CHAPTER 1
The man had been dead for a while, as was obvious from the stench. He lay spread-eagled on the cracked white earth of the salt desert, his skin burned reddish brown by the sun, the buttons of his faded shirt straining against the bloat of his stomach. In the hollow of his outstretched palm, in ludicrous contrast, glowed a bluestar, bright and impossible.
Irinya leaned forward and stared at it, her gut churning, wishing she could leave it alone but knowing she would not. Flowers were rare in the Rann of Kutch. Years of overharvesting and destruction of the hives they depended on had nearly wiped them out. This bluestar would be worth a gold mohur at least.
Fardan poked her shoulder, making her start. “Go on. It’s not like he’s going to jump up and throttle you.”
She shot him a glare. “Why don’t you get it?”
He took a hasty step back, raising his hands in mock horror. “I made lunch.”
As if there was any comparison between making a few rotlas and plucking a flower from an extremely dead man’s hand. “Some flower-hunting partner you are,” she muttered under her breath. She set down her potli and wiped the sweat trickling down her face with the edge of her dupatta. They’d seen bodies in the salt flats before—men who’d come for the magic flowers of the Rann and met death instead. The monsoon rains washed their remains out to sea every year.
But they’d never seen one with an actual flower. Nor had they seen one who was so obviously a foreigner, from the strange cut of his clothes to the light-colored eyes and hair. The elders would not be happy about this. It meant that knowledge of the magic flowers had leaked beyond the boundaries of the Indian subcontinent. A complete outsider had managed to find a bluestar—although he had not managed to stay alive.
The baniya would not care one way or the other as long as he got his flowers. He’d been hectoring them more than usual lately, demanding the rarest blooms, threatening to raise the interest rate on their debt if they didn’t meet his quota. He knew how flower hunting worked, knew how difficult it was to procure a single flower, and yet he acted as though it was their laziness to blame for the scant pickings.
Villain. One day, she’d pay off the debt and free the kul from his grasping hands. That was the vow she’d made to herself when she became a flower hunter, even though it seemed an impossible goal. She put the greedy moneylender out of her mind, wrapped her dupatta around her nose and mouth, and approached the body. The smell grew worse. Just a decaying shell, she told herself. Nothing to worry about. She crouched beside the outstretched hand, breathing through her mouth, and reached out.
The fingers on the hand twitched.
Irinya yelped and scooted back.
“What?” said Fardan in alarm, leaping to her side. “What?”
“Nothing.” She stared at the hand. She hadn’t imagined it. It was as if the flower had pushed the fingers aside, revealing more of itself. “Are we sure he’s dead?”
“Of course.” Fardan wrinkled his nose. “He smells worse than my grandmother.”
“Fardan!”
“I’m serious. She never bathes. But, I mean, look at his face.”
She looked. Short, salt-encrusted brown hair and beard, gaping mouth, stiff jaw, eyes staring sightlessly into the glare of the pale blue sky. “I thought I saw him move.”
“Bodies do that sometimes,” said Fardan with a knowledgeable air. “It’s all the gases inside them. You’d better hurry if you don’t want it farting on you.”
That was enough to galvanize her into action. She scuttled forward, snatched the bluestar from the dead man’s hand, and was about to scuttle back when she noticed the lone petal left in his palm. Inwardly, she cursed. The flower was worth more when it was whole.
Take me, said the petal.
She blinked. Flowers spoke to her sometimes, just like they’d once spoken to her mother. Or she imagined they did. A magical connection or a figment of the mind—did it matter which? The noonday sun beat down relentlessly, making her head throb. The sooner they got back to the camp, the better.
“You making friends?” said Fardan from behind her.
“Very funny.” She retrieved the petal and pocketed it in a small, furtive movement so Fardan wouldn’t notice, trying not to think about what she was doing. Stealing from the dead. Not that it belonged to the dead man in the first place. He had no business here in the Rann. Still, she would not withhold the words of farewell from him. She rose and backed away, joining her hands together. “May you find water and rest in the garden of death.” Fardan echoed her words.
She showed him the bluestar, the elegance of its four slim petals marred by the obvious absence of the fifth. It gave off a faint stench of brackish water—quite unlike the white jasmine with its rich, sweet fragrance. “You think the baniya will write off a full gold mohur for this?” she asked.
He took it from her and examined it, his face falling. “No chance. One of the petals is missing.”
“Still got to be worth at least ten silver tankas.” She grabbed her potli, took the last gulp of water remaining in her waterskin, and strode away, not waiting for Fardan. Why had she hidden the petal from him? Did she mean to keep it for herself because it had spoken to her?
Each petal of the bluestar could counteract the effects of the red flower—the hibiscus that compelled obedience. But no one was about to waste a precious hibiscus on the likes of her. She had no earthly use for it.
Fardan caught up with her. “This means riches,” he crowed, his hazel eyes sparkling. “Maybe I will leave the kul and become a famous artist in Ahmedabad. And you will miss me with all your poor, sad heart.”
“Use your brains, if you have any.” Irinya pointed at the flower in his hand. “Ninety percent of that will go to paying down debt. The baniya will be happy for five seconds before he asks for more. We’ll get a few miserable jital if we’re lucky. And you’ll spend your share on parchment, like you always do.”
Fardan sighed. “A man can dream.”
She glanced at him sideways. Anyone less like an artist was difficult to imagine, with his mischievous eyes, dimpled chin, unruly black hair, and hefty build. But Fardan’s large hands were capable of surprisingly delicate work.
