Rao could almost hear the argument forming on Baldev’s lips: What use could it be, to a man like him, to attack a guest of the regent?
Then Baldev remembered that the emperor’s sister was prisoner in the regent’s care. Rao could see him remembering it: the sudden grayness that came over the poet’s face.
Nothing he said would save him.
“We found a few scribes writing material they shouldn’t have,” the commander continued. “Outright heresy, hidden in Ahiranyi script.”
“Where are they?” one bold woman asked. Her voice shook.
“They’ve been taken to the execution grounds already.”
“Spare the women, at least,” Baldev whispered. In all his evening lectures, his recitations, his voice had never sounded so small.
“The women are the problem,” the commander drawled.
“What will you do to them?” the poet asked. His voice shook. Then firmed. “We have heard what Emperor Chandra does to women. Please—”
“A better death than unclean women deserve,” one of the two Parijati soldiers said loudly. “You Ahiranyi don’t know how lucky you are.”
The commander’s mouth thinned. Then he turned his attention to his men. Made a gesture.
Round them up.
It was too much. One of the Ahiranyi men who’d been kneeling in the blood of his compatriot gave a yell and threw himself forward. There was a hiss of steel, shouting—a burst of fresh blood, as chaos descended and the women shot for the door.
There seemed, in that moment, no reason not to intervene. Whatever the soldiers believed Rao to be, they were going to kill him too. So he turned, shoving one of the soldiers off-balance with an apparently careless scramble of his own hands and knees against the stone. In the tumult of bodies and weapons, it was a miracle that Rao was not crushed or stabbed. When he felt a boot in his ribs he took it as his due. His head met the floor. Stars burst behind his eyes.
Without a weapon, there was nothing to be done but to allow his weight to roll, and to grab another soldier’s leg. He groaned. Behind him, around him, the men were yelling. One threw a book. Sheaves of poetry burst against the floor.
One of the women was out the door and down the hall, a soldier running after her. Rao remained where he was on the floor.
He bit out a curse when a knife landed in the ground by his head. He looked up and saw the poet Baldev staring down at him, face bloodied, a bruise blooming over his eye.
Baldev spat in his face.
“Parijati scum,” he snarled. It was an ugly expression, entirely at odds with the reasoned, intellectual manner he’d taken in the past. “You’re all Parijati scum!”
Baldev punched wildly at the nearest guard—and then he was flung to the floor, pinned, and Rao was left where he was.
The soldier above him—one of the men not wearing the regent’s mark who had stared at his commander with barely concealed disdain—looked down at Rao, for the first time with a sense of kinship.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” the soldier said gruffly. “Once you get under the surface, they’re all brutes.”
Rao said nothing. His ribs hurt. His face was hot with blood.
If he’d had a sword, he could have taken the man’s head.
The soldier offered his hand. Rao took it.
“Sir,” said the soldier to his commander.
“Let him go, then,” the commander said, in that same bored drawl. “I think we can agree he’s only what he seems to be.”
Still, the soldier hesitated.
“I—I can pay,” Rao stammered out, hating himself a little for the ruse of it. He fumbled. Dragged the Parijati prayer stones, those piths joined by links of silver, from the neck of his tunic. “I—I can—”
Finally, that seemed to be enough.
“Go,” said the soldier. “Run, you drunken bastard. You’ll know better than to interfere with imperial business next time, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rao.
A better man would have fought valiantly for those weeping women, those men. The poet. A better man would not have been in this room—in this brothel at all.
But Rao was not a better man. He was only a man with a purpose, and his work was not yet done.
He stumbled to the door.
The poet was not looking at him. The poet had saved his life.
Rao left him to his death.
He woke to the sight of Lata leaning over him, her forehead creased into a fan of lines. Above her the ceiling was covered in carvings of roses and iris blossoms. He was back in the palace of illusions, then. Distantly, he could hear faint strains of music. But the rooms he’d rented in this fine pleasure house, an establishment with pink lanterns at the door, were as large as a king’s, and well-insulated from the noise below.