Chapter 13 Malini #2
“We’ve spoken of what we need to,” she said to Aditya.
“Then we should drink and do something to pass the time,” Rao said. “We could play a game of five stones, if you like.”
Malini laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“The children’s game?” She and Alori and Narina had played it time and again as girls, throwing colored stones in batches of twos, threes, fours, fives, up in the air and catching them with the same hand. Malini had always been awful at it.
“I even have painted pebbles for it,” he confided.
“Fine,” she said, holding out her hand. From the corner of her eye she saw Aditya smile too, shaking his head.
She lost, of course. Soundly. But at the end of it, she felt a little more relaxed. A little more herself. A little more human.
The bodies were, by tradition, kept distant from the main camp. Bodies were polluting: a source of sickness and stench. But there were always priests attending to the corpses, preparing them for the pyre, blessing them with prayers and ointment and garlands of funerary flowers.
In the very first weeks of battle—when Malini and her followers had begun to face Chandra’s forces, on the great mountainous crags of Dwarali—her followers had brought priests from their own city-states and lands.
But those men had not remained for long.
Priests of the mothers held great respect for the dead, but death in war was hard and ugly.
She did not blame them entirely for departing.
The priests maintaining the funerary tents now were not trained in Parijat.
They were the keepers of small Saketan village shrines and humble temples to the mothers.
In Saketa, there was a minor sect that worshipped the mothers as one being—the faceless mother, who they claimed was all women who had burned as one, joined in a single great consciousness.
Small and looked down upon by Parijat’s central priesthood, the sect were not afraid of hard work, and had quickly become the bulk of the priesthood serving her army.
As she approached the tent, flanked by Lata and Swati, Malini could see two men near the entrance.
They were thin, tired looking, ash-marked roughly at the forehead and chin, their knot-worked hair bound back from their faces as they shared a carafe of water between them.
When they saw Malini approaching, one leapt to his feet and slipped back into the tent. The other waited.
“Empress.” The priest bowed low to the ground, then straightened.
He did not have the tranquil, gentle gaze the priests of the mothers had all possessed in Harsinghar.
His mouth was puckered, his eyes surrounded by shadows.
This close, she could see that the ash at his forehead and chin had faded with sweat.
“The man who saved me was a priest,” she said. “I wish to see his body.”
The priest did not argue, though he apologized profusely as he guided her into the tent. “There is little we can do about the smell,” he said, voice trembling. “In this heat… Empress, you would do well to carry attar of roses with you to mask it.”
In the normal course of things, the man’s body would have been burned immediately after the battle that had killed him.
But Malini had quietly arranged for orders to be sent to the funerary tents, and to the unlucky soldiers who guarded them, that this particular body should remain untouched until she had the opportunity to see it herself.
“When I next visit here, I will do so,” she said, although she could not imagine why she would ever need to do so again. Still, he nodded, mollified.
The body lay under a white sheet. Flowers had wilted at its feet. He warned her again that it would be unpleasant, before he drew the cover back.
It was.
Swati made a small miserable retching noise and rapidly backed out of the tent. Lata averted her eyes, but remained.
Malini stepped forward.
He was young. Deep brown skin. Closed eyes. No ash on his forehead any longer, but he had the braided hair of a priest of the mothers, and the air of tranquility, even in death.
Bracing herself, she rolled up his sleeve.
There was a tattoo on his arm, a long one that stretched as low as the knobs of his wrists.
It must have hurt, to be marked so close to the bone, with a bare needle and soot and tannin to darken the scarred lines.
The words were in an old Saketan script, but Malini could pick up snatches of meaning here and there.
Mothers. Flame.
Void.
“No priests remain here for long,” said Malini. “This is thankless work.”
“There is nothing thankless about tending to the sacred rites of the dead,” the priest said swiftly. Then he blinked, graying as he remembered himself. “M-my apologies, Empress.”
“No need. Where is your temple?”
“Empress?”
“Your temple,” Malini repeated patiently. “You accompanied Lord Narayan here, but there is no temple on his lands. I am asking where you trained and worshipped, before you came to lay Saketa’s dead to rest in my camp.”
“On the land held by Prince Kunal,” the priest, staring at her with the alarmed look of a prey creature under the paw of a beast. “There is a temple adjoining his mahal—the priests are Parijat-trained—”
“I’m sure that is true. But that was not your temple,” Malini said.
“No, Empress. N-no.” He swallowed “I was trained in a small shrine. One that served the farmers, primarily. And many merchants, who passed through.”
“You were well treated there? Educated?”
He nodded.
“Show me your wrists,” Malini ordered softly.
He wore a long shawl, loosely coiled over his arms and shoulders. He shoved the fabric back to bare his arms and held his wrists before him. They were shaking.
“You are tattooed, as he is,” she observed. “I was sheltered in the heart of the faith, in Parijat. But I know that the priests of the faceless mother carry the names of the mothers in their flesh, so that worshippers may be free to pray to one figure alone.” She raised her gaze, expectant.
“My temple,” he said, stiff with terror, “where I was reared. We—it—worshipped the faceless mother. Yes, Empress.”
“As did this man, I see. This man, who should not have been anywhere near the battlefield, let alone poised to save my life. He should not have died for me. But he did. And I believe you know why.”
“Empress,” the priest choked out.
“Tell me what you know,” she said, gentle in her relentlessness.
“He was sent,” the priest said. “Surely he was sent.”
“By who?”
“The temple’s high priest,” the man whispered. “Perhaps. I was told nothing of this, Empress. I promise it.”
He sounded truthful enough. That did not mean she believed him. But she nodded as if she did. Gazed into his eyes, over the corpse of a fallen priest.
“Tell me more about your high priest,” said Malini, “about the temple where you were trained. I want to know everything. And in return, I will forgive you for the secrets you have kept from me, however unwittingly.”