A retinue sent to kill a man in his bed. They did not know, he suspected, that Aditya had any followers congregating in his service. If they had, they would not have come in such small numbers. They would have brought greater weapons of war.
Nonetheless, if Aditya’s followers had not left the lacquer gardens as the scout had warned them to; if they had remained and followed the way of the priesthood, allowing the tide of fate to wash over them…
Rao looked at Malini. She did not look back.
Kneeling at their feet, the warrior who’d spoken was making slow, deliberate motions: reaching for his flint, for the arrow, for the basic preparation of oil and ghee that had been hastily bottled before their descent. The others were doing the same. In the tense silence, Aditya made his way free from the crowd. He had a bow in his hands, and a quiver of arrows at his back.
It was a relief to see him stand forward so, with his shoulders straight and his head raised, his eyes narrowed as he stared through the night gloom at the monastery below them.
He held his hand up, making an unmistakable gesture. Hold fast.
They waited. Below there were cries, and the clash of swords. As planned, the few soldiers who remained below turned on Chandra’s men. It was a lure. Let the warriors of Parijat think they had come upon the monastery unaware. Let them think they would overcome Aditya, and send him to his slaughter.
Let them flood deeper into the lacquer gardens.
Aditya’s hand remained up. Hold fast. And Rao, who held no bow, held nothing fast but his breath inside his throat. Even his heart was frozen inside him, waiting for the inevitable cue.
Light the arrows. Set the monastery ablaze. Ensure that all of Chandra’s men—and all the poor, priestly sacrifices who’d remained behind—burned.
Hold fast.
He waited. Aditya did not lower his hand.
There was a rustle of unease. The noise below was growing fiercer.
Any moment, they were going to be spotted. The Parijati warriors would see them and turn their weapons upward, catching their men with arrows through the throat, the belly. The Parijati had the disadvantage, low in the valley as they were, but Rao still came out in a cold sweat at the thought.
One of the lords muttered an oath, moving as if to lower Aditya’s hand for him, to make the motion that commanded death—but Aditya said, in a voice like the coldest rain, “Would you burn priests? Hold, brother.”
The lord flinched. Stopped.
Aditya was imposing, in profile. Gaze like ice, his jaw a sharp line, austere and remote. He looked more like himself—like the Aditya Rao had grown up alongside, a prince of Parijat, a man who had never been anything but unfailingly honest, a scrupulous follower of honor and the noble code—than he had since the night he had heard the nameless speak.
Rao knew Aditya, this Aditya, well enough, to know what would come next. They were well placed here, to race down the valley, to slaughter warriors aplenty. It would be a purer path than the one planned. It would result in the deaths of many of their own men whom they could ill afford to lose. And yet the thought of it was a relief. It was a noble kind of war, and Aditya was a noble kind of emperor-in-waiting.
Rao was already reaching for his sword when Malini stepped forward. She had dropped the sacking and stood in nothing but her damp sari, her braid a black snake coiled at her throat. She strode forward as ugly cries intensified below them—the bellows of men murdering and men dying. Aditya went utterly still. Whatever he saw in his sister’s face held him fast.
“No man wants to kill his kin,” Malini said gently. “I understand that.”
She took Aditya’s bow from him. It was overlarge for her, but she held it steady.
“The priests of the nameless believe in fate,” she said, in clear common Zaban—loud enough for their men to hear her. Loud enough, Rao feared, for the men below to hear her too. But she did not flinch, and she did not protect herself. She stood tall. “The priests of the nameless built their garden of lac and resin. They knew this day would come to pass. Is that not so, Prince Rao? Do your priests know the path of fate?”
“They do,” he heard himself say, and knew he had condemned them.
“You will, perhaps, not wish to listen to the entreaties of a mere woman,” she said, in a voice that was even and calm and had no humility in it at all. “But I am a daughter of Parijatdvipa’s oldest line. A princess of Parijat. I am descended from the first mother of flame. My brother, the false emperor, tried to burn me alive, but I lived. I know the judgment of fire, and the price it demands. And here, in this dark, I hear the mothers. And I know it is my duty to ensure that fate is done.” She sucked in a deep breath, as if fortifying herself, as if she carried a burden of unfathomable weight—and turned and looked at the kneeling warrior, who stared up at her, silent and rapt. “Light my arrow,” she said.