Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “Does it have to be Latif?” Gul speaks my thoughts out loud. “You said the specters know the way, so it can be anyone, right?”

  “Do you know more than one living specter?” Kali asks, astonished. “What are they like?”

  Gul doesn’t answer. She simply watches me with her clear gold eyes, and I have the uncanny feeling that she understands the thoughts running through my head—exactly the way she did when I first told her about my plans to join the army. I try not to think about how the very same army has my signature now. How it’ll allow them to start tracking us, if they aren’t already.

  “There are many living specters. They can touch things and even people if they want to. Latif used to bring me coin, sometimes sweets,” I say, remembering. Gul and Kali are listening to me with rapt expressions.

  “I can see living specters clearly in my dreams, but not all of them will show themselves to me when I’m awake. They can choose to remain invisible in front of half magi as well. Latif told me that if a specter’s deepest desire is fulfilled, then nothing remains to bind them to the living world. If that happens, the specter fades, never to be seen again. So there is no guarantee that one will answer, even if I call for them.”

  Like my mother, for instance.

  “That said, there is another specter I know of. Gul heard her voice, too, in Chand Mahal,” I add, and see Gul’s eyes widen with understanding.

  I pull out the swarna from my pocket and rub it, picturing the specter’s young face in my mind. Somehow, I recall the name Latif had mentioned only once before:

  “Indu, are you there?”

  The coin in my hand grows warm, glows bright green. Indu appears as I pictured her in my mind, face first, one body part after another. I know I’m not imagining things when the lightorb above the specter starts flickering. Gul and Kali grow quiet, their eyes on the space where the girl specter now stands, sensing her presence.

  “You called for me, Xerxes-putra Cavas,” Indu says.

  My father’s name feels like pincers on my skin. I speak quickly through the pain of it: “Indu? Kali here thinks the specters can help us. You have to take us to a city that—”

  “Yes, I know. It’s called the City of Shadows.” Indu sounds bored. “I can’t guarantee they will let you in, though.”

  “What is this place?” Gul asks. “A city of shadows? Is it some sort of place the spirits live in?”

  Her words spark sudden hope within me. Spirits. A city full of them. Perhaps I’ll find Papa there. Perhaps—

  “Specters, yes. Spirits, no.” Indu continues watching me expressionlessly, but there is a hint of sympathy in her voice.

  “Is there a difference?” Kali asks.

  “Of course there’s a difference. Living specters are chained to the living world in a way that spirits aren’t—though there are few who have the gift to see us, either. The living world calls them seers—and you are lucky you have one among you.”

  My face flushes. I know Gul and Kali are watching me now, but I can’t bear their fascination or their interest in this so-called gift of mine. “This city, then. It’s for the living.”

  “For the living and those of us still chained to the living world. Magi have mostly forgotten it, of course, the way they always do things that are inconvenient. It is called—”

  “Tavan.” The word leaves my mouth by instinct, a fable and a hope, hanging crystalline in the air.

  “Tavan?” Kali sounds incredulous. “But that’s a myth. A tale for children.”

  “And there’s the amnesia I was referring to,” Indu says sarcastically.

  Gul bites her lip—I have a feeling she’s trying to suppress a laugh. Despite everything, I want to do so as well.

  “I will let them know you are here. That she is still alive.” Indu gestures to Gul. “Get to the end of the tunnel. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Hold on,” Kali says. “Juhi told us Latif was supposed to tip off Ruhani Kaki, an old woman in the tenements. She has our horses. I don’t know where this tunnel ends, so—”

  “Wait, Ruhani Kaki?” I interrupt. Horses? “What does Ruhani Kaki have to do with this?” I glance at Gul, but she seems equally confused. How many people are involved in Juhi’s escape plan?

  Indu doesn’t seem perturbed by Kali’s instructions. “I’ll take care of everything. I suppose you’ll want them saddled.” She sounds so much older than her age that, for a moment, I am disoriented. She’s a living specter, I remind myself. Dead for the saints know how long.

