“My nursemaid told me Ahiranyi folktales,” Malini said. “And my brothers and I thought they were fascinating. You know those, don’t you, Priya?”
“I do, my lady. There is a—a child I tell such tales to sometimes, in the mahal.” She added, “I would be happy to share them with you.”
Malini had seen this one kill a woman without hesitation and with seemingly no remorse—seen her move with shocking agility and brute strength. But there it was, clear in her words. A soft heart.
“Thank you,” Malini said, and smiled. “I would like that very much, Priya.”
PRIYA
Priya had been upon the Hirana not even a week, and she felt as if she would go mad.
Without anyone to help her launder the clothes and sweep the floors, lug the water and build fires—not to mention feed the entire household, including the door guards—she was overwhelmed. Although Pramila clearly thought a weekly visit from the other maidservants was enough, it was most assuredly not. And Priya was beginning to feel like a prisoner herself.
Pramila was always watching, always sour-faced and oozing resentment. At night, she ensured that the guards locked the northern chamber with Priya and Malini inside. At dawn, it was unlocked once more, so Priya could attend to her duties all over again.
Malini merely… slept. And woke, sometimes, to watch Priya with her unnerving dark eyes, before requesting small favors: a glass of water, a little attar to freshen her pillows, a wet muslin for her head to ease the day’s heat.
She did not ask for tales. She did not ask about what Priya had done to Meena that night on the Hirana. The questions she did not ask were like a quiet sword at Priya’s throat.
Every evening, before the door was locked, Pramila would visit Malini and lecture her about the mothers of flame. She would recite many passages from a thick book that she held upon her lap. Malini would listen without a word. Then Pramila would give her wine, which Malini obediently drank before falling into a stupor of sleep.
Once, when Priya was keeping herself busy folding Malini’s clean saris, Priya heard Pramila talk about the temple elders and children. She found her hands were suddenly frozen; unable to make herself move, she listened.
“… and the children chose to follow the elders and burn. An honorable death even for the impure,” Pramila said pointedly.
“The children didn’t burn willingly,” Malini murmured. She was lying on her back, her hands clasped over her stomach, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. The ceiling that was blackened by a corona of soot from the night Priya’s family had died. “How could children choose to burn?”
Pramila sighed, as if this was a tired argument, one they had worn out between them.
“The lesson,” Pramila said, “is that burning is holy. It puts an end to any human failings. It is a gift.”
They didn’t notice her or think of her, even when the cloth slipped from her trembling hands.
When the weekly visit of the other maidservants finally occurred, she was not allowed to sneak away to meet Sima or Gauri. She paced the northern chamber, not looking at the princess, not listening for her friends walking beyond the walls. And then, begrudgingly, she slept, wrapped in her shawl on a straw mat by the door.
She spent the time thinking of Bhumika, flint-eyed and heavy with child, desperately trying to hold her frayed household together. She thought of Ashok, who was alive—who had asked her to save him, and save them all, by doing exactly what she wanted to do anyway.
She thought of Rukh, the child she’d taken responsibility for and left, who wanted to help make a better world.
She pressed her ear to the straw mat and imagined she could hear them: the waters, strange and deep and powerful, moving somewhere beneath her. Just out of reach.
Patience. She needed patience. Her connection to the Hirana was growing. Now, when she walked across the stone, she felt it warm like sun-drenched earth beneath her feet. The carvings on the walls of the northern chamber had begun to move. Subtly, spirits be thanked—no more than a slight change in the shapes of eyes or mouths, or the position of yaksa hands, venom-tipped fingers turning upward or curled palms opening. The flowers around them had bloomed new petals, curled like licks of flame. Any more, and even Princess Malini or Pramila would likely have noticed, eventually.
Once, as a girl, she’d been told she had a special bond to the Hirana. She could have found the way to the deathless waters with her eyes closed—with nothing but instinct. As her bond to the Hirana grew, that instinct would return…