Chapter 40 Bhumika
BHUMIKA
Jeevan found her in her own chambers, where she was pinning her earrings into place. They were weighty things and couldn’t just be worn through the lobe. Strands of gold had to be affixed in her hair to keep them in place and balance out the weight of them.
Usually, she would have had a maid to help her, but today everyone in the household was preparing for the feast, and Bhumika had not wanted to rope a girl into the pointless task of getting her into her finery.
So when she heard a rap at the door, she said, “Enter,” and had the pleasure of watching Jeevan jerk to a stop, embarrassment flitting over his face as he caught sight of her kneeling before her mirror, her sari a spill of dark wine silk around her.
“My lady,” he said, turning his face away.
“There’s no need for that,” she told him. “I’m almost done. What news?”
“We have Lord Chetan,” Jeevan told her. “He was—difficult.”
“Where did you find him?”
“In his mistress’s house,” Jeevan said.
Bhumika gave a hum of acknowledgment. “So he was hiding.”
“Not just him, my lady,” he said. He still wasn’t looking in her direction. So Bhumika did him the service of turning back to the mirror as she tried to hook another slender golden chain through her bound, braided hair. “I found two of his allies in a nearby pleasure house.”
“They do like to complain about the economy. I’m glad they’re doing their part to keep it running.”
She heard Jeevan snort. When she turned around once more, his face was expressionless.
“Jeevan,” she said with a sigh as the chain slipped free from its pin. “Could you find a maid for me? Any will do.” She gestured at her hair ruefully. “I can’t hook this correctly.”
His face, still so expressionless, did something… complicated. A tightening of the jaw. A lowering of the eyes. “I,” he said haltingly. And then nothing more.
But she understood.
“If you don’t mind,” she said softly. “I’d be thankful.”
He walked over to her. He grasped one of the chains. Held the hook delicately between his slender fingers and raised it to her hair. She felt him touch one of her braids, a light pressure that shimmered through her.
She saw his reflection in the mirror behind hers. Their eyes met.
“Lord Chetan,” he said, after a moment.
“Yes,” Bhumika said, when she found her words. “Please. Take me to him.”
“I did not want to come here,” Chetan said, lips almost bloodless with terror. “Lady Bhumika, why did you send your men for me? Why have you condemned me to this?”
“Do you really believe there is anywhere you can run that the yaksa cannot find you?” Bhumika asked.
“They are our highest power. They live in every part of Ahiranya—in every root, every tree, every hope we have had for our past or our future. They want all our highborn present,” she continued levelly.
“So you will be present, Lord Chetan, for all our sakes, especially your own.”
He stared at her. For the first time, she saw something in him—a perceptiveness she had not believed him capable of. Perhaps fear had briefly sharpened his mind into something of use.
“You’re afraid, Lady Bhumika,” he said. “I have never seen you so afraid.”
She said nothing. She had no reason to be ashamed of her fear. Anyone would be a fool not to fear the yaksa.
“They—they are real, then?”
“They are.”
“They look—mortal.”
So do I, Bhumika thought. But I am not sure that I am anymore.
Out loud she said, “I would show them the same respect you show your yaksa idols on your shrine, Lord Chetan, if not more. They are exactly what they claim to be. No doubt they intend to prove it at the feast.” She rose to her feet and signaled the nearest guard closer.
“Bring Lord Chetan water. And fresh clothes, if he wishes for them.” The only men’s clothing fine enough for his status had belonged to her late husband, but he did not have to know that.
“Lady Bhumika.”
Something in his voice made her pause. “Yes?”
“Are they—as they were in tales? As in the Birch Bark Mantras?”
“They are…” Bhumika searched for words. “All you must do,” she said finally, “is show them respect and veneration. Do not think beyond that.”
“If they can see into our hearts,” he blurted out. “Our minds. Then they will know.”
She felt an icy trickle down her spine.
“What,” she said slowly, “will they know?”
He closed his eyes.
“I told you, Lady Bhumika,” he said. “I told you when we last met. Your rule has not been beneficial to all of us. We are Ahiranyi through and through, all of us. But Parijatdvipa…” He paused, swallowing painfully, heavily.
“We Ahiranyi, we benefited greatly under Parijati rule. And some of us have—acted. According to the interests of the nation.”
A leaden feeling in her stomach. Ah, the fool. The fool.
“I do not need to know more,” she said, when he moved to speak again. “No. Do not unburden yourself to me. It is far too late for that.”
“Lady Bhumika—”
“Lord Chetan,” she snapped, with far more anger than she had intended. “I thought I had impressed upon you the danger of turning on me. I thought you understood the danger you placed us all in.”
“You are only one woman,” he said thinly. “But they. What will they do?”
“You ask me for assurances?” Her voice was incredulous. “Well, I can give you none. You will have to hope they care less about mortal politics than I do.”
“Will you tell them?” Chetan asked. “If they do not know—will you tell them? Will you demand justice?”
“No,” she said. “I have no need to.” She swept to the door, fury heavy in her. “As you said, they already know what lies in your heart. They will make their own judgments. And you must hope they judge you kindly.”
Bhumika could not delay any longer. She began to walk toward the feasting hall. At her side, Jeevan was her shadow, as always.
“My lady,” he said. “At the feast. I will be there.”
She waited. When it became clear he did not intend to say anything more, she said, “Of course. You’ll be on guard.”
