Priya moved even closer, and through the strangeness of the sangam felt the echo of what Bhumika had seen: the burning women. The screams.
She stumbled. “That’s what the emperor wants?” she managed to say.
“Apparently so.”
The water glowed around them.
There had always been a distance between Priya and her elder temple sister. A gap that couldn’t be bridged by words. They had not been close, when the temple elders still lived and Priya was just a small girl. And from the moment Bhumika had taken Priya in, she’d made it clear they could not be family. The kinship between them had become something sharp and sour that bound them together regardless. It made honest words hard.
But something about this place—the strangeness of it, the river-ink of Bhumika before her, and the echo of Bhumika’s horror—loosened Priya’s tongue. Let the words flow free.
“I haven’t been able to come here in so long. Is that what it’s like to be twice-born?” she murmured. “To be able to enter the sangam and simply be—more than human?”
“We’re entirely human,” said Bhumika, “no matter what we can do.”
Priya laughed. Looked around pointedly, at the rivers knotted about them like compass roses. “You think this is human?”
“I think this is an aberration. A problem. And not something we should indulge in.”
“Then why are you here?” Priya challenged.
“Because I need to be,” snapped Bhumika. “Because so many things are falling apart. Because so many things are terribly wrong in Ahiranya, and I need to use every tool in my limited arsenal.”
“Do you meet Ashok here?” Priya asked bluntly. When Bhumika was silent she added, “I know he’s alive.”
“You should have told me you saw him,” Bhumika replied.
“You should have told me he was alive.”
“He didn’t want you to know.”
“Oh, you were lying to me out of respect for him. I see.”
“I never lied to you.”
“Don’t play silly games, Bhumika. You knew I believed he was dead, and you let me go on believing it. That was a choice to hide the truth from me. That’s as good as a lie.”
If Bhumika had been less shadow and more skin, she probably would have looked ashamed.
“He’s dangerous, Priya,” Bhumika said finally. “And I did exactly what I thought was necessary, for the child you were when he abandoned you.”
“But I’m not a child anymore.”
“Ah, Priya. Nothing is so simple.”
“No,” said Priya. “And I’m not asking for you to simplify the complexities of your life, Bhumika. I know my limits.” She sounded bitter, she knew. She didn’t really care. “But I can only act with the knowledge I have. The knowledge I deserve. So I am going to continue seeking the deathless waters. Because he needs them, and so do I.”
“Ashok wants to inflict chaos.”
“He wants to build a new world,” Priya said defensively, even though she’d said much the same to him, when they’d stood beneath the bower of bones. “A free Ahiranya.”
“No,” said Bhumika. “He wants a return to the old Ahiranya. He’s chasing a dream, a mirage, of a time when Ahiranya was isolated and alone and strong. How many hundreds upon hundreds of years ago was that?” Bhumika’s voice was all scorn. “He wants a world that can’t be forged without blood and death and sacrifice. In that way, he’s no different from the emperor.”
“Ahiranya is dying. Literally rotting.”
“But that doesn’t change our duty,” Bhumika said, “our need to keep it whole. If we are temple children still, then I can’t allow myself to forget that. And neither can you.”
“Ashok,” Priya said deliberately, “was the last person to treat me like family.”
One beat. Two.
“Well,” Bhumika said in a controlled voice. “If that’s how you feel, then that’s how you feel.”
“Bhumika, I am literally your servant.”
“And what else could you be? My long-lost sibling, perhaps? A distant cousin? I could hardly adopt you, could I? Being the general’s wife—using the general—requires certain sacrifices. It always has.”
Even in shadow—even in the sangam—Bhumika’s hand drifted without conscious thought to her waist. Priya felt oddly ashamed. She looked away.
Why are we always so ugly to one another?