Chapter 11 Priya
PRIYA
Priya read the letter three times. She could feel Bhumika’s gaze on her. But she didn’t look up. Even after she had stopped reading, Priya traced the words with her eyes—each loop and each whorl, the steady boldness of writing in Malini’s own hand.
“What do you make of it?” Bhumika asked, when Priya was silent for another second too long.
“I think she’s in some danger,” Priya said finally. “Enough that she risked—this.”
“The traitor emperor possesses a weapon of fire. A green-sabered warrior in a highborn’s court,” Bhumika quoted from the letter. “The empress knows the Birch Bark Mantras very well.”
“She does,” Priya said quietly. “She uses it like your poets do. Telling one story to tell another. But you know that, don’t you? You’ve read every word she’s sent me.”
“I’ve read every word the self-proclaimed empress of Parijatdvipa has sent my fellow elder of Ahiranya, yes,” Bhumika said with exaggerated patience.
“If you want private correspondence, Priya, then perhaps you’ll decide to seek the affections of a less powerful woman.
You don’t need to be annoyed with me over it. ”
“I’m not annoyed about it,” Priya lied.
“I’m sure,” Bhumika said. “Do you have any more insight into the choice of ‘green-sabered warrior’ than I do?”
The tale Malini had referenced was obscure enough that it was likely very few people from beyond Ahiranya would know it.
Even in Ahiranya, it would not be well known.
It was a small fable—the story of a warrior who claimed his sword of green wood was yaksa-blessed, that it contained a yaksa’s great powers.
With his lie, he entered the service of a highborn—and brought about the death of his lord in battle. It was a warning.
“A false weapon,” Priya murmured. “A false flame that is not blessed. That will bring ruin.” She hesitated, then said, “Have you heard anything about fire? Anything that happened to Mali—to the empress’s army?”
The war had felt distant to them, so far.
They had only faced limited attacks from the emperor’s forces, easily quelled by the forest and their magic, and Jeevan’s carefully arranged patrols of soldiers.
The emperor’s focus was clearly on his sister, and as long as she concentrated her efforts on places that were not Ahiranya, the emperor would do the same.
“I don’t have spies in the empress’s army, as much as I’d like to,” Bhumika said dryly.
She’d definitely caught Priya’s slip. “But the messenger she sent to us shared a little with the maid who brought him his dinner and offered him sympathy for having to travel so far so swiftly. The empress was intending to treat with the High Prince of Saketa. But when she arrived, the High Prince’s men attacked her own with fire.
The messenger implied it was—unusual flame. But he was reluctant to say more.”
“I’m sure he was,” Priya muttered. Bhumika’s best maidservants were very good at prying information out of people, but there was a limit to what could be accomplished discreetly. “Do you think it’s fire like their mothers of flame once used upon the yaksa?”
“I think the Parijatdvipans may believe it is, even if the empress doesn’t,” Bhumika said steadily. “I can imagine that has some—implications.”
The pause between her words was heavy with meaning.
“You’re going to have to tell me what all the implications are.”
A sigh. “Priya.”
“What? I’m just being honest. Or I can pretend I have a mind as clever as yours. Would you like me to lie?”
“The Parijati worship the mothers and their fire,” Bhumika said.
“A person who controls that fire is, surely, the rightful ruler of the empire. And if it is not Empress Malini, then she will not cling to that title of empress for long.” Bhumika’s gaze flickered between the letter still clutched tenderly in Priya’s hands, and Priya’s face.
“You’re going to have to try to think as I do,” Bhumika went on. “If you do as she wishes.”
And there it was. The request Malini had made. Between tales from the Birch Bark Mantras, and remarks about weather and travel, and wishes for Ahiranya’s health, and the health of its elders and highborn—there was the real reason for her letter.
“I don’t know what to do,” Priya admitted. “She’s asked for an elder. That doesn’t mean…” Priya paused. Swallowed, and said, “What do you think I should do?”
“Think like me,” Bhumika said. “Just for a moment.”
Priya tried.
“Why does she want an elder at all?” Priya asked, finally.
“She doesn’t want an elder,” said Bhumika. “She wants you.”
You don’t know that, Priya thought. But of course Bhumika did. Just as Priya knew. It was Priya she had written to; Priya she had remembered, even when she stopped being a princess and took up a greater crown.
“I don’t see how I could help her,” Priya said.
“Can’t you? With your gifts?”
“The gifts that the elders had before us were no good against the mothers’ fire, long ago.”
