The Jasmine Throne has been hailed as a series opener that will "undoubtedly reshape the landscape of epic fantasy for years to come" (Booklist, starred). Now, award-winning author Tasha Suri's provocative and powerful Burning Kingdoms trilogy continues with The Oleander Sword.
The prophecy of the nameless god—the words that declared Malini the rightful empress of Parijatdvipa—has proven a blessing and curse. She is determined to claim the throne that fate offered her. But even with the strength of the rage in her heart and the army of loyal men by her side, deposing her brother is going to be a brutal and bloody fight.
The power of the deathless waters flows through Priya’s blood. Thrice born priestess, Elder of Ahiranya, Priya’s dream is to see her country rid of the rot that plagues it: both Parijatdvipa's poisonous rule, and the blooming sickness that is slowly spreading through all living things. But she doesn’t yet understand the truth of the magic she carries.
Their chosen paths once pulled them apart. But Malini and Priya's souls remain as entwined as their destinies. And they soon realize that coming together is the only way to save their kingdom from those who would rather see it burn—even if it will cost them.
Praise for the Burning Kingdoms trilogy:
"Lush and stunning...this sapphic fantasy will rip your heart out." —BuzzFeed News
"A fierce, heart-wrenching exploration of the value and danger of love." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Raises the bar for what epic fantasy should be.” —Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights
"This cutthroat and sapphic novel will grip you until the very end." —Vulture (Best of the Year)
"It left me breathless." —Andrea Stewart, author of The Bone Shard Daughter
"I loved it.” —Alix E. Harrow, Hugo award-winning author of The Once and Future Witches
"Suri's incandescent feminist masterpiece hits like a steel fist inside a velvet glove." —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun
For more from Tasha Suri, check out:
The Burning Kingdoms The Jasmine Throne The Oleander Sword
The Books of Ambha Empire of Sand Realm of Ash
Release date:
August 16, 2022
Publisher:
Orbit
Print pages:
512
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“Have you ever seen a girl of greater purity, my prince?”
Those words were not meant for Kartik, but he heard them all the same. High Priest Hemanth stood with his head bowed close to the young prince’s ear. His voice was pitched low, but his words still carried. That could not be helped. The High Priest’s voice was rich and unmistakable—a vast thing, neither loud nor soft, but pervasive. It was a voice made for mantras, for song, for guidance. For pouring faith, like wine, into the cup of a waiting heart.
The two of them, priest and prince, were standing in the gardens of the imperial temple, birds trilling in the trees above them, and the wind swaying the branches. All of that noise was just loud enough to mask Kartik’s presence: his small, surprised stutter of breath, and the motion of his broom, scraping up a cloud of dust from the marble path.
He stepped back, into the shadows of the temple wall, his broom clutched tight in his hands. He hardly dared to breathe.
The High Priest spoke again. Gentle. Coaxing. His hand upon the young prince’s shoulder. The words reached Kartik’s ears like leaves falling onto steady waters: a soft collapse followed by a ripple of motion that ran right through him.
“Will you protect her? Will you guide her, so that she may keep her goodness?”
That was how priests often asked questions, Kartik had learned. Questions mildly phrased that demanded answers clawed from the marrow of a man’s bones, the deepest blood of his heart. And sure enough, the young prince nodded slowly and said, “Yes. Of course I will. What kind of brother would I be, if I didn’t save her from tarnish?”
Kartik waited for them to leave. Finished his chores in a kind of numb, ecstatic haze. His hands were steady, but his vision was a blur of lights and color. He walked across the temple floor, seeing everything with new eyes: the sandstone of the walls, carved with flowers; the gossamer curtains that filled every door and alcove, billowing in the wind. On every surface he saw the High Priest’s words echoed back at him, rewritten, remade, calling him.
Have you ever seen a girl of greater purity?
Kartik should not have heard those words; should not have carried them with him in the aftermath, inked indelibly into his own skull, as shining and constant as prayer song. But he had a mind made for knowledge, or so he had always been told. When he had been only a boy, and a disciple in a lowly Saketan temple to the faceless mother, his ability to recite hundreds of mantras and prayers from memory—and the Book of Mothers in its entirety—had drawn High Priest Hemanth’s attention, and led the High Priest to pluck Kartik from his old life. His mind had led him here: to Harsinghar, and its jasmine-veiled palace, and the imperial temple where he now served.
To the temple garden where a boy in training for his faith may stumble, unwitting, on the second prince walking alongside the High Priest, speaking of the imperial princess herself, and feel a truth reverberate through him that he did not yet fully understand.