  “Yes,” Kali continues, as if I haven’t spoken. “Now tell us about Tavan. Who’s living there? What—”

  “No time. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  And with those final words, Indu disappears, the flickering lightorb above us announcing her absence.

  “She’s gone, then?” Kali asks me.

  “Yes,” I say quietly, staring at the empty space where Indu’s body stood.

  “What’s this talk about horses?” Gul asks sharply. “And who is Ruhani Kaki?”

  “She’s an old lady who lives in the tenements,” I answer before Kali can. “She’s been living there for years. She … she always helped me and Papa, when no one else would. She knew Juhi as well,” I say, suddenly remembering.

  “She did,” Kali agrees. “The Way of the Guard, which Juhi had used to escape the palace years ago, ended in the tenements itself—behind Ruhani Kaki’s hut. She was part of the old resistance against Raja Lohar. That was all I was told by Juhi. She said nothing about Tavan, though.”

  “You and Juhi went to the desert looking for someone,” Gul speaks slowly as if thinking out loud, her voice growing angrier as she went on. “And you got injured by dustwolves. Were you headed to a city? Was it Tavan?”

  “Maybe. I can’t be sure.” Kali sounds uneasy now. “Look, Gul—”

  “She should have told you! She should have let you know what she was leading you into!”

  “Or maybe she didn’t know about Tavan,” I interrupt. I have my own doubts about this, but I don’t want to listen to them argue. “The specters don’t always reveal everything.” I think back to my encounters with Latif, my mother’s silence, and swallow back bitterness. “Either we trust them or we don’t.”

  Neither of us speaks for several moments. Kali sighs. “Well, I suppose we should get some sleep. Or at least you two should. I’ll keep watch.”

  “I can do that,” I say. Underneath the streaks of ash, I see that there are bags under Kali’s eyes. “I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.”

  I try not to look at Gul, who is still watching me, and settle into a crouch against the wall. Cold seeps through the stone—it must be nightfall now. We congregate under the heat of the lightorb, Gul ending up next to me, barely a hand’s width away. Despite what I said, my eyes flicker shut with my next breath, the smells of sweat, eucalyptus, roses, and girl surrounding me.

  * * *

  A muffled cry of pain startles me awake.

  Instinctively, I turn to Gul, whose back is slick with sweat—the sort that coats your skin when you’re having a nightmare. For a moment, I forget what I said to her earlier. I do what Papa often did for me when I was in the throes of a bad dream and wrap my arms around her, rocking her in place, whispering in her ear.

  “You’re safe,” I tell Gul. “You’re safe.”

  The refrain does for her exactly what it used to do for me: It quiets her sobs, turning them to deep breaths. I only register how close we are when wet lashes brush my cheek.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m all right now.”

  The words break the spell. I scramble to my feet. “We should go,” I say, my voice raw.

  Gul says nothing. I hear her gently waking Kali, and then afterward, their footsteps shuffle behind me: the only sound that prevails as we continue walking through the dark. Hours pass by. Perhaps even another day. Our food is nearly gone. Just when I think we’re going to collapse of exhaustion or thirst, Kali lets forth a startl
ed gasp.

  “Do you see?”

  I frown. I’m about to ask if she’s imagining things when I see it. Initially a pinprick, then a beacon. An overhead light that’s almost painful to the eyes when we get close.

  “A ladder.” Gul’s hand brushes its rough stone edges. “Thank the goddess.”

  More like thank the person who had the foresight to have it made, I think. Only that person might be Prince Amar—and for some reason I don’t like thinking of him at all. Or remembering the way he looked at Gul.

  Kali goes up the ladder first. “Come on. It appears safe.”

  Gul goes up next and then I follow.

  My eyes squint against the sun, directly overhead us, marking the middle of the day. Though which day it is, I’m not entirely sure. As Amar said, we’re a couple of miles from the Aloksha riverbed, dry save for the tiny puddles of water left behind by the few rain spells this month. Rocks jut out everywhere like teeth. My mouth burns. Just my luck to realize how starved we are for water in the midst of land so dry it might as well be a desert—even though the real Desert of Dreams is still probably several miles away.

