“How?” My voice is little more than a breath, released softly in the air.
Malti grins. “Watch me.”
She lets go of my hand and begins twirling on glowing feet. I leap back to avoid being hit by the shower of gravel she kicks up, along with grass and dirt—so much of it and so high in the air that she’s completely obscured. And then, the dirt collapses, and Malti is gone, leaving behind a hole in the ground—one in which I instinctively knew she would never hide. The guard—a woman with gray streaks in her hair—races in my direction.
“You fool!” she says. “Why did you let go of the rajkumari’s hand? Now we’ll have to spend hours searching for her again!”
I say nothing, even though I suddenly spot Malti perched on a high tree branch, holding her finger to her lips.
“Have you lost your tongue?” the guard demands. She curses under her breath. “Check the west end. I will look in the east end and also outside, in case she’s slipped out again.”
Once the guard is out of sight, I look up at the tree and nod.
Malti lightly drops to the ground and grins.
“Nice trick,” I say. “Where did you learn that?”
“I’ve always been able to do it. It’s why Rani Ma makes me wear these.” She holds up a pair of simple ankle bands set with tiny polished gray pebbles. “They hold in my magic. Here—you can touch.”
I run a finger over the smooth links of metal, the mirror like polish on the pebbles. My mind slows the way it does on drinking a sleep draught, limbs tiring so rapidly that I’m forced to drop my hand and draw in a breath. Even a light touch makes me feel as if something vital within me is being drawn out, reined in. But Malti doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort.
She puts the anklets back on and smiles. “Can we play now?”
I lean the parasol against the tree. “Of course we can.”
* * *
Malti chooses hide-and-seek, a game I’ve always been terrible at when it comes to the seeking. I think I spot a glimpse of yellow in a tree, but on closer observation, note it’s only a small bird on a branch nearly level with my eyes. Instead of flying away, it tilts its head, staring at me with its black-black eyes.
“Aren’t you pretty?” I whisper.
It whistles, and I am tempted to believe it understands me. Birds are harder to establish a connection with than other animals, and unlike insects, they cannot be easily controlled with whisper magic.
“Do you know where Rajkumari Malti is?”
It whistles again and suddenly takes off, startling me. I’m about to follow when a voice from the other side of the hedge behind me stops me in my tracks.
“The general is in the Brim again, isn’t he?” Major Shayla asks, her voice careless, lazy. “I could take advantage of that, I suppose. Find that dirt-licking stable boy he’s so fond of…”
Another voice murmurs in response: a man.
All thoughts of the bird and the princess have evaporated from my head. As silently as possible, I head in the opposite direction, alongside the hedge, trying to keep track of the voices moving on the other side. A few moments later, I find myself before a doorway with a pointed arch carved into the hedge—apparently, the entrance to a maze. There are no guards in sight.
Tricky, Cavas called the palace and its magic. The kind that makes you slip up. The kind that betrays. Then again, when has my own magic not betrayed me? I step forward, brushing aside the strange ticklish sensation that comes with crossing the threshold—a disturbance in the air that vanishes the moment I step onto the other side.
A KING AND A CAGE
25
GUL
This is not a maze. This is not even an extension of the garden.
While Rani Mahal is a blushing sunset pink, this palace reflects every color, every shift in the sky’s mood, its towers, domes, and finials made entirely of glass. I glimpse a figure running down a corridor when the light in the sky shifts, turning the window into a mirror. Though I haven’t seen it before, I know it’s the king’s palace. Heart racing, I spin around, only to find the hedge sealed over, the doorway I came through gone.
“Well, well. What do we have here?”
A hand grabs me by the arm. My wrists and ankles are shackled before I have time to take another breath.
“I thought I heard a trespasser.” Major Shayla’s voice is soft, almost amused. “What’s your name, girl?”
When I don’t answer, she holds my jaw in a painful grip. “I asked what your name was.”
“S-siya,” I force out.
Behind her, I see another familiar face: Prince Amar, whose eyes widen on seeing me.