She was here, at this very moment. In the temple hall, the young princess was kneeling before the statue of Divyanshi. All five mothers of flame—every single noblewoman who had willingly burned, giving her life to break the power of the yaksa and bring an end to the Age of Flowers—were depicted in the prayer hall. Four of them were arrayed in a crescent, their figures carved from gold: Ahamara, with her long hair loose around her, coiling like flame; Nanvishi, a star of fire blooming from her forehead, her palms outspread; Suhana with a broken bow in her hands and her face upraised; and Meenakshi, face lowered in prayer, hands clasped.
Divyanshi stood at their center, her statue taller than the rest, grandly wrought, with silver flowers trailing her arms. She stared forward, proud and beautiful, her golden face serene. The princess, kneeling at her feet, was entirely in her shadow.
The princess pushed a garland of flowers toward the statues of the mothers. The garland was deftly made, each blossom pierced through the heart with pristine white thread and gathered close to the next. Jasmine, a mingling of yellow and white, caught between weighty pink roses. He had seen those roses left as offerings so often that he recognized them as the ones the emperor’s wife grew in her own private garden.
Even in the vicinity of the temple, people gossiped. As if they did not know how their voices wafted in through windows. A beauty, they called her. One day she’ll break hearts. The emperor will want to watch her closely.
But he didn’t listen to gossip. He listened to truths and secrets. Kept them, and learned from them.
He listened now, as she bowed her head and whispered to the mothers. She could not see him, where he stood in the shadow, his broom still in hand. But he could see her. Hear her, and know.
It was then—when he was only a boy—that he began to see the shape of the future in a way even the High Priest did not. And though the High Priest’s question had not been for him, in his heart he answered it.
No. He had never seen a girl of greater purity. Never, in all his life.
A rider returned from Ahiranya on the day Malini first glimpsed the sea.
An army on the move had a particular, unpleasant stench: of horseflesh and elephant dung, sweating men and the tang of iron under hot sunlight. Malini had hoped, over weeks of travel, that she would grow accustomed to it. But she had not. Every time the wind blew, and the thin curtains surrounding her chariot billowed back and forth, Malini smelled it all anew.
The breeze that carried the ocean with it cut through the smell like a shining knife. It was a sharp scent, bitter with salt. She stood taller in her chariot when she felt it touch her cheek—reached to draw her curtain aside and let the wind reach her unimpeded by cloth.
Without the fabric clouding her vision, she could see the army that surrounded her: warriors from Srugna, with maces hefted over their shoulders; Saketan liegemen with liegemarks emblazoned on their sashes, and whips coiled at their waists; Alorans with chakrams at their wrists, riding alongside Dwarali archers on their white stallions with blood-red saddles; and her own Parijati forces, ringed around her, dressed in imperial white and gold with their sabers bare, the steel gleaming beneath the sun. This was her army, the combined forces of the city-states of the empire, that would help her unseat her brother and seize the throne. Her throne, by right of blood and of prophecy.
And over their heads, she could see the thinnest trace of blue.
The sea.
She had known she would see it eventually. Before Aditya had rejected his birthright one time too many—before Malini had been named empress—the handful of lords who had stood in staunch support of Aditya had made plans for their forces to meet and follow the path to Dwarali, keeping to a route along the coast wherever possible, land that was under the purview of those less loyal to Chandra. They had intended to make their way to the Lal Qila: a fort on the edge of the empire, built to withstand attacks from the nomadic Babure and Jagatay who lived beyond the empire’s borders. A fort, they hoped, that was strong enough to keep Chandra at bay too.
Malini had seen no reason to alter plans long in the making; plans that she had helped to form, with carefully placed suggestions and cajoling letters, in her time as a princess of Parijatdvipa under Chandra’s thumb. But still, there had been something viscerally satisfying about watching her army grow, as foot soldiers and elephant cavalry had joined them along the journey; as new lords had welcomed her arrival on their lands, swearing loyalty and opening their villages and havelis to Malini’s men, feeding them and arming them, and sending their own heirs and warriors to join the growing procession heading to the distant Lal Qila.
Even facing lords who were more reluctant to ally with her had been its own kind of pleasure. To watch them stand proudly against her and then crumble when faced with her army, her allies, the steadiness of her smile? That had done more than any flattery or veneration ever could to blunt the edge of the constant hunger in her: the writhing, burning craving that would only be sated by Chandra’s death.
