Chapter 20 Priya #2
“Oh no,” Priya said. “I couldn’t possibly. I know the reputation of my people.” She gave Raziya and Deepa a tight smile of her own. “I must act at the empress’s bidding or not at all.”
“You need not do anything, Elder Priya,” Deepa said, in that same small voice. “If you do not wish to. We are only curious. I have read much of Ahiranya, and I would like very much to learn more.”
“Maybe in the future, if the empress allows it,” Priya said.
Or if we meet a battle where Malini needs my help, or she weaves some other complex plot that requires me.
That thought shouldn’t have been as fond as it felt, in her own skull.
“Although I cannot show you my skills, Lady Raziya, my advisor is an able archer,” Priya said cheerfully.
“And I’m sure she’d be happy to demonstrate. ”
“An archer? Goodness,” said Lady Raziya, eyebrows raising. “Well, that is a skill highly valued where I come from. I would be glad to match my arrows against your advisor’s if she is willing.”
“She absolutely is,” said Priya firmly.
“I am going to kill you for this,” Sima muttered a little while later, as they stood in a Dwarali practice yard, curious horsemen watching as Raziya strung her bow.
A few maids had gathered to the side, and a group of Dwarali women were milling about.
They carried bows of their own, and one of them had set herself the task of setting up the target.
“Or shave off your eyebrows. Something unpleasant, you wait and see.”
“Think of it this way. You never would have done this as a maidservant.”
“Both eyebrows. And your hair,” hissed Sima, before she took up the bow one of Raziya’s guards was helpfully holding out to her.
Priya moved to stand in the shade with Deepa. A few men began to make surreptitious bets.
The target was the strangest contraption Priya had seen in a long time.
In Ahiranya, Jeevan trained people with a simple painted plank of wood.
But this, Raziya announced, was a Dwarali artifice, used for archery games: a fish carved from gold, hollow at the eyes, hung precariously from a high pole.
The guardswoman who’d raised it up knocked the pole with her foot, and the fish began to twist wildly.
“If we were playing as Dwarali archers do,” Raziya said to Sima, “we would judge where to shoot only looking at the reflection of the target in a basin of water, laid on the ground. But we won’t go so far for a simple game.”
Sima looked at the fish dubiously.
“So I win if I knock it from the pole?”
“Hitting it is considered enough,” Raziya said, drawing her bow and nocking the arrow. “The eye is ideal. Let me demonstrate.”
The arrow flew from her bow, striking the eye of the twisting golden fish, sending it spinning wildly in the opposite direction. There were cheers from the watching crowd. The other Dwarali women, though expressionless, were palpably smug.
Sima squared her shoulders like a woman going to her death, grasped her bow, and stepped forward.
There was no way this was going to end well. Priya was absolutely going to lose her eyebrows.
“Where is Lata now?” Priya asked, turning to Deepa. Deepa startled, as if she hadn’t expected to be spoken to, then went still. “She was the one who summoned us here, and I haven’t seen even a glimpse of her.”
“Oh, with the empress, I expect,” Deepa said, darting a quick look at Priya. “They have meetings all day. Usually we attend alongside her, but sometimes we have responsibilities to our own people.”
“Was I your responsibility today?” Priya asked. Deepa gave her an almost alarmed look, and Priya grinned at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not highborn, Lady Deepa, and I’m an outsider here. I don’t know how best to talk. Am I too blunt?”
Sima’s first shot had missed. Benevolently, Raziya allowed her to try again and this time there was some mild applause as Sima’s arrow took a glancing blow off the fish’s torso.
“No, Elder Priya,” Deepa said, when the clapping had faded. “Only—it is different. Interesting. To hear someone speak as you do. I will grow used to it, I am sure. You will need to be patient with me.”
“Sahar,” Raziya called, and one of the Dwarali women walked forward. “What do you think?” Lady Raziya asked. “She has some talent, doesn’t she?”
“Mm,” Sahar said, which was not exactly agreement. She gave Sima a critical look. “Have you used a bow in battle before?”
“Yes,” Sima said steadily.
“Have you injured anyone?”
“I killed a man.”
“Did he walk into your arrow?”
“Don’t insult me,” Sima said, but she was smiling. “I’m not that bad.”
“No, not so bad,” Sahar agreed. She turned to Lady Raziya. “My lady,” she said. “I’m happy to give our guest a lesson, if that is your will.” She looked in Priya’s direction and said, a glimmer of amusement in her voice, “You’re welcome to join in too, Lady Deepa.”
