Chapter 7 Malini #2
You would never have spoken to me so, she thought, her blood a deep river of anger that swelled and moved inside her, threatening to flood the plains of her heart, if I were either of my brothers. And yet I am a better leader than both of them, in every way.
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said, and let herself sag a little, shoulders rounding as if exhaustion had overcome her. “I will rest, Lord Mahesh. And then—later—we will discuss what must be done.”
Her own tent, like everywhere else in the camp, smelled of burning. But the scent was fainter here. Swati had swept the floor and perfumed the air. She had arranged bowls of water to trap the smoke.
They were all waiting for her: Deepa and Lata, and to Malini’s surprise and relief, Raziya.
Her head was wrapped with cloth, her hair bound to one side.
Sahar, still bloodied and ash-stained, stood at the entrance of the tent, acting as another guard.
Lata strode over the very second Malini entered the tent.
“My lady,” she said, gaze flickering anxiously over Malini’s face, her clothes.
“Are you hurt? What happened out there? Why did you go to Lord Mahesh without me? Shall I summon Rao? He’s seeing to his men, but I can ask—”
“No.” Malini shook her head. “Everyone I need is here.”
“I’ve arranged you bathing water,” Swati said softly. “Refresh yourself, my lady. You’ll feel much better.”
“Are you well, Lady Raziya?” Malini asked. “You should be resting.”
There was a pointed hum of agreement from the tent entrance.
“You should have waited for me,” Raziya said. Her hands were clenched in her lap. It took a moment for Malini to realize that the flinty look upon her face was anger. “I was indisposed,” she said stiffly. “But, Empress, you should have waited for me. Or if not for me, then Lata or Lady Deepa.”
“My father would not have allowed me there,” Deepa blurted out. Then flushed. A look passed between Lata and Malini. Nothing was said.
Malini moved behind a privacy screen and unraveled her sari. Let it fall into a heap behind her, knowing she would never willingly wear it again. After a perfunctory wash with a cloth and bucket, her hands shaking despite herself, she dressed again in clean clothing.
She unbraided her hair as she walked back into the main tent. Ran a comb through it in long, thoughtless motions, waiting for her heartbeat to settle. Swati made a soft noise. “Let me, my lady,” she said, and took up the task, swiftly drawing Malini’s hair into a new braid.
Another of Raziya’s archers entered the tent. “There’s a war council being held,” she said, voice urgent. “Right now.”
“The empress will be ready in a moment,” said Raziya. “Tell the men—”
“No, my lady,” the guardswoman said. “You don’t understand. The council has started. And they are not… they have chosen not to summon the empress.” She swallowed, and said weakly, “It was one of our lord’s men who told me, my lady, on Lord Khalil’s behalf.”
Silence.
Raziya said, “We may attend regardless, of course, Empress.” Her voice was cold, all the fury in it suppressed. “We will ensure you have an appropriate retinue with you. All of us will be at your side.” Deepa squirmed a little at that, but Raziya continued calmly, “Nothing will be amiss.”
They all looked at Malini. Waiting for her response.
“No,” she said. She would not go to them unprepared. She would not go with shaking hands and fire flickering behind her eyelids. That wasn’t how wars were won. “How do you celebrate battles being won, in Dwarali?”
“With drinking,” Raziya said.
“And battles not yet won?”
“Battles lost, Empress?” A raised eyebrow. “I do not know. We don’t lose battles in Dwarali. And if we do, we don’t survive.”
“It is lucky, then, that Parijatdvipa is a vast empire full of many paths—and that we women know something of rising anew from the flames of ruin,” Malini said. “Swati,” she said. “Arrange for wine to be brought. We are all going to remain here, in this tent, and celebrate our continued survival.”
“And sherbet,” Sahar muttered. “Wine’s no good for those with bleeding heads.”
Raziya gave her a narrow-eyed look. Malini said, swiftly—with a pang of annoyance at herself, for her own oversight—that sherbet would be ideal.
