“You can go,” the woman tells me dismissively. “But don’t expect to survive. The food you’ve been filching from the zamindar’s kitchen will go unnoticed for only so long.”
I no longer bother wondering how she knows this. Perhaps she, too, can read minds like the truth seeker. Or perhaps she simply possesses the one thing that Papa said does not seem to exist among many of our kind: common sense.
“I can take care of myself,” I say defiantly.
“What are you going to do?” Amira asks. “Piss again when the Sky Warriors capture you?”
She is close, and I am angry enough to lose my mind with that comment. Like a bull, I charge, ramming my head right into her belly. She grunts but does not fall—probably used to worse blows than mine—but I can tell I have taken her by surprise.
A pair of slender fingers wrap around my arm like a band of newly forged iron. They burn into my skin, and I almost faint from the pain of the sensation. Another hand muffles the scream that emerges from my mouth. In the background, I hear Agni’s furious neighs, the sound of her hooves clomping the dirt as she struggles against her bonds, trying to get to me.
“… control that horse…”
The woman’s black eyes glow red. Her words stifle the air, make breathing difficult. As I gulp a lungful, my head grows light. No. No, I can’t faint now!
To remain conscious, I try to focus on something concrete. For some strange reason, a tiny wooden figure pops up in my mind: the statue of the sky goddess at our prayer altar at home. I have not prayed to the goddess in three years, but now I find myself doing so out of desperation: Goddess of the sky and the air, let your hand guide mine …
The Samudra woman’s shouts are followed by the sound of Agni’s terrified neighs. Abandoning all attempts at proper prayer, I unleash my fury at the silent sky goddess. You abandoned my parents when they needed you. You abandoned me. But Agni is innocent. She does not deserve to be ensnared in this fight. If you really do exist, Sky Goddess, do something. Help Agni.
The birthmark on my arm begins to burn. In my mind, the goddess’s eyes glow green, and I am suddenly split in two, observing the scene from two vantage points: my own and Agni’s.
Even though I am still being restrained by Amira, I feel the bind of the rope around Agni’s mouth and head, feel the way her strength is muzzled by the spells woven into it. The air she breathes pricks my insides like ice. Danger, I hear her saying over and over. The little girl is in danger.
I’m all right, I try to tell Agni. I’m all right, Agni, I promise.
Another lungful of air, and suddenly I’m Gul again—only Gul—struggling against Amira, returned to my body. Whole again, I think, until the pain of the woman’s spell makes Agni double over, combines it with my own.
My vision clouds over. The world turns black.
* * *
When I come to, a pair of gray eyes look worriedly at me. “I’m sorry,” Kali says. “I only meant to stop you from hitting Amira, I swear. The spell I used must have been too strong.”
Kali reaches out with a hand again, but I crawl back against the wall. “Don’t touch me.” I force myself to my feet. I now can sense that Kali’s powers do not work if she’s not touching me. I do not need her probing the layers of my mind, discovering that I somehow momentarily slid into Agni’s.
Whispering. That’s what they call this kind of magic, where humans can telepathically communicate with animals. Before the Great War, whispering was a rare magic prized by many, including the Ambari royals. But as time went on and wild animals were domesticated, whispering became less and less important. Animal handling is now delegated entirely to non-magi. There are hardly any whisperers left in Ambar, most having gone to other kingdoms or to lands beyond the Yellow Sea.
For years, I’ve dreamed of discovering my own magic; as a child, I even prayed for it to the sky goddess. I don’t understand why the goddess decided to listen to my prayers now, nor do I understand why she chose to give me this particular power.
Whispering isn’t flashy or showy like the death magic used by Sky Warriors; in fact, few magi think of whispering as a valuable skill anymore. But I can’t help feeling excited by my new ability. If these women try to hurt me …
I glance at Agni, who isn’t moving anymore, and feel my heart sink. My discovery of my own hidden magic has come at a price.
“It’s all right,” the Samudra woman tells me. “Kali won’t hurt you.”
