Chapter 21 Malini
MALINI
The camp had been growing more restless by the day as the siege stretched on, so it was no surprise to Malini when one of her guards announced that Low Prince Ashutosh wished to speak with her urgently.
She had expected some kind of conflict to break out sooner rather than later. She resisted the urge to sigh.
“I will hold audience later,” Malini told the guard, as one of the military officials arrayed around her hurriedly gathered up the maps he’d been presenting to her.
The war council tent was full of administrators, the rustle of paper, the oily musk of ink.
“Tell him I will have ample time for him then.”
“He has company, my lady,” the guard told her. “The Ahiranyi—the woman—he has her.”
“Has her?” Malini repeated, and the man nodded, knuckling some sweat from his brow.
Hearing the impatient noise of voices beyond the tent’s walls, the clang of armor, Malini decided not to ask for further details.
“Let him in, then,” she said.
Prince Ashutosh strode in. Bowed. Behind him, four of his liegemen entered, with Priya between them, cuffed at the wrists.
She didn’t look afraid, but she did not look entirely at ease either.
She bowed along with the liegemen, and when they straightened she met Malini’s eyes for one brief moment before looking away.
“Prince Ashutosh,” Malini said, deciding to forgo any pleasantries. “Please explain why you’re bringing my invited ally to me in chains.”
Ashutosh’s face was grim. “This Ahiranyi,” he said, “attacked three of my liegemen. I demand that she be punished.”
“I see,” said Malini. She paused for a moment. “Nonetheless, low prince, I see no need for her to be bound.”
“There is plenty of reason, Empress,” Ashutosh said, a sullen set to his mouth, anger in his eyes.
Priya in contrast stood calm as anything, between the low prince’s liegemen.
The cuffs on her wrists looked weighty, but overlarge, which was no surprise.
They had, no doubt, been designed to hold a grown man captive.
And Priya, for all the strength of her, was slight.
When Malini met her eyes, Priya’s mouth quirked up, ever so slightly. Not enough to be called a smile.
They both knew she could have broken those manacles if she had wanted to. But here she was, awaiting Malini’s judgment, respecting Malini’s authority. Malini supposed that was generous of her.
“Are any of your men dead?” Malini asked Prince Ashutosh.
“No, Empress.”
“Injured?”
“Some cuts,” Ashutosh said grudgingly. “Some bruising.”
Interesting. If Priya had wanted them dead, they would have been dead.
“Do you deny attacking the prince’s men, Elder Priya?”
“No, Empress.”
“What offense did they commit to attract your ire?”
“Disrespect,” Priya replied crisply. She inclined her head. “Empress.”
“Disrespect can take many forms,” Malini said. “Tell me more.”
“They did nothing to warrant the treatment she inflicted,” Ashutosh cut in before Priya’s mouth could even part.
“Empress, it is not the wounds she inflicted that make me demand justice. It is the manner in which they were inflicted. By magic. Unnatural witchcraft. You have made an alliance with a monster.”
There was an intake of breath from one of the officials. The faintest rustle of movement, as they shifted uneasily and went still.
“The Ahiranyi leadership have professed and demonstrated their loyalty to me,” Malini said calmly. “All their gifts and their magic are wielded in the empire’s service. The Ahiranyi elders serve me.”
“We do not forget the Age of Flowers, Empress. We know what they are.” His voice was sharp.
“We Saketans remember, as all Parijatdvipans do, what the Ahiranyi did to our people. Will you allow the Ahiranyi to crush us now, as they did before? Do you forget it was your ancestor who sacrificed herself to save us all?”
“Your men are not dead,” Malini said. What foolishness. Was she witnessing anger, impetuous and unvarnished, or had this Saketan prince chosen this moment, of all moments, to test her political loyalties? “Your men are barely harmed. You will have justice, Prince Ashutosh, I assure you.”
“I will take any punishment without complaint,” Priya said, head held high.
Ashutosh and Malini had been speaking court Dvipan, the shared language of the highest of highborn, but Priya spoke now in common-tongue Zaban, in the lilting accent of the Ahiranyi, deliberately and clearly.
With her braid unraveling, and her feet squarely planted against the tent’s scuffed fabric base, she did not look like a highborn—did not look like the men around her, or their wives or their daughters.
She did not look like a maidservant either.
“Her life,” Prince Ashutosh said. “I want her life. She used witchcraft, Empress. Her kind have no place in the empire.”
Malini nearly laughed. Who was he to request the death of a ruler of another land? He would never have asked it if the ruler in question had been of Dwarali or Alor. But he had asked it of Ahiranya.
And it was because of the very history between Ahiranya and the empire that she could not throw his request aside entirely. How irritating.
“Elder Priya is an ally of Parijatdvipa,” Malini said, with implacable calm; with the iron will that was her right, as empress, throne or no throne.
“I will not waste the lives of my allies, when they may yet be the death of my enemies.” And no one, surely, could deny Priya’s value.
Priya was, as she had always been, unfathomably valuable, a thing full of possibility.
Useful. “But you are correct,” Malini acknowledged.
“There must be redress from Ahiranya. There must, after all, be justice among equals.”
A look flickered across Ashutosh’s face. He had not expected Priya to be called his equal.
