“Are you sure? I thought you were aging backward.” He gives me a small smile, and, oddly, I find myself wanting to smile back. “Is this your new trainee?”
“Yes. We’re supposed to be cleaning the green room—which is barred to everyone else at the moment,” she says, stern again. “The cupboard is still infested with blood bats.”
A frisson of fear goes through me. Blood bats?
“I know. Rani Ma told me.” Prince Amar’s serious eyes light up. “I wanted to have a look before you cleared them out. When diluted, their venom can heal some of the most complicated magical injuries, did you know? Vaid Roshan said it’s a new experimental healing technique.”
“Vaid Roshan had better stick to mending bruises and healing bones with his regular magic if he doesn’t want to be out of work,” Yukta Didi says sharply. “Goddess only knows what kinds of people get hired at the palace these days!”
Heat rushes to my face at the last comment, especially when Amar says: “Speaking of which—may I have a word with your new trainee?”
“Rajkumar, she’s new, she didn’t really know—”
“It’s all right, Didi,” he interrupts gently. “I am not going to punish her. I assume Rani Ma has already done so.”
There’s a long pause. “I’ll be waiting inside,” Yukta Didi says, a warning in her tone. She leaves the door partly open—probably to eavesdrop.
“I want to apologize to you for what happened earlier this morning,” Amar says in a low voice. “You were right to challenge my brothers—to question them about their honor. What they did to you—what I did—wasn’t honorable.”
I finally recover use of my voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Rajkumar. You didn’t do anything.”
“No, I didn’t. And with my silence, I became an accomplice.”
The grim tone of his voice both surprises me and fills me with suspicion. “You don’t need to apologize to me,” I say, fully conscious of the green room’s open door. “I am but a serving girl working for your mother.”
“We’re all servants in a way. The king must serve his subjects and so must the other members of the royal family. The Code of Asha states that to coexist, we must honor and depend on each other, magi and non-magi. It’s what the old high priests—the great acharyas of Ambar—called a sandhi or a joining.”
“Not all acharyas believe in being joined to non-magi, do they?” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Wasn’t it a priest who came up with the idea of the tenements, separating magi and non-magi before the Great War?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Amar admits. There’s a curious look in his yellow eyes. “You are very right—again.”
You also sound too well-read for a servant who isn’t the royal tutor. I curse myself for my runaway tongue.
“Forgive me, Rajkumar,” I deflect quickly. “I spoke out of turn. I heard people talking in the city and—”
“You don’t need to apologize to me, Siya ji. No one in this world is perfect—me least of all.”
I say nothing in response. I’m not even sure what I can say to someone this candid about themselves. And that’s when I realize—
“Rajkumar … I don’t remember telling you my name.” Well, my false name. With an added honorific. But still.
“You have your sources of knowledge. I have mine.”
I should take his words as a warning. As the threat that they probably are. But Amar smiles at me again, his eyes squinting mischievously—so reminiscent of a boy half his age that this time I can’t help but smile back.
“Shubhdivas, Siya ji.”
“Shubhdivas, Rajkumar Amar.”
I step into the green room and close the door behind me. I find Yukta Didi standing by the cupboard, frowning. “About time you came in. Now take this.” She thrusts a poker at me, its tips gleaming silver and sharp.
“What’s this for?”
“Blood bats, girl. Weren’t you listening to me outside?” She gestures to a wooden almari pushed up against the wall—a cupboard that looks completely ordinary, apart from the fact that it’s rattling from the inside. A bloodcurdling screech follows, sending shivers down my spine.
“We had an infestation in the servants’ quarters last month.” Yukta Didi would have appeared completely unperturbed if not for the hard set of her jaw. “Most of them are gone now, but these two escaped into the palace itself. The head of palace maintenance contained them in here, but he nearly lost an eye in the process. He refuses to come near them, and so do the other girls. Rani Amba wants you to have a try. She thinks it’ll be an excellent introductory task for you.”
