She could feel Malini considering it. Malini had the needle-flower now. Priya had told her to take it exactly for that reason. She could leave Priya here and walk to the bower of bones and begin her journey to Srugna. If she was swift, perhaps she would even catch up with Rao and all the other men.
“I’m dying anyway,” Priya added. “What does it matter?” I’ve served my purpose.
“What indeed,” Malini said, in a voice that was too sharp by far. Suddenly she wasn’t sitting back against the tree trunk. She was leaning over Priya, gaze intent, something fierce in the curl of her mouth. That held Priya’s attention, even through the stupor of fever. Malini was often vulnerable, or cunning, or as blank as glass. But fierce? No. She was rarely that.
“You don’t have to believe that I care for you, Priya. You only have to believe that I need you. And I do need you.”
“You have the needle-flower. You know the way.”
“I need you,” Malini repeated. And there was so much in those words—in the set of her lips. “So, what can I do to ensure that you live? Do you know a healer?”
Priya thought of Gautam and how they’d parted. “No,” she said.
“Then how can I help you?”
A shiver racked her. Cold. She was beginning to feel cold. That was a bad sign with fever.
“There is someone out there who will save me.” The strength in her was fading, but she knew what she’d sensed in the waters: the sangam, the forest, intertwined. She’d sensed other kin. Perhaps even thrice-born, because their presence had felt nothing like her twice-born siblings—somehow sharper in the sangam, distant and brighter all at once.
“Where?”
Priya tried to speak. Swallowed. She lifted a hand, pointing the way, and marks carved themselves into the trees in response. Her heart raced.
“Through there. Follow—marks on the trees. Like fingers.”
“How helpful,” Malini said. But even in her daze, Priya could hear the fear beneath her wry tone. “Here,” she went on. “Lean on me again.”
It took a long time to lift Priya to standing once more, and Malini was panting when it was done, wan with exhaustion. But she held Priya with a grip like iron.
“It wasn’t my nursemaid who told me tales of Ahiranya’s yaksa and magic waters,” she said. “No self-respecting maid would risk her position like that.”
“No?” Priya thought she knew something of what it meant to be a self-respecting maid.
But Malini only smiled at that, a thin, tight smile, even as she stumbled forward on unsteady feet, and said, “No. No normal maid who has to worry about losing her position. It was my teacher, my sage who told me. She educated me. As the women of my mother’s family were educated. As princes are. And she taught me this too: no wars are won without allies.”
“Your allies are at the arch.”
“But I’m here, in this forsaken forest. And so are you.”
“Are we fighting a war right now, Malini?”
“Yes,” Malini said. “We always are.”
RAO
They waited at the bower of bones for a long, long time in the dark of the moon. They waited as Hiranaprastha began to glow with festival lights, which grew bright enough for the glow to be visible even through the dense forest. They waited as dawn approached, rosy-fingered, for Malini to come.
Rao had promised to wait through the night for Malini, and he did so, along with Lata and Prem and all of Prem’s men. Day came. The city continued to flicker, alight with both sun and flame. Surely the festival was over? But Rao knew nothing of Ahiranyi traditions. He couldn’t be sure.
He kept on waiting.
The men were restless. One of the messengers in Prem’s service—a man used to traveling across swathes of the empire—entertained the others by telling them about the strange nature of the seeker’s path.
“Srugna lies beyond the woods, on every map. It’s a long journey, usually. Weeks. But Ahiranyi’s forest doesn’t always obey normal rules, and on the seeker’s path time moves differently,” the messenger told them.
“Differently?” another man asked, clearly skeptical.
The messenger shrugged. “All I can tell you is that if you travel this path, you’ll make it to Srugna in days, not weeks. The locals say the yaksa built it. For all I know, they did.”
“Does it demand a price?”
Rao and the others turned. Lata was standing back, in shadow beneath the trees. He couldn’t quite make out her expression.