Khalida helped Bhumika settle comfortably upon the floor cushions, beneath an open window that allowed in the smoke-tinged breeze.
She was surrounded by roses, growing in profusion in their clay and lacquered jars. Flowers, sweet and delicate, peeking from their thorny vines, twining from the gardens up to her windows. Soft, feather-leafed plants, dripping from the flat roof. Every single one had been grown by her own careful tending. By her hands—and most importantly of all, by her magic. Every time she breathed they moved with her, as if her own rib cage were their soil, the home for their roots.
There is power that is showy and fierce. And there is power grown slowly, and stronger for the time spent braiding its ancient strength. An old lesson from Elder Saroj. Bhumika held it in her mind’s eye as she waited.
“Ashok,” she whispered. “Come for me. And we’ll see who is stronger.”
MITHUNAN
The regent had been shouting for some time, demanding Commander Jeevan be brought to him. But there was no sign of the commander, or of any of the regent’s personal guard. Lord Santosh’s men were gone too, and no one could say exactly where they had gone, though one of the gatekeepers claimed they had left via the stables hours ago, fully armed.
Everything was chaos. Somehow Mithunan—no more than a lowly guard who kept watch on the walls, trained to shoot the occasional arrow and ring the bell for the changing hours, and not much more—had been given a sword and sent to fight.
And somehow, he’d found his neck in the hands of a rebel.
The rebel slammed him to the ground by the throat. Once. Twice. Released him. Above Mithunan, the rebel’s masked face wavered. Behind him, another mask appeared. Two of them.
The sound of a booted foot, striking a body to the ground. Three.
There were a lot more, beyond the mahal’s walls.
“Show us the way to the lady of the house,” said the kneeling rebel. “Or we kill you right now.”
He didn’t want to. It would be wrong. He knew that. But he could hear yelling, and the whistles of arrows falling. The thud and hiss of steel. He could hear the gasp of other guards, wounded and dying, around him.
He did not want to die.
To his left, one of his fellow guards was rising up on his elbows, gasping for breath. “We won’t do it,” the guard choked out. “Won’t—”
His words stopped. A wooden sword had been shoved into his chest. Around the hilt, his skin burned, blistering with heat.
Mithunan shuddered.
“So,” said the kneeling rebel, still watching him. “What will you do?”
“I’ll show you,” Mithunan said. Swallowed. “Please. Don’t.”
The rebel dragged him to his feet.
The wife of the regent had her own palace in miniature, in the central courtyard of the mahal. As Mithunan stumbled toward it, a strange burning knife at his back, he could only wonder at how the smoke and the fighting had transformed even the normally prosaic miniature fort of flowers. The trellises of roses, the white and yellow blooms upon the windows, all looked somehow thicker and darker. The green of the vines was deeper, almost oily with color. The window shutters were absurdly open. In place of lattice were leaves, entwined with shadows.
“It doesn’t look like much,” the smaller rebel muttered. A woman, by the sound of their voice.
The male rebel grunted in response.
Shoved his knife forward.
Mithunan felt nothing for a long moment. He looked down and saw the shaft of the blade protruding from his stomach, surrounded by blood, as if through a dream. Then he began to shake. Fell, as the knife was drawn free.
You should not have trusted rebels to spare you, he thought, and the voice in his mind sounded like his commander’s—a low, derisive rumble of judgment. They were always going to kill you. Fool lad.
“It will take you a while to die from that,” said the woman. She stepped over him.
But as the two rebels approached the rose palace, a rain of arrows was upon them suddenly—from the roof, the windows. They cursed and leapt, with terrifying swiftness, between the arrow-fall. It was like a dance.
And then the ground… shifted.
Flowers, jagged as glass. Thorns burrowing out of the earth, sharp as knives. As teeth.
He heard them as if through water. Saw them wavering, shifting as his vision failed.
The earth was swallowing the woman’s feet. She screamed, fighting it, but the gentle expanse of flowers the Lady Bhumika had planted with her own hands, long ago, had somehow consumed her up to the ankles. The ground was bloody around her.