Chapter 5 Malini #3
But Malini did not have the luxury of such careless cruelty, and her anger burned colder and slower than Chandra’s ever had. She nodded instead, allowing it, and thought, When this is done, and Parijatdvipa is mine, I will remember you.
“Lord Mahesh,” Malini said. “Please continue.”
After a moment, Mahesh began to speak, and laid out the task ahead of them.
As Malini approached her chariot, her army parted around her. Half her forces, arrayed in their armor, kept their eyes on her. She kept her gaze forward and her head high. She could not look afraid.
This was not meant to be a battle. It felt like one.
She felt the battle in the pounding of her heart as she climbed into her chariot; in the way her senses sharpened, knife-keen.
She heard the creak of the metal beneath her feet, the quiet shudder of her chariot’s canopy in the wind.
The clatter of hooves as her armed riders surrounded her: a sea of cavalry, carrying Parijatdvipan banners, painfully white under the beating sun.
Lady Raziya rose up onto the chariot beside her, bow in hand. Her guardswomen, on horseback, arranged themselves smoothly into a sickle formation around the chariot.
To their right, Malini’s general rose onto his own chariot. Lord Mahesh met her eyes. He gave her a grave nod.
She grasped the rail of the chariot. Her charioteer had his ear turned toward her. Waiting.
“Signal the men,” she said to Lord Mahesh.
The chariot shuddered forward. The clatter of armor and hooves filled the air as her army moved across flat, dusty terrain, under a gleaming blue sky, toward the High Prince’s fort.
It loomed before them. Small at first, on the horizon, then larger and larger still as they drew closer to its walls.
There was a greeting party awaiting them. A handful of Saketan soldiers. No more than that.
“The High Prince knew we were coming,” Malini murmured to Raziya. “Why has he not arranged an appropriate welcome?”
The High Prince was not the first highborn ruler who had been unwilling to bow to Malini. But when they had negotiated their surrender, they had all acknowledged her with ceremony. A proper coterie of warriors and their finest horses. Courtiers. Gifts.
Before her was… almost nothing.
Unease seeped through her.
“I don’t know, Empress,” Raziya said, sounding similarly wary. She looked to her women. Raised her hand in signal. One of them drew closer.
“Warn the others to be watchful,” Raziya ordered.
Malini turned toward Lord Mahesh.
“The High Prince’s negligence concerns me. Something is wrong,” Malini said sharply, pitching her voice to carry over the churning noise of wheels and hooves. He turned his head, meeting her gaze.
“It is wise to be cautious,” Mahesh said.
But he did not sound the conch at his belt and call for the attention of his commanders.
His chariot continued rolling forward, dust rising in clouds beneath its spoked wheels.
“But the High Prince has always been a strange man. I knew him, in our shared youth, and I can assure you he has never cared for pomp or ritual. He will surrender. We must simply wait.”
He has not surrendered yet.
If she ordered Mahesh to halt their forces, would he?
Could he? She knew an army had its own momentum and could not be easily stopped in its tracks.
She turned her head forward, gazing over the expanse of men before her.
Beneath her, her chariot shuddered to a slow stop as they neared the edge of the city.
She thought of all the High Prince’s messages—the fear she had read in them, the anxiety knotted through it all.
How she wished she had crossed paths with him at least once during her years in the imperial mahal and taken the measure of him herself.
Ink, it seemed, was not enough to weigh the heart of a man.
They waited. Silence growing, wind rippling through the flags of Parijatdvipa that hung from chariots.
The gates of the fort slowly yawned open.
No army emerged. Only one man. The sight was so strange that Malini’s own men froze, unmoving, as the gates drew shut once more, barring them from the city.
He was unmistakably a priest. Ash-marked, his expression mild, he crossed the dusty ground that lay before the gates of Saketa. As he walked, a cloud of that same golden dust rose around him, haloing him like motes of light.
Malini’s guards did not move.
Finally, a single commander on horseback made his way forward to greet the priest. The ground was silent for one breath, then two.
The commander rode back to Malini and said, “Empress. He wishes to speak with you. On the High Prince’s behalf.”
“Bring him to me,” said Malini.
