King Lohar’s mouth purses. “Not very entertaining, was he? Bring out the next one, Acharya.”
“Yes, Ambarnaresh.”
The cage rises again, this time holding a much smaller creature. I feel myself stiffen. It’s the young woman I saw at the flesh market in Ambarvadi—the one who made butterflies emerge from her fingertips. Her opponent is a man twice her size, his body marked with knife scars. The type who could crush her neck with one hand.
There’s a grim look on his face. For a moment, I think he isn’t going to fight her, but then he raises his spiked mace high in the air. As if from a distance, I hear Juhi’s voice the way it was in the schoolroom, going over the different weapons used in the Three-Year War—“Ambari mace. Heavier than an atashban, but easier to wield. The spikes, if poisoned with snake venom, are even more effective.”
Not so much against this woman. Tiny creatures erupt from her fingers, and for a second, I think they’re butterflies again. The buzzing sound, however, tells me differently. Bees. Which she points at the man right after dodging his blow. Bees that cover his howling face, his arms, and his legs. This time, I can’t bear it. I look away, knowing he has died when the cage gets lowered into the ground again. A hand clamps around my arm, and I feel the shackles disappear from my wrists.
“You’re next,” the guard tells me.
This time, when the cage rises, I am not even surprised by what I see inside. Twelve feet in height, the biggest of any animal I’ve ever seen. The mammoth’s fur and tusks are caked with blood, and its eyes are veined red. I trudge ahead in a daze. My vision blurs around the edges. I pause several steps away from the cage and close my eyes for a split second, concentrating on the sounds, the smells. The mammoth raises its trunk and roars, and even from this distance, I can sense its agony, feel its anger.
I take off my dupatta with shaking hands and tie it around my torso like a sash.
“Pick a weapon,” the guard says.
I scan the table outside the cage, lined with an array of different weapons. Daggers and kitchen knives, swords and maces. I can’t tell if any of them have been enhanced with amplifiers or if they can be used in magical combat.
“Be quick about it!”
I grab the closest weapon at hand: a plain dagger that, though not fancy, looks serviceable. If I can get close enough to the mammoth’s eyes. The doors shut behind me with a clang. The cage, which looked enormous from the outside, seems to shrink now that I’m locked in it with a giant animal. A part of me hesitates, still petrified by the idea of having to kill something so big.
“No target is ever too big,” Kali’s voice comes to me—a memory from when I first began learning how to pick pockets. “No target is ever too strong.”
It helps me take a step back. To detach from my surroundings and scan my enemy for any exploitable weaknesses. The mammoth’s size contributes to its brutal strength. But it does not have my speed. It cannot scale the bars of the cage the way I can—the way I do when a trunk swings my way, the dagger held between my teeth, its edges pricking the sides of my mouth. Great. Now I’ll probably slice off my tongue.
The mammoth trumpets and slams its body against the bars. The hit vibrates through my body, makes my teeth ache. Out of desperation, I reach out to the mammoth with my mind: Can you hear me?
“What did you bring for us, Acharya?” someone shouts. “A girl or a monkey?”
More shouting, followed by jeers. Then: another voice. A sound that only I can hear in my head.
… pain, pain, pain … The mammoth’s words sink in before it lets forth a howl that feels like it might shatter my eardrums. Only barely holding on to the fragile bond I’ve created, I focus on a series of images—the mammoth’s memories now flashing through my head:
A snow-covered mountain, wind howling in my ears. Men with stone armor, pricking me with their little thorns. I roar my fury. Red light colors the sky. I fall …
This place is hot. Far too hot for a body like mine. Someone splashes me with water, a temporary relief. “This is no elephant, stupid girl,” says an awful voice. Small, wet hands touch my hot face. Cold, blessed cold. A kind voice asks me if I’m all right …
I see the mammoth’s trunk approaching from a distance, feel it hit my side before I fall to the cage floor, tears burning my eyes.
