Hunted by the Sky

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “Still far too many.” Kali is the one who responds. Her lips are ashen, and I suddenly remember that she was at a camp as well. That Juhi helped her and Amira escape.

  “Perhaps there won’t be any left by the end of the year,” Subodh says gently. “We’ve sent the new king a message by shvetpanchhi, asking for his pardon. My sources tell me he’s different from his father. More malleable.”

  I think of Amar, the confusion I saw in his eyes when I accused him of colluding with Shayla. Was I wrong? Did he really want to help me avoid binding with Sonar? I hesitate before asking Subodh the next question. “Why are you doing this? You’re free now. You could … leave.”

  “I can and I will. Once I’m assured that Esther and her girls are safe. That they can return home. After all they did to keep me alive and well, it’s the least I can do.”

  His words feel like a gut punch. I think of Juhi, who rescued me. Of Amira, who infiltrated the palace despite the awful things I said to her. I might have talked about avenging my parents, but in truth I was only thinking of one person: myself.

  Do not judge yourself too harshly, Savak-putri Gulnaz. Subodh’s voice feels like a gentle breeze in my mind. I am older than you are and have made mistakes that are even bigger. There are always ways to make amends.

  Moments later, we’ve left the houses behind and are approaching a copse of date palms and other trees. A mirage, I think, when I see the water, but when Subodh pauses before it, I realize it’s a rectangular reservoir, the surface so flat and clear that it might be a mirror reflecting the clear blue sky.

  “Hundreds of years ago, the rulers of Ambar learned that they would need a more consistent supply of water apart from the rain that fell every Month of Tears to sustain their land-locked kingdom,” Subodh tells us. “They built a series of underground aqueducts to supply their towns and cities from the River Aloksha and from the Prithvi mountains. During the Great War, though, Prithvi raised its wall, and many of the underground channels dried up, along with the Aloksha itself. Raja Lohar was forced to build new underground channels from the Jwaliyan mountains to supply the kingdom’s cities and villages.”

  “How does this reservoir survive?” Cavas asks. “Raja Lohar might have not been able to get into Tavan because it was invisible, but he still could block your supply of water.”

  A shiver goes through me as Subodh turns his great yellow eyes in Cavas’s direction. But maybe meeting his mother changed things, because Cavas stares back at the Pashu king fearlessly, completely different from the cowed boy I’d seen before.

  “You’re right,” Subodh says, and I think I hear a smile in his voice. “After the Battle of the Desert, Lohar did block our water supply. Luckily, this reservoir wasn’t empty. With the help of a little magic, I keep replenishing its water and make sure it never dips below a certain level. It’s the only reason we’ve survived this long.”

  “What about the food?” Cavas asks. “Surely you can’t grow everything here. The soil isn’t fertile enough.”

  “Right again,” Subodh says. “Let me show you. Esther, would you please…”

  Without a word, Esther walks to the edge of the water and quietly adds a drop of clear liquid from a vial.

  “That is drishti jal from the waterfalls of Aman,” Subodh explains. “The Pashu use it to scour the truth and communicate with one another. To travel and bring provisions—if necessary. It’s how we have been getting food that is harder to grow in the desert, even with magic. It will not work as well for a human.”

  “I’ve tried,” Esther admits, a little sheepishly. “I thought I could go out and get us some food. But the water tossed me out.”

  Subodh places a paw against the water: It glows, turning for a brief moment into a human hand, then a hoof, then a bird’s foot with talons. He raises his head and makes a terrible shrieking sound. The surface of the water turns silver. For a long moment, there’s utter silence. Then:

  A hum in the air, which sends a shiver down my spine.

  The water begins to churn, concentric and swirling, sinking deeper and deeper to allow a figure to rise from within. My breath catches.

  It’s a simurgh. A Pashu with a woman’s face and an eagle’s beak and wings. Peacock feathers curl around her, gleaming like jewels, fanning out like a cloud. If Subodh’s eyes are suns, hers are the night sky: black and deep, glittering with infinite stars. A small crown rests on her head. Not only a simurgh, but also a queen. Over twenty gunnysacks are clutched in her beak and her claws. She rises in the air above us and then drops them gently onto the ground.

