Chapter 18 Malini #3
“You will not die here,” the priest said. “Empress. You have my word.”
Malini gestured over Lata, who held out her hands for the box in Malini’s stead. The head priest handed it to her. Settled deeper onto his knees.
“If this gift pleases you,” he said. “If you… if you accept that our ally is benevolent. Then I must request a gesture in return. A favor. If you promise to fulfill it, I will happily supply you his whereabouts. Where he will willingly meet you, and make a pact, if you desire it.”
I could torture that information from you, Malini thought dispassionately. He was already fear-struck. A little pain, the threat of more, and he’d collapse like dampened sheaves of paper.
But that would hardly win her allies. Alas.
“Bring it here, Lata,” she said.
Lata held the box forward. It was solid, and now she could see that it was made of a mixture of dark wood and onyx stone, its lid carved in swirls and whorls that formed a black rose. It had to be weighty, in Lata’s hands, but she held it up steadily, with no sign of strain.
Malini touched her fingers to the latch. Opened the lid.
Inside was ash. A thick, heavy layer of it, black dust mixed with white gristle. Wood, char, bone. Malini almost recoiled, but caught herself.
“Lata.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“A knife, please.”
Lata drew a small dagger—previously concealed in the fold of her sari—and offered it to Malini, who took it and used the tip to move the ash, peeling its surface like skin. And ah. There.
Beneath the ash lay a bud of fire.
Lata gave a muffled gasp. Malini thought of those priests upon the walls with their arrows; those priests with their swords drawn. She pressed her own blade to the flame and watched the flame shiver. Unfurl, like a blossom meeting sunlight.
She raised the dagger and the flame writhed. It moved nothing like real fire: uncanny, winding, opening and closing like a fist. It almost looked as if it were reaching for her.
She placed the knife into the box. Closed the lid with an abrupt snap.
“What does your secret ally require in return?” Malini asked the priest.
“The priest you have imprisoned,” he said. “Release him.”
That was a surprise.
“He sought to end my life,” said Malini. “He conspired to murder my men.”
“He acted out of faith,” the priest before her retorted, but gently.
“You have been called a priest-killer by some,” he went on, watching her carefully.
Was this a warning? Advice, or a threat?
She was not yet sure. “You took the lives of priests of the nameless in Srugna. I have heard the tales of your fire. Lives offered willingly,” he added, as if Malini had argued with him.
“But nonetheless, holy lives, stolen by your flame, your men, your guiding hand. But you have not yet harmed a priest of the mothers. To fight the men who faced you from Saketa’s fortress—that is an honorable battle, and no one would judge you for it.
But to kill a priest of the mothers who willingly entered your war camp, who kneeled before you—it cannot be forgiven. ”
Malini gave herself a moment to breathe and weigh up her options. Then she nodded.
“Your ally must have very good spies, to learn so swiftly what passes on a distant battlefield,” she murmured. “He is in Parijat, is he not?”
Instead of replying, the priest returned to his shelves. Drew down a cloth bundle, which he unrolled, revealing a map of Parijat.
The answer was yes, then.
“Let me show you the way,” he said. “I cannot give you his name, Empress. Even here, we call him the faceless son.”
“He is a servant of the faceless mother, then? Like you?”
“Ah, empress,” the man murmured, inclining his head. His face was gray. “He is not like me. That, I can assure you.”
It was simple enough, on their return to the army encampment, to brush aside the concerns of her highborn. To summon Lata to her side, and call for Yogesh, and relay her orders even as she walked across the camp to her own tent, the folds of her sari rippling from the speed of her footsteps.
“You wish to… release him.” The official’s voice was tentative.
Malini simply nodded. She did not have to explain herself to him. There would be plenty of people who could—and would—demand explanations of her later. Best to save her energy.
“Record what needs to be recorded in your ledgers, and see that it’s done,” said Malini.
Yogesh was silent for a moment, still walking beside her.
“Is anything unclear?” Malini asked.
“Ah—Empress.” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps—should I speak—to Lord Mahesh?”
“No,” said Malini. “There is no need for that.”
Malini waited until she was back in her own tent.
Then she opened the box.
Malini had a saber of her own, fashioned to be lighter than a man’s, with a smaller grip so that it would be better suited to her strength, her hands.
Its metal was shining silver, its scabbard inlaid with moonstone.
Swati brought it to her, and Malini placed the tip of the weapon into the ash. Sifted through it.
The fire rose from the dagger and crawled onto the edge of her saber. Shifted and glowed, flickering and swirling just as it had on the weapons of the priestly soldiers who had turned on her army at the fortress’s gates.
“Be careful, my lady,” Lata said, voice tight. She stood at the edge of the tent. Not as if she planned to run, or even wished to. But as if she feared the fire rising on Malini’s blade.
She was right to. Malini stared into the fire, which bloomed and withered like flowers upon a steel vine, and wondered what it would do.
Would it turn on her? Leap onto her flesh, destructive by nature, and burn her to char? She imagined, as she often had in her darkest hours, being reduced to an agony of ash. She imagined the tent burning and Lata with it.
She held the sword steady and waited. Waited.
Malini moved the fire between two blades—the saber and the dagger—watching as it coiled between them with tendrils like fingers. She watched with careful patience as it grew thinner and weaker. Waited, again.
Using the dagger, she carved a hunk of it away from the whole, and watched it grow dimmer than the rest.
This was not how true fire worked. It was not how mothers’ fire was meant to work, if the Book of Mothers was to be trusted.
She waited long enough that her arm began to tremble. Then Lata walked out of the tent and spoke softly to one of the guards, and returned with water, with food, and the task of watching Malini watch the flame.
Malini waited… and watched the fire begin to die. It withered as if the ash had been its roots. Its color faded, flame turning from gold to blue, to darkness.
Malini thought of the Book of Mothers—of the nature of the mothers’ fire and thought, ah.
A gift after all.
The fire of mothers did not fade. It did not wither. It was unstoppable—a force of destruction that only faded away when the yaksa were dead. But this fire had died before her eyes.
Chandra was not blessed. Not chosen. And now Malini had proof.
She could feel a smile tugging her mouth. She let it overcome her face. Let herself laugh as the fire went out.
“Look, Lata,” she said softly. “The mothers love their daughter after all.”