Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  They’re buying me time.

  I slam my head backward, knocking with Sonar’s. He curses, calling me a foul name. Taking advantage of his momentary pain, I use my elbows next and then my feet, spinning out of his grip. I grab hold of the daggers I’d dropped onto the floor moments earlier.

  “You little—”

  I slash a dagger upward. The scent of copper fills the air. I ignore the blood spurting from Sonar’s now-torn cheek, the howl of pain, and roll away from a jet of red light, which nearly burns off my hair. Death magic fills my veins, and I shoot green light at the Sky Warrior who had attacked me.

  Everywhere is chaos. Amira and Shayla are on the staircase, shooting spells at each other with atashbans. Kali is fighting another Sky Warrior. Amar is nowhere in sight.

  On the other side, Cavas struggles against the hold of another Sky Warrior, whose eyes meet mine. Captain Emil. The man who showed me a moment of kindness during confinement. The man who reminded me of my own father.

  Please, I plead with my eyes. Let them go. I don’t want to kill Captain Emil, but if it comes down to him and Cavas, there are no doubts in my mind about whom I’ll save. I see the hesitation on the Sky Warrior’s face, his grip on Cavas faltering, when a snarling Alizeh shoots another jet of red light at them—only to be stopped by a shadow.

  “No!” Cavas’s scream almost gets lost in the melee. A streak of silver lashes out at them, and Captain Emil lets go.

  Cavas’s father drops like a rag doll, his eyes closed.

  I hit Alizeh with one spell and then another. I furiously keep sending spells her way, determined to kill her, when a hard nudge knocks me to the side, out of range of another spell—this one aimed at me by Captain Emil.

  “Run!” It’s Juhi, who has taken over my place to fight both Alizeh and Emil. “Take the boy and run, Gul!”

  It’s a command that brooks no argument. A choice that may result in Juhi herself being captured or killed. The ultimate samarpan.

  I’m shaking so badly that it takes a moment for her words to register. Cavas, on the other hand, appears ashen, still crouched by his father’s body.

  I reach for Cavas’s now-clammy hand. “Cavas,” I whisper. “Cavas, we have to go.”

  In the distance, Shayla’s shouting for more reinforcements. I scan my surroundings, spotting a way out of the hall. My grip on Cavas’s hand tightens. To my relief, he does not resist, does nothing, even though his eyes are still on his father.

  Invisible, I think. We need to be invisible.

  It’s easier this time, the magic in Cavas’s blood responding more readily to mine.

  “She’s gone!” someone screams. “She’s gone!”

  “She’s here, all right.” Sonar holds a rag to his wounded face, his eyes scanning the floor. He holds an atashban in his other hand. “I can see her bloody footprints.”

  I send up a shield, narrowly blocking the red beam of light aimed our way. The spell, unfortunately, turns us visible, making us targets once more. My head tilts up, and I lock gazes with the portrait of the sky goddess overhead.

  Help, I plead. Help us.

  The sun and moons in her eyes begin spinning at a dizzying rate. Time slows, and I grow detached from the fight around me. No one else, however, seems to notice the goddess’s eyes. Or how they glow the exact green of my seaglass daggers and then turn red.

  “Get out of my way,” I tell Sonar. The voice that emerges from my mouth sounds like mine, yet not quite. My head begins to pound.

  “Kill her!” Sonar screams. “Kill her!” He aims the atashban at me again.

  Raise your hands, my daughter. Accept my boon.

  Fire burns in my eyes and under my solar plexus. I raise my hands and spin the seaglass daggers in a way I never could before. Twin red chakras erupt from my hands, slice across the throats of Crown Prince Sonar and his brother, Jagat, before the men can so much as aim a spell or cast a shield, their bodies thudding to the floor.

  Pain knifes across my temples. I feel my nose bleeding again. A strong hand grips my elbow, anchoring me when I would have fallen. Cavas’s face is paler than I’ve ever seen it. His mouth moves, speaking words I can’t hear. A minute later, he throws us both to the ground; we’ve narrowly missed another wayward spell.

  Gul. I read my name on Cavas’s lips. He points to another figure beside us. Kali, her mouth moving, telling us to hurry.

