Chapter 2 Priya
PRIYA
Every root and every inch of green in Ahiranya’s soil sang to her. She heard the song all the time—sleeping, waking. Felt its weight as if she were the limb of a much larger beast, a giant thing slumbering in Ahiranya’s trees, its earth.
She closed her eyes, the sun touching warm fingertips against her face through the thick canopies of the trees.
Slivers of cool shadow broke the heat into fragments.
She didn’t need to open her eyes to find her way.
The song guided her. The soil yielded to her footsteps, rippling like water.
This way, it hummed. This is where you will find what you’re searching for.
“If you don’t look where you’re going, you’re going to walk straight into a tree,” said Sima.
Priya opened her eyes and turned to give Sima a glare.
“I won’t,” she said. “I would never.”
“Oh, maybe not, but it’d be very funny if you did,” Sima replied. “Aren’t you meant to be exuding holiness and authority? It’ll be very hard to do that if you’re felled by a branch.”
“Sima.”
Sima grinned at her.
“It might be best to keep your eyes open just in case.”
Priya was, in fact, meant to be maintaining a certain image.
Even though she’d known today would be messy work, she had dressed in the plain whites of a temple elder.
For practicality she had donned a salwar kameez rather than the traditional long tunic, but the loose cloth was bleached white as bone, and her hair was bound back in a high braided knot with beads of sacred wood darted through its length, here and there, in the same style the temple elders had once worn.
It was Kritika, of all people, who had encouraged her to take up the style.
Soon after pilgrims began to arrive in waves at the Hirana’s base, pleading for guidance from their new elders, Kritika had taken Priya aside and advised her to dress as the elders had once dressed.
There will be worshippers who remember the elders, as I do, she’d said.
And for the rest… you must serve as a symbol, Elder Priya. And you must guide them.
Priya was uneasy with the idea of being a symbol.
She was uneasy with Kritika too, and with all the ex-rebels who had once served her brother.
But she’d chosen this path: chosen the rebels who now called themselves mask-keepers, and the title of elder.
She was far too stubborn to do anything but embrace this life with her arms flung wide.
And if the right clothes made worshippers weep tears of reverence, and feel hope again, and trust that Priya and Bhumika would rule them wisely?
Well, then. Priya would wear white. And she would do her very best to act like the person she was meant to be.
Priya offered Sima only the subtlest and most ladylike of the extensive collection of rude gestures she knew—which made Sima laugh under her breath—then straightened up and squared her shoulders, and kept her eyes open as she strode forward with what she hoped was a confident kind of grace.
Around Priya and Sima, other figures walked between the trees: a few once-born ex-rebels, with traces of magic coiling through their blood and scythes in their hands; a handful of soldiers, carrying sabers; and six of the men and women who had once been servants in the regent’s mahal, but now served the two temple elders of Ahiranya in a different capacity.
For months, they had been training with Jeevan in the mahal’s practice yard, heaving around maces and beating fake soldiers made of wood and straw with hand sickles.
Sima had even been given some training in archery, and she carried a bow and a quiver of arrows with her now.
She only looked mildly nervous, but some of the other servants were nearly gray with fear. That was understandable.
They were hunting imperial soldiers, after all.
Ganam, one of the ex-rebels, made his way toward her.
He wore the same mask he’d worn when he had been a fighter against Parijatdvipan rule: a wooden oval, large enough to conceal his entire face, with crude holes for eyes and a hollow for the mouth.
She shouldn’t have been able to see the questioning look he was giving her, but she could read the tilt of his head well enough.
Priya shook her head. Not here. Not yet.
Then she turned her attention back to the soil. She felt through it—felt the imperial soldiers ahead of her.
Some were already impaled on stakes of thorn. Bhumika had set up that trap. She had a gift for things grown slow and strange.
And Priya, well—
She had a useful wellspring of anger.
“Now,” she said. And they crossed the last wall of trees—and found the soldiers before them.
The fight was quick and bloody.
Priya tried to use her magic to subdue most of them, but one man, disarmed of his sword, wormed his way beyond her vines and tried to grapple her. She had the pleasure of punching him in the face.
