Ah, spirits, Priya hoped Sima wouldn’t ask.
Finally, Sima said, “Gauri wants you to find Meena.”
“What?”
“Meena’s missing,” Sima said. “Hiding, I expect. I think she was very frightened.”
“She was,” Priya agreed. Sighing, she dropped her rag in the bucket. “I’ll go and find her.”
“I’ll finish your work,” said Sima. “And, Pri, if you need anything…”
“Yes?”
Sima kneeled down, taking up the sodden cloth.
“Then talk to me,” she said. “I owe you. That’s all.”
Priya made an effort to find Meena. Truly she did. But if the girl was crying in a corner somewhere, she’d likely turn up in her own time. After peering into a few small cloister rooms, once used to house the effigies of spirits—now empty and gathering dust—Priya discarded the task and took the opportunity to head where she’d wanted to go all along.
Beyond the cloister rooms, Lady Pramila’s study, the kitchen, the latrine, and the bathing room—not far from the living quarters that once belonged to the old temple elders—lay the triveni.
The triveni was a room open to the air, held up by huge pillars carved to resemble yaksa. They grasped the ceiling with vast arms. Three branches of the temple were accessible through the triveni: the forbidden northern chamber where the princess slumbered, and those to the west and the south. Between them were swathes of the sky, the sunrise entering unimpeded from the east. If one was unwary, they could step directly out onto the Hirana’s outer surface—and straight into all its dangers.
Priya was not unwary. She crossed the triveni’s surface, which was covered in deep, sweeping grooves intended to resemble water on a shore. She came to the plinth at the room’s center. Above the plinth was the roof, a circle carved in the center like a window to the sky. The plinth’s surface was wet, its pale stone rain-washed and glimmering.
As she had so many times before, she murmured a prayer and pressed her hands to the plinth’s surface. She lowered her head.
She remembered there had been fat cushions on the floor once, for the temple elders to sit upon comfortably. And there had been chandeliers hung from the ceiling, laden with candles. She remembered running between the cushions, a hand dragging her back from the edge, and another cuffing her around the ear. Behave or you’ll fall, you silly child.
She remembered the rasp of silk against the ground; a crown mask of varnished wood, glinting in the light. Her brother’s voice. The laughter of her other siblings, mingled together. That, and no more.
A noise broke her reflection: a crash, overloud, splintering the air. She raised her head with a jerk.
“Meena?”
The noise had come from the corridor ahead of her. The northern chamber. If the fool girl had gone toward the prisoner’s room…
Priya lifted her hands from the plinth and slipped into the corridor, which was dark, one mere torch guttering in its sconce. On the walls were stone reliefs of the yaksa at war, conquering the world with swords of thorn in the gnarled wood of their hands. The paint had peeled and faded long ago, but the images were still clear. The mythical temple elders of old stood by the side of the yaksa, staring at her through crown masks, featureless apart from their open chests, which were hollowed out, three streams of water pouring from them onto a battlefield of corpses.
Forcing herself not to hesitate—not to linger and stare, drinking in the stories with her eyes—Priya slipped past them, bare feet silent on the ground.
She paused suddenly. The floor was damp, and not with rain. The ceiling and walls were enclosed here. She kneeled. Touched the liquid and raised her fingers to her face. Wine.
Close—very close—came the sound of muffled sobs.
Priya turned her head.
The wall to her right was latticed, with perforations wrought into the shape of flowers. Through it, Priya saw cloth, heavy silk curtains wavering as if in a wind, partially torn from their hooks. A metal pitcher upon the ground, the source of the spilled wine. She leaned closer…
And met a woman’s eyes.
For a moment, Priya didn’t know where she was. She was in her own past. She was staring at another temple daughter, sprawled on the floor before her. She was staring at her own ghosts made flesh.
Wide dark eyes. The whites bloodshot with weeping. The eyebrows were thick and arched, the skin a pale teak. The sobbing eased, and Priya could hear the woman’s breath: a staccato rhythm, rattling and sore.
It was the breath that brought Priya back to herself. Left her back in her own skin, shaking on her knees.