The perfect punishment, you mean. I stare at the poker in my hand and then back at the rattling cupboard, dust rising from it in a cloud.
“I could try whispering to them,” I say.
Another scream echoes in the otherwise silent room. Yukta Didi grimaces. “Whispering, huh? Didn’t think there were any whisperers left in Ambar these days. Certainly, there aren’t any left at the palace. Though I suppose even generally redundant magic has its uses if you know what you’re doing.”
I bite back my irritation at her dismissive tone. “If I fail, it won’t matter, will it?” I ask. “I won’t open the cupboard unless I’m certain. They’ll remain locked in.”
Yukta Didi stares at me, her grip on her own poker tightening. “I suppose there’s no harm in trying. But mind you, girl, if that lot gets loose again, you’ll pay for it.”
I’m sure Rani Amba will agree with you, I think grimly before placing the poker on the floor. The almari’s doors are latticed with crevices, carved into the wood to form two interlocking moons. The gaps are so tiny that it’s impossible for the flying rodents to break through, but large enough to see a shadow moving within, the blink of a glowing red eye.
The first step in whispering is contact. It doesn’t have to be physical. But I need to be close enough so that the animal senses me. Senses that I’m different from other magi. I brush my fingers against the door.
My name is Siya, I think, loud and clear in my head. I want to set you free.
I repeat the words over and over, until there’s a low moan from within. The rattling stops for a brief moment. There are more sounds, but this time I ignore them, picking out the blood bats’ scattered thoughts like heartbeats. One bat, two …
“Five,” I tell Yukta Didi. “There are five bats inside. Three are babies. The mother is frightened. She thinks we want to kill them.”
“As we should. They’ve caused enough trouble.”
“Shhhh! Not so loud.” Animals can’t understand human speech, but they sense our moods from the tone of our voices. I close my eyes again, listening to the sounds in the cupboard. My mind floats, at ease with whispering in a way it never has—and likely never will be—with death magic, picking out the shapes of the creatures within.
“We need to open the almari.” My words make Yukta Didi blanch. “If we do that, I know I can convince them to leave.”
The older woman glares at me in disbelief. But, a long moment later, she walks over to the window and opens it. “Get them to fly out this window. If you can’t, then…” She holds up the poker, and I’m not entirely sure if the threat is meant for the blood bats or for me.
Carefully, I turn the key and leap back as the doors swing open, bats rushing out in a flurry of brown fur and leathery wings. They swing left first, crashing into a vase, toppling it to the floor.
“This way!” I shout, pointing to the window. “By the goddess, this way! No, no! You promised!”
A bat swoops down at Yukta Didi, who closes her eyes and screams, stabbing uselessly at the air with her poker. I swear I can hear the bat cackling. She wants to kill us, does she? the bat says. She can’t even look at us. Sorry, girl. I couldn’t resist.
With a parting screech, the bats finally fly out the window, black shadows swirling like dried leaves caught up in the wind.
“They’re gone,” I say, watching them disappear. “Yukta
Didi? They’re gone. You can open your eyes now.”
One eye opens, then another. “They’re gone? For certain.”
I can’t help but smile. “For certain.”
“Well, then.” Yukta Didi rises to her feet, cool dignity back in place. “Get to work, girl. That silver mirror needs polishing.”
I suppress a sigh. What did I expect? A pat on the back? A well done?
It doesn’t take long for Yukta Didi to realize I’m hopeless at household spells, and it makes her irritable. “You should have told me that before. Wait.” She exits the room and reappears a few moments later with a bucket and a rag in hand. She tosses the rag at me. “Use this. And make sure you squeeze out the tamarind juice properly or you’ll stain the floor.”
“Yes, Yukta Didi.”
The work is tedious, smelly, and unforgiving, and soon I’m sweating despite the open window. It’s a waste of time when I could be doing something else—like trying to find a way into Raj Mahal. But that is next to impossible—especially with Yukta Didi still present, eyeing me like a predatory bird.