  I think I speak. Say something about Amira, Juhi—

  “Now, Gul!” Kali’s shout finally breaks through my haze.

  In the distance, I hear a scream. A woman.

  Before I can put a name to the voice, a beam of red light hits the chandelier overhead. Kali pulls us out of its way seconds before it thunders over the dead princes, shrouding them with bits of glass and metal, firestones, and blood.

  36

  GUL

  “Hurry!” Kali whispers. “Before someone notices we’re gone.”

  We race down a long passage that’s oddly empty, glass rising around us. Major Shayla’s voice continues to hum in the walls, reminding everyone that the king is dead. The glass corridor leads to stone walls: a room shaped like an octagon with doorways on all sides.

  “Juhi said there was a secret passage that began here. Somewhere,” Kali murmurs to herself. “It goes right under the palace garden and ends in the tenements outside Ambarvadi.”

  “We can go back and see if she and Amira are—”

  “No! The plan was to get you out. And you,” Kali adds, glancing at Cavas. “Juhi saw more than one person in the shells. I wasn’t willing to believe her at first, but it seems—duck!” she shouts.

  Over a dozen daggers slice through the air, sinking into the wall above us. I raise my head, glimpsing a brilliant yellow jewel and a plume of peacock feathers emerging from the same, over a red silk turban.

  Prince Amar.

  Fury rises within me. I get to my feet. Amar aims another spell at us before I can attack: a swarming cloud of bees.

  Turn, I whisper to them. Kill him.

  And that’s exactly what they try to do, only to turn into dust when Amar holds up a heavy-looking shield, blocking his own rebounded spell. However, the impact causes him to stumble, and Kali and I take advantage of this, casting our own spells at him in return. My spell knocks the shield out of the way, and a flaming streak of blue shackles Amar’s wrists and ankles.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you to never pick a weapon you can’t handle?” I snarl.

  He looks up at me, a few odd curls of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead under his turban, his yellow eyes oddly calm. “Go on, then. Finish what you came to do, Siya. If that’s really your name.”

  “I will finish you off, you liar!” I cry out. “I thought you were on my side!”

  “I was on your side.” Red flushes his cheeks. “I wanted to save you from binding with my brother. I thought you were an innocent caught in a trap. I was such a fool. You are clearly more ambitious than I thought. You killed my father, both of my brothers!”

  “I did not kill your father! But you? You told your father I was going to challenge him about the binding!” I press my glass dagger under his chin, relish his wince, the thin line of blood marring his skin. “He knew about it when he called me this morning. He was going to have my magic drained.” I bite back a wild laugh. “Well, Major Shayla beat me to the killing, didn’t she? Or did you both plan the whole thing together? Some twisted idea to rid yourself of your father and your brothers and get the throne for yourself?”

  “Major Shayla?” Confusion flickers across his features. “What in Svapnalok are you talking about?”

  “Stop lying! I will not be tricked by you again!”

  The seaglass’s green glow brightens and then, all of a sudden, grows dull. That is when I register Cavas’s presence, his hand gripping mine, the tug of his magic on mine like talons, holding it back.

  “Gul,” Cavas whispers urgently. “Gul, don’t. We need to get out of here, and he’s the only one wh
o can tell us how.”

  I wrench my hand out of his grasp. “Don’t!” I say. I still feel the grip of his magic on mine, feel it choking me. “Don’t ever do that again!”

  Pain flickers over Cavas’s face. “So it’s all right when you draw magic out of me?”

  “This isn’t the best place for a quarrel,” Kali interrupts, looking warily between the two of us. “Cavas is right. We need to get out, and Juhi didn’t exactly explain which of these eight doors to go through.” She grabs Amar by the shoulders, pulls him into a sitting position. “Show us the Way of the Guard.”

  “It’s gone,” Amar says flatly. “My father had that tunnel sealed many years ago, shortly after a fire broke out in the garden.”

  “He’s lying!” I say.

  “He’s not,” Kali replies, her eyes narrowing. “Yes, Rajkumar Amar, I see your truths and your lies. Tell us. Is there another way? Come now. Don’t make me finish what Gul started.”

