Chapter 41 Priya #2
Romesh was watching her, wary even through a haze of wine and opium. But he offered her the bottle. She took it from him and drank. She wasn’t going to reject hospitality.
She settled herself more comfortably on the ground. Tucked her feet under her and said, “That’s good stuff. Tell me, do you arm wrestle?”
“Every soldier knows how to arm wrestle.”
“I have some arrack,” said Priya. She didn’t, not anymore, now that everything had burned.
But she was sure she could procure some if she needed to.
Malini would give her almost anything if she asked.
“If I win, it’s yours. If you win, I take a bottle of your wine,” she said, gesturing at the carafes at the soldiers’ feet.
“Arrack’s filthy stuff,” Romesh observed. A murmur of agreement arose from the other men. “I’m not betting good Saketan wine for that.”
“How about hashish?” Priya asked.
He gave her a measuring look. “That,” he said, “I’ll bet some cheap wine for.”
“That’s not a fair deal.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Fine, fine.” Priya leaned forward, ready to steady her arm against the ground. “A little woman like me, you should be able to beat me left-handed, no problem.” She grinned.
He snorted.
“What shit. I saw you throw half a river onto an army.”
“I didn’t use my arms for that.”
“And how do I know you won’t cheat?”
“You’re going to have to trust my honor,” she said.
“I’ve always thought Ahiranyi have no honor.” His tone was neutral. His eyes still fixed on her own.
This was the kind of challenge she could understand.
“Test mine and we’ll see,” she said.
It wasn’t a fair match. Priya was plenty strong, but Romesh was burlier, and he wasn’t using his injured arm.
Still, she put up more of a fight than he’d expected, and by the time he slammed her hand down against the ground and held it there for a strike of three, the other Saketan men had gathered around to watch.
“Hand over my prize, then,” Romesh said, grinning.
“With this arm, after the beating you’ve given me?” Priya rubbed her arm dramatically. “Come find me tomorrow and I’ll give it to you then. Unless you want to wrestle again for the arrack after all…?”
“I don’t think you should,” one man said in a mildly chiding tone. “You’ll get an injury.”
“Sima should do it, then,” Priya said.
“Me?”
Priya turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow in challenge, and Sima said, “Ah yes. Me.”
“You’re going to get your advisor to wrestle a bunch of men?” Romesh asked.
“Hey now, Sima is my advisor and my chief arm wrestler,” Priya protested. “We’re more like family.”
“We’ve known each other since we were children,” said Sima. “I think I can take my lady’s place, just this once.”
“It’s a bet, then,” Romesh said, after more cheery heckling from the crowd.
Priya shuffled out of the way, and Sima sat. Cleared her throat.
“Soldier, if a maid may be so bold as to give you some advice…”
“Go on,” he said, putting his own arm forward.
“It’s never wise,” Sima said, taking his hand, “to bet on arm wrestling against an ex-laundress.”
The encampment was celebrating rowdily by the time Priya meandered her way back to Malini’s tent. The guards at the entrance let her in without comment.
New lanterns had been lit, filling the tent with a warm glow. And there, at the heart of it, sat Malini. She’d removed her crown of flowers, her jewels. She was in nothing but her sari, her braid snaking along her shoulder, fraying a little into curls.
Their eyes met.
“You went out,” Malini said. Her voice was carefully neutral.
“I have Saketan wine.” Priya slunk deeper into the tent, over canvas onto plush carpet—the monstrously expensive, hand-knotted silk thing that lay beneath Malini’s bed.
She could see the stains of her river-excursion marked into it: a snaking drip from one edge to the bed, a crescent of dark water-ink.
She liked the sight of it, and didn’t really want to consider why.
“Do you,” said Malini. She was sitting at her low desk, surrounded by maps. She was alone, at least—no sign of her inner court about. She had a piece of paper laid out in front of her, inked words drying on its surface.
“Cheap Saketan wine,” Priya amended. She held it up, loosely, and thought of Malini during her imprisonment—Malini forced to drink drugged wine again and again, poisoned, hallucinating. She hesitated, no words leaving her mouth, unsure if she had overstepped.
But Malini was watching her, still. Her eyes were darker than ever in the lantern light.
“You should share it with me,” Malini said.
She held out a hand, and Priya crossed the floor. Placed the bottle in her waiting palm. Malini tilted the bottle back, forth.
“This is half empty.”
“Sima and I drank some of it,” Priya admitted. “It was only fair.”
“Was it now?”
“Sima won it in a game of arm wrestling.”
Malini raised an eyebrow.
