The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen #3)(62)

“Captain Naik, you insult me.” Hastin’s voice is gravelly, like pebbles roll in his gullet. “Did you really think you could sneak past us?”

I slant a glance at Opal. “I had hoped.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “My powers are returning slowly.”

“A bhuta?” Hastin asks, tipping back on his heels. “The demon rajah sent one of my own to spy on me?”

“We aren’t with the army,” Natesa says. “We serve Prince Ashwin.”

Hastin trembles the ground beneath us. “The demon rajah and the prince are the same. Both are out to destroy our world.”

A warning echoes in my mind, and my old suspicions manifest. “We were told you wished to unite with the empire.”

Hastin manipulates the stones around just me, pressing me into the wall. “I’ll never ally with Tarek’s heir or his kindred.”

“Are they alive?” I squeeze out.

“Concern yourself with your own inevitable death,” Anjali drawls.

Hastin releases us from our dirt confines. Opal falls forward onto her knees, residual grime in her bloodletting scars. Natesa helps her up.

“Take them to the wives’ wing,” Hastin tells his daughter and then points menacingly at Opal. “Don’t cause any trouble, or I’ll throw you in the dungeons.”

The palace dungeons are laced with poisons that dampen bhuta powers. Hastin’s reluctance to strip a fellow bhuta of her defenses is a courtesy he does not offer us mortals. His soldiers disarm the rest of us.

The warlord marches up to the palace. He must be holding us hostage for the same purpose he captured Tarek’s ranis and courtesans—leverage. Hastin hungers for the whole of the empire, and he intends to manipulate Kali and Prince Ashwin, or entrap them, into getting what he desires. We are alive so long as they are, which is comforting in a sense. If Kali and the prince were dead, we would be too.

Anjali yanks her chakram from the wall and pushes the rounded blade so close I can see my reflection in it. “Misbehave and you’ll lose your nose.” Yatin puffs out his chest, an instinctual reaction to protect me. Anjali’s blade comes even closer. My breath fogs the steel. “Keep your troops in line, Captain.”

She and her comrades herd us up the stairway to the palace wall. This section has no gate, yet one of Anjali’s men opens a passageway in the clay bricks with his powers. We pass through the temporary door into the palace grounds, and the Trembler closes it behind us.

The rebels prod us down a pathway through the garden. The untended flower beds are overrun with weeds. Palm trees molt dead fronds, and the topiaries need a trim, but the grounds are still verdant and smell of sweet citrus and flowers.

We enter the palace through a side door. Familiar jewel-toned draperies sweep across terrace doorways. Cool marble-tiled floors, white with rivers of nickel, echo our footsteps. Aromatic scents waft in from the high-arched open corridors: desert sand, budding neem trees, and coconut oil. The corridors that once bustled with servants, court officials, and guards are lonely. Only a flamboyant peacock struts down the hall, dragging its brilliant tail feathers behind as it searches for sand fleas to dine on.

Silence pours out of the courtesans’ main entertaining hall. No music plays or jade glass bottles clink. No hint of hookah smoke hazes the entry or scent of women’s perfume lingers. The absence of life startles me. Natesa slows and then quickens her gait away from the deserted wing. Her servitude as one of Rajah Tarek’s courtesans is a time she would rather forget.

The doors to Tarek’s chamber and atrium have been torn off. Within his private quarters, furniture and cushions lie about haphazardly, as though swept up by the wind and dumped in a jumble. Glass shards sparkle like frozen teardrops across the tile floor. Torn draperies hang lopsided, and piles of sand gather in the corners. The destruction of the rajah’s quarters makes Hastin’s rule more tangible.

We are guided to the top floor of the wives’ wing. Arched casements open to a view over the garden, palace wall, and forsaken city. Past them, dunes ripple into the horizon. Streaks of red, soldiers in their uniforms, swarm the main city gate and launch boulders from catapults. A gut-shaking boom resounds in the distance.

“The army will break in,” I say, mostly to myself. “It’s inevitable.”

“They’ll enter the city only when we’re ready.” Anjali’s cryptic reply tests my assumption that the rebels pulled back to protect the palace.

“How?” I ask.

She scoffs. “Think, Captain. What’s the city wall made of?”

All at once, their strategy becomes clear. “Clay bricks.”

“And where does clay come from?”

She is patronizing me, but I answer all the same. “The land.”

“My father stationed Tremblers around the city to uphold the wall. As I said, your army won’t enter unless we allow them.”

“As I said, we aren’t with the army.”

“If my father suspected you were, you’d be dead.” Anjali stops at the doorway to the Tigress Pavilion. “Hold your breath.”

“What—?”

A wind barrels at us, smacking my breath away and pushing us back. My unit skids across the floor and through the pavilion threshold. A final gust slams the door shut after us.