The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

Chandra did not bow his head. He watched his sister. She wore no crown. Her hair was loose—tangled, trailing across her shoulders. He had sent maids to prepare her, but she had denied them all, gnashing her teeth and weeping. He had sent her a sari of crimson, embroidered in the finest Dwarali gold, scented with needle-flower and perfume. She had refused it, choosing instead to wear palest mourning white. He had ordered the cooks to lace her food with opium, but she had refused to eat. She had not been blessed. She stood in the court, her head unadorned and her hair wild, like a living curse. His sister was a fool and a petulant child. They would not be here, he reminded himself, if she had not proven herself thoroughly unwomanly. If she had not tried to ruin it all.

They told each other about Priya, too. If you go to the Old Bazaar on the first morning after rest day, a maid will come and give you sacred wood, if you need it. She won’t ask you for coin or favors. She’ll just help. No, she really will. She won’t ask for anything at all. The girl looked up at Priya. Her left eyelid was speckled with faint motes of green, like algae on still water. She wore a thread around her throat, a single bead of wood strung upon it. “Soldiers are out,” the girl said by way of greeting. A few of the boys shifted restlessly, looking over her shoulder at the tumult of the market. Some wore shawls to hide the rot on their necks and arms—the veins of green, the budding of new roots under skin.

“The princess does not yet know,” Santosh said, sounding more gleeful than Malini liked, making her head rise, “where her prison cell is located. Would you like to do the honors, General Vikram?” The regent’s gaze flickered between them. “Emperor Chandra has requested that you be housed in the Hirana, princess,” he said. Malini wished she could be surprised. But she was not. Dread and resignation pooled through her, rolling from her stomach through her limbs, until even her fingers felt numb. “The Hirana,” she repeated. “The Ahiranyi temple.” Pramila inhaled audibly. She had not known, then. “The temple where the priests of Ahiranya set themselves alight on my father’s orders,” Malini said slowly, looking from Pramila’s pinched face to the regent’s unreadable one. “The temple where twenty-five children—” “Yes,” General Vikram said abruptly.

Damn her brother and the cruel, twisted nature of his mind. Of course he would lock her away far from all her support, all her alliances. Of course he would send her to a room in a decaying temple where dozens of children had died screaming in flame, simply for the crime of being too powerful, too monstrous—

Priya knew what everyone knew about the princess, and only that. Emperor Chandra had ordered his sister to rise to the pyre alongside her handmaidens, to sacrifice themselves as the mothers of flame had done, so long ago. But the princess had refused the honor. And now she was here.

All failure was born from weakness. This was truth. He had known better than to send Meena on a task that required both patience and cunning. She was—she had been—too rash and too fierce, too openhearted. And she had known she was dying. She had known they were all dying. Desperation had undone her. And as her leader, he should have known it would. But Ashok had wanted her to succeed. He had wanted it because she had reminded him of another girl and another time, of hopes sacrificed, and he had thought, If Meena is even a shadow of her…

It was only since his arrival in Ahiranya, where passages from the Birch Bark Mantras were painted on walls and recited by poets who used the brothels as cover to disseminate their politics, that he had come to understand that what he and his friends had blushed over as lewdness was a source of faith and defiance to the Ahiranyi, who joined stories of seductive beings of flower and flesh, of two men lying together, and of world-conquering glory on the same lyrical breath.

Malini raised a hand, brushing her knuckles against the swelling of Priya’s cheek. Her fingers trembled, still. Priya could feel the sting of the touch. It burned through her blood, sang, and she thought, Oh. Oh no.

Rao told Prem as much, as he rested his head on Prem’s shawl-cloaked arm, feeling the rise and fall of Prem’s shoulder beneath him, moving in time with his breath. Prem hummed and laughed in all the right places, and Rao finally went quiet, closing his eyes. The room was still spinning. He was probably going to be sick later, he realized. He didn’t care. “How is he?” Lata’s voice. “Oh, fine, I suppose.” Prem’s voice was as light as ever. “He’ll be asleep soon.” Lata sat down—he heard the rustle of her clothes, the thump of her body—and she and Prem began to speak in low voices, as Rao drifted in and out of consciousness.

“No one else thinks like he does, little dove,” Aditya said gently. He lightly brushed the shorn ends of her hair. “This is a more enlightened time. But you’ve no need for a knife. You have guards enough to protect you, and two brothers who love you.” “And who will protect me from my brothers?” Malini asked.