He caught her gaze and grinned. “Missing me already?”
She snorted and focused on the landscape. The Rann stretched flat in every direction as far as the eye could see, salt crystals glittering in the sun. Not a single blade of grass broke the hard white featurelessness of the salt flats. Yet it was the only place in the Indian subcontinent—perhaps the entire world—where magic flowers grew. Jasmines loved the hollows of dead trees, roses preferred black volcanic rock, hibiscus were drawn to fossils, and sunflowers hid in the base of thorny bushes.
Nor were they defenseless. Each flower had its own kind of thorn that produced a unique poison. There were no known antidotes, but Irinya had been building her immunity to their poison for years, giving herself tiny pricks, widely spaced apart, so she could handle them safely.
She spied a lone desiccated tree, wrapped by a withered vine, and trudged toward it, tingling with anticipation. Like jasmines, bluestar favored dead trees.
Fardan followed. “Where are you going? We already have the flower.”
“I want the thorns.”
She reached the tree and inspected it. Sure enough, black needles as long as her index finger rose up the vine in a menacing column. A bluestar’s thorns. This must be where the unlucky stranger had found his flower. Much good it had done him.
“Are you planning to do away with the baniya?” A thoughtful tone entered Fardan’s voice: “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
“Hush.” She withdrew a white cloth from her potli and plucked the thorns, taking care not to touch them directly. Eighteen—not a bad haul. She wrapped them in the white cloth and tucked them in her bag. She would treat them when she had the time, converting them to poisonous little darts for her blowpipe. One thorn she would reserve for pricking herself.
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Fardan, leaning toward her with open-mouthed interest.
“Poison you.” He knew about the blowpipe she’d inherited from her mother, of course. But no way was she telling him about the darts. That was her secret.
“Ha,” said Fardan. “Good joke.” His brow furrowed. “Wait, you’re joking, aren’t you?”
Her lips twitched, and she turned her footsteps south. In the distance, white salt and pale blue sky blurred until you could no longer tell which was which. But somewhere in that haze, the desert ended and the grasslands began: Banni, their home for much of the year. She drew her dupatta farther down over her head, blinking in the glare of the sun, and caught sight of a raptor circling overhead. A black vulture, drawn, no doubt, by the prospect of a feast. There would be little but bones left of the dead man by the time the rains came. Despite the heat, she shivered.
“You’re going to prick yourself, right?” Fardan caught up with her. “But why do you need so many thorns? They’re dangerous. I should tell Bholi,” he added in a sanctimonious tone.
“Bholi Masi would sooner listen to a bleating goat than to you,” said Irinya, quickening her pace across the salt flats. Overhead, another vulture joined the first. She had no desire to witness their meal.
Fardan winced. “Your aunt hates me. Why does she hate me?”
Irinya threw him an exasperated glance, half-glad of the distraction his prattle provided. “She doesn’t hate you. She just knows you too well, you good-for-nothing rascal.”
That had been his nickname since childhood when he accidentally set fire to a supply tent. He had others: useless scribbler, lazy loafer, or simply that boy.
“I’m no longer a good-for-nothing rascal,” he protested, nearly tripping over a small black rock jutting out of the cracked earth. “I’m a fine, upstanding member of the kul.”
“You’re the reason the camels stampeded on the way back to the village last year,” she said, extending an arm to steady him. Not that he needed her help, the lummox.
“How was I to know my flute playing would spook them?” he said, aggrieved.
“Your flute playing would spook the dead.” She dropped her arm and scanned the sky. They’d left the vultures behind. Overhead and all around was only the eye-dazzling emptiness of the Rann. “And you lost a goat the one time you took them grazing.”
“I was drawing! I bet she fell in love with some wild boy-goat and is now the proud mother of several kids.”
Irinya bit back a grin. “That goat was eaten by wolves, and you know it.”
He scowled. “I’m not cut out for herding.”
“Or storytelling.” Fardan’s great-uncle Chinmay was the kul’s storyteller, a position that guaranteed a place in the council as well as in the hearts of the people. Everyone in the kul had grown up listening to his stories. It had been his fond hope, ever since Fardan was born, that he would take his place one day. Fardan regularly dashed those hopes. “Or milking, or flute playing, or camel training.”
He threw up his hands. “Flower hunting, that’s my job. And I’m the best.”
Boastful boy! Irinya flicked her gaze upward. “Second best to me. And Pranal, Ayush, and Jai are just as good as you.”
“Are not,” he said indignantly. “I found the bud of a silver spider lily.”
That stopped her dead. She spun around. “Liar.”
Spider lilies hadn’t been seen in more than twenty years. The sultan’s men had posted flyers in every village of Banni, offering huge rewards for a single specimen. It was every flower hunter’s dream to find one—especially now, with Portuguese invaders ravaging the Malabar Coast and the sultanate armies scattered in defeat.
Fardan crossed his arms, his face tightening. “I’m not lying. Come with me and I’ll show you. But you must promise not to take it. It’s only a bud, and it needs a couple more days to open.”
“Impossible.” She shook her head, her thoughts scrambling for purchase. He must have made a mistake. If anyone was going to find a silver spider lily, it was her. “You must’ve seen a jasmine bud.”
“You think I don’t know the difference?” he countered. “I’ve been flower hunting since I was twelve. Five years, same as you. And I’ve found as many as you, too.”
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