The Library of Fates(29)

A woman peddling threads of jasmine walked by, barely taking notice of us. Their fragrance filled my nose, making me think of Arjun, of the ring he had given me. I still had it on my finger, and I looked at it longingly.

Arjun. Would I ever see him again?

“Keep walking,” Thala urged me, interrupting my thoughts. And so I did.

My eyes couldn’t take it all in fast enough. The buildings in the town square were a stark white, but they all had red tile roofs that they wore on their heads like low hats. A clock tower chimed and two small doors opened, releasing a dozen or so wooden birds, painted red and blue and yellow.

And in the distance were the lofty blue and silver minarets of Ananta’s temples, mosques, and churches.

A trio of musicians finished tuning their instruments and began to play a folk song, the cheery staccato notes contrasting with how I felt. A group of young girls in low-waisted yellow saris began to dance, twirling string of bells on their wrists as they moved, laughter escaping their lips as though they were deliriously happy for this new day. Even the sky—too clear and too beautiful to be reasonable—appeared to be taunting me.

“We should clean up,” Thala said, her voice slicing through my thoughts like the blade of a fan through heavy air. “And then I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Tell me now,” I insisted. I couldn’t wait.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them her irises were black.

“Your friend, Arjun. He’s safe.”

I exhaled a sigh of relief. “He is?”

“Yes. He’s been taken captive. Sikander plans to use him for his knowledge of the kingdom, and his knowledge of you.”

“And Bandaka and Shree?”

“They’ve been taken captive as well.”

I felt a fresh set of tears piercing my eyes.

Thala closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, they were lavender.

“Your eyes—”

She nodded. “It’s a characteristic of oracles. That’s how they hunt us down, how they enslave us. Our eyes change color whenever we have a vision. It’s usually subtler. The chamak enhances it. They’ve been lacing my food with it, force-feeding it to me for months now. An experiment,” she said. Her voice carried no emotion, and she looked away when she said this.

I remembered Shree telling me once that chamak was dangerous for an unformed mind, and I wondered about the toll it took on Thala.

“That’s why Sikander says he wants chamak. So he can see the future. And so he can control its trade and become the most powerful man in the world.”

“Isn’t he already?”

“There’s no limit to his greed, to his desire for power.”

But something else was eating away at me. “What did you mean when you said they hunt you down?”

Thala hesitated, looking away from me. Finally she met my eyes, her face immobile. “In Macedon, they treat us like second-rate citizens, and yet, they rely on us for our visions, our talent. They hunt us like animals, enslave us, trade us on the open market. Entire empires are built on our predictions. They run experiments on us, give us all kinds of concoctions to enhance our powers. And then, when they’re done with us, they dispose of us,” she said.

“That’s horrific.” I shuddered.

She went on. “Sikander couldn’t have built his empire without the aid of oracles. Or his army of slaves. One man’s will carried out by a regiment of the unwilling. And yet we all helped him. We had no choice. Death or a life in slavery.”

“His entire army is a mercenary army?”

Thala nodded. “The desperate, the poor, orphans, young men who have lost their families, their homes. Sikander’s empire absorbs them; they become a part of his machine. Most of us are so young when he takes us from our homes, we have no say.”

“How old were you when you were brought to Sikander?”

“I was nine,” she whispered, looking away. But I heard the hint of devastation in her voice.

To distract myself from the shock of her words, I dug my fingers into the satchel Mala had given me, pulling out a scarf and the skin of water and handing them to Thala. She drank thirstily and then offered the water back to me before she wrapped the scarf around her russet-colored hair, which would have made her stand out conspicuously as a foreigner in Shalingar. Once it was securely wrapped around her face, only her eyes exposed to the world, she looked at me. I wondered who, if anyone, she had shared her story, her words, with. I considered what her life must have been like before she became Sikander’s slave.

We continued to walk through the crowds, and I watched despondently as people around us went on with their day as though nothing had changed. Some of them exchanged and bartered goods, haggling with vendors. Elderly men and women hobbled with canes. Children played with marbles or drew patterns on cobblestone with brightly colored chalk. Monks clad in orange robes silently strolled the packed lanes just outside the square. Teenagers on their way to school, judging by the books in their arms, held hands and giggled, or quietly whispered secrets to one another.

Even though the palace was under siege, no one in the kingdom of Shalingar seemed to know this. But soon they would.

We should have known was all I could think. When Sikander attacked Bactria, there was a rumor that he did it so quietly and swiftly that the people of the kingdom didn’t even know it till days later, once the military had been turned, the granaries had been looted, and the royal palace overtaken.