“And you don’t care for me,” he said. “I know. So let’s not play your usual games of pleasantries. Tell me. Did you watch them die?”
“I did.”
“Was it brutal?”
“Executions are always brutal,” said Bhumika. “Anything else would defeat the point.”
“I knew they were going to burn the women,” he said. “Does that surprise you?”
“I know you have your spies,” she said. “Just as I have my own.”
“Nothing like you have, but we make do. You have an executioner, don’t you?” he said. “But I have a man who sweeps up the temple to the mothers of flame. Apparently not all the priests are supportive of the emperor’s interest in purification. They’re worried the rebels may burn down their temple in return.”
“Should they be worried?”
His shadowy mouth curved into a grin. “Who knows,” he replied. Then his smile faded. “You know, of course, that your husband is a fool.”
Bhumika did not entirely disagree. But Ashok’s words were an attack on her, not Vikram: on her choices, on her sacrifices, on the life of a Parijati highborn wife that she wore, a mask of her own.
“He had to retaliate. The emperor required decisive action.” Or so Vikram had told her, his brow a furrow of irritation, when Bhumika had questioned his decision to kill the rebels by crushing. If she had known about the burning…
Ah, too late now.
A statement needs to be made, he’d said. You can’t understand, my dove. You have a soft heart.
“So he puts poets and maidservants to death? Does your husband know he killed the very people you fund from your family purse?” When Bhumika did not deign to reply, Ashok laughed. “I told you he’s a fool.”
“You were the one who set a false maidservant in my household,” Bhumika said tightly. “You were the one who made him and his ilk consider this necessary. You knew your actions would have consequences.”
“I need the waters.” His voice lowered. Liquid dark. “Surely you understand that.”
Of course she did. She felt the pull of the waters every single day. She felt the yearning in her, the gravity of it tugging at her blood. If the power of it could have unspooled her veins from her body, it would have. She understood why Priya climbed the Hirana. She understood why the sangam haunted her own dreams.
“I need them more than you know,” he told her.
“You’ve been consuming the waters,” said Bhumika. It was a knot in her chest, that knowledge. “Broken from the source. I understand exactly how much you need them. A desperation of your own making, I think.”
He said nothing. That was answer enough.
“Why?” she asked, hating how it hurt still to think of him one day dying. As if she owed him anything at all.
“I’ve been consuming the vials for a long time,” Ashok said quietly. “And it keeps me strong. Keeps me alive. Now my new family—my soldiers, my fellow warriors—consume it too. They may not be twice-born like me. They know the vials will kill them. But they do it anyway, because like me they know that we must be free.”
He stepped closer to her.
“We’ve taken back forest settlements. We’ve placed people carefully where we needed them. In merchants’ houses. In highborn havelis. We’ve gained patrons. You’re not the only noble funding rebellion, Bhumika.” He leaned closer. “We’re learning every point of vulnerability, every place to strike so that the bones of the empire crumble around us.”
“All those plans will mean nothing when you’re dead and the rest of us are left to clean up the blood you’ve spilled,” said Bhumika.
“I won’t die,” Ashok said. “None of us will die. We’ll find the waters. We’ll live. Reinstate the temple council. If we bring back even a shadow of the Age of Flowers, it will be worth it.”
“Oh, Ashok. This won’t end as you hope.”
“We have Priya now.”
Even in the sangam, even in a place where they were dappled shadow, Bhumika’s face must have revealed something of what she felt, because Ashok said, “I sought her out.”
“Your damn rebel maid almost killed her.”
“I apologized.”
“Ah. That’s fine, then,” Bhumika replied scathingly. “As for having her—if you think you have any control of her, then you don’t know her at all.”
“I do have her. She told me how much she’s missed me. How she loves me still.” There was something like true sorrow in his voice. True feeling. “She didn’t know I lived.”