“Your polishing is satisfactory,” she says now. “And you aren’t afraid of hard work. That’s a good thing. So many girls these days think honest labor is beneath them. They absolutely refuse to do anything without the aid of magic.”
I dip the rag back into the bucket and squeeze hard. “My, uh, old mistress taught me that there is no shame in working without magic. Even if you are a magus.”
I glance into the mirror, spot the older woman’s approving nod. “That is what my old mistress, Rani Megha, taught me as well.”
I wonder if she thought the same way when she decided to tax the lives out of the non-magi and brand them traitors, I think. Out loud, I say: “You worked under Rani Megha? Goddess! What was that like?”
I must sound appropriately awed, because Yukta Didi gives me a small smile—the first she’s directed my way. “Megha was a brilliant rani and an exacting mistress. We were lucky to serve her, and we knew it. Well, some of us did. There were other girls who wanted more. A lot more than they deserved.”
The words send a chill down my spine. “What more could they possibly want than to serve their rani?” The question is innocent—too innocent perhaps for the likes of me. But I keep my eyes wide and open, and soon the suspicion drains from Yukta Didi’s face.
“When you become a serving girl, you cannot bind with anyone; you are bound to the palace. It’s a hard undertaking for anyone—and many don’t realize how hard until they come here. You seem like a good girl, Siya, so let me warn you from the beginning—don’t be foolish. The girl you replaced—her name was also Siya. She got caught last week with one of the serving boys in the garden. Major Shayla nearly skinned them both alive.”
“Aah!” I bite back a scream, stifling it to a gasp. Blood trickles down my finger, cut by a part of the mirror that my hand slipped up against when I heard the name of the woman who murdered my parents. The taste of copper floods my tongue.
“Queen’s curses! Did you get blood on the floor?”
“No.” I force myself to focus on the mirror again. “Major Shayla. Who is she?”
“Someone you don’t want to come up against if you can help it. They call her the Scorpion in the Sky Warriors’ barracks. She’s one of the few women apart from the queens who can move freely between both palaces. Keep your head down if you see her. With the Scorpion around, you’re better off invisible.”
“Why do they call her the Scorpion?”
“Because you never know when she’ll sting.”
Juhi would say that the gods had played a role in arranging this. For the other Siya to be sacked and Cavas’s sudden appearance at the flesh market. The altercation with Amba’s sons. For the woman who murdered my parents to be so close. I should feel happy—everything seems to be falling in line with my plans—but unease churns my gut. Once again, I have the sensation of being watched, of being listened to.
In the distance, a gong goes off. “That’s the servants’ lunch bell,” Yukta Didi informs me. “It always goes off after the queens finish eating. Leave now or you won’t get any food until midnight. The work will still be waiting for you.”
* * *
The serving girls eat in the kitchen courtyard—an open-air space bordered by a wall of pink stone at one end and a water basin to wash utensils at the other. A woman stands next to a table stacked with brass plates at one end and two steaming vats at another. She gives me the same up-and-down look Yukta Didi did earlier, but her brown eyes are kind, and the portion she serves me is the same as the others’.
I find a spot by the water basin, a brief distance from where a group of other girls are already settled. I feel the others glance as I pass them, hear their whispers even after I crouch on the floor behind them.
“That’s the new girl?”
“Queen’s curses, how skinny! She’s not going to last!”
I ignore them and focus on the food itself: a spicy affair of smooth, creamy kadhi and khichdi that tastes as delectable as it looks, each yellow grain of rice melting in my mouth. I’m not here to make friends, and soon enough the conversation drifts from me to other happenings at the palace.
“You were at the raj darbar today, Nargis. What happened?”
I grow still at the words raj darbar. The king’s court in Raj Mahal. I shift around, trying not to seem as if I’m eavesdropping.
“There was a peri there today,” a girl, probably Nargis, replies. Her voice is clear and carrying; she knows she has an audience, and she likes it. “He sang like a dream! So handsome, too. All of us, including the two younger queens, kept drooling over him! Rani Amba was most displeased at our behavior. She called us undignified.”
