Vikram held the mask of wood, stained with blood and gristle, in the glove of perfumed cloth the priest had offered him. He looked at the eyeholes, the gape of a mouth. He could feel the heat of the thing through the cloth, warmer than flesh.
“You call it power,” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“The rot?”
The priest shook his head. “The woman’s body is clean of impurities.”
“What is this, then?” Santosh asked. Vikram startled. He had forgotten that Santosh was there. The Parijati lord’s face was gray. “Some kind of Ahiranyi witchcraft? I thought their cursed power died with their yaksa.”
“No,” Vikram replied, shaking his head. “Likely just a product of the forest. The wood there has always been—unusual.”
Even before the rot, he thought.
With weariness, he realized so much had gone wrong during his reign. The rot had begun. The temple children had grown more powerful. They and their elders had burned. The rebel unrest had swelled unceasingly, rising as the rot spread hunger and death and displaced villagers from their ancestral homes. And now… this.
“There will need to be justice,” Santosh demanded. “Witchcraft—whatever it may be, it is a crime. These Ahiranyi think they can bring back the Age of Flowers. They need to be punished. They must learn that Emperor Chandra is not weak.”
Vikram nodded. “Rebels will be interrogated and executed,” he said. The rebels who were likely behind this would be nigh on impossible to capture. The most violent of them, masked and therefore faceless, were too good at vanishing into the forest, where no sensible man would follow. But the poets and singers, who recited forbidden Ahiranyi poetry in bazaars and daubed mantras on walls, who offered visions of a free Ahiranya—they would be an easier target. A suitable scapegoat.
Even as he spoke, he knew it would not be enough. And sure enough, Santosh’s mouth firmed. He shook his head.
“They owe us more, General Vikram,” said Santosh. “They owe the emperor a sacrifice.”
What would be enough justice—enough blood, enough death, enough suffering—for an emperor who sought to burn his own sister to death?
What must I do to ensure that my rule survives this night’s work?
Vikram thought, grimly, of his young Ahiranyi wife, her placid eyes, her foolish, kindhearted nature and the child in her belly. His wife—who collected orphans and rot victims with a kind of mania—who had perhaps brought the assassin into their home, however unwitting…
She wouldn’t be happy with what he had to do. But she would accept it. She had no other choice.
He looked at the bones of the assassin on the stone slab before him, the open husk of her face, the bare vulnerability of the jawbone devoid of meat. The room was filled with the stink of death, despite the garlands and perfume.
Vikram lowered the mask down upon the table.
“Have her last rites,” he said. “With all due reverence. Scatter the ashes. She has no family to take them.”
The priest inclined his head. He understood the ways of the dead.
“With all due reverence,” Santosh repeated.
“Would the emperor object to such?” Vikram asked.
“Ah, no,” said Santosh. “No. Emperor Chandra would be pleased to see the proper religious order respected. To see a rebel purified, at the last.”
Santosh had made something that Vikram intended as an honorable act into a vengeance. And indeed, perhaps it was. The Ahiranyi preferred to bury their dead, after all. A rebel would not want to burn.
“It will be the first purification of many,” said Santosh. He no longer looked drunk or boastful. Only intent. In his face, Vikram saw a shadow of the glinting, brittle evil of the emperor. “We will make Ahiranya pure, General Vikram. In Parijat’s service.”
RAO
Rao didn’t know when the imperial soldiers began marching through Hiranaprastha. He was in a brothel, his back to the wall and a half-empty bottle of arrack in his fist. There was a courtesan twirling at the center of the room as men watched in semi-inebriated rapture. The courtesan was dancing beautifully, every turn of her belled ankles a bright, melodious chime. But this was a small and decrepit pleasure house that had barely anything in common with the large pink and turquoise palaces lining the city’s glittering river. It was painfully cramped, the alcohol cheap and the hall so crowded that men were packed shoulder to shoulder. It was so crowded, in fact, that the man to Rao’s left had lodged his elbow into Rao’s side and kept it there for the last half hour. Rao’s ribs ached.