“What are you doing here, girl?” His voice is so stern that, for a moment, I wonder if he even recognizes me. “Don’t you know it’s forbidden to cross the rekha? Who let you through?”
“N-no one. I d-didn’t know that was the rekha,” I finally stutter. I think back to the doorway, wonder at why it sealed off again. “I was looking for Rajkumari Malti and thought she might be here.”
“A common girl with a common name, sliding through a magical barrier as if it’s air. Strange, isn’t it, Rajkumar?” Major Shayla says. “Someone might think there is a security breach.”
“Palace security is your jurisdiction, Major,” Prince Amar reminds her, his voice cold.
Shayla ignores him and stares at me, as if trying to whittle out my secrets.
Cavas would advise me to act meek. To plead for my life and hide any strength I have. But I stare right back at the major, years of anger burning through. My fingers itch for my daggers. Or anything remotely sharp.
She turns around and nods at someone else, a gray-haired Sky Warrior accompanying the prince. “Put her in confinement. Let her fight for her freedom in the cage tomorrow.”
“The cage?” Prince Amar glances at me quickly. “Is that really necessary? Perhaps Rajkumari Malti—”
“As you rightly said, palace security is my jurisdiction,” Major Shayla interrupts with a sneer. “Hence, I must treat her the way I would any trespasser.”
“You can’t put her through the cage for a foolish mistake!” Prince Amar sounds angry now, even a little afraid. “She won’t survive it!”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
Major Shayla’s fingers slide down to my throat and tighten in a way that I know will leave bruises. I force myself to stay still and not wince.
She smiles. “Ah, yes. This one will be good for entertainment.”
* * *
The gray-haired Sky Warrior leads me away from Raj Mahal to another building in the distance, red dust layered over its rough stone surface.
“Come,” he says, and my body turns of its own accord, drawn by the magic in the shackles Major Shayla placed on my wrists. Shackles can be used in varying ways: to shock, to tame, to control. I’ve read that in prisons, the slightest movement can set off a shackle, turning a prisoner into a mess of nerves. I’ve also read that shackles can be broken if you try hard enough. The only problem: When I was living with the Sisters, I never tried breaking a shackle. Never thought my magic strong enough.
A few feet from the building, the Sky Warrior pauses. “Go in.”
I frown. The building, shaped roughly like a square, has an open door and no guards. The queasy sensation I had on touching Princess Malti’s anklet returns. No, my body rebels. Don’t go in. A shock—both familiar and painful—goes through my wrists and ankles.
“It will be worse if you don’t get in before dark.” The Sky Warrior’s face is serious, a map of hard lines. “Go on.”
The shackles force me to step forward one foot at a time. When I try to resist the shackles’ command, a blade of pain burns down my torso. It’s not until I’m inside the building’s threshold that the pain eases, a moment of sheer relief followed by sudden, unexpected exhaustion. In a moment or two, I’m on my knees, longing to lie on the tiled floor. Why am I so tired? What’s going on? The more I try to focus on my surr
oundings, the more my vision blurs. It’s this building, I realize. Confinement, as they call it. A place that drains you of energy, that prevents you from moving or using magic.
Better designed than any prison cell.
“I will be back for you at dawn,” the Sky Warrior says a second before I slide to the floor in a deep sleep.
* * *
In my dreams that night, I see many things:
A woman with my mother’s voice, stroking my hair, telling me a story about the beginnings of the universe.
The sky goddess on a throne made of air and clouds, spinning a sunlit chakra on a forefinger.
A boy in a plumed turban, firestones gleaming at his ears, the mustache stark on his pale face. Wake up, he says. Wake up, Siya ji.
I am in a room of starlight and shadow. Gul, a boy’s voice says. I turn and reach for his hand, but all I feel against my fingers is stone.
* * *
When the morning comes, the Sky Warrior returns for me. A shock runs through the shackles, rousing me from my stupor.
“Come,” he says. Another shock. “Quickly now.”