  Amar stares at her for a long moment. “There is another way. But you’ll have to undo the shackles on my feet.”

  “Truth?” I ask.

  “Truth,” Kali says. “Is there a trap? Answer me!”

  “There isn’t,” he replies. “Not that I know of, at any rate. Only two people know of this particular passage.” He glances at me. “One of them is dead.”

  Kali rises abruptly to her feet. The shackles around Amar’s ankles vanish. “Show us the way, then, Rajkumar. And none of those conjuring tricks.”

  “I can’t exactly conjure with my hands shackled, can I?”

  A fair point. Kali nods at Cavas, who pulls Amar to his feet.

  “This way,” Amar says. Without another glance at us, he disappears through a doorway. Cavas shoots me and Kali one final look before following. Cursing under my breath, I go after them, Cavas’s white tunic barely visible in the dim lights of the corridor, which, unlike the rest of the palace, is made of stone and not glass.

  “Quickly.” Amar’s voice is loud in the silence. We follow him through a door that leads into a richly decorated chamber, nearly every bit of the walls covered with shelves of books and scrolls. If not for the canopied bed in the corner, I might have mistaken the room for a library.

  “Close the door,” he tells Kali. “And throw up a shield while you’re at it.”

  He strides to the shelf opposite the bed, carefully pulling out one of the books with his fingers. From behind the wall, I hear a groan that isn’t quite human, followed by the scrape of wood against metal. The shelf revolves, revealing space for a thin person to pass through. Or perhaps two.

  “This tunnel will lead you away from Ambar Fort and Ambarvadi. It’ll take you a couple of days, but you will emerge somewhere near the end of Aloksha’s dried riverbed,” Amar says. “Maybe you can escape from there into the desert. I don’t know. You don’t have much time, in any case. The Sky Warriors will be here soon.”

  “How do we know this isn’t another trick?” I ask sharply. “That we won’t find a battalion of soldiers waiting for us at the other end?”

  “The workers who built this secret tunnel had their tongues cut off.” Amar raises his shackled hands. “And I am at your mercy. Tell her, truth seeker.”

  “It’s true,” Kali says, touching his hand. “All of it.”

  I pause. “I still don’t trust you.”

  “Well, you don’t have a choice.”

  Silence.

  Amar stares at me. “You really didn’t kill my father?”

  I nod at Kali, who places a hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t,” I tell Amar. “Major Shayla did.”

  “Truth,” Kali says softly.

  Amar stares at Kali, whose hand is still on my shoulder, confirming my truth. His face falls. “My brothers—”

  “They would have killed us,” Cavas interrupts in a hard voice. “Or they would have captured us and used us as playthings. You know this. You know their sense of honor better than anyone else.”

  Amar’s mouth trembles. He does not deny Cavas’s words.

  A knock slams the door, makes it rattle in its hinges. “Rajkumar Amar!” Major Shayla shouts. “Raise your shield and open the door!”

  Amar inhales deeply and stiffens his shoulders. “Go on, then. Once you’re all inside the tunnel, your friend’s shield won’t hold up anymore. Go, if you don’t want everyone to die!”

  The door thunders again. This time the impact is worse.

  “Come on,” Cavas tells me quietly. He has already slipped through the opening and into the tunnel. He holds out a hand. I take it, and he pulls me through. Kali is the last one to go through, a moment before Amar slams the shelf shut behind us, plunging us into the dark.

  Voices rise on the other end. “I don’t know where they are!” Amar screams, his voice a high whimper. “I was hiding from everyone!”

  I don’t know what Major Shayla says in response, or understand the terrible crashing noise that follows. All I hear is the sound of my own heart and the slap of my bare feet against uneven ground, Cavas’s hand clasped tightly in mine.

  37

  CAVAS

  The tunnel is as black as pitch, endless. It allows my thoughts to run away with me for the first time, registering Papa’s absence.

  “Take me with you,” Papa had insisted. “Use me as a distraction while you bring Gul out of the palace.”

  I never should have listened. Should have insisted he stay at home. Safe. Away from magi and the murderous fire of their atashbans. I suppress the voice that insists they would have come for us later, that they would have killed him anyway.

