The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

As his sister shook her head once more, he grasped her by the skull, raising her face up. He did not hold her tight. He did not harm her. He was not a monster. “Remember,” he said, voice low, nearly drowned out by the sonorous song, “that you have brought this upon yourself. Remember that you have betrayed your family and denied your name. If you do not rise… sister, remember that you have chosen to ruin yourself, and I have done all in my power to help you. Remember that.” The priest touched his torch to the pyre. The wood, slowly, began to burn. Firelight reflected in her eyes. She looked at him with a face like a mirror: blank of feeling, reflecting nothing back at him but their shared dark eyes and serious brows. Their shared blood and shared bone. “My brother,” she said. “I will not forget.”

As if a choice, carefully bred into your nature by grief and training and hardship, was any choice at all.

If only he had made this decision sooner. If only he had told Meena to reach out to her, to ally with her. But no matter. There was still a way forward. He could still turn his sister’s gifts to his own ends. Ahiranya was worth any price. Even her.

“With all due reverence,” Santosh repeated. “Would the emperor object to such?” Vikram asked. “Ah, no,” said Santosh. “No. Emperor Chandra would be pleased to see the proper religious order respected. To see a rebel purified, at the last.” Santosh had made something that Vikram intended as an honorable act into a vengeance. And indeed, perhaps it was. The Ahiranyi preferred to bury their dead, after all. A rebel would not want to burn. “It will be the first purification of many,” said Santosh. He no longer looked drunk or boastful. Only intent. In his face, Vikram saw a shadow of the glinting, brittle evil of the emperor. “We will make Ahiranya pure, General Vikram. In Parijat’s service.”

“Power can be looking after people. Keeping them safe, instead of putting them into danger.”

“If only I lived in the Age of Flowers after all,” she said dryly, not allowing herself to feel any bitterness. “Then I could have married a woman like the ancients used to. But I could still have chosen to make a home with a nice girl, marriage or no marriage,” Priya added with a shrug. “I chose to stay at the mahal.”

“And what will you do if I’m not well, in the end?” Priya asked. “Nothing,” Sima said. “I could do nothing. But I’d still want to know. That’s what friends want.”

“We should not do what powerful people tell us, simply because they tell us,”

But some men dream of times long dead, and times that never existed, and they’re willing to tear the present apart entirely to get them.

“I thought it was. After all, power makes everyone monstrous. At least a little.”

This is not how you quell conflict, thought Bhumika. But she did not say so. She stayed silent.

Priya. Priya leaning over her. Priya squeezing her hand, trying to draw her back into the steady world. Priya’s hair was so very straight, so dark where it draped over the curve of her ear. Strange. She was not lovely, no, but parts of her were lovely. Parts of her. “There are so many ways I could have convinced you to set me free.” Dark thoughts, light thoughts, like a flicker of shadow on skin. “I wish I had the strength to use you as I need to, in order to escape here,” Malini said. “And yet I’m rather glad I can’t.”

A child should not be a chain, used to yoke a woman like cattle to a role, a purpose, a life she would not have chosen for herself. And yet she felt then, with an aching resentment, how Vikram would use their child to reduce and erase her. She hated him for that, for stealing the quiet and strange intimacy of her and her own flesh and blood and making it a weapon.

She knew how many faces people possessed, one hidden beneath the other, good and monstrous, brave and cowardly, all of them true.

There was a sound, somewhere below them. Priya’s jaw hardened. “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.”

“The rot arrived when our powers did,” she said eventually. “It was smaller then, weaker, but they were afraid. They thought we were the cause. And that we were monstrous. We were too strong. So they killed us. Died with us.”

“And have you found yourself, Priya?” Priya shook her head. “I don’t know what it means to be a temple child anymore. Maybe it means being useful to people who seek power,” she said, finally looking at Malini. “Maybe it means being monstrous. Sometimes it feels like it. But maybe… maybe it means something else. The children and I, we could control the Hirana. Control nature. Someone once told me that the strongest of us could even control the rot. Maybe what it means to be me is to… to be a cure.”

Priya sighed, suddenly weary. “Leave me. Go to that Lord Rajan of yours. Go to your brother. Do—exactly what you’d hoped to. I know you want to. Don’t pretend you care what happens to me.” “You saved my life,” Malini said. “You saved it more than once.” “And you still don’t care,” said Priya. “I know that. So go.” She could feel Malini considering it.

“I’m dying anyway,” Priya added. “What does it matter?” I’ve served my purpose. “What indeed,” Malini said, in a voice that was too sharp by far. Suddenly she wasn’t sitting back against the tree trunk. She was leaning over Priya, gaze intent, something fierce in the curl of her mouth. That held Priya’s attention, even through the stupor of fever. Malini was often vulnerable, or cunning, or as blank as glass. But fierce? No. She was rarely that. “You don’t have to believe that I care for you, Priya. You only have to believe that I need you. And I do need you.” “You have the needle-flower. You know the way.” “I need you,” Malini repeated. And there was so much in those words—in the set of her lips.

