“Pramila will be angry,” said Malini, once they had left the room and begun walking down the corridor.
“We can return to your room if you wish, my lady,” Priya said.
She wasn’t surprised when Malini shook her head. Malini was leaning upon Priya’s arm, clinging on as if Priya were the spine holding her frail body up. But her expression was clearer—more focused than it had been since the moment they were formally introduced to one another, lady to maidservant.
The wind was blowing across the triveni—one hard, buffeting wind that raced down the three open, empty corridors of the Hirana with the hollow roar of a beast. Priya, dressed in her new sari with no shawl to draw over her shoulders, was beginning to regret her decision to coax Malini from the dark, sick quiet of her jail. She’d have actually preferred the sticky heat of a monsoon-laden night to this strange, unseasonable weather.
“We’ll walk around,” Priya said. “Once or twice. And then we’ll return to your room, if you like.” Before the guard patrol next passes through the triveni, ideally.
“Did I hurt you?” Malini asked abruptly.
“What?”
“Your arm. Did I hurt it?”
“A little, my lady,” Priya admitted.
Malini took hold of Priya’s right wrist, raising it to the spill of moonlight. Her mouth thinned.
“I don’t bruise easily,” Priya told her. But Malini did not let go. She looked at Priya’s hand as if she could read it—read every callus and whorl, every line upon Priya’s palm—like language.
And Priya watched Malini in turn because—well, she could admit it to herself, at least—because she simply wanted to look at her. Looking at Malini felt like a forbidden thrill, but somehow less frightening than meeting her eyes, which was too… equalizing. Intimate.
Oh, Priya knew an infatuation when she was in the middle of one.
“You’re strong,” Malini observed. “I felt the grip of your hand on me. But you didn’t even try to stop me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“How odd,” Malini said. Her voice was soft. Finally, she released Priya’s arm.
“I did not mean to harm you either,” said Malini. “I do not like acting without intent.”
Priya shook her head. “I’ll be more careful if I need to wake you in the future,” said Priya.
She hooked Malini’s arm into her own once more and began guiding her around the edge of the triveni.
“Now,” Priya said. “A tale of the yaksa.”
She told Malini a simple tale. A story told to children, of a young man, a woodcutter, who was born under ill stars. If he fell in love, his beloved would share his cursed luck. Any man or woman he married would die an early death.
“So he avoided other people,” Priya said. “And his family worried about him all the time. And then he told them he’d found someone to marry after all.”
“Who?” Malini asked.
“A tree.”
“A tree?”
“That,” Priya said, “is exactly how his family responded. They weren’t impressed, I promise you. But he garlanded the tree like it was a bride to him, and he told it tales and gave it offerings of flowers and secrets, and one day the tree transformed into a beautiful man. It had been a yaksa all along. The yaksa built the woodcutter a mahal of banyan and banana leaf, and they lived together happily. Now, when children are born ill-starred, we give them a first marriage to a tree, so the yaksa will watch over them, and their second, mortal marriage will be sweet.”
Malini gave Priya an odd, unreadable look.
“Men can fall in love with men, in Ahiranya?”
Oh. Priya swallowed. She’d made a mistake. A simple, innocent Ahiranyi tale was far less so to people who were… not Ahiranyi.
Surely Malini had heard the stories people told about the lasciviousness of the Ahiranyi: their willingness to sell pleasure, the looseness of their women, the fact that they were willing to sleep with their own sex? And surely, like all Parijati, she abhorred it.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” Priya said. “A silly maidservant like me, I should have known better.” She bowed her head in apology. “Please forgive me.”
She felt Malini’s hands on her shoulders. Suddenly they were facing one another.
“Please,” said Malini. “I’d like to hear your answer.”
“I suppose they can do so anywhere, my lady.”
Malini shook her head. “It isn’t done, in Parijat.” The tone of her voice did not suggest she would welcome questions, so Priya asked none.