by speaking to you,” she said. “But now—I have to return to her. My lord.” She bowed her head in acknowledgment.
He said nothing in return.
RAO
Prem was sitting alone, a great shawl wrapped around him despite the heat, an open carafe of wine in his hands. He was drinking directly from the bottle, a look of contemplation on his face.
“The horses are ready,” announced Prem. “My men are arranging provisions. I tried to meet with General Vikram to give him my farewells, but praise the mothers, he’s not receiving visitors at the moment. Share a drink with me?”
Rao leaned against the wall. “Princess Malini may be dying,” he said. It was all he could manage.
Prem’s eyes widened, then narrowed, in comprehension. “The maidservant was from her,” he said. “I should have known the girl was one of her spiders. Gods, that woman has a way of collecting people, does she not?” Prem turned and thunked down his wine. He tugged the collar of his tunic. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to save her,” said Rao. “But I know that isn’t possible. And it isn’t what she wants us to do anymore.”
“Good. It isn’t what I want us to do, either.” When Rao gave him an incredulous look, Prem shook his head. “Don’t stare at me like that. You know there’s no easy way to save her. And brave as she was at court, as excellent as she was for putting together Emperor Aditya’s cause, she’s not… vital.”
“Is she not?” Rao murmured.
“Aditya will come back for her, Rao. When the war’s won.”
“He can’t if she dies.”
“Then she’ll be remembered for her sacrifices, and Emperor Aditya will honor her,” said Prem firmly. “The promise of death awaits us all, Rao. Some of us get a good death and some don’t. At least she won’t die burning.”