Malini was silent. She had never been given the impression by anyone, not least her subdued mother, that such knowledge was for princesses. “When I was a girl, my father arranged for a female sage to educate me,” her mother continued. “I will try to provide the same to you, my garland child, but until that day, I can give you what I have. Such things will help you survive as a daughter of Parijat. A blossom with a thorn heart.” “I am not thorny,” Malini said. “I cried.” “Weeping does not make you any less yourself,” her mother replied. She touched her fingertips to Malini’s shorn hair. “Be careful with your tears,” her mother added, in a voice of cultivated restraint. “They’re blood of the spirit. Weep too much, and it will wear you thin, until your soul is like a bruised flower.” Her mother had been wrong, though. Weep enough, and your nature becomes like stone, battered by water until it is smooth and impervious to hurt. Use tears as a tool for long enough, and you will forget what real grief feels like. That was some small mercy, at least.

Bhumika’s sense of who Priya was—the fact that she saw Priya as some kind of staggering, strange, fierce, and elemental creature—made Priya want to laugh incredulously. “I have never done anything—anything,” said Priya. “I’ve been… nothing but a maidservant. Parts of me are broken and I stand in the middle of all those pieces and don’t go anywhere. I’m stuck, Bhumika. In all this time, I’ve just been quiet. I’ve just survived.”

Like all other parts of the Hirana, the entrance to the deathless waters moved. Sometimes the Elders made a ritual of seeking it out. But Priya had never struggled to find it. She was not the best fighter—not the cleverest or strongest—but even with her eyes closed she could find the way unerringly. It had astonished Elder Chandni when she’d realized. The elders had all tested her. Blindfolded her. Spun her about until she was dizzy with it. Asked her at night, at dawn, in the heart of the day. She always knew the path. No one could explain her gift. She’d heard the elders discuss it once, in Chandni’s room, when she’d been curled up asleep on the floor beside Chandni’s pallet. “It’s a strange affinity,” Saroj had murmured. “Oh, the longer we’re here, the more we feel connected to the Hirana, to be sure. But the girl is… different.” Chandni’s fingers had carded gently through her hair. “Not many children are born on the Hirana,” she’d said. “It’s no surprise that she shares a special bond with the temple.”

Malini had felt helpless in the past. She did not feel helpless now, although she should have. Her cheek was throbbing. Her head was spinning with stars. “If you kill her,” she said, in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere far beyond her, from somewhere old and beyond mortal lifetimes, “you do not know what you will make of me. I will see you ruined, Pramila. I will see your living daughters ruined. I will blot all that brings you joy out of this world. I will murder more than your flesh. I will murder your heart and spirit and the very memory of your name and your lineage. I vow it.”

“Promise me this, or one way or another, you die here.” “You’ll kill me after all, Priya?” “No, you fool woman,” Priya said, eyes blazing. “No. Never me.”

“Some parts of me are monstrous,” Malini said, and when Priya turned to look at her she saw that Malini was clutching the needle-flower cask at her throat. “You know why? A woman of my status and breeding, Chandra told me, should serve her family. Everyone told me I should be obedient to my father and my brothers and one day, my husband. But Aditya and Chandra made their choices, and I didn’t simply accept those choices. I didn’t obey. Because my brothers were wrong. But more than anything, Priya—more than that—I’m monstrous because I have desires. Desires I have known all my life that I should not. I’ve always wanted things that would place me in danger.”

“I think you may be a good person after all,” Priya said slowly. “Oh?” Malini smiled. “You change your mind so swiftly?” “Parts of you, then,” said Priya. “Parts of you want the world to be better. You want justice for yourself and the people you love, because your rights have been denied. You think the world owes you for that.” “You need to work on your love talk, Priya,” Malini said dryly, and Priya laughed, a warm sound. “And I hope you realize you could be speaking about yourself, temple child.”

“That… that the people you care about can be used against you. And strength—strength is a knife turned on the parts of yourself that care.” Priya’s fingertips touched at the hollow of her own ribs.

“Don’t be sorry,” said Malini. “Don’t—” Her own words left her. Her own words broke. This was what she had needed. Not forgiveness, not a balm for this strange writhing fury inside her, but the promise of someone to care for—to love—that she could not harm. Even if she had to. Even if she tried.

