The Star-Touched Queen (The Star-Touched Queen #1)(68)

“That is all. If you see Gauri, you can tell her I will be at the palace gates. She can let me and my horse out that way, facing … north?”

I checked with Kamala that this was the right direction and she grunted. Mother Dhina was still staring at the shoes, her fingers tracing the seams of silk that shone like light upon water.

“You’re not a sadhvi, not a thief and not entirely a charlatan,” said Mother Dhina. “Who are you?”

If I could tell her, I would. But that answer was beyond me, so I gave the only one that felt right.

“I’m a dead girl walking.”

*

Kamala kept pawing at the ground.

“Let me, let me, let me,” she pleaded.

“No.”

“I’ll be so very nice. If you let me, I’ll only nibble at your skin. You won’t even bleed too much. I swear on my soul.”

“You have no soul.”

Kamala considered this. “Just let me, let me—”

“There are no bodies to be found there. Trust me. She gave me her word no one would be injured.”

“Then let me make sure,” wheedled Kamala. “Let me make sure that the nasty crone kept her word—”

“No. We are waiting for Gauri and then we are leaving.”

“You are not very kind.”

“You are not very patient.”

Kamala harrumphed and snuffled my hair, sending showers of something wet and stinking down my neck. I suppressed a groan. I wanted to sink into a frothing hot bath and collapse into pillows bursting with feathery down. Instead, I had Kamala’s increasingly bony spine to look forward to.

“Are the Dharma Raja’s representatives still there?”

“Yes, yes, but they are restless as trees in a storm.”

“What do you think it means?”

“They are waiting. They are salivating. Their spittle drops into the ground, fat as newborn babies, heavy as the sighs of lovelorn boys … oh, how it mocks me.”

The smoke rose and formed inky coronets atop the parapets of the harem. Shouting voices converged, thick as the smoke itself, until it became a collective fug of surprise. Night had draped herself languorously over the courtyards I had once roamed. No stars gleamed above. No moon watched my treason. I waited for Gauri, my breath held for the moment to see her once more … and then I did.

She was riding toward me on a horse the color of rain-drenched tree trunks. All the guards had fled their watch for the palace gates and had rushed to fetch pails of water to extinguish the fire. There was no one guarding the iron gates, but still I had waited. I wanted to see her go. Besides, I had something that belonged to her.

Gauri’s face was shining by the time she pulled up to the gates. I clambered onto Kamala’s back and together we dashed into the bramble of forests. As we ran, the moon striped us silver. Damp leaves kissed our skin and we wore crowns of starry dust motes. Beside Gauri, magic thrummed in my veins and I believed, after so long, that perhaps we really could be the things we dreamed of—dancing bears or twin sea dragons with tails made for ensnaring oceans. But now I knew that it wasn’t the magic of past stories that made me feel this way. It was the same thing I recognized in Naraka but could not name. Love. Impossible love.

When we stopped running, Gauri heaved, eyes squinting on the fire that was beginning to die down, leaving nothing but smoke. She turned to me and her lips were pursed.

“The fire has been smothered. Why did you bother waiting? You have done your duty.”

I jerked my head toward the smoke unfurling into the skies. “Any casualties?”

“Nothing but a couple silks, I imagine,” said Gauri. “Mother Dhina constructed her fire quite cleverly. And painlessly. But while I am indebted to her, I imagine that it is you that I have to thank.”

I smiled. “No need.”

“I need to know why you did it.”

“I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, this time her voice soft. “I recognized your necklace the moment you came into the city walls. My sister had given it to me before she disappeared, no doubt taken by some foolish king.”

Her eyes were hard and glassy with unrestrained tears. “Do you know what happened to her? Did she send you here to look after me?”

I couldn’t hide my hurt when I looked Gauri in the face.

She hadn’t recognized me.

My own sister had no idea who I was, even after she saw the necklace around my neck. My words to Mother Dhina rang true. I was a dead girl walking. I was a ghost making peace with the places I once haunted.

I took the necklace off, letting my fingers graze its small seed pearls just once before I handed it to Gauri.

“I saw her once, in a faraway land that no horse or boat can reach, but that all will find,” I said, my voice thick.

“How was she?” asked Gauri.

This time, tears were sliding down her face, shining against the helmet she wore.

A part of me wanted to grab Gauri by her shoulders and shake her into remembering me. But that would’ve done nothing. And so, as I had done so many years ago, I told her a story. I glossed over the grotesque and emphasized the beautiful. I created details where there were none, things pulled out from my imagination, things as I may have imagined them myself at some point or another.