… kill the girl, kill the girl …
The taste of copper floods my tongue. It would be easy to be crushed under the mammoth’s foot. Perhaps I wouldn’t even feel the pain for long. Not the way I do now, hollow sounds echoing in my head, my body aching so badly I wonder if I’ve broken my ribs. Somehow, I rise up and look into the mammoth’s angry eyes.
I don’t want to kill you, I whisper through our bond, hoping the mammoth can hear me. I know how hot it was in that market. I know you.
A blink. I see the images that flicker through the mammoth’s mind as if it were my own: the whip flying, stinging, taking away the relief wet, cool hands brought.
“I don’t want to add to your pain,” I say out loud. The buzzing in my ears intensifies.
A voice from the audience breaks through: “Why is she talking to the animal? Is she a whispe—”
I focus again on the mammoth. I saw that man whipping you. I tried to stop him. Remember?
Another blink.
My heart leaps to my throat. I kneel, placing my dagger on the floor. The mammoth cries out again and charges at me. I grit my teeth. I could use death magic. Could aim an attacking spell right at the mammoth’s eyes—even without a magical weapon. Not doing so could be the biggest mistake of my life. The earth around me trembles. The mammoth’s trunk winds around my body and raises me into the air.
… kill. Crush her skull and be free …
Use your mind, Gul, I tell myself. Held tight in the mammoth’s grip, I force myself to think of cold things—of the candied ice I once ate at the moon festival, of chilly desert nights spent laughing with my parents by a bonfire in a village.
My birthmark grows warm and then cool. My fingers turn to ice. Cold seeps from my hands, which I curl around the mammoth’s trunk, his hot fur. “Do you remember me?” I ask, praying that my magic has worked and that my chilly hands aren’t simply a byproduct of my fear.
For a moment, I’m not sure if my words register through the red haze of pain the mammoth’s feeling. Then, a hairbreadth from the ceiling of the cage, it pauses.
The girl. You’re the girl from the flesh market …
“Yes.” I gasp for air. Yes, it’s me. We met before.
For a moment, the trunk sways, and I think it’s going to drop me. Instead, it places me gently on the ground, keeping its trunk curled around my body to hide my trembling.
One kindness for another, the mammoth tells me as I cling to it. You did not let me die in the market; I will not let you fall.
I dig my hands into its fur, pouring my thanks into the cold spell. I don’t need to talk to the mammoth to feel its relief. In the background, a chant goes up: “Siya! Siya! Siya!” Some of the men are even calling for my freedom. They seem to have completely forgotten that moments earlier they wanted me dead. From behind the gold bars, I watch the king stand and raise a hand in the air. The gesture earns him dead silence.
“It seems the trespasser has earned her freedom.”
Cheers erupt, Ambari bugles filling the raj darbar with the sound of celebration. Only I can see the look in the king’s eyes. A look that tells me everything his false smile doesn’t.
27
CAVAS
Every month, the king holds a spectacle at Raj Mahal—an event that is talked about and discussed at length until the next one happens. It’s the sort of conversation that you can’t avoid, that you often become an unwitting listener to.
“Who was there this time?” Govind asks one of the stable boys.
“I heard there were only three this time. A thief, who got chewed up by a shadowlynx, then there was this giant ox of a man who was battling a little girl—I think
she was a conjurer. Turned the dust in the air into a hive of bees and killed him with those.”
“What about the last one?”
“That’s the one everyone’s been talking about! There was this serving girl—you know, the one who accompanies Rajkumari Malti? She crossed the rekha to the other side!”
My heart sinks to somewhere around the region of my toes. I feel Govind watching me from the other end.
“She fought a mammoth from Prithvi! And get this—”
“I’m going to fill Raat’s trough with water,” I say.
I don’t want to listen to more. I don’t want to hear how the mammoth gored Gul with its tusks or crushed her underfoot. I don’t want to remember her laughter or the empathy shimmering in her eyes when I told her about joining the army.
I shouldn’t be thinking about Gul.