I would laugh, if not for the pain suddenly jabbing the left side of my ribs. Over the past few years, I’ve been hit by fighting spells at several village schools. Other magi children, who saw that whatever magic I had only came out as dull sparks during our classes, often mocked me for not shooting back a spell of my own. Kali’s spell to restrain me was slightly stronger, perhaps, but not much worse.
I hobble to Agni’s stall. I need to make sure she’s unharmed.
“The mare is fine. She’s only sleeping.” The woman’s lie would be as soothing as balm to anyone who didn’t feel the knifeburn of her wicked spell. “Why don’t you come with us?” The look in her eyes is an odd mix of both calculation and concern.
“Why should I?” I reach out to touch Agni’s nose; she is in pain. I can feel it by the way she shivers. “I don’t know you or these girls. How do I know you won’t take me to the Sky Warriors? That you won’t treat me as badly as you treated this horse?”
Surprise flickers through the woman’s eyes. She scrutinizes me, and I’m afraid she can sense what happened to me, the true reason I fainted. But she presses her lips together and says nothing. Instead, she turns to her companions and raises a hand. It is now that I notice the rings: thin, finely wrought marble bands on each finger. Pure white sangemarmar, used to amplify her powers. To my surprise, Kali lifts her sari petticoat up to the knee. Amira turns around, pushing down the shoulder of her blouse. The woman holds up the lantern to each exposed body part, one after the other.
Each girl has a birthmark. A brown one in the shape of a diamond right next to the dagger strapped to Kali’s calf; a black one in the shape of a falling star on Amira’s shoulder blade.
“My name is Juhi,” the black-eyed woman says. “And you must be the girl my shells have been leading me to. The girl from the prophecy.”
Instead of making my heart soar with triumph—Papa was right about me all along—Juhi’s words settle like curdled milk in my belly.
“What makes you think that? They have birthmarks as well!” I say, pointing to Amira and Kali. “One of them could easily be the Star Warrior.”
“I thought for a time that one of them might be,” Juhi admits. “But the shells do not lie. Whenever I asked them to show me the Star Warrior, they led me somewhere else, away from Amira and Kali. According to the prophecy, there is only one Star Warrior, and for a time, I thought she might be from Samudra or another kingdom.
“Yet the shells never lead me outside Ambar. Over the years, I’ve been to different towns and villages: Meghapur, Dhanbad, Amirgarh, and Sur. I stayed in every place for a few months, looking for her. But eventually the shells would grow cold, and I would lose the Star Warrior’s trail all over again. This time, the shells led me to Dukal.” Juhi studies my face, as if memorizing it. “And their magic has never felt stronger.”
My insides coil tight. No, I tell myself. It’s impossible. So what if my parents and I lived briefly in each of the places that Juhi mentioned? It doesn’t mean I’m the Star Warrior.
“The Star Warrior possesses magic unknown to all,” I say, recalling the words of the prophecy. “I can barely do any magic!” I’ve known this since the day I first entered a village schoolroom—and walked right into a battle of spells between two boys. Neither of us was hurt—the magic the boys produced wasn’t strong enough—but it wasn’t my first experience at feeling powerless. “You might as well take me to the tenements to live with non-magi.”
To my surprise, Juhi laughs. “Don’t be silly, my girl. The way you resist
ed Amira’s magic—a non-magus isn’t capable of doing that. Only another magus is.”
The comment elicits a smile from Kali and an eye roll from Amira.
“Kids at a village school called me a dirt licker once,” I say quietly. When I asked Papa what that was, he was so angry. He told me never to use that kind of language in the house. Ever. That it was a filthy word made of ignorance and fear of non-magi. After I was forced to leave school for my poor magic, Papa taught me at home from his own scrolls, and when he ran out of them, he would buy used scrolls at the bazaar. Just because you can’t go to school anymore, it doesn’t mean you should stop learning, he told me.
“Children only repeat what their elders say.” Juhi’s voice is grave. “Years before the Great War, magi and non-magi lived side by side, they bound with each other, they had children. Many things have changed since then, and the time will come when magi children will pay for their parents’ sins. When that is, I don’t know. The shells do not tell me this.