  “Food. To last you for the next three months,” the simurgh says, perching before Subodh. She is nearly as large as he is, and her voice sounds like several birds singing at once.

  “Rani Sarayu,” Subodh says, bowing. “You honor us with your presence and your gifts.”

  Without even thinking, I sink into a bow as well. Beside me, I see Kali, Cavas, and Esther doing the same.

  “Raja Subodh.” Sarayu bows in front of him and tilts her magnificent head to acknowledge the rest of us. “I am only a regent. The land of Aman and the Pashu still await their true king.”

  “I have never been a good ruler, Rani Sarayu.” Subodh’s voice is grave. “But I do hope to return home. You said you have news.”

  Sarayu says nothing for a long moment. “We do have … news. The message was delivered by one of my birds, three days ago, shortly after the new king, Amar, was crowned. There was a meeting going on between the new king and the palace vaid. My bird overheard the vaid telling Raja Amar about how he found traces of poison in the old king’s body. The poison was likely being fed to him over years at a time. The vaid mentioned that the new general, Shayla, had been responsible for overseeing Raja Lohar’s security, including his food. The information made Raja Amar furious.”

  There’s a crawling sensation in my belly.

  “Later, when my bird delivered the letter, she ensured that Raja Amar read the whole scroll. He sent back a letter in return, asking if he could meet you.” She holds up a scroll but does not hand it over.

  “What happened to him, Sarayu?” Subodh growls. “What are you not telling me?”

  “There was a coup that night. I found out through my other birds only this morning.”

  I don’t want to hear what Sarayu says next. But I can’t make myself walk away.

  “The Sky Warriors, led by General Shayla, ambushed the new king when he came to see his mother in Rani Mahal. The chase led to the servants’ quarters in the palace, to a hidden passage. The Sky Warriors were shooting atashbans at him. Raja Amar jumped out of the window, over two hundred feet to the palace grounds.”

  My heart sinks. Next to me, Cavas curses out loud.

  “Did he survive?” Subodh asks urgently. “Did you check?”

  “My birds saw no traces of blood in the area. But a funeral was held for Raja Amar the next day. Perhaps the Sky Warriors found his body before we did. Or perhaps they used a false body in his place. We don’t know for sure.”

  A drop of over two hundred feet. Amar could have floated above the ground, the way some magi children in my village did when I was younger. The way I finally did, after I dropped into my mother’s arms.

  Or perhaps he couldn’t.

  Magic doesn’t work the same way for everyone. I think back to how Amar could conjure daggers and bees but not a shield to protect himself. And falling from that height, at that speed … As much as I want Amar to be alive, I know the possibilities of his surviving that fall are slim to none.

  “General Shayla declared Raja Amar’s death a suicide—the unfortunate aftermath of his father’s and brothers’ murders,” Sarayu says. “She has also declared a bounty of five thousand swarnas for the heads of the new leaders of the rebellion.”

  Sarayu raises her wings, revealing two faces within: Cavas’s and mine.

  It’s my fault, I think, feeling nauseous. I made up my mind to kill the king. I infiltrated the palace without t
hinking of the consequences of what would happen after he died.

  Others have paid the price for my thoughtless actions. Juhi and Amira, who are now being tortured in captivity. The marked girls, who are still locked up in labor camps. Amar, who is now dead. I don’t dare look at Cavas, who is now part of a war he never wanted to fight.

  A pair of voices echo in my head:

  You must be a leader when all hope is lost.

  We’re your army. Ready to fight at your command.

  A small, selfish part of me longs to go back into hiding. To forget everything I’ve done.

  But you are not that girl anymore, a voice in my head reminds me—my own. Even if you hide from other people, you will never be able to hide from yourself.

  The knot in my chest unravels.

  My reprieve here in Tavan is temporary. The time will come when I will have to go back to Ambarvadi. When I will have no choice but to face Shayla, regardless of what happens next.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Queen Sarayu’s beautiful, terrible eyes find mine again before she makes her final pronouncement:

  “The Sky Warriors, the army, the ministers, the courtiers, and Lohar’s three queens have unanimously accepted General Shayla as the protector of Ambar and sworn fealty to her.