So many distant plans were finally blooming to life before her eyes—and not in Aditya’s service, but in her own. After the hard, endless work that had gone into the making of them, her plans now moved like a force of nature, like waves that swelled and grew, each one feeding into her rise to power. It was exhilarating.
As she gazed at the sea, she mused that if she had been a woman of greater faith, she would have considered her glimpse of it a sign: that her army was itself a vast and unstoppable sea. That nothing could stand in the way of her fate. But she had more of a pragmatic nature.
She took a more practical interpretation of the sight, instead. When she had gazed at maps of the empire and charted the route with her eyes and her fingertips, she had known her army would touch the coast when they were a mere week from Dwarali’s borders. Now they were here—breathing in a greenness of salt, a cold breeze that moved through the army and made a few men pause, raising their sweat-slick faces to capture that coolness on their skin. They would reach Dwarali soon, and the Lal Qila soon after that. The next step in her rise to the throne had almost begun.
Next to her, Lata let out a noise of quiet awe.
“Have you seen the sea before?” Malini asked. She could feel Lata craning her head to catch a glimpse of it over Malini’s shoulder. Obligingly, Malini leaned back to allow it.
“In scripture,” said Lata. “Illustration in books. Art. But not in person. And… and you, my lady?”
“You know I have not,” Malini replied. She waited a moment longer, then let the curtain fall back into place. “There are plenty of rivers and lakes in Parijat, but the imperial mahal is as distant from the coast as it’s possible to be.”
“A shame,” Lata said, “that we cannot stop and admire it.”
“The men will need to rest eventually,” said Malini. “No doubt we’ll have our chance then. Perhaps we can even go swimming.” She could feel Lata’s look, at that. “I’m sure they will all turn their backs respectfully if I ask them to.”
“You’re making a joke,” Lata said dubiously.
“Clearly not a very good one,” Malini said. “Of course we’ll do no such thing.”
But she would have liked to. She thought, with wistful grief, of Alori and Narina. Her heart sisters would have loved the sea. Narina would have walked in the water ankle-deep only, holding her skirt up with both hands. She had always been far too careful of her clothing to do more. Alori would have waded in deep, slipping into the water like a fish. Alor was full of as many rivers as Parijat, and her brothers had all taught her to swim as well as they could.
I miss you, she thought, speaking to nothing in the quiet of her heart. I will always miss you.
Unbidden, the thought of Priya rose in her mind, as it so often did. What would Priya think of the sea? She could not imagine Priya out there. In her mind’s eye, all she could see was Priya as she’d been in the forest, waist-deep in water, hair sleek, loose, and soft in Malini’s hands. The feel of Priya’s mouth against her own.
She tucked the thought carefully away, like a treasure.
That night when Malini’s tent was erected, there was no time to admire the coastline, and in truth Malini had not expected there would be. She was relieved, almost, that there was not. It would not have been the same without her heart sisters. Better to leave it as a dream.
The most senior—and loyal—of Parijatdvipa’s highborn joined her for the evening meal. Wine was brought out in carafes of beaten metal, and tea for those who did not imbibe: small cups, rich in milk and sugar and cardamom. The food was simple but far more lavish than what was being fed to the rest of the men: fresh parathas, dhal thick with ghee, and rice heaped with onions fried a deep, lustrous gold.
There were special dishes, occasionally, to please the palates of different highborn: sharply spiced sabzis for the lords of Srugna had been brought out today; these were a particular favorite of Lord Prakash, who was one of the oldest lords in attendance and made no bones about being set in his ways and his tastes.
Malini listened attentively as Lord Mahesh, the man she had named as the general of her army, informed her of the progression of their journey. She maintained her posture, her calm, and touched barely anything—not even the wine, though the sip she had brought to her lips had left heat in her blood. Lata was seated in the corner of the tent. Watching. She was Malini’s only female companion; the men all thought her present for the sake of propriety.
It was a curiously difficult business, to uphold the image of propriety and prophecy and goddess-chosen empress. Especially when you were eating. She had seen her own father deep in his cups, staining his clothing—but then, her father had been an emperor, and Malini was—not. So she ate only sparingly, knowing she would have a proper meal later, when the night was cold and deep, and she and Lata could share food intended for common soldiers: a little pickled mango or onion practically stoppered in oil for a long journey, and a paratha gone dry, unsoftened by a golden sheen of ghee; a quick gulp of lukewarm tea, spiced so heavy-handedly that it burned almost unpleasantly on the way down.
“Prince Rao is absent again, I see,” said Lord Mahesh.
