But soon they veered away from the ribbon markers, nothing to guide them but their shared lantern and minute etchings on the bark, the symbol language used by hunters and woodcutters. And then Priya looked up, and realized they were in the bower of bones.
The bower of bones was an ancient place—both a grave and an entrance to an old, old trail carved by yaksa hands. There were places in Ahiranya where time moved differently; this path was the strongest of them and the most well-marked. The seeker’s path, some called it, because it led to the neighboring nation of Srugna, and Srugna’s great monasteries to the nameless god, where priests meditated on the secrets of the cosmos and worshipped their god above all other immortal beings.
But it was a cursed place too. Local villagers and woodcutters in search of sacred wood to harvest claimed to have heard whispers among the graves. They found footsteps in the dew-wet soil, at sunrise, and the bodies of rot-riven animals on the ground. It was as if the creatures had come to the bower to die. Or been left there, some said, by ghostly hands.
When the flesh rotted away, those ghosts returned to finish their work. Above Priya and Rukh hung the bones of the animal dead, strung up on ribbons of red and yellow. They gleamed yellow-white in the light of the lantern. As the wind rustled the leaves, trapped rainwater fell in a cold shimmer, and the bones chimed against one another with the click of chattering teeth.
“Well,” Priya said mildly. “What a pleasant spot for a meeting.”
“I don’t usually meet them here. But…” He shrugged, his expression guarded. “I was told to, this time.”
Meena had worn a crown mask. She’d drunk deathless water broken from the source, and fought viciously, so Priya already knew these rebels were the hardest kind—the ones who used murder as their method of resistance.
She’d heard the gossip and stories of the rebels who wore masks. When the merchant had been killed, people had spoken of seeing a masked figure leaving his haveli. She thought of that now—of rebels who struck fast and vicious—as she glanced down at Rukh.
He looked miserable; his arms were wrapped tightly around himself. She felt anger curdle in her, at the thought of them using a starving boy, a dying boy, turning his heart to their ends. It wasn’t right.
She raised the lantern higher, the dark night staring back at her between fronds of leaves and bone.
“What usually happens, when you meet the rebels?” she asked.
“I give them information,” he said. “Before they sent me to you, I told them whatever I heard in the markets. They used to give me food.”
Not much food, she thought.
“No sacred wood?”
Rukh shrugged.
“Okay,” Priya said levelly. “What did they want you to do in the mahal?”
He said nothing.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “Surely you can tell me now.”
“Just to be their eyes and ears,” he muttered. “To watch you. And—anything else interesting. Anything they could use. That’s all.”
She nodded. “Are any other servants doing the same?” she asked, and he immediately frowned.
“A few, I guess,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know. There might be more of us hidden.”
“Us?”
“Rebels,” he said.
“You’re not a proper rebel,” Priya said immediately.
“I am,” he insisted.
“Meena was a rebel,” she said. “She knew how to kill. You don’t.”
“How do you know?” Rukh asked. There was a mulish set to his chin.
She looked down from his sharp little face to his clenched fists. With his hands as they were, prickling with threat of new green growth, she wondered if he would be able to handle a knife, even if he was given one. Knives required delicacy.
“You don’t,” she said simply. “Whatever she is to them, you’re not that.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” Rukh muttered.
“Clearly not,” said Priya.
There was no sign of anyone around them. No villagers, no hunters, no rebels. Priya supposed she and Rukh would just have to wait. She lowered the lantern to the ground. Then she straightened.
He stared at her. She stared at him.
“You’re not the only one allowed to believe in things,” Rukh said in a low voice. Priya was disturbingly reminded of the tone she’d taken with Bhumika. “I’m allowed to want the world to be better. I’m allowed to want to help make that happen.”