I cling to his voice, to the stinging sensation on my wrists, and force myself to move out of the stone building.
“Here.” A kachori appears before my eyes, and suddenly my mouth begins to water. I grab hold of the pastry and stuff it into my mouth. Onions burst on my tongue, sweet and savory at the same time. Once I finish, the Sky Warrior gives me another kachori. And then another. When he hands me a fourth kachori, I raise a hand. No more.
“Do you plan to die in the cage?”
The sharp words make me look up, focus on his face again, the rugged planes of it, silver tinting parts of his shaggy black brows. Papa would have had brows like that, I think, if he had lived long enough.
I take the kachori. “Sau aabhaar.”
“There’s no need to thank me. You are to be the entertainment today, remember? And there’s no entertainment without a fight.”
The words are an echo of Major Shayla’s, but they do not have the same effect. Perhaps it’s because of the look on his face—the subtle tightening of his lips right before he turns away. There is a gentle tug at my shackles, forcing me to move sideways, like a wayward pet brought to heel.
“The cage,” I say, suddenly remembering the conversation I overheard between the serving girls on my very first day here. “The palace buys prizefighters at the flesh market, doesn’t it? To fight us in the cage?”
The Sky Warrior glances at me but says nothing.
Who am I fighting? I wonder. Or what?
The glass palace rises before us, teasing with glimpses of what could be inside: a throne, a king, a crown of firestones and pearls, imminent death. The Sky Warrior makes a sharp left, the magical bond between us pulling me along. He nods at a burly guard posted by the side entrance.
“Any more coming in today, Captain Emil?” the guard asks without even glancing at me.
“No,” the Sky Warrior says. “She’s the last of today’s lot.”
I might have missed what he said to me next had I not been following him close enough, might have mistaken the frown on his face for indifference.
“Win the crowd, girl. It’s the only way you’ll win your freedom.”
26
GUL
The inside of the king’s palace makes Rani Mahal look like a relic from Svapnalok’s past. Reflecting Ambar’s desert heritage, enormous, iridescent palm trees form the pillars of a long tunnel, their false fronds curving overhead, weaving together to scatter bits of sunlight filtering in through the web of indradhanush and glass. The marble floor, though flat, looks like sand, glitters the way the desert might in the sunlight, with shifting dunelike patterns across the ground. At the very end of the tunnel is a giant metal box with bars surrounding every side, except the top and bottom.
“Steady,” Captain Emil says, before ushering me in and shutting the door. He raises his head upward and cries out: “Lift!”
Barely a moment later, the box gives a sudden jerk as if tipping to the side. I grab onto one of the bars and hold tight. The box rises in the air, Captain Emil’s legs disappearing first from sight, then his torso, then his head. I look above, but the roof is a mirror. I see only myself: my hair matted in strands around my terrified face.
A few moments later, the box rises into a room larger than any I’ve ever seen before.
This is not just a room, I realize. This is the throne room. The raj darbar, where the king holds his court.
Lightorbs glow overhead, brighter than the real sun, which is also warming the room. Rows upon rows of courtiers sit on elevated cushions, their eyes focused on me. My gaze, however, is drawn to the very center of the room’s end, to a giant glass dome affixed with moons and suns and hundreds of planets.
Underneath, I spot a man dressed in a deep-green angrakha and narrow trousers, raised on a gilded throne over everyone else, perched cross-legged on a set of giant red cushions. Gold dusts his high cheekbones over a pure-white mustache and beard. Pink conch pearls adorn his neck and ears and hang in tassels from his waistbelt. Tucked into the center of his emerald turban is an ornament I’ve only seen in paintings before: an enormous teardrop firestone set in gold and plumed with ostrich feathers, flames leaping within the gem’s many brilliant facets. Though I can’t make out his eyes at this distance, I feel them watching as a guard rolls open the doors of the box.
King Lohar. Seventy-fifth ruler of Ambar and the Desert of Dreams. He’s a man I’ve killed in a hundred different ways in my imagination over the past two years. A slit throat. A poisoned cup. An atashban blasted through the heart.