He did not speak loudly enough for the other highborn to hear him.
“He has his responsibilities,” Malini replied.
“We all do,” Mahesh said. “One of them—a most vital one—is this. A moment of bonding. Of discussion. We must be united, Empress. Moments such as this are what make us whole.” He gestured at the men around them, wreathed in soft lantern light.
It was amusing to hear Mahesh speak of bonding and unity, when Malini was herself so conscious of how different she was from the men around her. How carefully she had to hold herself apart, and how distant she felt from them. They were of use to her, and she liked them for that, of course. But they were not Alori or Narina or Lata. Not Priya. She did not know how to love them, truly love them, and had no desire to.
“Lord Mahesh,” Malini said. “You know, as I do, where Prince Rao goes.”
A shared look. Without breaking eye contact, Mahesh refilled his cup of wine.
“Do not mistake me, Empress. I am glad he is able to counsel and comfort Prince Aditya. I would be glad if the prince allowed others to do the same.”
Mahesh was a powerful figure in Parijat, with many highborn Parijati allies, due to the ancient standing of his family—his ancestor had been there when Divyanshi, and the mothers of flame that followed her, burned.
Ever since, they had been a family known for its military prowess and its religiosity.
And Mahesh had always been loyal to Aditya, not Chandra; had unwaveringly supported the idea of Aditya taking back the throne he had abandoned. His refusal to agree with Chandra’s form of faith had won Malini followers she would not otherwise have had.
She had chosen him as her general for all those reasons. His presence at her side was an advantage.
But his affection for her brother was a…
Well. Not exactly an irritant. But a potential problem in the making, for all he had been unfailingly respectful of her. Respect did little good if she could not grasp control of his loyalty and bind it to her permanently.
“You sought him out again?” Malini asked.
“He refused my company. As he refuses everyone’s.”
Everyone’s but Rao’s went unsaid. And Malini’s, of course.
“My brother feels adrift,” she said. “He seeks to focus upon his relationship with the nameless, and find a new path for himself. When he finds his way, he will surely welcome the comfort of old friends and allies.”
“Perhaps you can speak to him, Empress.”
“I do,” said Malini. “And I shall.” If he refuses to listen, she thought grimly, then that is his own business.
A rustle of cloth. A guard drew back the tent flap.
Yogesh, one of the military administrators who managed her army’s supplies, entered and bowed low. He was dressed plainly, in a turban and sash-bound tunic, but even if she had not known him by sight, the single chakram on his wrist and the dagger neatly tucked into his turban wrapping would have marked him as an administrator from Alor, and accordingly loyal to Rao—and through Rao, to her.
“My sincere apologies for the interruption, Empress. My lords.” The light of the oil lanterns flickered over his face as he tilted his head in Malini’s direction. “But an urgent messenger has arrived for the empress.”
Her heart gave a sudden thump.
She had many, many riders in her service. An empress needed even more eyes and ears than a princess, and Malini had ensured that she would have spies and messengers across the breadth of the empire. Not a day passed without word from allies arriving or departing, carried by men on horseback.
But among all these riders, she had used only one of Rao’s loyal men. And that man had been tasked with one particular journey.
An urgent message could have been anything, absolutely anything; and yet, the presence of Yogesh and no other administrator, and the meaningful look on his face, made hope grasp her insides.
“Well then,” she said, and rose.
Mahesh gave her a grave look, half rising himself.
She waved a hand.
“Enjoy your meal. There’s no need to stop for my sake.”
“Empress,” Yogesh said, ducking his head in respect. “The messenger is in Prince Rao’s company. I can ask for him to be sent to you immediately—”
“No need,” she replied. “Take me to them.” Better to have this conversation with Rao present; she’d learned that messengers did not respond well to being spoken to directly by a prophecy-blessed empress, and she could not see Rao alone in her tent, even with Lata and guards for company.
The tent the military administrators shared was full of books and ledgers carried from site to site, expertly wrapped in scented cloths that kept the paper from rotting in the heat or rain and repelled the various insects they encountered. As she entered there was a scramble of bowing, papers dropped. She ignored the commotion, seeking out the messenger.
She saw Rao first; dressed up in his princely finery, with his brace of daggers and his chakrams, speaking to a broad-shouldered, very nervous-looking Aloran man.
When they saw her, Rao bowed; the rider scrambled to press his face to the earth.
“Rise,” Malini said to both of them, and they did, though the rider kept his face lowered.
“What news?” she asked Rao.