Wine and sherbet were poured. Malini told them what had happened outside the High Prince’s fort, and watched as Lata’s face grew tighter, and her eyes more calculating, as she considered the implications of what had passed.
She observed the way Deepa shrank further in on herself, like a small prey creature seeking to conceal itself from danger.
“Deepa,” Malini said, finally. Deepa startled visibly, then settled back onto her cushion. “If you wish to see your father, you may go. He must be worried for your well-being.”
“I—I don’t need to see him, Empress. My apologies.”
“Will he not want to see you? Ensure your health?” Malini enquired.
Deepa shook her head. “No, Empress.”
“Then I must, in his place. Are you well?” Malini asked. “It was frightening for Raziya and me to face fire on the battlefield; but it is frightening, too, not to know what may be coming for you.”
“I am well, Empress,” Deepa said. “Thank you for your concern.”
Malini allowed a moment to pass, as more smoke-filled air wafted in through the tent curtain; as Deepa clasped her hands tighter, under the watchful eyes of Malini’s inner court.
“Did you want to serve me, Deepa?” Malini asked softly. “I am afraid I have not asked you since war began in earnest.”
“I…” Deepa hesitated.
“Was it your father’s will or your own, to serve me?” Malini pressed.
Deepa lowered her gaze. “My father asked it of me,” she said. “But I was happy to come.”
Malini nodded, slowly. “Of course you were,” she agreed.
“You are an obedient daughter. Your first loyalty is to your father. You love him. And he controls your fate: your marriage, or lack. Your status. All of us understand this,” Malini went on.
“And I understand—and forgive you—for watching me for his sake, and your own.”
Deepa lifted her gaze. Eyes a little wider. A little wild.
“Empress,” she blurted out. “I have said nothing—nothing—” She stopped, and seemed to steel herself. Then said, “I am the third of five daughters. Not the prettiest. Or the most charming. My father—he only wished to give me an opportunity to rise.”
Malini was silent for a moment. Then: “What did you tell him about me, Deepa?”
“Nothing, Empress. Nothing.”
“Be honest with me now,” Malini said. Low and chiding. “Don’t let your panic mislead you. You’re intelligent. Educated. Lata speaks highly of your mind. Tell me what you have told your father. Tell me what I am in your eyes.”
Deepa hesitated. “I… Empress. You are. Dedicated to winning this war. And you. You work tirelessly. You are always—as you are,” she said haltingly, gesturing jerkily to Malini. “You are. Brave and—and poised. A true heir to Divyanshi. I have told my father this.”
“And what else?” When Deepa remained quiet, Malini leaned forward. The other women watched, tense and silent. “Compliments and flattery are all well and good, Deepa. But I know they are not all you say. I am asking you for the truth.”
Deepa was intelligent, and thoughtful. Malini could practically see the thoughts flitting through the younger woman’s mind—tightening her jaw, making her mouth part on words she couldn’t quite say, then close again.
Finally, Deepa came to a decision. Her gaze hardened.
“You speak of the mothers,” she said. “And you—Empress, you speak of being mother-blessed. But you do not pray. Or. Or speak to the mothers.” Her confidence grew, her voice wavering less as she continued.
“You are not gentle or kind. You try to be but… there’s a coldness in you, Empress.
You do not forget those who slight you.” Alarm rose in her face as she said swiftly, “But I did not tell my father so.”
“Why not? Do you think it insults me?” When Deepa only looked more panicked, Malini smiled, letting her voice gentle with it. “I wanted your honesty. And I thank you for it. And in return, I have some honesty for you.
“Your father has lost his faith in me. And your father holds great sway among certain factions of my allies.” Malini’s decision to make him her general had only strengthened his power.
“I would like to know what he does. What he says, or does not say. Watch him for me. Tell me what you learn, and you will be rewarded with more power in my court than you could ever achieve as an unfavored daughter in your father’s household. ”
“My… my family,” Deepa said haltingly. “My sisters. My mother. I need to know they will be. Safe.”