  “She was crowned queen by the head priest this morning.”

  A QUEEN AND A HOUND

  41

  SHAYLA

  “No news yet, Rani Shayla.”

  The messenger speaks in Paras, the language of Jwala. He’s young, perhaps in his late teens, his skin sun-browned, his copper hair shining under the bright lightorb in my private chambers in Raj Mahal.

  Black flames tattoo the muscles of his bare arms, the way they do all the Jwaliyan queen’s precious hounds, the best trackers and messengers on the continent. He gives me a smile—wide, toothy, and dimpled. A boy used to the effects of his own charm. I tilt my head sideways, scan his dirty brown vest and orange dhoti, the red dust caking the pointed tips of his shoes.

  “Did you travel from Jwala by foot?” I ask in Paras, my accent perfect, my voice like silk.

  The boy’s smile slips. “I did. H-her M-majesty, the rani of Jwala, c-couldn’t spare any horses.”

  “Interesting. A kingdom known for its horsepower unable to spare one to reply to an urgent message.” My lips curl into something that might outwardly resemble a smile.

  Some ally the Jwaliyan rani was. Then again, she had been acting up even when Lohar was still alive. Cutting off the water supply for first one, then two, then four Ambari reservoirs. Slowly reducing the number of Jwaliyan horses gifted to the king every year. Using old age as an excuse for the past few years to avoid diplomatic visits to our kingdom.

  The boy’s knees knock together, bone audibly hitting bone. Behind him, Alizeh’s gray eyes meet mine. She is the only one who watches me without fear. The only one whose loyalty I can count on. It’s why I made her my general. Gave her a uniform of pristine white and silver.

  “Lohar-putra Amar, the conjurer king, is gone,” I say. “His body vanished into thin air. And you tell me that no one can find it. Not even you, one of the continent’s best hounds.”

  It had been easy to fake the conjurer’s death. To kill a non-magus palace worker, deface his corpse, dress it in royal finery, and place it in the casket before it was buried. The sound of Queen Amba’s sobs made things better. Sweeter.

  Finding the conjurer’s real body was another story altogether. He wasn’t lying broken on the palace grounds after his fall. Nor did we find him in any of the palace’s secret tunnels. I know. I had my own hounds look everywhere.

  The messenger’s soft mouth trembles. “M-my queen, I—”

  “I am not your queen, messenger. Your queen is in Jwala,” I cut in. “Your queen did not have the courtesy to congratulate me on my ascension. Your queen ignored the urgency of my message and took two whole weeks to send me a useless boy with a worthless answer.”

  “Kabzedar,” the conjurer king had called me before leaping from the window in Rani Mahal. Usurper in the Common Tongue. “You will never be accepted in Ambar. You will never be its true queen.”

  Amar thought himself so smart. Thought he could imprison me based on a fool vaid’s simple testimony about the poison berries they found in Lohar’s body. In the drink that I pretended to sip for him every day.

  Silly boy. Naive king. Did Amar really think it was easy to defeat the most powerful magus in Ambar without weakening him a little? Had he forgotten how his own father had poisoned my mother?

  My newly forged gold crown fits like second skin, tapers to a point with a teardrop-shaped firestone in the center. I watch the messenger’s eyes flicker to it from time to time, as if mesmerized by the lights dancing in the jewel’s many facets. Is he thinking now about how I’d ripped the stone from the real kabzedar’s turban, shortly after I’d sliced his throat?

  Unlike the rulers of old, who dressed for politics in colorful, resplendent silks, I dress for battle: my tunic and trousers made of lightweight black silk, my armor and boots made of matching leather. As far as ornaments go, however, a queen’s crown isn’t a bad thing. It’s the only jewelry I wear now, along with the three firestones studding my left ear. My mother’s firestones, three of her tiniest jewels that I’d stolen years ago from the usurper’s Ministry of Treasure—my Ministry of Treasure.