A shock goes through my shackles.
“Move!” the guard says.
I step out of the box and into the throne room. In person, the king does not look as imposing as he does in paintings, his cheeks hollow where they should be round, his limbs bony and weak where they should be muscled. Long fingers curl around the armrests of his throne like claws; indeed, with the beaked nose, he looks less like a man and more like a decrepit bird. Only his dark-brown eyes are the same, small and cruel as they take me in from head to toe, then he waves a hand, dismissing me entirely. The guard ushers me to the side, next to a man who is similarly shackled.
“Is that everything, Acharya?” the king asks.
“Yes, Ambarnaresh.” The voice belongs to the high priest: a tall man with shoulder-length black hair. Unlike acharyas in temples, who wear plain cotton robes and no jewelry, the king’s high priest wears a floor-length white tunic made of silk, gold hoops in his ears, and a priceless necklace of pale-green jade.
“Let’s begin,” the king commands. “We’ve waited long enough.”
The acharya bows deeply and then turns to face the audience.
“Lords and ladies of the court. Thank you for attending the spectacle. This month’s contenders include a thief who stole bread from the royal kitchens, a soldier accused of treason, and a serving girl who overstepped her boundaries by crossing the rekha.”
I break out in a cold sweat, hoping my shock doesn’t show itself. Are stealing bread and treason punished in the same way now? What kind of justice is this?
Applause rings through the court. A few men bay like dustwolves, the loudest among them the crown prince and his brother. Prince Amar sits next to them, a blue jewel gleaming in his turban. He’s the only one who shows no sign of excitement. To avoid their gazes, I glance upward, spotting a gallery where a group of women stands. Even from this distance, I can make out Queen Amba’s rigid stance, feel the chill of her gaze on me.
“Today, these challengers will fight with a preselected opponent in the cage,” the high priest continues once the noise dies down. “Losing will mean death. Winning, on the other hand, will mean freedom.”
A few men jeer from the audience. My gaze falls on a figure on the periphery of the crowd, right next to Major Shayla. Captain Emil, his face stern.
Win the crowd, girl.
> Ministers and courtiers are placing bets with a servant holding a long scroll of parchment. A hundred swarnas. Two hundred. Six hundred. The numbers blur in my head, lose meaning, when the acharya raises his arms in the air, parting the floor several feet from the king.
My skin crawls at the sound: a hiss followed by the screech of metal against metal. It reminds me of being trapped in the box again, except what emerges from the ground is even bigger. A giant golden cage, wrought out of bars more elaborate than the one that brought me into court.
Inside the cage is an animal I’d seen only once before as a child, its teeth gleaming at me in the moonlight, moments before my mother snatched me back into our house. A shadowlynx, with eyes the color of sand. Horns emerge from the top of its skull, two pointed spirals that rise in the air from behind its ears. They are exactly the shape of my seaglass dagger blades. My heart sinks, and I desperately wish I had my weapons with me. The giant feline bares its teeth at its opponent: the man who was standing next to me only a moment earlier, his shackles nowhere in sight, his hands gripping a spear and shield. A doorway opens—barely big enough to let him squeeze into the cage.
“You may want to close your eyes, serving girl,” someone shouts at me from the audience.
I keep them open and watch the man raise the spear in the air. The shadowlynx bares its teeth and then suddenly disappears from sight, except for its shadow, which shows up against the bars when the light falls over it. The man tenses but does not lower the spear. He lunges to the side. A yowl rends the air.
The man screams next, and it’s only when he turns his back that I see the three long scratches marring it. He lunges again, but this time, the shadowlynx is too quick. His spear hits only the bars. In the next moment or two, I wish I’d listened to the person who warned me to close my eyes. A few groans erupt behind me when the man’s throat twists sideways, fresh blood running down it. I know he’s dead before he even falls to the ground, before the shadowlynx appears before us again, licking its paws clean. The cage disappears into the ground once more.
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