The girls laugh, sounding delighted.
“Did he have wings?” someone asks eagerly. “The peri.”
“Did he fight in the cage?” someone else adds.
“Of course he didn’t fight in the cage!” Nargis scoffs at the last question. “You know the spectacles take place only once toward the middle of every month, Sunaina. And he didn’t have wings, either. Remember how the peri were when they had wings? They attacked us all with that beast of a Pashu king during the Battle of the Desert. No, they’re better off clipped, I say.”
“I wish I could go to court,” one of the girls says. “If only to see all the creatures the raja brings in from the flesh market. And the spectacles in the cage.”
“I still remember last month’s spectacle,” Nargis says gleefully. “Raja Lohar had brought in five prizefighters from the flesh market and pit them all against an armored leopard. The beast just ripped them apart. If you want to see something like that, you need to get on your rani’s good side. That’s the only way for girls like us to attend the king’s court or even see what Raj Mahal looks like! That, or serve the Scorpion.”
No one laughs this time.
“I hear the Scorpion prefers boys serving her,” someone else says. “I saw her eyeing that dirt licker from the stables the other day. What’s his name? Cavas?”
The morsel of rice and gravy turns sour in my mouth. Anger, sudden and sharp, spikes through me. I breathe deeply, struggle to hold it in.
“Better him than us,” another girl says.
When lunch ends a moment later, a shadow falls over my plate. A girl I don’t know scowls at me. “Yukta Didi wants you back in the green room. You still have a lot to do.”
Having a lot to do seems to be true, because once I return to the green room, Yukta Didi hands me a broom and tells me to get to work before shutting the door behind her. Around the time my arms feel like they’re about to fall off, she reenters to inspect my work. She glances around the room, frowning at the polished table, the shining mirror, and the gleaming wooden floor. “I suppose this will do for now. Come on. The toilets need to be cleaned as well.”
* * *
A gibbous Sunheri glows in the sky when I finally return to my new quarters, sweat and goddess knows
what else sticking to me. Even washing afterward with strong lye and honeyweed soap doesn’t do much to improve the smell. I expect one or more of the nine girls I share the room with to comment on this, but no one seems to notice my reappearance. The novelty of taunting the new serving girl must have worn off.
Unlike the others, who fall asleep, one by one, lulled by the relative darkness of the room, I remain awake, my mind turning over the various ways and means I can sneak outside to get my daggers. A part of me knows it’s foolish to hope that they’re still exactly where I hid them—that they haven’t been found already.
You wouldn’t be here if they were, I reassure myself. After that altercation with the princes, it wouldn’t be hard to deduce that I was the one who brought the weapons in. I wouldn’t even need a truth seeker in the vicinity to get convicted. The spiderweb on the wall next to my cot glistens in the dim light.
I wait a moment more before shifting, my bare feet lightly pressing the floor. Unlike the royals, serving girls don’t wear anklets, only simple jootis made of tough brown leather. Tonight, I leave the shoes behind as well and slip out, the door making no sound when I pull it shut. The corridors are dark, lit intermittently by a fanas or two. To get out, I know I must make my way to the main courtyard and find the gate leading to the marbled walkway Cavas pulled me away from only this morning.
Cavas. It feels as if I haven’t seen him for years, even though it has been only half a day. I think once again of what I heard the girls saying about him and Major Shayla before pushing the thought away. I can’t afford to be distracted. Not when I’m so close to avenging my parents.
Spurred by that last thought, I force myself to think, recalling every scrap of conversation I heard today, trying to match it to what I already know about the layout of the palace. Two ramps led into the servants’ quarters, one of which went to the lobby of the queens’ apartments. Where the other ramp goes, I’m not sure. But I know I’ll have to take a chance and find out. Heading farther down the long passageway, I finally reach a dead end. I’m about to head back when a mouse scampers across my foot, nearly making my heart stop.
Hunted by the Sky Page 18
