Chapter 6 Priya #2
Untouched by a thrice-born’s hands, the rot was a death sentence.
The girl would always carry this small mark of magic on her—would always need to conceal it with long blouses, and pluck away the petals with her fingers, so only the buds riddled her skin’s smoothness—but she would not die.
That, at least, was something Priya could do.
There was nothing to be done for the field.
Ganam used his own small once-born magic to help her build a barrier of trees around it, enclosing it from the surrounding fields and the village itself.
Deep-rooted trees that ate moisture were best, so Priya poured her strength into forcing banyan after banyan from the soil.
When it was done, she sat down on the exposed roots of one tree and chugged a carafe of water, exhausted, while Ganam explained to the village leaders that they would return if the rot escaped its carapace; that they could not fix it.
That they were sorry, but even the temple elders of Ahiranya, newly empowered and ensconced, could only do so much.
“Thank you,” she said, when he came back.
“I don’t think I was tactful enough,” he muttered.
“You were fine,” Priya said. True or not, what was done was done. She stood. “Come on. Let’s walk back.”
“What about the palanquins?”
“We’ve already failed.” She kept her voice light, dismissive, even as the shame of it curdled into a hard knot of determination in her chest. “We don’t need to pretend to be grand anymore.”
As if sensing her mood, the guards didn’t try to force them back into the palanquins.
They all walked together instead, through the forest. Insects whirred in the air, so thick between the trees they formed clouds that undulated like dark gauze.
The ground crunched underfoot. Ahead of the others, Priya and Ganam had no stick for beating the path to scare off snakes, as was customary.
But there was no need for one: Ganam was applying his once-born magic to the carpet of leaves and twining flowers before them, shaking it in warning.
It was a trick Priya had suggested to all of the once-born as a good method for refining their magic. The once-born—the rebels who’d fought and killed, brutally, for the independence of Ahiranya—had seized on the exercise as a way to hone their control.
Ganam was one of the best. He moved the vegetation before them in elegant waves, a ripple that grew and spread like the aftershocks of a stone meeting still water.
So it was no surprise to Priya when he opened his mouth and said, “If you had help, maybe you’d be able to do it. Maybe it’d be easier.”
Priya was damnably tired. The mud on her knees had dried, crusted over into twin crescents of soil. She didn’t want to have this conversation again.
“Bhumika doesn’t have time to help with things like this,” she said.
The once-born had magic. But it was nothing like the depth of power that lay in Bhumika and Priya. Only the thrice-born could stop the rot in its tracks. Only they could do what Priya had tried—had hoped—to do.
Only they had a hope of curing the rot.
“You and she don’t have to be the only thrice-born,” he said.
“I know,” Priya said. “I really do know. But we don’t want—neither of us…” She stopped. “It’s dangerous.”
She wouldn’t have dragged him along on these journeys if she didn’t think that one day he’d pass through the waters. But her words came out of her clumsy.
“No man or woman who fought at Ashok’s side is unaware of that,” he said.
He didn’t sound angry, but they’d had this argument often enough that she didn’t need to look at him to know that a spark of mingled grief and fury had lit in his eyes.
She felt the same thing—always—at the mention of her dead brother’s name.
“But we’re not afraid to die for the sake of Ahiranya. ”
“Maybe right now Ahiranya needs you to live for it,” Priya said as gently as she could. “We can’t afford to lose anyone.”
Ganam said nothing. After a moment, Priya shook her head.
“I don’t want to argue,” she said. “Let’s just get back.”
There would be plenty of time to argue in the future.
“It sounds like it could have been a lot worse,” Sima said later.
They were sitting with their backs to a tree in the orchard. It was night, velvet and dark, and they had a carafe of wine between them.
“Probably. I just can’t think of how right now.”
Priya didn’t usually become maudlin when she drank wine, but it had been a trying day. She had been rambling on for some time—tracing the rim of the bottle restlessly, constantly, with her thumb.
“If I sat all day in a room and did nothing but tend to rot sufferers, I’d still barely make a difference. I’d be like—like one ladle in a bucket the size of the world. You understand?”
“Never try to become a poet, Pri,” Sima said. She’d spent the day tending to the running of the mahal and was about as tired as Priya, but mellowed by liquor. She smiled a little.
“I was a poet to her,” Priya said quietly, letting the confession slip free. “I… I wrote to her, you know.”
“How is your empress?”
“Who knows.” Priya shrugged. She suddenly felt a little exposed. Her face was warm. “But we’re not talking about that.”
“You’re the one that mentioned her.”
“Look, she’s—she’s not important. What matters is this, okay?
I can’t fix a field,” said Priya. “Not of rot sufferers, I don’t mean field like I meant ladle, but—oh, I should never have turned poet at you, you’re right.
Look, the plain truth of it is this: There’s so much work to do, and I can’t do it alone.
” The words exposed a hollow ache in her chest—a sheer knot of anxiety that she couldn’t ignore any longer.
“We need more elders. More thrice-born.”
Sima exhaled.
“That’s hard, Pri.” Silence. Then she raised her head and looked at Priya. “What would you say,” she said slowly, “if I wanted to be more than I am? If I wanted to travel through the deathless waters like the mask-keepers? Like you?”
Priya stared down at her hands.
“I don’t think it’s what you really want.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not like they are.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Sima’s shoulders tense, saw her visibly bristle. Quickly, Priya said, “Not like—Sima, not in a bad way.”
“In what way, then?”
“Let me take a drink,” Priya said. “Then I’ll explain.”
They sat in taut silence as Priya swigged the bottle, taking three or four methodical mouthfuls. Her lips burned. Her throat felt fiery.
“The kind of strength you need to pass through the waters and survive—it’s a hard kind.
A scarring kind. The kind of scars that sit inside your soul, under the skin.
” She closed her eyes. “I don’t. I don’t want that for you.
I don’t think you really want that for yourself, either. You’re too smart for that.”
“It’s pretty scarring to learn weapons too, you know,” Sima observed. “And the fear never really goes away. The guilt, either. What’s the difference, getting a weapon that lives in your blood instead of your hands?”
“It’s different,” Priya said. “Believe me.”
“I’ve known hardship,” Sima offered. “And I’m willing to know more if it’s for something worthwhile. Protecting the home we’ve built, the family we’ve made here… that feels worth it.”
“You don’t know the price,” Priya said. “And I…” Her voice cracked a little. Something flickered through her—the image of a knife, a flower. Wood, bones. “They’ve already done it. Paid some of it. They can’t go back. But it’s not a price I’d ever want a friend to pay.”
A pause.
“What happens,” Sima asked finally, “when you enter the waters? What is it like?”
Priya laughed and shook her head. Drank another mouthful of liquor. She bit her lip lightly, flesh-sour and liquor-sweet.
“I’m not even sure I know,” she said. “I’m not even sure I remember.”
But there was one thing she was sure of, from her time in the field of rot; from her sleepless nights after Ashok’s death; from the whispers that flickered through her, sometimes, in a voice as sweet and rich as a flowering rose.
Oh, sapling.
The waters remembered her.