“I am not asking for anything unreasonable,” Malini retorted. “I never have. But if you will not explain yourself, let me explain something to you: You and Chandra both believe the right to rule is something that must be given to you, by the mothers of flame, by blood, by the nameless. I’m no such fool. I know there is no higher power that sanctions a king or emperor. There is only the moment when power is placed in your hands, and there is one truth: Either you take the power and wield it, or someone else will. And perhaps they will not be as kind to you and yours.” She leaned forward. “You had your choice, Aditya. And when you relinquished power, Chandra turned on me and my women. Alori’s death. Narina’s death. Every single moment of suffering I have faced—they all lie on your shoulders. You must do better now.”

“That was before the first time Chandra hurt me,” Malini said crisply. “That ended my childhood fancies abruptly.” He stared at her, uncomprehending. “When,” he said, “did he hurt you, as a child?” She sucked in a breath. He didn’t remember. She wanted to lift her hair and bare her neck. She wanted to show him how she had been hurt; to show him not simply the physical scar but the way Chandra’s cruelties large and small had flayed her sense of self, until she was raw, a furious tangle of nerves, until she was forced to build herself armor, jagged and cruel, to be able to survive. But he would not understand. He had never understood. Her hurts and her terrors, which had consumed her all her life, had always been small to him. He had either never truly seen them or simply, easily forgotten them.

“This plan is…” He hesitated. “Say it, Rao.” “Cold,” he said. “Cruel. Unlike you.” “You sound a little like Aditya did,” she said, after a pause that stretched the air between them thin. “But I suppose you’ve long been friends for a reason. You both have a weakness in you that I don’t understand.” “Morality isn’t weakness.” “It is if it will see us all dead. Rao, we have men, but only so many men, and so many weapons,” said Malini. “The monastery is in a valley. Vulnerable, for all that it has only one known entrance. All that, you know. If we remained there, we would be rounded up with ease. Or slaughtered. Perhaps they would burn us. It would be so easy.” Her voice shifted, like fingers upon a sitar’s strings, from softness to thrumming savagery. “And I will not burn, Rao.”

“When you murder your brothers, remember that we loved you once, heart sister,” Narina finished. “Remember that we love you still, no matter what you become.” Malini closed her eyes, which burned with tears. She closed her eyes against the vision of them, and the grief. When she opened them, Narina and Alori were gone.

“It will be a long journey,” the Dwarali lord said gruffly. “But we’ll rig a chariot for you, princess. Something suitable.” “Dwarali women ride, don’t they?” “We all ride,” he told her. “Man, woman, or any soul between.” “It is a shame I do not have their skill,” she said. “This skill your Dwarali women possess.” “Skills are learned, princess,” he said. “I think you will gain them swiftly enough.” He spoke with a respect that verged on reverence. Malini simply nodded, eyes fixed on the distance, and kept on walking.

Rao kneeled down before her. He did not kneel like a man overcome by grief, or as men in tales kneel before women they loved. He did not even kneel as he had when his sister had burned upon the pyre, with his face blank and his hands in fists, too devastated to move or breathe. He kneeled and lowered his head. Touched his fingertips to the ground before her feet. He kneeled as a man kneels before a king. An emperor. “It’s time,” he said, in a clear voice, to Malini and all the assembled highborn of Parijatdvipa, “to tell you my name.”

“It would be a great sacrifice on my part, to rule this land,” Malini said, slow and solemn, as if her heart were not a burning coal, a thing of joy and rage. “I am only a woman, with brothers still living. If I am to rule… my lords, I must rule in the name of the mothers. I must rule as a mother of Parijatdvipa. “I have not burned, as the mothers burned,” she continued. “I know it isn’t their will. But I burned my goodness upon the monastery’s flames. I burned my gentleness. I made a fitting empress of myself. My lords, if it is the will of the mothers and the nameless both, then I will take the throne of Parijatdvipa for the good of all of us. I will do it, as the prophecy demands.”

She could make something new of Parijatdvipa. She could make herself something monstrous. She could be a creature born of poison and pyre, flame and blood. She had told Aditya that when the opportunity to seize power came—to wield it—the opportunity had to be taken and held and used. If he would not wield it, she would. If he would not take their brother’s throne, in that room of sweet falling jasmine where the sisters of her heart had burned, then she would do it. She was going to build a new world. All this she would do, when she sat on Parijatdvipa’s throne. But first, she thought quietly, savagely, to herself, as the men around her kneeled and shouted her name. Malini. Malini. Mother Malini. Empress Malini. I am going to find my emperor brother. I am going to make Chandra kneel before his peers, humiliated and broken. And I am going to watch him burn.