For the first time, I glimpse fear on Kali’s and Amira’s faces.
Juhi frowns. “That is a question for another day. Sleep now, Havovi. It’s getting late.”
I feel the exhaustion of the past few days creeping up on me, threatening to unravel me like a spool of wool.
“Gul,” I tell her. “My name is Gul.”
A TWO-MOON NIGHT
The city of Ambarvadi
2nd day of the Month of Moons
Year 22 of King Lohar’s reign
4
CAVAS
The fireflies stop glowing.
It happens for an instant, a faint crack in the brilliant dome of insects magicked over Ambarvadi’s bazaar before it reseals, barely noticeable unless you’re like me, your face scrubbed clean with sugar oil, your skin prickling from being out in the crowded marketplace, pretending that you belong. It’s a sticky night, the day’s heat still lingering in the air, compounded by bodies jostling for space, sand feathering the roofs of the tents. The sweat beading on the back of my neck, however, is cold and has little to do with the temperature around me.
When I arrived in the market, the sky was still awash with orange—the exact time Latif asked me to meet him here, behind the bangle seller’s stall. The sun is gone now, but Latif is still missing.
“Time flies quickly in my line of work,” Latif always says, even though he never mentions what that work is.
A thanedar passes by, glancing at my face first and then at my palace-issued orange turban, with its identification pin in the center. His gaze travels over my white tunic and dhoti, the pointed tips of the worn leather jootis on my feet. I brace myself for the slurs, more out of habit than out of fear. Dirt licker. Abomination. Get out of my way, filth. But when he simply nods and moves along, I realize the uniform has done the trick. In the palace, every servant wears a uniform, whether they are magi or not. Here, in this moment, no one knows about who I am or the blood that runs through my veins. Unless the thanedar decides to ask me to identify myself on a whim—to press my thumb into the tip of his lathi, waiting for the wooden staff to change color, the way it would for a magus.
A beat passes. Two. I let go of the breath I’m holding. Overhead, through the shifting veil of glowing insects, two moons hang in the sky. Sunheri, the yellow moon, and Neel, the blue one. According to legend, the moons were both goddesses once. “Friends first and then lovers,” Papa told me, “until one of Sunheri’s many suitors killed Neel out of jealousy.”
But their love was a true one. A moon appeared in the sky one night: blue, like the color of Neel’s skin. Pitying her plight, the sky goddess granted Sunheri’s wish to join Neel—turning her into a moon as well—a faded yellow orb that waxes and wanes, that grows full, but never brightens to gold except for one night out of every three hundred and sixty. On Chandni Raat—the night of the moon festival—the only night in the year when the blue moon appears in the sky.
There are those who call the story of the two moons a myth. A tale of childish fancy, spun into a clever way of gathering coin for the king’s depleted coffers after two successive wars. Out of the story of Neel and Sunheri emerged the moon festival: a night for lovers, revelry, and mischief. A night where it’s possible to find your neela chand. In Vani, the words neela chand literally translate to “blue moon,” a phrase that refers to your mate. Your perfect other half.
A few feet away, I spy a pair of girls, no older than fifteen, holding hands as if preparing to launch into a rain dance spin. But then the girl dressed in yellow rises to her tiptoes and lightly kisses the cheek of the one dressed in blue. The fireflies, drawn by their laughs, glow brighter, several twirling around the girls before rising up to float overhead again.
Bahar, the girl I once thought would be my mate, used to laugh like that, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief, her face full of joy. Yet, on the heels of that image, I recall another one: Bahar, her skin leeched of color, dragged off in a cart by a thanedar, her hands bound behind her back. The charge was magic theft—made by a palace worker who allegedly saw Bahar’s hands glow green while helping her mother in the kitchen garden.
That Bahar also had a tiny birthmark on her cheek did not help matters. I remember running after the thanedars’ wagon, screaming, “It’s not a star!” before one of them hit me in the chest with a spell that knocked me unconscious.
My insides feel raw, like skin singed with hot oil. I am about to turn away from the girls when I see it again. The fireflies flickering. A crack of darkness within the light.
I see the girl’s dusty brown feet first: bare of anklets and shoes, skimming the packed earth with such lightness that she barely leaves a footprint. Unlike the bright silks of the other revelers, she’s dressed in black, her plain choli leaving most of her back bare and her arms covered to the elbows. If there’s a hint of color, it comes from the tiny blue mirrors embedded in the depths of her ghagra, making the wide skirt glimmer like a starry sky.
Her thin dupatta veils most of her face, but even I know what she’s up to when her hand lightly brushes the back of a man’s tunic belt, when she walks away with a polite apology, a furrow etching her brow.
A pickpocket who didn’t hit her mark. Unlike Bahar, this was a real thief, trying to steal gold and silver coins for the tiny bits of magic embedded in them. The magic in the coins itself isn’t very powerful. The palace’s stable master, Govind, calls the magic in money dead magic, limited in the things it can do. “It is true that non-magi can access bits and pieces of the magic embedded in coins; they can even produce a few sparks if they try,” he told me once. “But for this sort of magic to have any consequence, a treasure trove of coins would be needed. You’d also need a talented alchemist to distill the magic from the coins and stabilize it. For magic to be truly powerful, it must be alive, must be part of the person manipulating it.”
Yet I also know that, regardless of the truth, those who have no magic of their own would risk anything—including imprisonment or death—to get their hands on some.
It’s perhaps this thought—or maybe some other instinct entirely—that draws me away from the spot where I’m supposed to wait for Latif. I weave through the bodies pouring down the narrow lanes of the bazaar and duck under the jutting beam of a sweets stall, following the girl dressed like the night. Like a shadow.
Except she isn’t a shadow, and the next person she targets—a young merchant with sharp eyes—catches hold of her wrist.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His voice cuts through the surrounding chatter like a cudgel, draws the attention of a nearby thanedar. “Thief!”
The girl’s dupatta slides down her head, revealing frizzy hair as black as surma, a cleft on a stubborn chin, and gold eyes as hard as the firestones from Ambar’s jewel mines. She gives the merchant a sudden, dazzling smile and tosses her long braid behind one shoulder.
“I apologize,” she says. “I thought you were my mate.”
In Ambar, a person’s looks are often enhanced with glow: shimmery creams, oils, and powders ranging from the pure gold dusting the cheeks of the royal family to the cheap sugar oil used by the poor. A glowing face is an indicator of being blessed by the gods, whether magic flows in your veins or not, and can be traced back to the figures in ancient paintings found in caves in the mountains of Prithvi. Two kings and two queens, four rulers of a then-united Svapnalok who were said to have descended from the gods and goddesses themselves.