Not when she’s probably the reason behind the dreams I’ve been having since we both turned invisible in Chand Mahal. They’re strange dreams, filled with spirits of people I do not know, clawing at my arms and legs, begging me to listen. Last night’s dream had been even more chilling. I saw my mother again; only this time, instead of walking with me in the Desert of Dreams, she was at the center of a storm, surrounded by dustwolves. The closer I got to her, the more her body changed, fur sprouting from her skin, her hands and feet turning into paws. Long canines gleamed as she roared, her pale-green eyes the only part of her that remained on a terrible feline face. Save us, she cried out. Save us, Cavas. I woke, sweat soaking my tunic, a scream locked in my throat.
I’m still thinking of the dream this morning. It’s perhaps because of it that I find myself headed past the garden, toward Raj Mahal. I’m not a woman, so the magic of the rekha has no effect on me, feels like nothing except a slight disturbance in the air. A pair of serving boys rush past, none paying attention as I make my way across the too-green lawn, toward the crowd gathered outside the shimmering palace. I am not sure what I’m expecting upon reaching Raj Mahal—a funeral procession? Bodies wrapped in shrouds to be buried in unmarked graves outside the city?
I don’t expect to find two courtiers lying on the grass nearby, giggling and smelling strongly of honeyed madira, their cups lying forgotten nearby. I don’t expect to hear cheering up ahead, as Acharya Damak attempts unsuccessfully to dodge a group of rowdy men showering him with blue flowers conjured from thin air. There is no wake here, I realize. Only a celebration, which, from the sounds of it, has been going on for some time. I spot the king watching the unfortunate acharya, with a bored expression on his face and a jade wine cup in his hand. Next to the king stands a girl with a trail of blood running down her temple, but otherwise unharmed. Gul. Or Siya, as the bejeweled courtiers call her over and over again, her name a victory chant in their mouths.
She survived. By some miracle, the way she helped us both survive Chand Mahal.
Or perhaps it was no miracle, I think. Perhaps this is what she was always meant to do.
Gul, with her too-thin face and far-too-sharp eyes. Eyes that continuously scan her surroundings, that pause and widen when they fall on me. I might be invisible to a crowd of magi, but Gul has always been able to see me. The way I’ve always been able to see her.
What she has to do with me is not important, Latif had told me. What she has to do with you is.
And it’s about time I found out exactly what he meant.
* * *
The trouble with Latif: He hasn’t appeared in nearly two weeks.
Even after constant rubbing, the green swarna in my hand remains cold—which it never has in the past.
“What are you doing?”
I look up to find Papa standing overhead, staring at me. “N-nothing.” I put the green swarna aside nonchalantly. “Found this on the road on the way home tonight. Looks like it’s a fake, though.”
“Hmm.”
“Did you take your medicine today?”
He grimaces. “I’m feeling fine.”
“That’s because you took your medicine on time for the past week.” I try not to sound impatient. It was the way this medicine worked. With lots of doses and lots of rest. The moment Papa began exerting himself with more than the most basic of chores around the house, things began falling apart.
“I’ll make you some tea.”
“It tastes like poison.”
“If it were poison, I wouldn’t be arguing with you right now,” I say dryly. “Go rest.”
The cot creaks behind me with his weight. Flames lick up the wood on our small stove. I put the kettle on. When the water is steaming, I pour it into a brass cup and stir in the herbs.
“Your ma used to do this, you know,” Papa says suddenly. “Make tea. Scold me for letting it get cold.”
An image appears in my mind: the strangely familiar woman I saw as a five-year-old, a woman who looked startlingly like the portrait of Ma hanging in our house. Papa called that moment a figment of my imagination, and for the longest time, I accepted his answer. Never questioning it except for the past five nights.
I sit on his cot and grip my knees with shaking hands before speaking. “I saw a little girl five nights ago at the palace. She said she was a living specter.”
Papa frowns. “You didn’t see a living specter, Cavas. I told you this when you were a boy.”
