Chapter 34 Swati
SWATI
There was no rest on the journey toward Parijat, not for Swati.
Every time the empress’s tent was disassembled or assembled, she had to supervise the packing or unpacking of all the empress’s possessions: her beautiful saris, her jewels, her weapons, her books and inks and the paper she valued so much.
If any of it went astray it would be Swati’s fault, so Swati did not allow anyone else to interfere with her work.
As the empress’s tent was erected in a grove not far from Parijat itself—only a day’s journey left, at most—Swati was mending the embroidery on the map of Parijatdvipa, neatly working in knots and markings to mimic the villages and fields they had passed.
Swati worked to untangle a thread with care, tongue between her teeth.
Hours might have passed, or only minutes, when she felt fingertips on her shoulder.
She startled and dropped her bone needle with a sharp exhale of surprise.
“I’m sorry,” said a voice. The accent took a moment to place. Dwarali. Then Swati looked up, and realized it was one of Lady Raziya’s archers who had interrupted her. “Come with me?” the woman asked. “There’s something you will like, I think.”
“I have work,” Swati said, even though the map was nearly done.
“Will your lady need her map tonight?” The woman snorted delicately. “No. So come.”
Swati followed, largely out of curiosity.
The archer guided her to a space behind Lady Deepa’s tent, where a group of women stood.
She saw Lady Raziya’s other guards. A few soldiers, slouching, holding bows over their shoulders.
And a handful of maids and the few highborn women of Empress Malini’s retinue, all of them picking up bows of their own, staring at the wooden targets set in the distance.
“Come closer!” Sahar shouted. She was one of Lady Raziya’s women, an archer and charioteer, and quite frightening for it. “Pick up a bow!”
Some of the women shuffled closer. Swati tentatively joined them.
“Lady Raziya asked me to train the women of the court, and the women of the camp,” Sahar said, looking them over.
“If you want to learn, you’re welcome to.
And if you don’t…” She shrugged. “Go. I’ll be demonstrating, and then we will teach any of you that want to try.
” She gestured at the men and the other guardswomen.
One of the men waved, and his fellow soldier kicked him in the foot, rolling his eyes.
Swati wrung her hands together. Took a small step back.
“Where are you going?” the woman who had found her asked.
“There are many soldiers here,” Swati said, lowering her eyes in a show of humbleness.
As she did so, she cast a glance around.
The many booted feet of Lady Raziya’s guardswomen, the delicate sandals of some of the highborn women.
The feet of the woman beside her, in narrow boots beneath a dark salwar kameez.
She looked up, and met the eyes of the Ahiranyi advisor, Sima.
Swati had not known what to think of the Ahiranyi when they first arrived.
But she’d always had a vague sense that the Ahiranyi were lesser.
Not truly Parijatdvipan, because of what their ancestors had done, and the gods they believed in.
But the temple elders of Parijat were her mistress’s allies, so she had been respectful.
When she’d heard men muttering about witches, she’d simply done her best to ignore it.
Sima was giving her a questioning look. “If you don’t want to shoot, I can take you back to the empress’s tent,” Sima said.
Was it safe, Swati wondered, to talk alone with an Ahiranyi woman? Could she curse Swati just by looking at her?
Perhaps some would claim it wasn’t safe.
But Sima had shot at a golden fish with Lady Raziya, and shared barbs with Sahar, a woman Swati greatly admired for doing all the things Swati would never dare to do in a thousand years.
Killing, for one; drinking a whole glass of arrack in one swig, for another.
So Swati stayed where she was and admitted, “I feel shy. And I don’t believe I would be very good at it.
” Why, oh why, had the archer dragged her over?
“Here,” said Sima. “I’ll show you some the basics myself.” She smiled, her cheek dimpling. “I’m a kinder teacher than Sahar, I promise you. I used to help teach the children back in Ahiranya.”
“Oh, I…” Swati hesitated.
“You don’t have to,” Sima said, in that lilting Ahiranyi voice of hers. “But when you’re in war, sometimes knowing you have some power, even if it’s fragile, even if it’s nothing against what’s coming… It helps.”
Swati raised her head properly, and looked at the tents. The war camp. The women around her, and their determined faces, and Sahar nocking her bow, expression intent even as she explained loudly what she was doing, and why.
Swati took a deep breath, and said, “Yes. I’d like that too.”