Chapter 42 Bhumika
BHUMIKA
Nowhere in the mahal was safe from the eyes of the yaksa.
Bhumika crossed the corridors, following the light of the moon where it broke into the halls, between the thick foliage that wound over the windows; the creepers that hung from the ceiling, as graceful as curtains of silk.
She could feel every inch of them, every bit of the life within them, like an extension of herself.
And the life—the pulsing, breathing force of it—watched her in turn.
In this corridor, if she was still and silent, she could hear the distant noises of the nursery.
Sometimes, she stood there by the window with her eyes closed and strained to hear a single noise—a laugh or a cry, the sound of her daughter’s voice.
Anything at all. Sometimes, like a cruel joke, one of the yaksa deigned to allow her a glimpse of Padma through a half-open door, or down the end of the corridor, held in their arms.
Tonight, she heard footsteps. But no yaksa emerged, and no Padma. Just Kritika, dressed in white, her expression stiff. When she caught sight of Bhumika, she paused, and her expression only grew stiffer.
“Elder Bhumika,” she said. “Good evening.”
“Kritika,” Bhumika said in return. “Are you… better now?”
“I was never not well,” Kritika said.
“The banquet—”
“I am going to the Hirana,” Kritika cut in. There was something hunted and defiant in her face. She raised her head, chin up, and said, “I am going to pray alongside the yaksa. Whom I worship. And trust.”
Bhumika stared into her face.
“Kritika,” she said. “Please.”
Kritika began to walk again. Quickly, as if she could outrun the banquet. The look on Bhumika’s face.
“I fought for a better world, Elder Bhumika,” she said determinedly. “I will not reject it. I have faith.”
Bhumika said nothing to that. What could she say? She let Kritika go.
Silence fell again. She swallowed hard, against the aching lump of grief and anger in her throat, and walked onward.
She crossed the corridor and slipped from one to the next, making her way into the narrow servants’ passages that adjoined the once grand hallways reserved for the nobility. She did not see Sanjana’s vibrant face, or Chandni’s gentle one, or the gleam of Nandi’s silvery eyes. She was glad of that.
Her people were waiting for her in the kitchens. Billu was carefully stoking the fire in one of the ovens. When he saw her, he bowed his head in greeting.
“They don’t care much for flame,” Billu said, adding some fuel to the embers burning low in the oven. “So I thought, I’ll get some work done and keep them away while I’m at it. My lady.”
She nodded.
“How is Rukh?” This, she addressed to Ganam. He was standing on the edge of the circle of servants, the only mask-keeper present. The only one, frankly, that Bhumika had felt safe inviting. Khalida was sitting cross-legged on the ground behind him, her head bent as though too heavy for her neck.
“Well enough,” he said, expression grim. “Doesn’t remember his mother’s name, sometimes. And sometimes he looks at me like he can see right through me. But he’s more himself again.”
She felt helpless relief run through her. Whatever her brother had done to the boy, he had not deserved it, and she was deeply glad that it was a wound he was capable of healing from.
“I tried to see Padma again,” Khalida said. She sounded subdued. Haunted and tired, in a way that years of service to the regent and the tumult that had followed his death had never managed to make her be. “They wouldn’t let me.”
“Ah, Khalida,” Bhumika breathed. Foolish tears began to build behind her eyes. “Thank you for trying,” she said.
Every time Bhumika had attempted to go near her daughter, the yaksa wearing Chandni’s face had found her and taken Bhumika’s arm lightly, so lightly.
Would her dear temple daughter show her the mahal again?
Let her touch the fruit trees in the orchard—feel their strength and change them?
Would Bhumika take her to the worshippers once more, so they could meet a yaksa and touch Chandni’s feet, and pray to her as they so desired to?
And Bhumika had said yes and yes, obediently yes, and had not seen her daughter.
“The feast,” she began. Then stopped.
They stood or sat around her and watched her. Waiting for her to speak.
“You know by now what has been done to the highborn who attended the feast,” Bhumika said.
“The yaksa have told them they will live, if they are obedient. And if they are not, the rot will take them. And the yaksa have told me that they seek a war. They have told me they desire a new Age of Flowers. The highborn will now have no choice but to help them.” A pause.
Then, “You know they keep my daughter from me.”
Khalida let out a low sob.
“I never imagined the yaksa returning,” Billu said, from his place by the pots.