“I know what you told me.” I feel my jaw grow taut. “I also know that I was the only one who could see her. There was a magus in the room with me, and she couldn’t see the girl. Besides, that girl wasn’t the only living specter I’ve seen. There’s another, whom I’ve been meeting every month now. For a whole year.”
Papa falls silent.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.” My voice comes out hard, accusing. “I can tell from the look on your face.”
Papa averts his gaze from mine and takes a deep breath. “You said there’s another specter you’ve been meeting with for the past year. Who is it?”
What?
“That’s it?” I demand. “You’re not even going to deny that you were lying to me this whole time?”
“Cavas, please. I don’t claim innocence here, but you need to tell me now—whom have you been seeing? And why?”
It isn’t Ma, if you’re wondering, I think spitefully. But the sight of Papa’s trembling hands stanches my anger somewhat, and I force myself to tell him the truth:
“The specter’s name is Latif. I’ve been telling him palace secrets in exchange for the coin it takes to buy your medicine. He has small eyes, a hooked nose, a beard. He ties his turban like a merchant.”
“Or the high-ranking palace servant he used to be.” My father puts aside his cup, the tea completely forgotten.
The inside of my mouth feels like sandpaper. “So you know Latif.”
“I did know him. Back when he was still alive. He was head gardener at the palace,” Papa says slowly, his gaze focused somewhere in the past. “Brilliant at earth magic, but more than that, a good man. He never thought himself greater than anyone else—magus or non-magus. Of course, that got him into trouble from time to time. He had been a favorite of Rani Megha’s, but once Lohar became king, things went … awry. Latif was arrested and then killed. The Sky Warriors made sure to hang his body in the square of the Walled City.”
Questions pour out of my mouth: What happened? Why was Latif killed? What does he have to do with Gul and Juhi? What—
“That is a story for another day,” Papa’s soft voice cuts me off. His face has taken on a pallor I don’t like. “Please, my son. I will tell you about this one day, I promise.”
I force myself to breathe deeply. Angry as I am, I still can’t find it in myself to push him as hard as I want to. “Fine, then. Another day. But I have one important question.”
I wait until Papa nods before asking: “You told me that only half magi can see living specters. Is that still true?”
Papa stares at me for a long moment. “Yes, it’s still true.”
“Papa.” My voice trembles
. “Papa, was Ma a magus? Is that why the people in the tenements don’t like her?”
He closes his eyes. A tear slides down his cheek. “Your mother wasn’t a magus.”
“Are you a magus, then?”
When my father opens his eyes again, they’re sad. “No, son, I am not.”
My blood runs cold.
“My wife was your mother, yes,” Papa says. “But your father was—is—magi.”
A pair of strays begin barking outside.
“So he’s alive, then,” I say after a pause. “My … the man who…” My voice trails off.
“Yes.”
I want him to deny this. To claim that I belong to only him and Ma. But there are other things that don’t add up—that have never added up. Like how my eyes are dark brown, while Papa’s are hazel and Ma’s were pale green.
A part of me wants to know, wants to demand, who my real father is. But then another part wonders about the circumstances under which my mother came to know him. If there was a reason he left me with her instead of coming to claim me for his own.
“Was my mother … was she what the people in the tenements say she was?”
“People have tongues that wag far too often and minds that don’t think as much. Your mother didn’t have much choice about some of the things she had to do. Your father … I don’t think he was cruel to her. I think she even liked him.”
“Stop!” My voice makes him wince.
Outside, a lone stray howls into the night, reminding me of the dustwolves from my dreams.
“Cavas—”
“You told me that I’ve been living a lie for most of my life. Forgive me if it takes me some time to process that I’m not even your son!”
“Cavas, listen to me—”
I don’t. I can’t. I stalk out the door and into the muggy night air.
28
CAVAS
Half a mile from our house lies the ruins of an old temple, most of its engravings lost to time and the Great War. The inner sanctum, which once housed statues of the gods, now stands empty except for a rusty metal pitcher, a broken fanas, and a tray. Overhead, an old bell still hangs precariously from a fraying rope.
Hunted by the Sky Page 23
