Chapter 18 Malini #2
“I hope you know how much I do not want to do this,” Priya whispered in return. Her body was taut as a bow string. She was clearly out of her element in a temple of the mothers—surrounded on all sides by the forces that had annihilated her own nation’s glory.
Malini could not respond. The lords had entered behind them, and she could not risk being overheard.
Instead she held her own feelings in a close, anxious fist in her chest and walked a few more steps forward to the altar.
She kept her gaze fixed on the statue of the faceless mother in her graceful lengha of rich flame, a dupatta of smoke coiling around her empty face.
It was a tale her teacher had told her once, many years ago.
That poor worshippers who could not afford to keep idols of all the mothers would often keep a single crude effigy in their home—faceless, smoke-veiled, intended to stand for all the mothers at once.
In the generations since, Saketan commoners had begun to worship the mothers as one: the faceless mother, who was all and none of them at once, a figure who stood for all the mothers of flame who had been or who would be.
The temple’s head priest approached. Ash-marked at forehead and chin, he held out flowers on a beaten copper tray. His wrists were inked—names in scrolling script that wound together in whorls and knots. “Empress,” he said, lowering his eyes. “We are honored.”
“It is my honor,” Malini said, taking the flowers from him, and the needle-darted thread that lay by their side. “Any opportunity to venerate the mothers brings me joy.”
She pressed the needle through the first flower as the priests began to pray. Began to weave a garland, the scent of roses and marigolds rich on her fingertips.
Priya walked forward.
There was a moment, a pause like the brief silence before a rising storm. And then Priya bowed, pressing her head to the ground before the mothers. Witnessed by Malini’s own loyal men. She held the position for two heartbeats. Three. Four.
Good.
Then she stood once more, preparing—at the behest of the priest murmuring into her ear, Malini saw—to bow to Malini, too. A gesture of her obedience to Parijatdvipa.
Malini turned to mirror her. Without hesitation, without thought, Malini took Priya by the arm, stopping her motion.
The garland was crushed between them, bruised and richly fragrant.
“It is the mothers who must be venerated,” Malini said.
“Here, within this temple, their worship supersedes all else.”
Hopefully the words were pretty and politic enough to hide the instinctual nature of her action—her desire to say I will not shame you, not you, not like this.
Priya nodded her head without lowering her eyes. Perhaps she understood. Perhaps.
“Empress,” the temple’s head priest murmured then. “Would you do me the honor of speaking to me alone?”
There was some bristling of the lords, but not much. Malini inclined her head. She turned, and bowed to the altar, and lowered the finished garland at the feet of the mothers. Then she rose to her feet. Lata followed her, a quiet chaperone.
The head priest led Malini and Lata to a study, a room with high windows and ancient manuscripts bound in silk and palm leaf stored on stone shelves. It was quiet and empty, distant enough from the worship hall that Malini could only hear the faintest strains of voices.
The priest was watching her warily. Before he could fall upon niceties—offer her a tea or sherbet, and stretch out this whole business interminably—Malini seated herself on the cushions arrayed on the floor.
Lata moved to stand by the door, hands clasped before her.
Lata was not barring the door—certainly not.
But she was a deterrent, and a message for the high priest: The empress wishes for you to remain here.
From his silence and his stillness, Malini was sure he understood.
She waited for him to sit. After a moment, he did.
“You have heard, I’m sure, that the High Prince has allied with my brother in Harsinghar,” Malini said, with no further preamble.
“That soldiers from Harsinghar have carried what appears to be mother-blessed magical fire with them and have turned it upon my men. One of them, a Parijati priest, turned it directly upon me.” A pause.
The priest before her gave no reaction; no nod, no negating shake of his head.
He merely watched her—eyes wide, unblinking, as if he were staring at a mirage, liable to flicker and fade.
“I would have died when the fires fell,” Malini went on.
“But another man saved me. Another priest. A priest of the faceless mother. One of your own.”
Silence, again.
“You should speak,” Malini said. “I will not leave until we have been honest with one another.”
The man’s gaze flickered.
“How did you know he was one of my own?” the priest said finally.