“But you are not a non-magus, Havovi. You may have suppressed your magic when you were very young, perhaps out of fear of revealing yourself because of your birthmark. Or you may simply be one among the hundreds of other magi girls who aren’t prophesied to save Ambar. Only time will tell.”
Yes. Only time will tell if I will be anything apart from the girl whose very existence killed her parents. My throat pricks, my ribs growing tight.
“So.” I pause, unsure how to phrase my next question to these strange, dangerous women who have offered me an escape route. “Who are you?”
Kali laughs out loud. Even Juhi’s lips nudge in the direction of a smile. Only Amira seems unamused, her scowl deepening. In the background, their horses nicker. Agni nudges my shoulder protectively; I stroke her velvety nose.
“People who do not know us think we are ordinary Ambari women. Seamstresses. Midwives. Farmers. Mothers. Daughters. People like your zamindar will offer us food and shelter in exchange for a walk through the fields or a night in their beds.” Juhi’s eyes harden. “Of course, deceptive appearances are a must in our line of work.” She holds up a hand. There, right in the center of her palm, I see a golden tattoo shaped like a lotus.
“Do you know what this is?”
Warriors. My heart skips a beat. Protectors. “You’re the Sisterhood of the Golden Lotus. But I don’t understand. Do the Sisters … do you all have birthmarks?”
Juhi lowers her hand. “No. Only Amira and Kali. But I don’t limit the Sisterhood to marked girls. There are other women as well who need saving, who need to escape their pasts.”
I sense Juhi is now talking about herself, but I don’t have the courage to ask her about it.
“Long before I was born, my parents had another child, an elder sister I never got to know,” I say instead to fill the silence. “Ava, her name was. One day she came home sick, feverish. On the advice of the village healer, my parents took her to the big hospital in Ambarvadi, to see one of the vaids there. But even he couldn’t diagnose the cause of her illness or prescribe a cure.” With the exception of the gods, vaids, who train for several years in the art of healing and life magic, are our last barriers between life and death.
“The vaid told my parents that the sky goddess had called Ava back early, that the best of us died young. Ma would not accept it. After Ava died, she fasted for a whole month, praying to the goddess for justice, until she finally collapsed in the temple. When she came to, Ma said she had seen the goddess herself. The goddess had granted Ma a boon: a daughter. I was born ten months later, during the Month of Tears.”
People say rain poured from the sky every day of the month that year, infusing the land and the crops with magic. Men danced in the village square until their long white tunics and dhotis were drenched, their mouths open to the sky. Women caught one another by the wrists and twirled in circles outside, in the rain-soaked earth.
“My parents were so happy when Ma got pregnant.” My voice catches. “I wish she hadn’t. I wish I was never born.”
Outside, a pair of dogs begin barking, cutting through the heavy silence that has fallen over the room.
“Every birth has purpose,” Juhi says. “And yours is important or the Sky Warriors would not have come to this sleepy little village to look for you.”
She walks to a corner where their belongings are heaped together, and from the pile, she pulls out a small, sweet-smelling bundle wrapped in cloth. Even through the layers, I can smell the richness of nutty mawa and honeyweed and ghee, my dry mouth watering almost instantly. I am too hungry to care or be embarrassed by the way I fall upon the moon-shaped kachori, devouring the first one so quickly that Juhi gives me three more in quick succession, saying nothing even when I pick the flakes of fried dough out of my clothes and lick the sugary grease off my fingers. Slow down, Ma would have said. Slow down or you’ll be sick.
Hot tears slide down my cheeks.
None of the three Sisters who watch me eat speak a word of comfort. They quietly turn away when I begin to cry and talk among themselves—Kali making an exception by getting up to fetch a cup of water from the clay pot in the corner when I begin to hiccup. I can see, even through my grief, that this is a move neither Juhi nor Amira approve of. They glare at Kali, who only shakes her head.
“The girl has lost both mother and father,” she says. “What do you want me to do? Ignore her?”
“She’s already too soft,” Amira says. “Useless.”