There was a flurry of movement from the military officials who surrounded her; the rising shuffle of pages, and mingled voices rising. An array of punishments was suggested. Beating. Exposure to the elements. Forfeiture of lands.
Deepa entered the tent. Head bowed, she looked at no one as she bowed and then made her way to Malini’s side. Her message was a whisper, quickly murmured—and then she was bowing and slipping away again.
“Public caning would be acceptable,” Ashutosh said grudgingly, when it became clear no one would allow him to have the execution he desired. There was a ripple of agreement from his attendant liegemen.
Priya said nothing. Her expression was the kind of calm that settles on waters before a storm.
By the mothers, Malini would not give a woman to these men and have her caned before them. Her mouth was full of a bitterness that was like poison. She would not give Priya to these men. She would sacrifice a great deal, do a great deal, but not this.
“It is my understanding, from the tracts that govern justice in wartime, that a highborn lord would first, as a courtesy, have his punishment decided by a superior from his own country. Elder Priya,” Malini said. “Who has the right, in your entourage?”
“No one, Empress,” said Priya. “I am the most powerful representative of Ahiranya here. The only person who stands higher than me is the High Elder Bhumika, and she remains in Ahiranya.”
“Then such courtesy cannot be extended to you,” Malini said.
She tried not to look into Priya’s eyes.
She looked over her head instead, at the men watching the both of them.
“But I believe the punishment meted out to a highborn ruler is usually financial in nature, rather than physically inflicted. Is that not so?” Malini asked, turning her gaze on one of her officials.
He stammered something incoherent, wetted his lips, then nodded.
“Financial redress has not been codified into law, Empress, and is not—ah—in line with tradition, but it is—a choice often made. In the past.”
That sounded very much like tradition to Malini, but there was little point in arguing semantics.
“Prince Ashutosh,” she said instead.
“Yes, Empress?”
“Only you can decide what would provide you redress.” It was a risk, a gamble, but better this way. Better, to place the choice in his hands rather than allow her loyalties to be laid out openly before her council. “But a trade may be worth your consideration.”
“There is only one thing Ahiranya trades in,” one of the soldiers muttered. There was a snicker from one of the other men; a twitch of lips, here and there, among their watchers.
Ashutosh did not reprimand them.
“Prince Ashutosh,” Malini said, in rebuke.
“My men only speak truth, Empress,” he replied.
How stupid. Whatever he believed—whatever any one of them believed—they had seen how Malini’s face had lit up when Priya had first arrived and kneeled, right there in the golden sun-burnt dirt of their war camp.
Malini had felt the light sweeping into her face: the tug of her own lips wanting to form a smile, the joyful breathlessness of her lungs.
How could he have seen her react so, and then say this?
Another test, perhaps. Of course it was a test.
Again, the thought came to her, uselessly, that if she were Emperor Aditya, and someone had spoken in such a manner about Rao, why—she could have had them killed, and no man in the circle surrounding her would have murmured a word of protest. When would she have the power to do as she willed—to grind laughing, spiteful men under her heel, and walk on steady ground?
Would such a time ever come?
“Prince Ashutosh,” Malini said. “A number of your men suffer from the rot.”
He swallowed, face pinched. He was insulted, perhaps, to have this taint on his loyal liegemen aired before an audience of his peers. Or he had not known that she knew. “Yes, Empress.”
“Are they still camped with us?”
She knew the answer, of course. But he nodded jerkily and said, “Yes, Empress,” once more. Then: “I do not abandon my men. Many of them have trained alongside me since we were mere boys.”
“Elder Priya possesses the ability to save mortal lives from the rot,” said Malini.
“Men, and land. That is what Ahiranya trades, in my service. If your men require services of another kind, they may wish to consider what offense they may cause their empress, to speak so before her.” A pause.
Then, when she judged that the weight of it had crushed at least a little of the spiteful spirit from the sweating liegemen, who had bowed their heads and could not seem to meet her eyes, she said, “Out of respect for the loss my fellow highborn has suffered, I will allow him to choose the form of redress he prefers: caning, or the survival of his men. The decision lies with you, Prince Ashutosh.”
All eyes turned on the prince, then.
She knew what he would say even before he opened his mouth.
“Their lives,” he bit out.
“Elder Priya will save their lives, then,” Malini agreed. “That will be redress enough, and the end of this. Yes?”
Priya bowed her head in acknowledgment. Ashutosh did the same, his shoulders stiff, his expression even stiffer. Whether he had learned anything from this would remain to be seen.
“One last matter, Prince Ashutosh,” Malini said. He paused and waited. “I have been informed that one of your men began the matter. Have him whipped. He should not have attempted to begin a diplomatic incident. I’m sure you agree.”
“Empress,” Ashutosh said, face shuttered.
“Well, then,” said Malini. “Elder Priya will attend upon your men tomorrow. Remove her chains, and you may go.”
With the air of scolded children, the liegemen removed the manacles and stepped away, following their prince in bowing and swiftly exiting the tent. Priya remained.
“Elder,” said Malini.
Priya raised her head. “Yes, Empress?”
“I hope this will not happen again,” Malini said.
“You have my vow, Empress,” she said. “It will not.”