“Anandpranam.” The happiest of salutations. Even with his palms respectfully joined, Zamindar Moolchand makes the ancient greeting sound perverted. “Be my guests for the night, ladies. Sate your hunger with my bread. My home is your home.”
“Sau aabhaar, zamindar,” says the tallest of the women. A hundred thank-yous. Another woman might have added the Common Tongue honorific ji, perhaps even delivered the greeting flirtatiously. This woman doesn’t, even though she smiles, her deep-brown skin glowing in the moonlight. The pallu of her simple homespun sari slides down her head, revealing streaks of blue in her midnight hair. Ma once told me that it’s the sort of blue that can’t be covered up with soot or the oil from a jatamansi plant or magic. The mark of someone from the seafaring kingdom of Samudra.
The sight of it makes Zamindar Moolchand’s unctuous smile slip. Had the woman been out in daylight with her head uncovered, the very look of her would have raised unspoken questions. The deadly Three-Year War between Samudra and Ambar ended fourteen years ago, but everyone still remembers the bloodshed: the corpses littering Ambari streets, the high screams rising from firepits where soldiers with blue-and-black hair burned Ambari citizens alive.
“My father married a woman from Samudra before the Great War,” the woman says now. “She died when I was a baby.” She speaks our language perfectly, her Vani smooth, the accent crisp and airy. It holds no trace of the sea. “We are headed back from Sur, where one of my daughters had a baby. The zamindar would do us poor women a big favor by offering us a place in his stable for the night.”
The zamindar turns his attention to the other sari-clad figures. One has shielded herself from his gaze, tucking her pallu like a veil over her mouth and nose. The other, a pretty, pale-skinned young woman, looks unperturbed by his leer.
“What’s your name, my dear?” he asks her.
“Kali,” she says.
“Kuh-lee,” he enunciates slowly, as if savoring the sound of the word. “Why don’t I offer you and your friends more comfort? My only brother is in the army and no longer lives here. I have five guest bedrooms. It can get lonely in this big old house.”
If I could speak to any of these women, I would tell them not to do it. Every female in Dukal—old or young—knows how unwise it is to meet Zamindar Moolchand alone or to accept any favors from him.
“We prefer the stable.” A hint of steel cuts through the quiet deference in the older woman’s voice. “Our horses are tired; we need to ensure they are well rested. And with so much thieving in Ambar these days, one can never be too sure.”
She stares at the zamindar until he averts his head and nods.
“Of course. Of course.”
I duck behind a bale of hay in Agni’s stall as Moolchand opens the door to the stable, letting in the women.
“Come on, Ajib. Gharib.” The women click their tongues gently, guiding their horses into empty stalls on the opposite end.
“What a lech,” a voice says. It’s the veiled woman—no, a girl—who finally uncovers her face, revealing dark surma-lined eyes and skin like fine copper. Like her companions, the girl’s black hair is bound in a braided bun. Unlike the other two, however, she wears a square amulet tied around her upper arm, marking her as a follower of the prophet Zaal. She appears to be a few years older than me. “I thought I’d have to strip him naked and hang him upside down from the roof of his stupid haveli.”
The pale girl—Kali—snorts. “Like what you did to that safflower merchant last year for calling you his little flower bouquet? Seriously, Amira.”
“Don’t give me that look, Kali. You were a few seconds away from slicing that zamindar up like an onion with your daggers.”
A pause before they both burst into giggles.
“Enough, you two,” the older woman cuts in. “I don’t want to have to modify the memories of an entire household again. Sky Warriors were at this village a few days ago; I still see traces of their magic against the trees outside.”
As the girls murmur apologies, I think of the stories I heard growing up. Of women with shadowy faces and daggers glinting in their hands. Women who wear their saris like fisherfolk, who knock down doors and slash into enemies with knives and swords and spells. The Sisterhood of the Golden Lotus.
Witches, some men call them. Thieves.
Fighters, my mother told me. Protectors.
No one is quite sure if the Sisters are legends or common brigands, and no one ever quite remembers what they look like. Appearing and disappearing from villages and towns with a stealth that rivals King Lohar’s Sky Warriors, the Sisters have no permanent home, successfully melding into their surroundings like color-changing lizards. I can’t tell if these women are from the fabled Sisterhood. But I know it isn’t wise to be seen by them before I find out more.
“Look!” one of the girls says, a sound that makes Agni snort angrily, ears flattening again.
I sink into the shadows, the hay behind me pricking my skin like needles.
“How lovely you are.” It’s Kali, reaching out to touch Agni with a hand. Not a chance. Agni snaps her teeth together, forcing Kali to jerk back.
“Strange. Horses usually aren’t this afraid of me.”
“Leave the animal alone.” The other girl—Amira—says with a yawn.
“She’s acting like she’s protecting someone. Is there a foal?”
“Let me see.” It’s the woman again. From the shadows, I can see her face quite clearly: high cheekbones, slender lips, shrewd eyes that are as black as the sky outside the stable window. She must be least forty years old.
She begins murmuring words in an incomprehensible language that makes me think of sand under my feet and wind in my hair. She waves a hand over Agni’s head, snapping her fingers once, releasing fine sparks that glow and smell of sandalwood. I feel the tension in the air dissipate. And sure enough, Agni’s ears emerge from the back of her head. She dips her head into the feeding trough, nibbling a bit of the hay.
The woman wipes her forehead with the edge of her sari. “Amira, get me some light, will you?” There’s a soft sound not unlike marbles rolling across the floor.
“You’re scrying with your shells? Again?” Amira places the lantern on a hook near Agni’s stall, casting light upon the shadows. I hold my breath, doing my best to blend in. If I had a choice, I would turn invisible. But invisibility is a difficult spell for even the most advanced magi, and I can barely produce a spark. My best hope, I know now, is to slide against the wall toward the girl-size gap behind the wooden partition that splits Agni’s stall from the one I normally sleep in. As the woman and Amira argue with one another, I begin inching away from my hiding place.
“Didi, do you think it’s wise to do a reading now?” Amira is saying.
Didi. The Common Tongue word for “elder sister” gives me pause. The Samudra woman and Amira look nothing alike, are perhaps not even related by blood. But you wouldn’t know that from the worry and frustration lacing Amira’s voice.
“You know how those shells affect you,” she tells the woman. “They misled us today, taking us to that awful moneylender all the way near the edge of the desert. He would have turned us in to the thanedars if I hadn’t tied him up!”