“Ma’am. I do not admire her,” Priya said, voice halting. “I only—I need to keep this position, ma’am. I have people to care for, who are reliant on me. I cannot lose my standing or my income.”
“Despite what the princess may say to you, I am the one who decides if you remain or not,” Pramila said, an approving note in her voice. “You’ve been a good worker, apart from one unfortunate lapse. You need not fear anything as long as you remember who it is more… prudent… to obey.”
“Oh, thank you,” Priya said. “Thank you so much, Lady Pramila.”
Malini heard the sound of Priya’s footsteps against the floor, drawing closer.
“Please allow me to help you more, Lady Pramila. May I… I could light incense in your study in the evenings, to sweeten the air. Or, I could make your favorite meals, if we have the ingredients? And I could—I could give the princess her medicine. I already take her the evening meal, after all. It would be no trouble to also give her wine too, before she sleeps.” Priya paused. Then she added, “She trusts me. She won’t fuss.”
There was a moment of silence. Pramila shifted; the silk of her sari rustled around her.
“Despite what you may believe, and what is sensible, I love the princess,” Pramila said haltingly, as if the words were being pried out of her. In a way, they were. Her voice wobbled. “I love her enough to want what is best for her, even if she doesn’t.”
“Then let me take this burden from you,” Priya said. “Please.”
“Fine,” she said. “As long as you remember who you are loyal to.”
“Of course, ma’am. Anything to be of use,” Priya said earnestly.
Malini opened her eyes, just a little. In the thin crescent of her vision, she saw Priya—face wide-eyed and guileless, hand outstretched—and Pramila placing the vial of needle-flower in her palm.
Dusk fell. Pramila returned to lecture Malini about the mothers. Malini half listened as she watched the door, wondering what Priya was doing. Pouring a dose of needle-flower obediently into Malini’s wine? Or perhaps tipping the whole bottle in, so that Malini would die swift and painless?
Unlikely. But she imagined it all the same.
Priya offered Pramila a bow and entered the room. As Pramila rose to leave, Priya spoke.
“Lady Pramila has given me the task of providing your medicine,” Priya said to Malini. Then she gave Pramila a sidelong look, as if seeking approval. Pramila nodded, and Priya kneeled down, holding the carafe between her palms.
Malini stared at it. Then she looked at Priya.
“I know something of medicine made of needle-flowers,” Priya said, voice quiet. Pramila, hovering by the door, was unlikely to have heard her.
There was a message, in those brown eyes, in the way she held out the wine as if it were a gift instead of poison; as if it were something precious cupped between her palms.
Trust me, her face said.
That was the problem with making allies. At some point, inevitably, there came a moment when a decision had to be made: Could this one be trusted? Had their loyalty been won? Was their generosity a fa?ade for a hidden knife?
Malini made her choice. It was easier than it should have been.
“Do you?” Malini said, with equal softness. “Well. As it happens, so do I.”
She met Priya’s eyes. Without breaking their shared gaze, she took the carafe and drank deep.
RAO
After Rao heard about the executions and the women who were burned, he sat with Prem and worked through three bottles of wine grimly, methodically.
He was painfully relieved that Prem did not mock him for it; only poured out his glasses, and allowed Rao to lean on him, and told him rambling stories of their youth, to which Rao could only manage slurred responses.
“Remember,” Prem said, “when you and Aditya tried to learn to dance for my aunt’s wedding? Remember that?” Prem had long since stopped drinking, and was smoking his pipe, his face wreathed in a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. “You were truly shit. Both of you. I couldn’t believe it when Aditya gave you a black eye.”
“It was a traditional Saketan dance,” Rao managed to grumble out, even as the room kept on spinning dizzyingly around him. “We’d never danced with sticks before.”
“Not much different from using sabers, is it? You should have been fine.”
It hadn’t been like using sabers at all. That had been the problem. They had both been clumsy, awkward, more used to scholarship and weapons than dance. And Aditya had tried to fling his twin dancing staves like sabers. That was how he’d thwacked Rao in the face.