“If you were your father’s son, and I your emperor, you could ask me for assurances that you would be recognized as the head of your family,” Malini said.
“If you chose the empire’s future over your father’s ambitions and errors, you could ask me to vow that your sisters would be protected and given a future unbound from your father’s fate. ”
Deepa swallowed. “I am not a son,” she said.
“And I am not an emperor. So what will you do, Lady Deepa?”
She looked away. She looked at Lata and Raziya and Sahar; at Swati, watching quietly. Slowly, the panic seemed to bleed from her face.
“My father bid me to serve you, and I did not say no. I did not even try to refuse.” She met Malini’s eyes again. “I wanted more. Is it selfish, to want even more than this, Empress?”
Are you leading me astray? her eyes asked.
“It is not selfish to serve your empire,” Malini said steadily. “And it is not selfish to protect your family from your father’s errors. And he has erred, Deepa. You have in your hands the power to right his wrongs. Will you do so?”
Deepa swallowed. “I have always wanted more,” she confessed. “Always wanted—purpose.”
“I know,” Malini said, looking at Deepa with all her focus, all the charm she could force into her own voice and eyes and body. Let Deepa know she was seen. Let Deepa know she was valued. It was true enough, surely, to grasp her loyalty and chain it fast. “I know.”
“I want the assurances you spoke of,” Deepa said. “I… I want to know I will be rewarded. And my family shall be safe. And in return… Empress, I will tell you everything of my father. And I will be your loyal servant, as I have always been.”
Malini smiled.
Later—much later—she sat with no company but Lata, and thought of how else she might protect herself from men who had stopped seeing her as a living god.
“When this began,” she said quietly, watching Lata raise her head, attentive. “I believed I would have the empire in my grasp by now.”
Or that I would be dead.
Sometimes she thought she would spend the rest of her life like this, on broken roads surrounded by armed men, always negotiating webs of politics and power with allies who bowed and bristled and measured her worth to them as she measured theirs in turn.
She would always be one step away from success or from ruin. She would never see Chandra dead.
Could something be achieved by sheer force of want alone?
Lata sat on the ground, cross-legged, back straight. She sat in the pose of a sage at debate, ready to help Malini unravel the thorny knot blooming in her own skull.
Malini calculated a new path forward.
“Bring me Yogesh,” she said, lighting the oil wick lantern by her papers, collecting her writing instruments close; ink, a thick sheaf of paper. “Try not to draw any attention to yourself, Lata.”
Lata nodded and left without another word.
Malini thought of the power of a tale—the way it could splinter into shards and cut the throat of its own maker. The tale of a crown prince turned priest, a firstborn son, still held more sway than the myth she’d wound around herself from prophecy and fire and her own sheer ambition.
She needed a weapon no one else had. She needed—she wanted—someone she could trust. Someone who had loved her even after a knife to the throat; who had held Malini’s face in her own two hands, warm and alive, and said, I know you. I know this face, and it is mine.
She had dreamt of writing to Priya again so many times. She had written to Priya so many times.
I am always thinking of you. I think of you in battle. I think of you in the dark of night. When my mind is silent or full, you wait there for me.
It galls me that I want you as much as this. That my heart so thoroughly belongs to you. The power you have over me, Priya. Why does it refuse to fade?
I think of the way the earth would yield to your hands, flowering for you. I think of what you could do for me, if I put you to use. And I should put you to use. Somewhere, you must wonder why I haven’t.
I think of how you could have made a weapon of anything.
Do you think of me, in the quiet? I wonder—
No more. She could not think of it any longer.
She wrote a different letter. Not for Priya, or at least, not for Priya alone. She wrote as empress, with all the weight of her status behind her words, and none of her heart.
She hoped Priya would understand anyway. She hoped Priya would come. For the sake of the alliance between the empire and Ahiranya. And for the sake of what still lay between them, or at least lay inside Malini, turning forever to the memory of Priya like a thing of the earth seeking light.