by Varsha Ravi
“Nila fell to her knees beside the river, having transformed back to human while traveling through the forest. She wept and wept, but her tears could not wash the blood off, nor could the water of the river. The young girl looked to the sky and prayed for Makai to release her from life, prayed for the goddess to wash away her sins. The goddess could not manage the latter—Nila’s mistakes were her own and no divinity could erase them. But she took pity on her, and released her. It is said that Nila floated up to the sky—that the blood on her hands turned it crimson and her tears coalesced and formed a white jewel that held her soul. And every moon, we mourn her—those she lost and those she killed and those she loved.”
There had been silence for a moment—and then Kita had asked quietly, “What happened to the river, Mother?”
At that, Aswathi had turned away and smiled softly, as if amused by a personal joke. “They say it runs black, my sweet. They say it runs black.”
Looking at the carving now, wrapping around the base of the north tower, Kiran was struck by the expression on the young girl’s face. It was one of sorrow, but also one of weariness. As if she had looked into the eyes of death itself and not flinched. As if she knew it. It was a familiar expression to him, but he could not place it. Bitterly, he thought he could’ve seen that expression on anyone he knew—the war had not spared any of them. That faint, unknowable sorrow he had seen on their parents’ faces now lived on in their hearts.
There was a distant sound of panting, ragged and frantic. Normally, he would not have been able to hear it, soft as it was. But the temple was deathly silent in the night; he let his hands fall from the carving and retreated back into the main area.
The moonlight illuminated only the pool in the center, a clear, pale blue color against the silver light. There was a small figure hunched on the last step, kneeling beside the edges of the pool. They were pitched so far forward that for a moment, Kiran feared they would fall into the water. And yet they did not, rocking back and forward to a rhythm he could not parse.
For a single, heart-stopping moment, he thought it was Aswathi—her ghost back to haunt him where he would not be able to run.
But the figure was not dressed in a priest’s robes. They were dressed in simple cotton nightclothes, wrapped in a thin, dark cloak. Kiran descended the steep stone steps. They were not damp, and yet he feared falling nonetheless. There was something about the water beneath that paralyzed him, spoke of simple, quick suffocation.
Kiran knelt beside the figure and hesitantly reached out a hand to turn them toward him. His breath caught from surprise. “Suri?”
She flinched, scrambling away from him. Her eyes had snapped open, but there was a feral, jagged terror in them that wiped away all traces of recognition. He reached out again, then thought better of it and dropped his hand. “Princess—”
But she was not listening—she had glanced down at her hands. Kiran inhaled sharply. Her hands were covered in blood, her palms ravaged with small, shallow cuts and a long, uneven one. A cheap kitchen knife lay beside her, drenched in blood.
She made a choked, strangled sound, of abject terror or utter disgust—he could not tell which one—and surged forward to the pool of water. Suri scrubbed at her skin with a ceaseless, intense fervor, washing her hands of the blood long after they had become clean. Her skin was beginning to pink, small scratches showing under her fingernails.
Kiran reached forward and held her hands tight, stilling their motion. She struggled against him for a few moments, writhing in his grip, but eventually she calmed. Sharp, rough sobs ripped out of her; she looked up at him—still distant, still lost, but tired. He let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. For a few minutes, the sound of her crying echoed in the empty temple, her tears soaking into his skin.
Eventually, the shuddering sobs faded into trembling. She pulled herself back, and he realized he was still embracing her, his hands light on her arms. He moved to let go, but she raised a hand and placed it on his, leaning into the touch.
“It’s the blood,” she said, explanatory and nonsensical. He nodded as if he understood, but she tilted her head, as if aware he did not. She exhaled, long and slow, and dropped her hand from his. There was something achingly weary in her expression. “Take me back to the palace, Kiran.”
He wanted to ask her why she was here—why she had been crying, how she had cut herself and why it had shaken her—but every question he had felt unimportant in the face of her request. So he rose slowly and took her back to the palace with one hand still on her shoulder, a kind of lifeline. The guards were still awake, and they were too tired to come up with excuses, so they took the long way around—through the hidden shed and along the beaten path. They silently walked through the gardens, following the west colonnade back to the princess’s rooms. He could hear faint rustling from inside—the sound of her maids sleeping, no doubt.
Suri’s face had regained some of its color, but it was still pale, the color of damp sand. Her expression, too, had receded, an uncharacteristic uncertainty tilting her mouth. She began, “I am sure you are tired—”
“You know I do not sleep,” he said, soft where the words were disdainful.
She glared at him and he was glad of it, if only because it drew her further out of that slick, silk-strong fear that had held her. “I could not ask you to go out of your way any longer.”
“That is what I have done since you first arrived,” he reminded her, a little surprised at his own forcefulness. “I have long since grown used to it. And if I left, who would dress your wounds?”
Suri glanced down at her hands, surprised, as if she had forgotten the cuts. They had not begun to bleed again, but they had grown into an angry red color in the time since they had left the temple. She looked at him grudgingly, as if she were considering the merits of allowing him to stay. Yet there was something habitual and fragile about it, too.