“But if I had, I’d have thought they’d make Ahiranya better.
Make the world respect us. I’d have thought they’d treat us well.
” He savagely poked at the flames. Firelight running fingers across his face.
“Seems to me, they’re no different from the empire,” he said.
“We’ve lost one tyrant and gained another. ”
“At least they’re ours,” someone said.
“Are they? No one told me when I was a boy that the yaksa I grew up praying to would like sickening people. Hurting children,” Billu replied. “I would have gone and prayed to the nameless instead if they had. At least one’s not likely to move in and poison the guests.”
“So what do we do? Fight them? How’s that going to end?”
“I am not asking you to raise your voices and weapons against them,” Bhumika said. “Far from it.”
“Are you asking us to obey them? If I wanted to serve them,” Ganam said, “I’d be sitting with Kritika right now, you understand, Elder Bhumika? I wouldn’t be here of all places, with people who barely like me.”
“Even Kritika’s not sure if she wants to worship them anymore,” said a soldier.
“As Billu rightly pointed out,” Bhumika said calmly, “our people have survived oppression and mistreatment before. We know we have the strength to do so if we must.”
“But we shouldn’t have to again,” one of the maids said. Her voice trembled. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“It isn’t fair,” someone else said.
More voices clamored up, rising and tripping over one another. There was a thud. Bhumika turned, and saw that Jeevan had knocked his saber pommel hard against the wall, making a noise loud enough to silence them.
“Elder Bhumika,” he said. “You were saying.”
“It isn’t fair,” Bhumika said. “And I am… grief-stricken. I had so many hopes for Ahiranya. As you all did. I know. But I also have faith in all of you. I have faith you will survive. I have faith you can bend to monstrous forces, and still hold pride in your hearts. And I know if the opportunity arises, you will set yourselves free.”
“And you?” Ganam asked. Eyes on her, assessing. “What will you do, Elder Bhumika? Lead their wars for them?”
She would do whatever they asked of her, but only what they asked of her.
She would weave her way around their orders, finding hairline fractures in their control, weakening their grip on Ahiranya and its people.
She would do what she had always done: play at obedience, while ever sharpening her knives. Waiting for a chance. Only a chance.
The thought made her to want to wither. She understood their frustration; their hopelessness. It was hers too.
“I will remember what we are,” she said.
“I will keep the thought alight in my heart, like a candle. And when our lives darken, I will use it to guide me through. I will remember that we are not what is done to us. We are, and always have been, more than that.” Her voice softened as they stared back at her—grief and rage and something like hope in their faces. “That is what I will do.
“We will not die bravely and needlessly,” she said. “But we will not lose hope. That is what it means to be Ahiranyi, whether the yaksa know it or not. When they destroy us, somehow we will always grow anew. Have faith in that.”
She felt Ashok before she saw him. The green sang and writhed in her head, a warning and a call. And there he was. Waiting for her beyond the kitchen courtyard.
“Keep the others in the kitchen,” she said softly to Jeevan. “Keep them safe.” He hesitated, clearly unwilling to leave her alone—but at her urging, he abruptly nodded and walked away.
The spirit wearing her brother’s face wavered on his feet. Stood on the dusty ground of the yard and looked at her with her brother’s sullen eyes, always displeased, always demanding more than she could give. She stared back.
“I heard you talking,” he said. “To the others.”
“Then you know I counseled obedience.”
“There’s a tale I want to tell you,” he said. His voice echoed through the dark. “A child’s tale. Though you won’t find the whole of it in any book. Only fragments.”
That did not sound like Ashok’s voice.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Once,” he replied. “There was a yaksa. A yaksa who came after Mani Ara to this world. Like her, he made himself part of Ahiranya. He became a green thing. Flowers in him. But it was humans he loved best. He took in orphans. He raised them like his own.
“But mortals were so lonely, by nature,” he said. “His kind—his yaksa kin—were bound together by the waters. Could feel each other. Could share dreams and feelings. Thoughts. Mortals had no such skill. So he decided to give it to them.
“To have magic you have to sacrifice something. He taught them that. Told them when they drank the waters, they would have to give something up. Hollow themselves to make room for it. They chose to do it. He created a temple to train them. He led them to the waters, and let them take the waters up. Those that lived were bound to the yaksa—sharing their magic, their memories, their hearts. Those that died, he kept for himself. Beloved masks.” He touched a finger to his own face.