“Stay still,” said Priya. She raised one hand in the air.
The earth splintered, grass bending upon itself as thorns like spears shoved through the sod. Malini held herself perfectly still as they drove up through the ground around her feet—as the trees creaked, as if they were being drawn by some terrible gravity to bend toward the place where the rebels stood.
The rebels raised their own hands. Pushed Priya’s work down.
“That won’t work, Pri.” A man’s voice. Low, even. One of the rebels stepped forward. “We’ve all drunk from the vials today.” Eyes black, shadowed by the mask. “Put your hand down and come along obediently, hm? You’re wasting your energy. You have to see that.”
His words were echoed by the other rebels, with a susurration like wind through leaves. Obey. Obey.
Priya’s hand trembled. She opened it to the sky, the trees groaning dangerously. In response, the masked rebel tilted his head and a root forced its way from the ground, lashing tight around her wrist.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “But I will if I need to.”
“Ashok,” she said. “Let me go.”
“Kneel,” he said, and there was that whispered echo again. That chorus.
One of the thorns in the ground snapped. Ricocheted. With her free hand, Priya shoved Malini farther behind her. Priya made a noise that sounded as if she’d been punched, and then in the silence that followed, Malini saw a rivulet of blood snake down Priya’s hair, staining her neck and the back of her blouse.
Priya looked back wildly at Malini.
Malini was struck, in that moment, by their shared helplessness.
Then Priya turned away. Slowly, she kneeled.
The rebel took a step forward. For all his size, his footsteps were almost soundless upon the ground. He removed his mask, revealing a face that was all angles, brushed dark at the jaw by stubble. He did not look at Malini, or the other rebels. He seemed to see nothing but Priya.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he said.
“But you have,” she said. Her voice was strained, as if she were pushing against a great weight.
“I will die, Priya. All of us will die.” He kneeled down too. “Do you want that?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then tell me the way,” he cajoled. “Show me. We can go together.” He held his hand out, palm open. “I’ve bested you. I’ve proved myself stronger. It’s only right.”
A sharp shake of Priya’s head.
“Will you really deny me my rights as your temple brother? You would deny me the chance to give Ahiranya the freedom it needs to survive?”
Of course. Of course he was a fellow temple child, Malini should have known. Should have pieced together the nature of this. But she didn’t move. She listened, and hoped there was an outcome from this better than all the dire ones that seemed to lie before them.
“Would I deny you the right to make us into exactly what the elders feared we’d become?” Malini could not see Priya’s face, but she could imagine what expression Priya wore: the bared teeth, the challenging set to her jaw. “I would.”
“You’re acting like a child,” he said. “You know what needs to be done. You know Ahiranya’s only chance is freedom from the emperor’s control and his ideology. Our only chance to be more than rot, degraded by Parijatdvipa’s idea of us, made smaller day by day, year by year—is this. The deathless waters. Their blood on our righteous hands. And yet you still refuse.”
“I’m not refusing,” snapped Priya. “But I won’t give it to you like this. Ashok, not like this. Not the way you want it.”
The man—the rebel, the temple son—named Ashok stood, drawing himself to his full height.
“Then how?” he asked, voice dangerously calm. “You want me to grovel, Priya? Maybe there will be time to make a world and a rule more like you want in the aftermath. But right now, you have a weapon you have no idea how to properly use. And it’s mine by right.”
“I want you to talk to me. I want you to use your reason. But you’ve backed yourself into a corner, haven’t you, Ashok? You’re killing everything you love. Yourself. Your followers. And you can’t see any way out but this.” Priya’s head was still bleeding freely, dripping onto the soil. “Maybe I should thank you after all for abandoning me. If I’d stayed with you, you’d be killing me too. At least now you’re only hurting me.”