“Ahiranya has new rulers,” said Rao. “The regent is dead.”
Lady Bhumika? she thought. Priya? She had hoped. Hoped—
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
The man looked too awestruck to talk, so Rao said, gently and firmly, “Tell the empress.”
Priests, he told her, ruled now in Ahiranya. No, not priests—temple elders, like the days of old. Or people who claimed to be temple elders. Two women were among them. “Some say the High Elder was once the regent’s wife,” the rider said.
“Who told you so?” Rao asked.
“People talk,” he replied. “Merchants and—people in the city. People on the road.”
“You did not see them directly?”
“No.” He hesitated. “But…”
“Go on,” said Rao.
Everyone knew, he said, that the temple elders were truly what they claimed to be, because since their rise to power the forest around Ahiranya had grown stranger than it ever had been. He’d heard tales of trees turning and twisting as if they were alive, watching people pass them by. Emperor Chandra had apparently sent a small group of scouts, then another, to test Ahiranya’s borders. A fruitseller, who regularly traveled in and out of Ahiranya, had found a dozen imperial soldiers dead, speared on thorns as thick as a man’s arm. The rest were simply never found.
The rider himself had never seen any violence. Only Ahiranyi living their lives as they normally did. The merchants he’d seen—a reluctant handful at most, who went out of desperation and necessity rather than desire—had traveled through Ahiranya unharmed. And the rider had gone unharmed himself, of course. But he had seen new soldiers on the streets—not the regent’s men in Parijati white and gold, but groups of men and women in plain, mismatched armor, carrying sickles and bows instead of traditional Parijati sabers.
Malini could feel Rao watching her. He knew something of her relationship to Ahiranya, if not everything. No one, not even Rao, was owed everything. But he knew she had been saved by the Ahiranyi; knew she had a bond with them.
“Thank you,” she said to the rider. “Go with Yogesh, and you’ll be rewarded.”
Coin, and a warm bed to sleep in and food; and she would make sure he was watched, to see if his information was handed to anyone else.
When she returned to her tent, she called Lata to her side. “I’ll need you to scribe for me,” she said.
As Lata sought out ink and paper and lit a candle, Malini began to search for the right words; the politically expedient words—something to affirm her support for Ahiranya, something that would tell Lady Bhumika and Priya, and anyone they had allied with, that she had not forgotten what she had promised them, once she had her throne.
The best emphasis she could give her words, of course, was action. Once this letter was done, she would send others to her allies in Srugna and the estates that bordered Ahiranya, encouraging them to maintain strong trade ties with the new temple elders. The forest might have grown strange—stranger even than when she had known it—but the rider had made no suggestion that it was dangerous to anyone but Chandra’s men. Surely, then, the forest and all its strength lay in Lady Bhumika’s control, and Priya’s. And Priya, at least, she trusted. She could not entirely help herself.
She wanted to tell Priya that she had not forgotten her.
But forgetting or not forgetting Priya was not a political concern. It was a thing of her heart: the husk of a flower she wore on a chain around the throat. It was the memory, preserved green and shining in her mind, of the two of them lying by a waterfall, gazing at one another, water glinting on Priya’s dark hair, her smiling mouth.
She should have banished the thought. But she did not. Instead, she decided she would ask Rao for his rider again. She would send a discreet message.
One for the elders of Ahiranya. And one… not.
She told Lata what to write, and Lata did so. This letter, exquisitely formal and written in Lata’s careful, elegant script, would pass under the eyes of a military administrator, and the lords who served her.
But the letter for Priya would not. And she wanted to write it with her own hand.
“I can write this message for you too, my lady,” Lata said, when Malini took up ink and paper.
“This one will not be seen by the lords tomorrow,” Malini said.
Lata was silent, but her silence was pointed. It made Malini laugh faintly. She raised her head.
“I know there are no true secrets,” she said. “But there will be nothing to trouble them in this, should it fall into their hands. And even an empress may send a kindly letter now and again, to an old ally.”
If anything, Lata’s face grew graver. She had spent a great deal of time with Malini on this journey. She knew more of Malini’s heart than anyone, though Malini had not spoken of it.
“There is a saying, among the craftsmen and women of Parijat who turn bronze and gold and stone into effigies of the mothers,” Lata said. “They say, when a statue is first wrought, it shines so brightly, any man may look upon it and see a mother divine. But all things tarnish, when the rain falls upon them.”
“Poetic,” Malini murmured.
“Empress,” Lata said, in a quieter voice. “You have a golden tale surrounding you. Do not allow it to weather so soon.”