A susurration ran through the men, sudden as a rippling breeze, as the priest was brought before her chariot.
He bowed in one graceful motion, then raised his head. He was an old man, gaunt and sun-wizened. But his eyes were fierce.
“You will not be allowed to enter the city, Princess Malini,” the priest said, by way of greeting. His mouth widened into a smile. “And the High Prince will not be leaving his throne to greet you here.”
Ah. So this was a trap.
But what kind of trap? The High Prince was well defended in his city.
The fort of Saketa was famed for its complexity, its multiple walls that wound and twisted, covered with watchtowers.
It was said that if someone had been able to view the fort from the sky, its structure would resemble a blooming, hundred-petaled lotus.
Malini had examined its likeness on her map mere hours ago.
To siege the city would be nigh on impossible.
To starve out the people within it would cost Malini more than she could afford to give.
If the High Prince had invited her into his palace—if he had surrounded her and her advisors there—then perhaps she would understand the nature of the vise she had been caught within. But this. This, she could not comprehend.
“If the High Prince will not negotiate with me, I can only offer him war,” Malini replied.
The priest inclined his head.
“I am a priest, but I am also a warrior,” the priest said.
His eyes were flint. “Emperor Chandra has not waited idly for the betrayal of his blood siblings, Princess Malini. The priesthood has grown. There are those who pray by fire and kneeling, by flowers and funerary rites. And then there are men like me, who have learned a different kind of prayer.”
“Will you raise a sword to me, priest?” Malini asked.
She did not allow herself to feel fear or even anger.
She had faced worse. And if Chandra had given holy men sabers, and sent them to war with her—well, what did that matter?
They would be either poor at faith and politics, or poor at war, and either suited her well enough.
“I am here to serve the High Prince on Emperor Chandra’s behalf,” the priest said.
“I have come, as have my brethren, for the sake of Parijatdvipa. Because I understand sacrifice. But you do not, Princess Malini.” There was a sudden, strange urgency in his voice.
Distantly, she heard the low wail of a conch being sounded.
One of the commanders had seen something.
Another wail.
Something was glinting on the walls of the fort. Archers.
Warning. Danger. Danger.
The priest’s voice rose higher as the highborn lords muttered and turned their heads, slow to mark the danger; as soldiers drew their shields; as Malini straightened, tense in her carriage, unwilling to show weakness, forcing herself to trust in the defenses surrounding.
Next to her, Raziya calmly reached for her bow, nocking an arrow as if she was contemplating shooting the priest square through the eye.
“The mothers of flame blessed their sons,” he cried out, words tumbling over themselves. “When the mothers chose to die by fire, their deaths—their sacrifice—were a blessing, an act that summoned magical flame to the swords of their followers.”
“We have all read the Book of Mothers,” Mahesh said impatiently. He was gripping his saber hard. “Men, restrain the priest—carefully.”
“If you understood the nature of sacrifice, Princess Malini,” the priest said swiftly, as soldiers surrounded him, “you would do your part, as so many other women have. Willingly and gladly. For your emperor brother’s sake.”
“Other women,” she repeated flatly, as her heart thudded, as a sickening jolt of understanding ran through her.
He stared back at her. The fervent light of his smile had faded, leaching from his mouth to fill his eyes, which were painfully wide and fixed upon her.
“The weapons that shall be turned upon you and all the emperor’s enemies are carried in their ashes,” he announced with pride. “They burned to save the world. As the mothers burned. You can do no less. Know your place, Princess Malini. And see what women braver than you have wrought.”
He raised a hand.
Malini looked up as the gate of the fort opened once more—flung wide to release riders on horseback holding blades that glowed, tendrils of smoke rising around them.
Looked up, and saw the fire begin to rain from the sky.
Her army had faced fire arrows before. They were a weapon of war, and the commander of each branch of the army sprawled across the field before her—horse cavalry, elephant, foot soldier—knew how to respond to such tactics. Even staffs or swords covered in flame could be fought.
But this fire was—wrong.
It bloomed. Winged like birds. Soaring. Jumping from one body to the next, sentient and graceful. As one body fell, it shifted to the next, seeking fuel.
Alive. It was alive.
The air filled with the smell of smoke, of burning bodies.