  “I don’t think we’re too far from Sur,” Kali says. “Perhaps we can—” Her voice cuts off abruptly, and she presses a finger to her lips.

  A moment later, I hear it as well. The sound of hooves, followed by a horse’s sharp neigh. Without another word, we race toward a rock, which we duck behind, squinting at the dust rising from a distance. Kali and Gul unsheathe their daggers. I, on the other hand, look around and pick up the largest rock I can find. It could be Indu, bringing the horses Kali talked about. But it also could be a group of Sky Warriors out hunting for us.

  A high-pitched voice rings in my ears:

  Rooh was born without a heart

  Some say without a soul

  But when he ripped his chest apart

  He found a girl of gold

  Gul and I rise to our feet as one, racing toward the cloud of dust. A pair of Ambari stallions pause a few feet from us, but the third horse keeps cantering forward, its coat glistening like rubies in the afternoon light. Gul throws her arms around the red horse and begins sobbing—a mare, I realize, from Jwala. Kali isn’t as weepy, but she races to meet the stallions, stroking their noses and calling them by their names.

  The rock I picked up earlier clatters to the ground. For the first time that week, I feel something that could be close to relief.

  38

  GUL

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” I tell Agni now, stroking her mane.

  You will always see me, foolish girl. Even if you don’t want to.

  I laugh, though at this moment it must sound more like another sob, because Cavas looks at me again, alarmed. Kali on the other hand is checking on Ajib and Gharib, examining their hooves and their eyes. She unties a bag from one of their saddles—a waterskin that she offers to Cavas and then to me. I gulp down the fresh, cool water and then hand the skin to Kali, who does the same.

  “Bless Ruhani Kaki,” Cavas says, opening another bag. “There’s food here as well.”

  We tear into cloth bundles containing khoba roti and bottles of mango preserves—once Kali rations them out. No meal has felt so filling, has tasted so good. Guilt twists my insides. Regardless of the secrets she kept from us, Juhi did care. Juhi, who, along with Amira, has probably been captured by the Sky Warriors by now, if not outright killed.

  I glance at Cavas, who is offering a bit of his own roti to Agni. He has unwrapped his turban, and I see his hair for the first time: black and straight, the fringe falling over his eyes. I study the hollowed planes of his face, his aquiline nose, the shadow of a beard over his chin. As if sensing my gaze, he looks up, but I turn away before my eyes meet his. It’s my fault Cavas’s father died. My fault that Cavas is here now, on a path he never would have chosen for himself.

  You are too hard on yourself, Agni says through the bond that connects us. You didn’t bring the boy or his father to the king’s palace.

  Perhaps. But I still feel responsible. Just as I do for the power that had burst out of me like fire in Raj Mahal, killing both the crown prince and his brother. With shaking fingers, I pull one of my seaglass daggers from its sheath. The blade instantly glows green, showing no hint of the scarlet it did two days earlier.

  Raise your hands, my daughter. Accept my boon.

  In accepting the sky goddess’s boon, I allowed her magic to enter my body and gave her full control of my powers, unable to stop what happened next, even if I wanted to. Did you, really? a voice in my head taunts. Did you really want to stop?

  “Hurry up,” Indu’s disembodied voice cuts through my thoughts. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “I agree,” Kali says. “I don’t like the look of this place.”

  I understand what she means. Even though there isn’t anyone around—the nearest settlement must be at least a day’s ride away—we’re too exposed here in the open, too easily seen. As for the horses—I don’t even know how the three of them successfully made it here without getting noticed.

  Kali offers Gharib’s reins to Cavas and takes Ajib’s reins for herself. I force myself to focus on the task at hand—reaching Tavan—and climb onto Agni’s back. A keening erupts in the distance, followed by a series of howls. My skin crawls at the sound. Agni’s ears flatten.

  “Dustwolves,” Kali says grimly. “Indu, where do we go?”