Malini thought again of the men kneeling before her. The sun beating overhead. Their voices chanting. Empress Malini. Mother Malini.
“It will tarnish one way or another,” said Malini. “And I need to start telling new stories to replace it. Make sure the letter is given to Rao’s rider when I am done. And give him coin enough to encourage his discretion.”
Lata argued no more.
Malini should not write it, she knew.
But she wanted to.
I have looked upon the ocean, she wrote. And it made me recall the tale of a river. And of a fish, searching for a new world on its bank.
And I remember a tale of garlands. And ill stars. And two people who found their way to one another.
Tell me, do you remember it too?
Every root and every inch of green in Ahiranya’s soil sang to her. She heard the song all the time—sleeping, waking. Felt its weight as if she were the limb of a much larger beast, a giant thing slumbering in Ahiranya’s trees, its earth.
She closed her eyes, the sun touching warm fingertips against her face through the thick canopies of the trees. Slivers of cool shadow broke the heat into fragments. She didn’t need to open her eyes to find her way. The song guided her. The soil yielded to her footsteps, rippling like water. This way, it hummed. This is where you will find what you’re searching for.
“If you don’t look where you’re going, you’re going to walk straight into a tree,” said Sima.
Priya opened her eyes and turned to give Sima a glare.
“I won’t,” she said. “I would never.”
“Oh, maybe not, but it’d be very funny if you did,” Sima replied. “Aren’t you meant to be exuding holiness and authority? It’ll be very hard to do that if you’re felled by a branch.”
“Sima.”
Sima grinned at her.
“It might be best to keep your eyes open just in case.”
Priya was, in fact, meant to be maintaining a certain image. Even though she’d known today would be messy work, she had dressed in the plain whites of a temple elder. For practicality she had donned a salwar kameez rather than the traditional long tunic, but the loose cloth was bleached white as bone, and her hair was bound back in a high braided knot with beads of sacred wood darted through its length, here and there, in the same style the temple elders had once worn.
It was Kritika, of all people, who had encouraged her to take up the style. Soon after pilgrims began to arrive in waves at the Hirana’s base, pleading for guidance from their new elders, Kritika had taken Priya aside and advised her to dress as the elders had once dressed. There will be worshippers who remember the elders, as I do, she’d said. And for the rest… you must serve as a symbol, Elder Priya. And you must guide them.
Priya was uneasy with the idea of being a symbol. She was uneasy with Kritika too, and with all the ex-rebels who had once served her brother. But she’d chosen this path: chosen the rebels who now called themselves mask-keepers, and the title of elder. She was far too stubborn to do anything but embrace this life with her arms flung wide. And if the right clothes made worshippers weep tears of reverence, and feel hope again, and trust that Priya and Bhumika would rule them wisely? Well, then. Priya would wear white. And she would do her very best to act like the person she was meant to be.
Priya offered Sima only the subtlest and most ladylike of the extensive collection of rude gestures she knew—which made Sima laugh under her breath—then straightened up and squared her shoulders, and kept her eyes open as she strode forward with what she hoped was a confident kind of grace.
Around Priya and Sima, other figures walked between the trees: a few once-born ex-rebels, with traces of magic coiling through their blood and scythes in their hands; a handful of soldiers, carrying sabers; and six of the men and women who had once been servants in the regent’s mahal, but now served the two temple elders of Ahiranya in a different capacity. For months, they had been training with Jeevan in the mahal’s practice yard, heaving around maces and beating fake soldiers made of wood and straw with hand sickles. Sima had even been given some training in archery, and she carried a bow and a quiver of arrows with her now. She only looked mildly nervous, but some of the other servants were nearly gray with fear. That was understandable.
They were hunting imperial soldiers, after all.
Ganam, one of the ex-rebels, made his way toward her. He wore the same mask he’d worn when he had been a fighter against Parijatdvipan rule: a wooden oval, large enough to conceal his entire face, with crude holes for eyes and a hollow for the mouth. She shouldn’t have been able to see the questioning look he was giving her, but she could read the tilt of his head well enough.
Priya shook her head. Not here. Not yet.
Then she turned her attention back to the soil. She felt through it—felt the imperial soldiers ahead of her.
Some were already impaled on stakes of thorn. Bhumika had set up that trap. She had a gift for things grown slow and strange.
And Priya, well—
She had a useful wellspring of anger.
“Now,” she said. And they crossed the last wall of trees—and found the soldiers before them.
The fight was quick and bloody.
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