Quietly, she unlatched the door and let them both in. She lit the lamp beside the entrance, casting the entire room in an eerie amber glow that created shadows out of them both. She darted a nervous glance at the two adjoining rooms, but they remained alone.
Padding across the room, she took a reluctant seat on the bed, glancing up at him expectantly. “The bandages are in the night stand.”
He obediently pulled open the first drawer of the night stand, rifling through its contents before moving on to the second one. Suri made a faint, nearly inaudible sound in the back of her throat, but did not say anything when he turned to look at her. That drawer was filled with imported books, though he could see the edge of a white slip near the bottom. The third drawer was empty save for a small wooden box, filled with linen cloth and a series of bottles. Kiran pulled it out and laid it beside her on the bed.
He cleaned the wounds in silence, interrupted only by the occasional hiss of pain when a cut was particularly large. It was only when he began to wrap them, trying his best to keep them from constricting her, that she spoke. Her voice was a little ragged, though he was not sure if that was from the pain or from the experience itself. “I am afraid of blood.”
It explained part of what he had seen, but not all of it. “For how long?”
She closed her eyes. “I am not sure. Longer than I can remember. It is one of my first memories.”
Kiran frowned up at her from where he knelt beside her hands. “One of your first memories is of blood?”
Her hands stiffened within his, her entire body going still and brittle, as if a single touch could crack her. When she spoke, the words were careful, soft, as if she was drawing each one out of herself painfully. “I have always been a tool of blood, of violence. Of death. It is the way of my family.”
Suri did not elaborate on her words, but Kiran thought he understood what she meant to say regardless. She was gritted teeth, gravel-studded palms, bloody smiles—a perfumed, crimson rose, every petal cut into a razor blade. She was a storm of a girl with lightning in her blood; and
she had been born with it sparking, but she had been taught to turn it outward, into blood and blades.
He had always suspected, right from the beginning—the knives, the suspicion, the cutting, heavy glances. But the visions had hidden the danger of her heart, obscuring it in ash and flame. Besides, if blood on one’s hands absolved others of the moral responsibility to care for their life, he would’ve died a long time ago.
He finished wrapping her hands, removing the excess. Without meeting her gaze, he took them in his own, flattening them so the wounds did not bleed. “I should have known, and I did, in a way, but I didn’t act on it. But—if you want—you don’t have to help me with the spy. I would never force you; I know you have your reasons. The blood, your family—I cannot ask you to continue.”
She squeezed his hands in hers so tightly the last words petered off, falling into silence. He met her gaze reluctantly; her gaze was hard and bright, cooled embers held up to the light.
“I appreciate it,” she said, a touch sardonically. “I appreciate this. But I knew what I was involving myself with when the messenger sent the first missive—I knew when I came to this city.” Suri gave a little laugh, soft and dry. “It is a little late for me to remove myself from these matters now. I might be so closely enmeshed that to cut me away would stop my heart on its own.”
“Don’t say that,” he said sharply, and she pulled her hands from his. The wounds had begun to bleed again, soft crimson blossoming against the coarse bandages. She watched the blood with a cool distance borne of suppressed discomfort—it was a familiar expression to him; he’d seen it on Viro a thousand times before. He blew out a sigh, but his chest still felt tight with fear. “You cannot speak so blithely of death. The gods are always watching.”
The corners of her mouth curled in a crooked smile, a strange display of amusement. “If you say it, it must be so.” Abruptly, she turned away, leaning over her bed and rifling through the drawers of her night stand before pulling out two glittering knives with no small amount of satisfaction. She gave them to him the way a mother might show peers her children, flushed with equal parts self-consciousness and pride. Hesitantly, she said, “I wanted to show you these, when I saw your garden. I don’t know what that says about my utter lack of self-preservation, but—the garden is something beautiful you’ve grown and loved, and these are close as I’ve ever come to that.”
Kiran took the knives into his hands. One shone brightly even in the dim candlelight, with a hilt of gaur bone and a glittering steel blade, while the other was dark as night, with a hilt of varnished mast-wood and a blade of obsidian. He knew the ceremonial daggers almost as well as he knew himself, but he had never taken any measure of joy in bloodletting—it left him exhausted and faintly resentful at the best of times. But he could feel Suri’s fastidious, careful kind of love in the knives—in the worn hilts, the sharp glint of the blades, the faint warmth in her eyes when she looked down at them. Truthfully, he said, “They’re beautiful.”
She beamed despite herself, twisting her hands in her lap. The cuts still bled, but the blood seemed to bother her a little less than before. She pointed at them in turn, first at the silver one, then at the black one. “My eldest brother gave them to me before my first assignment, after I wore out the practice ones. This one’s Solitude, and this one’s Darkness.”
He looked up from where he had begun to run the pad of his index finger along the slender edge of the obsidian knife. Darkness. His mouth quirked to the side in a wry smile. “What did you name them for?”