  “This way,” Cavas says, watching the space somewhere behind Kali. Though he’s still pale, his brown eyes are alert now. We turn our horses around and begin following Cavas. By nightfall, we make it to the edge of the Desert of Dreams without incident, and we camp next to a nearly dried-out pond, the water browning with mud. Indu whistles the Rooh song again while the horses pause to drink and nibble on the clumps of wild desert grass growing nearby. Cavas leans against a dhulvriksh, its rootlike branches jutting into the sky.

  “We’ll need to keep moving,” Kali tells me. “There’s no saying what might be happening at the palace now. Or who’s already on your tra—Queen’s curses!” She’s staring somewhere behind me.

  I turn around to see a rising cloud of white dust, the sort that might be caused by a battalion of soldiers or—

  “A dust storm,” I say out loud.

  My mother often warned me about the Desert of Dreams—especially about the diamond-bright Dream Dust that swirls through its center like powder. “It glitters,” Ma said. “It stings your eyes and your face. It creeps into the crevices of your clothes and body. It does its worst when you accidentally catch a whiff of it.”

  “Perhaps we better stay here,” Kali says, staring at the white cloud of dust. “Wait for the storm to subside.”

  “Bad idea.” Indu’s voice, her cold breath so close to my ear that it makes me stumble.

  “By the goddess! Will you stop that?” I shout.

  “You’ll be jumping at more than my voice when the dustwolves get here.”

  We hear howls again, as if summoned—only this time they’re louder, closer.

  Dustwolves or a dust storm. I’m not sure which option is worse. Next to the dhulvriksh, I notice that Cavas is breaking off a long stick—likely to ward off the wolves. I find myself walking toward him, pausing less than an arm’s length away, a dagger in my hand.

  “Do you want this instead?” I ask.

  His eyes widen as he stares at the hilt of the seaglass blade, then narrow as he vehemently shakes his head. “I want nothing to do with all that.”

  All that. As if it’s something repulsive. As if I am the same. I swallow back a retort. I know Cavas is grieving for his father. That he’s justified in his response after years of being ill-treated by magi like myself. Underneath the hurt, I feel something else: anger, simmering under my skin. I hold on to it, let it fuel my limbs into action by reaching out to climb onto Agni, who nudges Cavas with a sharp snort. His eyes soften infinitesimally, and after a pause, he heads to Gharib.

  “Fo
llow my voice,” Indu says. “Follow the sound of my voice and I’ll do my best to keep them off your scent.”

  She begins whistling again—though this time, instead of getting annoyed by it, I clutch onto the sound like a lifeline. We gallop toward the column of rising dust in the distance, Agni lightly churning the sand under her hooves, putting up a veil between me and any possible predators.

  Behind me, Cavas lets out a curse, followed by my name. That’s when I feel it—the brush of a paw, of something, on my bare foot—and then I hear a yelp as I kick out. A long howl claws up my spine. Agni spurs faster, the road growing bumpy the farther we go into the desert. I can’t see Kali, even though I hear her cry out somewhere to my left. A shadow rises amid the dust, nearly invisible, if not for the telltale eyes glowing red with hunger. This time, however, I’m ready, my dagger sending a beam of green light directly into the dustwolf’s eyes. The spell isn’t strong enough to kill it, but from the yowls I hear, there must have been enough damage to push it back.

  I hear Cavas curse again. “I lost my stick! And there are more of them!”

  I raise my dagger again and aim another spell—this one much weaker than the one before. I see the dustwolf outlined in the green light, bigger than the biggest dog I’ve ever seen, stubby horns growing out of its skull. It dodges the spell this time around and reaches out with a slash, catching Agni with its claws. The mare screams, nearly bucking me off in her efforts to dodge the wolf. The sky darkens in this part of the desert, the air around us turning a murky yellow.

  “Aim for the rising dust!” Indu shouts. “And try not to inhale anything!”

  “Kali? Cavas?” I shout. “Are you there? Did you hear Indu?”

  “Here!” Kali appears ahead of me, heading right into the storm. “I heard her!”

  But there’s no answer from Cavas—not even a shout. Each of my senses screams that something is wrong. Without really thinking about it, I turn Agni around.