His boots thumped against the marble. Her own footsteps were a swish of silk. Their rhythm was discordant. “If there is trouble,” he said eventually. “If you… if you are in danger. I will intervene. I promise you.”
“Intervene with the yaksa?”
“Yes.”
“A brave thought,” she said. “But it would be a pointless act.”
“However pointless it would be, I would try.”
“I am capable of keeping myself safe,” she said quietly. “And if I can’t, I would be happier knowing that someone I trust remains behind, alive, to deal with the consequences.”
It was like a beautiful garden in the hall, so beautiful that she could only pause for a moment and stare at it in awe.
Creepers were draped from the ceiling. Flowers bloomed at the lattice windows.
A bed of sweet grasses rose from the floor that had once been plain sandstone.
The mahal had long been fractured, broken by war and by root and flower, but the yaksa had turned those flowers into architecture.
Then she walked forward, a steady and even glide, between the rows of laden tables, heavy with ripe fruit, rich dhals, sabzis studded with almonds; platters of rice, colored yellow and red and gold with saffron, fat raisins, and filigrees of crisp onions flecked darkly onto their surfaces.
The yaksa were kneeling at the head of the feast, all of them seated together. To their left sat the twice-born mask-keepers and Kritika. To the right sat Ashok. Next to him was a space clearly reserved for her.
The lords of Ahiranya had come in droves. Like Chetan, many of them had been dragged here, or cajoled by Jeevan’s men. But some were here for faith. She could see the certainty, the worship in their eyes.
Her lateness meant that they were all far into their meals, plates piled high, half-empty glasses of liquor arrayed in front of them.
Bhumika seated and then steeled herself; forced a smile to her mouth and reached for the food. Ashok took her hand.
“No,” he said, voice hushed. He wasn’t looking at her. “Wait.”
“Ashok…?”
“Wait,” he said again. He met her eyes. “Can’t you feel it? See it?”
Bhumika looked down at the food. Then, she understood.
The rice on the platter before her began to glisten, soften, its surface bursting.
The fruit withered, puckering like flesh in cold rain.
Before her eyes, the flesh split open, seeping liquid that looked and smelled entirely like blood.
The scent grew stronger, and Ashok’s grip tightened punishingly.
The food was quite suddenly riven with rot.
For a moment, the room went utterly still. People froze, their mouths full and open, their fingers still pressed into bowls of what had once been food.
Then someone let out a noise—a choked, horrified scream—and the silence splintered.
Men and women wrenched themselves back from the tables, screaming. Bhumika yanked her hand free from Ashok’s and stood. Flower petals fell upon her hair, their skin like flesh, their smell rotten-sweet. She could do nothing, absolutely nothing.
This was not the gentle, awful arrival of the rot as Bhumika had known.
This was fast, a swift metamorphosis of flesh to flower. She saw skin rupture, plants flowering. Saw people change, twisting before her eyes as green sprouted through skin, through hair, reshaping them.
This, then, was the purpose of the feast. This.
At the edge of the room, she saw Jeevan watching. Terror in his face. Don’t move, she tried to say with her own face—with the stillness of her own body. Stay where you are. Do not try to help me, oh please, do not.
In front of him, a woman collapsed to the ground, knocking over bowls and plates as she went.
They rolled across the floor as she crawled between them, branches of wood forcing their way through her skin.
In front of Bhumika, a man clutched his own face, made an awful, broken noise as his fingers sank into mossy softness.
“We trusted, once,” Chandni was saying. Her voice was as clear and bright as a song. Her unblinking eyes looked over the room of screaming, writhing people with serene compassion. “That was our error. We do not trust so easily now. Still, we offer gifts.”
“Bow before us,” Sanjana said, smiling. “Show your worship and loyalty, and we will ease the burden of our magic a little, so that you may continue to live.”
“Or do not bow,” Sendhil said. “And do not worship. And our magic will consume and keep you. We will remember your faces and your skins, and carry them with us. But you will be dead.” His expression was remote. “Choose.”
Bhumika looked at the room full of people.
Her people—the ones she’d sought to protect from the empire, and lead, and provide a future.
She looked at the panic in their eyes. Her limbs did not want to obey her—were trembling without her say-so—but she made them do her bidding.
She walked. One step. Another. Stood herself before the yaksa.
She saw Kritika, a hand to her mouth, shaking.
The mask-keepers at her side were gray-faced.
Ashok stared at her from his seat, his eyes wide and lost, as if he could not comprehend what was happening before him.
She looked at the yaksa who wore her family’s faces.
She knelt and bowed her head to the floor.
Her jewelry clinked. The chains in her hair felt heavy enough to pin her skull down.
“What are you doing?” Nandi asked curiously.
“I am bowing to you,” she said evenly. “I am showing you my worship and my loyalty, as you asked.”
“You are already our temple daughter,” Sanjana said, amused. “Already hollowed. The rot cannot touch you, daughter. And we know you are ours.”
Bhumika raised her head.
“As your temple elder, it is my duty to lead by example,” she said levelly. “So I have. So I shall continue to do so.” She bowed again.
Behind her, other highborn finally began to understand. One stumbled forward. Then another. She heard the clink of fallen cutlery. The scrape and shuffle of bodies. Around her, shadows gathered. She bowed again, and all the highborn lords of Ahiranya followed suit.
“Good,” Chandni said, pearl-eyed, smiling. “Good, my dear ones. Good. You’ve chosen well.”