He went for the knife at his belt. Tried to gut her.
This is why, she thought—blood simmering, her pulse pounding in her ears. This is why you’re killing them. Breaking them. This.
The soil pulled his feet deeper. Deeper. His hands were still free. That was no matter. Priya could still attack him with her vines; still see him suffocated, dragged under.
There was a whistle and a thud. An arrow had gone through his throat. She looked behind her and saw Sima, gray-faced, clutching her bow.
“Messy,” Ganam remarked. “But the job’s done.” He straightened, squaring his shoulders. “Elder Priya,” he said. “What now?”
They went home.
Priya drew a dark shawl around her shoulders to conceal her attire, then dived into the city’s depths with her companions surrounding her.
Invisible in a crowd of soldiers and mask-keepers, she was free to take in the sights around her without having to worry that she’d be recognized and bowed to, worshipped or feared in a way that made her teeth itch with discomfort.
Hiranaprastha’s streets were busy around them, noisy and heaving with people.
There were food stalls here and there, and groups of children playing, and people squatting in the shade, watching the crowds drift by.
Under the blue sky, the city was all churned mud and brightly painted stalls and shops.
Empty lanterns hung from verandas, wavering in the mild wind.
At night, those lanterns would be filled with candles, and the city would glow like a constellation.
For months, Hiranaprastha had been a shadow of itself—broken by both violence and fire.
But the buildings had slowly been fixed or simply put back to use by necessity since then.
Priya caught a glimpse of a house with a partially broken wall as they moved through the streets.
Someone had strung a curtain of wooden beads and colored glass across the gap.
Sunlight through the glass shone green, blue, pink.
Priya turned toward Sima. Brushed their shoulders together to catch Sima’s attention. In return, Sima offered her a tentative smile. Her face still had an ashy pallor, but she was starting to look more like herself now that they were nearing the mahal.
“How are you feeling now?” Priya asked.
“Oh, just fine,” Sima said. It was such a blatant lie that Priya almost laughed.
She didn’t, though. She didn’t want to hurt Sima’s feelings. She wanted to comfort her.
“It’s all right if you feel—conflicted,” Priya said. “About killing someone. Or if you’re still a little afraid. It was frightening.”
Sima looked down at her own hand and laughed awkwardly.
“I think maybe I was a little afraid,” she admitted. “And I was trying so hard to be brave, too.”
Priya knocked her shoulder against Sima’s again—as close as she could get to a hug without embarrassing her in front of their companions.
“You did really well,” she said. “Trust me.”
“Does it ever get easier, the fear?” Sima asked. “Do you start going into fights and just find a way to ignore all of, you know…?” She waved a hand around vaguely. “Or does being powerful the way you are stop you being afraid?”
Priya didn’t know how to explain that her relationship with fear had been complicated long before she became thrice-born.
“It helps,” Priya admitted. “But you’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Sima. You’ve got me.”
Ahead of them, Ganam was using his bulk to cut a swathe through the crowd, carving their group a path back toward the mahal.
Priya could see it in the distance, looming above the low buildings of Hiranaprastha.
Only the Hirana stood taller than it—an ancient mountain with the temple proper at its zenith.
People took little notice of them as they walked, though a few gave them nods of respect.
In Hiranaprastha, the patrols that worked for the temple elders had become just as unremarkable a sight as the regent’s soldiers had once been.
Simply part of the fabric of city life, with all its rhythms and routines and dangers.
“I don’t always want to hide behind you, Pri,” Sima said ruefully. “Maybe I want to be able to look after you too. Have you considered that?”
“Sima, you literally shot a man through the throat for me,” Priya said. “Do you have any idea how impressive that is? I don’t mean that you’re weak or—or anything like that! I just mean…”
“I know what you mean,” said Sima.
“We protect each other.”
“I know,” Sima said again, her smile softening into something more real. There was almost color in her cheeks again. “I really am getting better with a bow. Jeevan’s going to be so pleased.”
“Absolutely,” Priya agreed. “He’ll have you teaching the little ones before you know it.”
Sima gave a theatrical shudder. “Don’t threaten me with that,” she said.
They strode up to the main entrance of the mahal.