  “Do you know what I do to men who lie to me?” I ask the messenger now. “Do you know what I did to my own father?”

  My Sky Warrior father thought he was protecting me when he told me that my mother had never wanted a daughter. He thought he was doing right when he enrolled me in the academy for the kingdom’s most elite soldiers the year I turned five—just to keep me out of the queen’s sight. Back then, I was one of two girls among twenty boys. Over the next twelve years, only three of our batch survived the training necessary to become Sky Warriors: Alizeh, Emil, and me. Twelve years had been more than enough time to learn how a woman’s body could be used and abused at the academy, how little her tears mattered in this world.

  My mother would have never let them hurt me. She would have never let me cry.

  Yet your mother never tried seeking you out, did she? The thought hovers at the edges of my mind, has Lohar’s serpentine voice. She never even looked at your face.

  I rise from my chair and make my way to where the messenger stands, his scattered breath brushing my cheek. “I crept up on my father while he was sleeping,” I whisper. “I sank the tip of my atashban between his ribs and carved out his heart, the organ still pumping blood in my hands.”

  As if to demonstrate, I withdraw my obsidian and firestone atashban, a weapon newly forged to be more powerful than Lohar’s original design. The boy’s throat bobs, but my arrow tip is sharp. The line I’m carving into his flesh doesn’t falter.

  Hiss. A trickle of water. No, piss soiling the Jwaliyan messenger’s bright-orange dhoti. A sour smell rises in the air.

  My laugh breaks the quiet of the room, is echoed by Alizeh.

  “Poor child,” I say lazily. “I branded him with only half of the royal seal.” A new seal made of my mother’s trident crossed with a Sky Warrior’s atashban. A symbol that I wear stitched over my black silk tunic in scarlet.

  The trident I’ve carved into the messenger’s skin gleams wet and red. He whimpers.

  So young. So pitiful. So boring.

  “Toss him into the dungeons,” I tell Alizeh, setting my atashban aside. “The shadowlynx needs to be fed. Any leftovers can be boxed up for our dear ally, the queen in Jwala.”

  “Wait!” The messenger’s voice is barely more than a squeak. “Wait, Rani Shayla! I can tell you more. I saw living specters on my way here. They’re all over the city. Singing, rejoicing!” He trembles when I turn to face him. “I … I’m a seer, my queen. I swear I’m telling the truth!”

  He is. I have seen enough liars to know the difference. A seer. Half magus. Half dirt licker.

  I raise a fi
nger. Alizeh lets go of the boy’s arms.

  “What were they singing, messenger?” My voice is as soft as a mother’s. Nearly as kind.

  The messenger releases a shaky breath. The voice that emerges from his throat, however, high and oddly pure:

  The sky has fallen, a star will rise

  Ambar changed by a king’s demise

  A girl with a mark, a boy with her soul

  Their fates intertwined, two halves of a whole

  Usurpers have come, usurpers will go

  The true king waits for justice to flow.

  Fury rises, burning my neck and my ears. That stupid Star Warrior and her worthless dirt licker lover. Hindering me all over again. I breathe deeply. No matter. I would deal with them both the way I dealt with the kabzedar king. The way I dealt with the dirt-licking maids whom my father had bribed to lie to my mother, telling her I was a boy.

  I rest a hip against my desk and clap my hands once. A wooden chair slides forward, knocking into the back of the Jwaliyan messenger’s thighs. He collapses into a sitting position, his lips chapped and dry. He no longer attempts to woo me with stupid smiles.

  “You have my attention, messenger,” I say. “Now tell me more about these living specters.”

  Glossary

  Note: You will find many of the terms below common to our world and the former empire of Svapnalok. However, there are a few words that differ slightly in meaning and/or are used specifically in the context of Svapnalok. These have been marked with an asterisk (*) wherever possible.

  acharya: A scholar and religious leader

  almari: A cupboard

  *Ambarnaresh: A title for the king of Ambar

  *Anandpranam: The happiest of salutations

  angrakha: A long tunic that is tied at the left or right shoulder

  *atashban: A powerful magical weapon resembling a crossbow