“The shells never lie, Amira.” The woman’s voice, barely louder than a breath, is the only indicator of her exhaustion, of the toll her magic took on her. “That there are indications of Sky Warriors being here confirms this. Someone in this village needed our help. Perhaps they still need our help. The only way to know is by doing another reading.”
“But, Didi—”
I’m nearly inside the next stall, so close to freedom that I don’t hear the way Amira’s voice abruptly cuts off or the shift of her feet as she lunges at me in the darkness, her arm winding around my neck.
“By Zaal!” she screams when I sink my teeth into her skin. But she does not let go. Her arm tightens its grip, so hard that for a moment my vision blurs. In the background, I hear Agni’s loud neighs, the sound of her hooves hammering the earth. The stall’s wooden beams shudder.
“Immobilize her!” the woman shouts.
“I can’t!” Amira’s hands are hot with magic. But the birthmark on my arm burns hotter, sends a shock through her body. “Aaah! It … it doesn’t seem to be working.”
I kick backward, the sudden movement nearly making Amira stumble. A hard hand winds through my tangled hair and tugs sharply. It forces me to loosen my teeth and, in the process, feel cold steel pressed sharp against my throat.
“Another sound and you will no longer have a voice.” I only have to look into the Samudra woman’s cold eyes to know she means every word. “Understand?”
As if I didn’t get the point already, the blade at my throat stings. I take a deep breath and force myself to go limp. My unreliable magic may have protected me from Amira’s spell, but it will not shield my throat against a dagger.
From the corner of the stable, a horse whinnies. “Someone’s outside,” Amira mutters.
The blade bites my skin once more: a warning.
Kali is already at the stable door, speaking to someone. “No … no, it’s all right. One of our horses got spooked by something moving outside. Thank you for your concern. Please tell the zamindar that all is well. Anandpranam.”
Once the door is firmly shut, the woman turns to face me again. Her nose wrinkles, and suddenly I’m very aware of the sour smell coming off me. But then her gaze falls on my right arm, bared to the cool night air from my scuffle with Amira. She pushes aside the torn sleeve of my tunic and stares at my birthmark for a long time.
“What’s your name?”
3
GUL
“Havovi!”
I blurt out the first name that comes to mind, belonging to a girl my cousin Pesi was smitten with.
A finger runs lightly down my cheek. “She’s lying. You have both succeeded in terrifying the poor thing.” There’s a hint of sympathy in Kali’s wide gray eyes. Up close, I realize that she’s younger than I first thought—perhaps only sixteen or seventeen years old.
“It’s true! I’m Havovi!”
“Silence.” The woman’s knife does not move from my throat. “Kali’s gift is seeking out truths, scouring them for lies.”
I bite my tongue. So Kali is a truth seeker. I’d seen one before, in a village square, accompanying a thanedar to interrogate a prisoner in the constabulary. But I’d never met one in person.
“Don’t worry, girl. I will not force you to tell me your real name. It’s not important to me in either case,” the woman continues. “Though I must give you some credit for having the guts to lie with a dagger pressed to your throat. For a girl who has barely seen twelve blue moons in her life, that is impressive.”
“Thirteen!” I spit out. “I will be fourteen in two months!”
Something shifts within the black depths of the woman’s eyes, and for a second, I wonder if I’ve amused her.
“Truth.” Kali laughs softly when I flinch. “She has seen thirteen moons. Still a baby, though. Probably just broke her blood barrier.”
I feel my face grow hot. I am small for my age; it’s something my mother always lamented when she looked at me, worrying over my narrow chest and my narrow hips, wondering if I would ever be strong enough to bear children. “I do not want children,” I told her fiercely back then and never understood the weight that settled over her at my response.
“She’s old enough,” Amira says. Her heart beats like a war drum against my back. Her fingers dig into my shoulders through the cloth of my tunic. I am now beginning to regret the bites I took out of her.
“So you’re going to hand me off to the thanedars, then.”
The woman tilts her head to the side. “What makes you say that, girl? Why would we do such a thing?”
“To get a hundred swarnas. To gain favor with Raja Lohar.” The latter is even more valuable than a hundred gold coins. If Ambar is our world, then King Lohar is its god, able to close shops, burn villages, and drain the most powerful magi of their powers with a snap of his fingers. “Besides, the penalty of hiding someone like me is—”
“We know what the penalty is,” the woman interrupts. “Amira, release her.”
“But, Didi—”
“Do it.”
Amira drops her hand to the side and suddenly, shockingly, I find myself free. I collapse to the ground, air burning my windpipe, and wonder if she was planning to choke me to death.
“You can go,” the woman tells me dismissively. “But don’t expect to survive. The food you’ve been filching from the zamindar’s kitchen will go unnoticed for only so long.”
I no longer bother wondering how she knows this. Perhaps she, too, can read minds like the truth seeker. Or perhaps she simply possesses the one thing that Papa said does not seem to exist among many of our kind: common sense.
“I can take care of myself,” I say defiantly.
“What are you going to do?” Amira asks. “Piss again when the Sky Warriors capture you?”
She is close, and I am angry enough to lose my mind with that comment. Like a bull, I charge, ramming my head right into her belly. She grunts but does not fall—probably used to worse blows than mine—but I can tell I have taken her by surprise.
A pair of slender fingers wrap around my arm like a band of newly forged iron. They burn into my skin, and I almost faint from the pain of the sensation. Another hand muffles the scream that emerges from my mouth. In the background, I hear Agni’s furious neighs, the sound of her hooves clomping the dirt as she struggles against her bonds, trying to get to me.
“… control that horse…”
The woman’s black eyes glow red. Her words stifle the air, make breathing difficult. As I gulp a lungful, my head grows light. No. No, I can’t faint now!
To remain conscious, I try to focus on something concrete. For some strange reason, a tiny wooden figure pops up in my mind: the statue of the sky goddess at our prayer altar at home. I have not prayed to the goddess in three years, but now I find myself doing so out of desperation: Goddess of the sky and the air, let your hand guide mine …
The Samudra woman’s shouts are followed by the sound of Agni’s terrified neighs. Abandoning all attempts at proper prayer, I unleash my fury at the silent sky goddess. You abandoned my parents when they needed you. You abandoned me. But Agni is innocent. She does not deserve to be ensnared in this fight. If you really do exist, Sky Goddess, do something. Help Agni.