“He had a priest’s hair,” Malini replied. “He wore an ash mark. But he was not Parijati, and he carried the many names of the mothers, inked into his wrists. Just as you do.”
“You examined his body.” The priest’s voice was unreadable.
“With great respect, yes,” Malini responded. “I will return him to you, if you request it of me. If you do not, he will be burned.”
“It was not our intent for the man to die,” the priest said slowly. “It was our intent that a message be passed to you, discreetly.” A wary pause. “It is difficult for you to be approached with any subtlety, Empress.”
Not so difficult if they had sent a maid, a woman. But clearly, they had not considered it.
“Well, I am here now before you. I am willing to listen. What message do you have for me?” When he paused, throat working, she gestured at the room. The emptiness, only Lata watching them. The torches flickered. “You will not have another opportunity like this again.”
His throat worked. And worked.
“Emperor Chandra wishes to end your life,” the priest said, each word spoken with great care. “That is no secret.”
Malini inclined her head in agreement.
“As you have been taught—as you have seen—a life can possess great value. And you are a daughter of Divyanshi’s line.”
Malini waited.
The priest swallowed once more, and Malini thought vaguely that perhaps she should have requested refreshments after all, if only to put an end to that particular tic. In the light of the study—dim as it was—she could see that his skin was slick with sweat. The ash at his forehead was oily with it.
“My temple is small, Empress. We are not significant.” And do not wish to be, his tone implied. “Proximity. You understand.”
“Your message is from someone else,” she said levelly. He nodded. “You are near the siege, but not too near. Close, but not in service to any lord.” Another nod. “Then your message is from a priest of significant power,” she concluded.
“There are some who would make an alliance with you, Empress. If you wished it.”
“Their names?”
The priest shook his head.
“It was my understanding,” Malini said, “that Chandra has the complete support of the priesthood. That he has raised you above all kings and princes of Parijatdvipa. Your powerful friend must be aware I cannot do the same, when the throne is mine. And yet a priest died for me. Help me understand.”
“The priests of the mothers are not perfect allies to one another. Nor do we share a perfectly agreed-upon sense of what is right. What we share in common is a desire to do right. To walk a righteous path. But there are some who think Emperor Chandra… Your brother. That he is the right path. And there are others who look to you, Empress. And place their hope in you.”
Fine words, but Malini was not sure she could believe that any of the priesthood would so easily set aside the power they possessed under Chandra. So she waited, allowing the priest time to sweat and feel the weight of her eyes on him, and his own words press at his lungs, his lips.
“Not all of us have gained great power under Emperor Chandra,” the priest added.
A truth. But not the whole truth. The secrecy here—the sense that a game was being played that she could not see the fullness of—made her teeth ache.
“How can I trust your ally, when you give me so little?”
“Your life was saved, Empress,” the priest said. “One of our own sacrificed himself.”
“Which was not the intent, as you have already said. But what does your ally want from me? And what can I gain from him in return? Can you tell me this, priest?”
“What can you gain—? Ah. I have a gift for you, Empress. From the man himself.”
The priest rose abruptly to his feet, turning away from her and walking over to his manuscripts.
Hidden behind his books lay a small box, polished, carved from onyx. He kneeled down and held it out to Malini like an offering.
She did not take it.
“A priest of the mothers almost destroyed my men and me,” Malini said. “Can I trust this gift, priest? I am not sure.”
“There is no force more righteous in all of Parijatdvipa than priests of mothers,” the man said, which was not what Malini had asked.
Malini felt bitter laughter threaten. She reminded herself that she was prophesied by the nameless, that she had claimed to know the voices of the mothers of flame, that she had proclaimed that she had been chosen by them for the imperial throne.
She had to believe in her power, to hold all those lies steady.
She could not think of the day her heart sisters had burned. She could not think Your righteousness is liable to kill me, if I let it.
“I trust your righteousness,” she said instead.
“I trust you are loyal to ideals that may serve to save or destroy me. But priest, I assure you: ideals that bring about the murder of the last woman of Divyanshi’s line are a defiance of the will of the mothers, and the will of the nameless god.
I know it. So, I ask you again, as an imperial daughter with the mothers’ hands on her heart: Can I trust this gift? ”