Well. Emperor Chandra was not known for his generosity. Vikram again remembered the hunger in his eyes, when he’d asked about the temple children burning. It was not a hunger Vikram could trust.
“I vow to you, daughter of flowers, that every effort will be made to keep you safe as a pearl,” Vikram said.
She shook her head. “It is not enough, General. How can it be enough? Oh, mothers of flame, protect me. I cannot survive here, alone and unloved!”
“Princess,” hissed Pramila. “No. Silence, now.”
“I…” Her face crumpled. “I have nothing here. No attendants. No ladies. No guards that I can trust. I was gently raised, General. I am sure I will die like this.”
“Princess,” he said. He kneeled, then, before her. His knees ached. “Your brother has ordered that you be kept in solitude. In contemplation. I cannot give you the court you once possessed. It would be treason.”
“One attendant would be enough to put my heart at ease,” whispered the princess. “General, the woman who saved my life—can I not have her? She is only a maidservant. No doubt she knows nothing beyond obedience. I doubt she even speaks a civilized tongue. It would be as if you provided me a—a loyal hound. She would not disrupt my contemplation. But perhaps I would feel… safe.”
It was not an unreasonable request.
One maidservant. Well. Surely the emperor would not be wrathful if Vikram provided the princess one simple Ahiranyi girl to sweep her floors and help her sleep at night. Surely Lord Santosh would not object to this measure if Vikram framed it as a way of calming a frightened girl. One maidservant was a small price to pay, to keep the princess biddable. Even now, looking into his eyes, her breath was calming. New color flushed her cheeks.
“What,” Vikram said carefully, graciously, “can I, a humble servant to your family, do but attempt to ease your pain? You will have the maidservant. I promise it, princess.”
After Vikram had spoken to the Hirana guards, the weeping princess, and his closest advisors—and even comforted his wife, who had woken when the conches sounded and begged for news of her precious servants immediately upon his return—he went to his own private chambers, stood upon his shaded balcony, and stared into the distance for a long moment, gripping the wood of the balustrade so tightly it creaked in the vise of his hands. A servant, standing in attendance by the door, asked him tentatively if he wanted to change his garb. His tunic and dhoti, both a silk so dark a blue they were almost black, had grown sodden, darkened with rain and sweat by the journey up and down the Hirana.
“No,” Vikram said shortly. “Arrange a bath for when I return.”
He did not want fresh clothing for this task.
The servant murmured an acknowledgment and withdrew. Vikram left the veranda, returning to the cool interior of the mahal, and made his way deeper and deeper into the building, and deeper still, beyond gates and guards, down to a dark staircase protected by barred doors and men alike.
Santosh was waiting for him there. Vikram had hoped the man had gone to bed. But one of Santosh’s men must have informed him of Vikram’s location.
Beneath the mahal, in the prison cells, a priest awaited them.
“General,” the priest said. “Come. She is prepared.”
Santosh bowed his head. For once, he was quiet. In the presence of a priest of the mothers, he finally showed proper respect.
The priest had pale eyes, green-brown, and a mark of ash upon his forehead and his chin. He was a true Parijati priest, and accordingly, he had arranged the assassin on a slab of stone, swathed her in white cloth, and marked her skin with resinous perfume. He had put right the worst of her fall: All her limbs were where they should have been, which Vikram gathered had not been the case when the guards had first found her, at the foot of the Hirana. A garland of flowers, half-wilted from the heat, was piled at her feet.
Priests showed respect to the dead, whether they deserved it or not. And Parijati priests showed special respect to women who had passed on. It was their way.
In the lantern light of the cell, Vikram looked at the body. At the face.
He turned away quickly. Not quickly enough.
No amount of drink would blot out the image of that skull. No fall had pulverized it. It looked as if it had… melted.
“The mask she wore has power in it,” the priest said tranquilly. He held his hand before him, and Vikram saw that the skin was burned. “Take it with this cloth, if you wish to look upon it,” the priest added, holding the mask toward him. “Carefully.”