Deepa squeaked out a refusal that sounded almost like I’d accidentally shoot myself in the foot. Priya bit back a laugh and watched the archery lesson begin.
“Your advisor has some skill,” Lady Raziya observed, approaching Priya once Sima had departed. “But she is still—raw. Not yet fully trained. I think, perhaps, the bow is a new skill to her.”
“We’ve all had to learn new skills in Ahiranya.”
“I imagine so,” Lady Raziya said. “When you are a people who serve another people, your options are narrowed. You are never quite given the tools to rise. And when you do rise, why—it is hard to build a palace from subpar stone, with the help of half-trained masons.”
“As you say,” Priya murmured.
“But perhaps you are building something quite different.” A pause, as Raziya looked her over, her gaze thoughtful. “I will see your skill one day, Elder Priya. I look forward to it.”
Before Priya could respond—and spirits knew what she would have said to that—she heard a yell from somewhere beyond the practice yard. It sounded like Sima’s voice.
Without another thought, she turned and ran.
There was Sima, surrounded by a ring of Saketan soldiers. One was holding a sword whip out to her by the hilt. Sima was grim-faced, refusing to take it. As Priya strode closer, she began to hear what the man was saying to her.
“… fight a Dwarali, but you won’t test your skills against us?”
So they’d been watching, then.
“I don’t know the sword whip,” Sima said steadily. “You want to test your arrows against me, fine. We’ll see who wins.”
“I saw you lose.”
“I was no match for Lady Raziya,” said Sima, in the tone she used on all the guards at the mahal in Hiranaprastha, when they irritated her. “But I think I can take you.”
The soldier grabbed Sima by the wrist.
In that instant, the fight was inevitable.
Bhumika no doubt would have disagreed. Priya could practically hear her sister’s exasperated voice in her head. Of course the Parijatdvipans want conflict, Priya. But you don’t have to give it to them.
The man was muttering something, too low and viperous for Priya to make out the words.
“My lord,” Sima was saying, voice firm and loud enough to carry. “Please control yourself. This is not an appropriate way to talk about my mistress or my people.”
“Our land’s cursed by your blight,” the soldier was ranting. “And you want me to be polite? No, the others may be too cowardly to say anything, but we don’t want you here. You Ahiranyi, you ruin everything you touch.”
“Then stop touching me,” Sima said, wrenching her hand back. He didn’t let go.
And before Priya could do anything, Sima was lifting her left hand and punching him square in the nose.
There was a crunch, and blood, and the man holding Sima yelled and raised his whip.
“Stop,” Priya shouted. The ground rumbled beneath her. She didn’t care if they felt it. Let them. “Is this how you treat advisors from other lands, soldier?” She shouldered her way through the circle of men. “What would your commander say about this?”
The soldier dropped Sima’s hand. She darted away from him, moving to stand at Priya’s side.
Priya took a deliberate step forward.
The man was resisting the urge to step back. She could see it in the stiffness of his shoulders; the sudden twitch of his feet. But he stayed where he was.
“You want a match with a sword whip, then I’ll happily face you,” Priya said.
“I can show you how I’ve treated Emperor Chandra’s men, if you like.
I’d be delighted to give you a practical demonstration.
” Her fingers twitched at her sides. If her damnable magic failed her, she would gladly take one of those sword whips and garrote the man with it. She knew she could do it.
“No one is using any kind of whip against anyone else,” Sima said. “Elder,” she added, nudging her arm against Priya’s. “There’s no more need to defend me. I’m sure this soldier has seen sense.”
“Lower your weapon, idiot,” one of the other men muttered.
And the soldier did. Good.
Then he spat in Priya’s face.
“Fuck,” Sima said feelingly.
Once, Priya would have taken that casual violence without a word; would have lowered her eyes and gritted her own teeth and tucked the hurt and rage away to be unseen, to rot and gather dust inside herself.
She would have done nothing. She would have wished, only wished, that she could show him what she truly was.
She didn’t have to wish anymore.
The soil surged open like a wave. Something made of roots deeply buried—something sharpened to a blade by Priya’s fury—surged up. The man screamed and danced back, dropping his whip. Yells filled the air.
Priya very calmly closed the earth back up. She turned, meeting Sima’s gaze, as one of the Saketan soldiers grabbed her by the arm. Sima’s eyes were wide, her face pale. Behind her, Deepa had emerged from the tent, mouth open in shock.
Don’t worry, Priya wanted to say. What can these men possibly do to me? But she couldn’t. She was being dragged away, and Sima was left alone, watching her go.