  It’s my fault. All mine.

  I release a sharp breath. It turns into a sob.

  Gul places a hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off.

  “Cavas,” she whispers, sounding equally tearful. “Cavas, I’m so sorry—”

  I pause, spinning around, forcing her to crash into me. Though I can’t see her in the darkness, I can feel the scrape of her heavily embroidered blouse against my fingers, hear her rapid, uneven breaths.

  “I wanted to run,” I spit out. “But Papa insisted you were in danger. That’s why we were even in that palace of horrors, why we weren’t halfway to Havanpur by now. But now Papa’s gone, and you and your friend are here, and I don’t even know why I’m still alive!”

  My last sentence is a shout that echoes horribly in the silence. Ahead of us, I hear the other woman—Kali—stop in her tracks. I know she’s waiting, listening to our conversation in the dark.

  I turn away from Gul, even though her answering sob cuts through me like a blade. Deep down, I know I’m being unfair. That it isn’t Gul’s fault Papa died. Papa wanted me to be here—to save her.

  Use me as a distraction, he’d said.

  Well, I did that, didn’t I? I think bitterly. I did that so well.

  “It’s my fault,” I whisper.

  If I’d only chosen not to listen to him, he’d still be alive.

  * * *

  The air smells of decay and rats.

  I feel one race over my feet, and I jerk back, swallowing the vomit rising to my throat. A bloodbath and my father’s death didn’t make me throw up, but somehow a rat in the dark nearly does. Perhaps it’s the effect of the adrenaline wearing off, our run slowing down to a crawling trudge.

  I’m tired, I think. So tired.

  “I think we should rest here for a bit,” Kali finally says, speaking for the first time in the tunnel. “As far as I can tell, no one’s following us.”

  Fingers snap in the silence. A small lightorb rises up from Kali’s hands and floats overhead, illuminating a tiny part of the dark tunnel. Kali pulls up the hem of her long tunic to reveal pockets in her flowing trousers. She unbuttons one and pulls out a small bundle … that turns out to contain food. A mix of dried yellow grams with cracked brown shells, moong dal, puffed rice, and fried sev—the sort that people carry on pilgrimages or other long journeys. She offers the bag to each of us in turn, and I take a handful, my stomach
growling.

  The mix is dry, and there is no water to wash it down. But it tastes good, and before I know it, my handful is gone. I close my eyes and lean back, pretending to ignore Gul and Kali’s conversation.

  “Crossing the rekha was the most difficult part,” Kali is saying. “We didn’t know what to do—or how. But a little princess helped us. Dark eyes, beautiful clothes, haughty little voice.”

  “Rajkumari Malti?” Gul says.

  My eyes open of their own accord.

  “Probably. She never told us her name,” Kali says. “She was following us—had been following me and Amira since we arrived, apparently. Tried to bury us in the ground at one point—I’ve never seen such strong earth magic before. Somehow we convinced her that we were on your side and that we wanted to help you.” Kali pulls out a little gold chain with an elephant hanging from it. “She gave us this token and said it would help us cross the rekha unharmed. Don’t know where she got it from.”

  “She got it from her brother,” Gul says, frowning. “Rajkumar Amar. He designed the rekha.”

  “The conjurer who tried to kill us?” Kali sounds more interested than angry. “You two seemed to have had some sort of … understanding.”

  I hate how my every fiber is now focused into hearing Gul’s answer. But all she does is scowl at Kali and says, “Had is the key word here. He will likely be king now that his father and brothers…” She wraps her arms around herself, and I notice she’s shaking. Her lower lip is indented from being bitten.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Kali says abruptly. She turns to me. “A couple of days after Gul left for the palace, Juhi managed to get in touch with a living specter named Latif. She says you know him as well. That you’ll be able to summon him.”

  My back stiffens of its own accord. “Why?”

  “Juhi said our next destination would be a city that only the living specters know of. Latif has promised that the specters will guide us and show us the way.”

  The green swarna feels heavy in my pocket. The thought of summoning Latif, who promised to get me and Papa out of the tenements, who got me into this mess in the first place, is too much to stomach in this moment.