“A story book of Isa’s,” she replied, shoving at him lightly when a brief laugh left him. Her cheeks were flushed, the old pallor beginning to fade. The knowledge that he had warmed her even this small amount—it was heady, dangerous. Dangerous the way the sea was at night, when sailors gone salt-mad would gaze down at the shining black water and step over stone and soil and into darkness.
Suri tilted her head, strands falling away from her loose braid and framing her face. “There was this line, I still remember it—Death is gracious in that it grants us both darkness and solitude. I suppose I fancied myself a little like death back then.” Her gaze turned dull with bitter self-deprecation. “Easier for a child to bear, of course, the notion of being a tool of some greater power rather than just another assassin. As if my heart was worth anything more than blood and ashes.”
“It is,” he said, so sharp and quick and certain that she glanced down at him, a little shocked. He was slightly surprised by the conviction in his voice, but not by much. “You are more than what your family deems you. You may be a tool of violence—” her mouth thinned at the phrase, but she did not speak, “—but that is not all you are.”
She fell silent at that. After a few moments, he looked up, but her gaze was faraway, set on some distant, un-seeable point through the windows of her room. Then she glanced down at Kiran. “You saw the letter.”
He sat back on his heels. “I did.”
“Despite your threat, I send them regularly,” she said, lips twisted and sharp. “Though the information is often useless. I haven’t sent this one yet.”
A smile flickered on his face, out of place. “If you had, I doubt I would have seen it.”
Her mouth twitched, but she did not smile. When she spoke, it was a kind of confession, bloodied hands holding out something fragile and valuable and aged. “I do not want to send them anymore. You know this, I’m sure, as you know everything—you would not have let me live otherwise. The possibility of my betrayal is too dangerous for your kingdom. But it is the truth.”
It was true that her betrayal could have destroyed them all. But it had never truly occurred to Kiran as a possibility. They had first met with the shadow of her death hanging above him, her blood tainting every conversation they had exchanged since. But he knew the part he had to play. “I saw the letter,” he said. “And I know you have not sent it, and I know you will not.”
“A premonition,” she said, a faint, humorless smile hanging from her lips.
He shook his head slightly, letting go of her hands. “I told you before, didn’t I? That you are more than a tool of violence. That your own heart guides you. I know you will not send it.”
“You would stake the future of your kingdom on this hunch,” she said, an attempt at scorn lacing her voice. But it was too soft, too afraid. “You would risk the crown—because you think you know my heart.”
Kiran tried at a smile, but it was uneven, tenuous. “I would.”
“And if I betray you?”
“Better chances than those that lie in front of us have already passed untouched,” he pointed out.
“If I did?” she insisted. “What would you do then?”
“I refuse to consider it.”
“You’re a fool.” She sounded nearly hysterical.
If only you knew, he thought, bitter all over again. If only you knew how much of a fool I really am.
“Perhaps,” he said, bold in the near darkness of the room. The distant candlelight turned them both to ghosts, to whispers. Kiran was suddenly painfully aware of his own heart, of its warmth and of its mortality. “But I do not think I am.”
Suri turned to look at him, gaze red-rimmed and lost. Her lips parted, as if to say something more. But before she could, a door behind them cracked open. Her grip on the bed frame tightened, and she winced at the pressure.
“My lady? Why are you awake so late at night…” the voice trailed off as Kiran glanced back and caught the gaze of a maid. He did not recognize her—her dark hair was braided loosely in a traditional style, and her soft brown eyes were hazy with sleep. But the sight of him had sharpened her gaze, disbelief cutting through her expression. And another emotion, something more familiar to him—fear. Her gaze fell to the knives on the bed, lingering strangely before breaking away.
After a few moments more, the other door opened as well, and another maid entered the room. He recognized her as Suri’s Najan handmaiden from the banded tattoo o
n her arm. But she also seemed faintly familiar, as if he had seen her around the temple before, though he could not recall what for. She did not look as surprised to see him, only vaguely wary. Her gaze flicked from him to Suri, a silent question the other girl refused to answer, her eyes on the floor.
Kiran pulled himself to his feet, shaking out the residual stiffness in his joints before dipping his head in a brief bow to Suri. “Think on my words, Your Highness.”
She looked up at him, her expression momentarily pained before she smoothed it out. Quietly, she said, “I will.”
When he returned to the temple, the brazier had gone out. It was the first time in the twelve years he had tended it that it had extinguished on its own. He put his fingers on the still-warm coals, bracing for the soft sting of fire and finding nothing.
“A fool,” he murmured, closing his eyes. Is that what you think of me too?
There was no response, but for a moment, Kiran thought he felt the coals grow cold.
“That was—he was—” Mohini had been speechless since Kiran had left. Her arm was outstretched, finger crooked loosely toward the space he had vacated. “That was—”
“That was who?” Isa asked innocently. She pulled her shawl tighter around her when they both glanced toward her, but her eyes were hard. Isa might not have met him, but hanging around the high priestess all the time, Suri had no doubt she would’ve heard of him.