My eyes dry up. Once again, I feel the strong urge to bite Amira. Instead, I wipe my face with the cleanest part of my sleeve.
“Are you from Ambarvadi?” I ask Juhi.
“We live in a village called Javeribad. A few miles west of Ambarvadi.”
Ambarvadi, the capital. A city glittering with houses made of marble and sandstone, havelis that make Zamindar Moolchand’s mansion look utterly ordinary. It is said that magic is so concentrated in Ambarvadi that the glow of it blots out the stars with its brilliance. A couple of miles from the city, King Lohar lives in a sprawling fortress on a high hill.
“Is Ambarvadi really the way people say it is?” I’ve always wondered if the stories our teachers told us are true or mere embellishments. More propaganda courtesy of the new Ministry of Truth established by King Lohar—an organization that monitors and controls the publication of all information in Ambar, from royal proclamations to scrolls of children’s stories.
“It is exactly that way. Which only makes it more dangerous.”
I think of the one and only portrait I saw of the palace—or a part of it, at least. A tall building in the shape of the sky goddess’s own crown, its tiered towers clustered together like sweets on a tray, the very tops of it hidden by mist, except for clear, sunlit days, when you could see its gleaming points and grilles and dust-pink domes.
“Does Raja Lohar live there?” I remember asking my father.
“No,” Papa said. “Ambar Fort is a giant complex consisting of two big palaces and several other buildings grouped together. The palace you see from the city of Ambarvadi is Rani Mahal, where the queens live. The king lives in Raj Mahal, a palace on the other side of the complex.”
Some say that Raj Mahal is a mirror image of Rani Mahal, but built with black marble and rainbow-hued metal called indradhanush. Some say that the king’s palace is made of firestones, thunder, and clouds. No one really knows, as no portraits are allowed. Some secrets were paramount to the king’s safety. Even then, I had the sense that Papa knew more about those secrets than he was telling me. And now I will never be able to ask him what they are. I swallow against the tickling sensation in my throat, barely holding back a fresh bout of tears.
Useless. My heart burns when I think of what Amira called me. I am not useless. I am not weak.
I recall King Lohar’s portrait that hangs in every school, every hospital, every government office, and even some private homes. The king is seated on a cushion, cross-legged, wearing a deep-blue angrakha embroidered with gems, matchin
g narrow trousers and a sash. His cheeks are tinted with gold dust to indicate royal blood; his jootis, crafted by the kingdom’s finest shoemakers, are decorated with shimmering threads of indradhanush. Crowning his head is a turban of blue silk, set with a plumed ornament made of an enormous firestone in the shape of a teardrop.
I don’t know how I will do it, but one day I will meet Raja Lohar, I vow. And when I do, I will kill him.
“What do the Sky Warriors do?” I ask Juhi. “To the girls who are taken? Do they really drain them of their powers?”
For the first time, I glimpse fear on Kali’s and Amira’s faces.
Juhi frowns. “That is a question for another day. Sleep now, Havovi. It’s getting late.”
I feel the exhaustion of the past few days creeping up on me, threatening to unravel me like a spool of wool.
“Gul,” I tell her. “My name is Gul.”
A TWO-MOON NIGHT
The city of Ambarvadi
2nd day of the Month of Moons
Year 22 of King Lohar’s reign
4
CAVAS
The fireflies stop glowing.
It happens for an instant, a faint crack in the brilliant dome of insects magicked over Ambarvadi’s bazaar before it reseals, barely noticeable unless you’re like me, your face scrubbed clean with sugar oil, your skin prickling from being out in the crowded marketplace, pretending that you belong. It’s a sticky night, the day’s heat still lingering in the air, compounded by bodies jostling for space, sand feathering the roofs of the tents. The sweat beading on the back of my neck, however, is cold and has little to do with the temperature around me.
When I arrived in the market, the sky was still awash with orange—the exact time Latif asked me to meet him here, behind the bangle seller’s stall. The sun is gone now, but Latif is still missing.
Hunted by the Sky Page 3