“If the fire is false, our gifts—your gifts—will suffice,” said Bhumika.
“I’m needed here.”
“So many excuses,” murmured Bhumika. “It’s almost as if you don’t want to go. Is that so?”
Priya swallowed. “This is home. And I have so much to do. The people—the rot—”
“I can manage the rot.”
“And run a country at the same time?”
“We just discussed how the mask-keepers want to pass through the waters,” Bhumika said.
“They want to become twice- and thrice-born. They will be able to help with the rot. And with governance, if they must. And you’ll come home and continue your work eventually.
” She gave Priya a steady look. “We need the empress to take her throne. Nothing is possible if she does not. Perhaps she recognizes that she requires your strength for that. One ancient magic, false or not, against another. Perhaps she just wants you beside her.” A sigh.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll make do. Ahiranya will make do. What choice is there, really, Priya?”
There’s always a choice, Priya thought. What could Malini do, from across the breadth of an empire? And she had not ordered them. Not threatened. The letter had been very clear on that.
And yet. And yet.
There were always words, words under words, with Malini.
Malini never lied. But her truths were deep waters.
I ask you, with courtesy, as my allies—
“We’ll still have the sangam,” said Bhumika. “We’ll maintain our evening discussions.”
“I can’t believe that you think I should go,” said Priya. “I thought you’d try and convince me not to.”
Bhumika shook her head. Her mouth was thin, troubled. “I always knew you would seek her out.”
“Not while Ahiranya still needs me,” Priya retorted hotly. “Not while you still need me. Not when we have a handful of once-born you don’t really trust, and the chance you’re going to lose half of them to drowning. Bhumika, I can’t.”
“Many of our alliances only exist because of your Empress Malini. If we lose her goodwill…” Bhumika shrugged delicately.
Priya nodded, saying nothing for a moment.
“We cannot afford for her to fail. Or to die,” Bhumika said into the silence.
“You told me once that if she turned on us, I should remove her.”
“That would be a death on our terms, for our purposes,” Bhumika said. “Any other kind of death would ruin us.”
Malini failing. It was hard to imagine. Ever since the news had made its way back to Ahiranya that it was the princess, not the prince, who sought to take Emperor Chandra’s throne—in whispers and rumors carried by merchants and traders, swirling through to markets ahead of the arrival of an official imperial missive, signed with a flourish by Malini’s own hand—Priya had believed that Malini would win.
She was too clever to lose. Too willing to pay any price.
Even in her own skull, Priya couldn’t lie to herself: Malini would do what was necessary to ensure her own success, even if it cost her Priya.
She’d burned priests, people said. And Priya had thought of Malini’s face after they’d kissed in the forest—the fierceness in her eyes—and thought, She would. She would.
How desperate was Malini, to have summoned one of them at all? Was she desperate? Her letter had been all diplomacy. There were no creases from tense fingers; no salt from tear marks.
But there had been the tale from the Birch Bark Mantras. There had been all her words before. Her Priya, I think of you—
Priya swore and pressed her hand to her face.
“Ah, spirits. Does it have to be me? Wouldn’t you like to go on a trip, Bhumika?”
“I’m sure I’d do very well in the empress’s court,” Bhumika said. “But you know it has to be you.”
“I don’t know how to talk to kings and princes.”
“You’ve spoken to at least one prince before,” Bhumika pointed out. “And an empress. Though I suppose you did more than speak with her—”
“Bhumika.”
“Am I not allowed to make the occasional joke?” Bhumika said, smiling a little when Priya scrunched her face in response. Then her expression turned grave again. “You’ll manage. They’re just highborn.”
“You’re better suited for dealing with them,” Priya said to her. “We both know you are.”
“It’s you she wants,” Bhumika said quietly. “She may not have asked for you by name—wisely enough—but you know it to be true. And even if that were not the case, I cannot go.”
Bhumika didn’t have to say it: Ahiranya could survive for a while without Priya; without her hands on its soil, its people, its rot.
But it couldn’t survive without Bhumika, who held the mask-keepers and highborn and merchants and common folk together with a fragile weft of favors and loyalties, bribes and responsibilities. Priya wasn’t fit for that kind of work.
“You will not be able to feign a highborn’s diplomacy, never mind the kind of display expected of a country’s ruler. I don’t deny that.”
“A teacher, maybe,” Priya suggested desperately. She couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Someone to train me in decorum. Or a companion on the journey to guide me.”