“Who did she wrestle?”
“One of Prince Ashutosh’s men,” Priya said with a shrug. “Don’t worry, they seemed impressed.” Priya looked around again. The noise of the camp seemed very distant here. There was incense lit—a soft, rich fragrance of sandalwood. “Where are your people?”
“Celebrating,” said Malini. “Just like you were.”
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating too?” Priya sat down next to her, legs sprawled in front of her. She leaned back on her elbows, nearly lying on the floor. She tilted her head back, feeling the starry warmth of the alcohol swimming through her. “You should always celebrate when you do well in battle.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Malini. “But I didn’t want to celebrate with them. I wanted to… reflect. And I wanted to wait.” Her gaze drifted. Traced Priya’s jaw. Her throat.
She opened the wine. One easy, graceful motion of her hands. “And now here you are.”
“Here I am,” Priya whispered back.
Malini leaned toward her. She raised the bottle, pressing the coolness of the rim against Priya’s lower lip. “Will you drink?” she asked.
“I think I’ve had enough,” Priya said softly.
But she raised her own hand, tilting the bottle along with Malini, and felt the wine brush her lips—felt the sweetness of it burst on her tongue.
And then they were lowering the bottle together.
Letting it meet the floor. And Malini was cupping Priya’s face in her palms and tilting her face up.
The kiss was—gentle. There were no words that Priya could find inside herself for it. No more than a brush of their lips; nothing more than the caress of Malini’s breath on her skin, and the scent of her—smoke and salt, and sweet jasmine oil.
Malini leaned in closer and touched her fingertips to Priya’s upper arm.
A light touch. Almost a question. When Priya said nothing, Malini dragged her fingers down.
Her fingers were still soft, unmarked by calluses from weapons or physical work, but her touch was firm.
When she drew her fingers up, her nails scraped Priya’s skin, leaving a slow, steady line of fire in their wake.
Priya couldn’t help but make a noise—a thin, wanting thing.
“Do you still want to see if I’m capable of breaking you?” Malini asked. “Do you still want me to try?”
Something hushed, almost reverent in her voice, in the shape of her mouth, the look in her eyes. It made Priya feel dizzier than any wine; made her body feel like something alchemized.
“Yes,” Priya said. “Always. Yes.”
Malini tilted Priya’s face up herself and kissed her again; a slow, lush kiss that made Priya’s mouth part; made her feel drunk with desire, more human and more present in her own flesh than she had been in so long, so long, perhaps ever.
She could taste the wine on Malini’s lips now.
“Look,” Malini murmured. She took Priya’s hand and led her fingers to the chain around Malini’s throat. Guided them along her collarbone, down the ridges of metal against the skin and bone, to the husk of a flower that lay above her breasts.
“You still wear it,” Priya managed to say. It was hard to think, when Malini was so near her. Hard to think through the faint, warm haze of wine and the sight of Malini’s hair escaping its braid, sweetly unraveled, Malini’s throat bared.
“I do,” Malini said. “It reminds me of what I survived. And what I still have to do. And of you.” She curled her hand over Priya’s. Strong though Priya’s hand was, callused from war and work, it fit perfectly inside Malini’s own. “I would not be here without you.”
“Malini,” Priya said quietly.
“I like carrying a piece of you with me. A little of your magic. Sometimes when I lie back to sleep I feel it pulsing like a heartbeat. I feel it like your heart against mine. The warmth of it seeps right through me.” She hesitated, her thumb brushing shapes into Priya’s skin. “It makes me feel human.”
Priya was powerless to stop Malini encircling her wrist and drawing her hand down over soft skin, over the buttery silk of Malini’s blouse, over the shape of her body through cloth—the curve of her breasts, rising and falling with her breath.
The narrowness of her rib cage. The velvet of Malini’s stomach.
The curve of her hip, warm through the cloth of her sari.
“I am tired of wanting and not taking,” Malini said. So honest and clear. It felled Priya, just a little. Made her breath catch inside her.
“Then take,” Priya said. Wanted and wanted, with an ache that ran right through her. “Take, Malini. I’m here.”
“Come with me to the bed,” Malini whispered, and how could Priya refuse her? How could she want to?
There was hesitation in Malini: in the way she traced the lines of Priya’s throat with her nails, almost grasping, circling, holding, but not quite; in the bruising, then carefully softened pressure of her hand at Priya’s waist as she lowered her down to the bed.
The punishing warmth of her mouth, then the tenderness of it, the feather-lightness of the way she kissed the corner of Priya’s eye, her cheek, the shell of her ear.