“No. No normal maid who has to worry about losing her position. It was my teacher, my sage who told me. She educated me. As the women of my mother’s family were educated. As princes are. And she taught me this too: no wars are won without allies.”

“I was there,” Rao pressed on, voice as low as he could make it, “when Malini wrote him letter after letter, convincing him to take up his birthright again. I was there when she convinced lord after lord, warrior and prince and king, to join her brother’s cause. I was there when… when she stood before the court and called Chandra a false emperor on a stolen throne and proclaimed that she spoke for the mothers of flame. When she promised he would fall.”

“Tell me,” he said. “She was upon the Hirana long before any of us. She was there as an infant. Is she yours?” “It doesn’t matter,” said Chandni. “Whether my flesh made her—whether she was left a foundling at the base of the Hirana, with birth blood still on her—what difference does it make? I thought of her as my own. That was my error.”

“They—Chandni—said they thought… they thought we weren’t even human. That I’m not even human. She thinks I’m monstrous. My own—my own family. That’s what they think of me. Do you think I’m monstrous, Malini?” Priya heard Malini’s footsteps drawing closer. But she didn’t really want to hear Malini’s reaction. She was afraid suddenly that Malini would say yes. So she spoke again instead, the words tumbling out of her. “Because I think you are. Or I’m afraid you are. Oh, you’re so lovely to me, you’re very good at being lovely, but you’re also the woman who organized a coup against the emperor. You’re deep waters, Malini. You’re so much more than you’re willing to show me, and that scares me. I think I’m always waiting for you to turn on me.” “I’ve been myself with you, always,” Malini said. Her voice was careful. Steady. “But we all have more than one face. We have to have many faces in order to survive, don’t we? That’s natural. Normal.” Malini was at her shoulder now, kneeling also. “This face you know didn’t abandon you in the forest when you collapsed. I carried you when I was weak, to people who frankly frightened me, and I stayed with you. That was all me.” Priya knew that was true. But how could she trust Malini? How, when she couldn’t trust herself? “But the rest of you,” Priya said unsteadily. “Your other faces—” “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....

“I’ve avoided marriage. I’ll never willingly beget children with a man. And what is more monstrous than that? To be inherently, by your nature, unable to serve your purpose? To want, simply because you want, to love simply for the sake of love?”

“I was never lying about wanting you,” Malini said in a low voice. “Never with my eyes or my words. Never when I touched you. All of that was true.” Another tug. Priya felt the last of her braid uncoil, the pressure on her scalp releasing. “You’re already helping me. You’ve saved my life, Priya. I’m free. There’s no benefit—nothing I gain for the empire, for my goals—by telling you this. Do you understand?”

And Malini was tilting her face up, kissing her with a fury that melted into sweetness, with a tenderness that was strong as lifeblood, and burned. Burned.

“I’m not a man who gets angry easily,” said Rao. “But what Chandra did to your sister, and mine, and Lady Narina, the way he mocked faith to burn them…” Rao grappled for calm, gazing fixedly at the neat lines of Aditya’s priestly shawl. “He was always cruel, Aditya. Cruel and vindictive. But I don’t need to be a priest of the nameless to see that this is only the start of what he can do, and will do, now that he has a measure of power. And if you cannot see that—if you cannot see that you must put him aside—then you are indeed not the friend I once knew. Whatever vision the nameless granted you when I took you to the gardens—the answer to what you need to do is plain.”

being here felt like a blessing. Kissing Priya in clear water, holding her arms, her warm skin—lying beside her here in the quiet warmth of sunlight—made Malini feel closer to happiness than she had been in a long time.

Malini wanted to explain that being monstrous wasn’t inherent, as Priya seemed to believe it to be. It was something placed upon you: a chain or a poison, bled into you by unkind hands.

But you, Malini,” she said. “You want to remake the world.” “I just want to change who sits on the imperial throne,” Malini replied. But that didn’t feel entirely like the truth, even to her own ears.

“This face. This face right in front of me. The face you’ve shown me, the fact that you kissed me. I know it. I know you,” said Priya. “I know exactly who you are. There are other versions of you that I don’t know. But this one…” Her fingers were against Malini’s lips. “This one is mine.” For a moment, Malini felt as if maybe this was all that she was. There was nothing more to her, no princess of Parijat, no politician, no royal. She was just this, just herself, under Priya’s sure hand. Someone content.

“It won’t die,” said Priya. “Not until I do, I think. It’s a memento but not… not only of loss.”

“You’re terrifying,” Malini said. There was no fear in her, though. She almost wished the flower were sharp-edged so that she could feel the pain of it against her breast. Priya snorted. “Hardly,” she said. And then, with endearing self-consciousness, she tucked her hair behind her ear and looked away.

Priya knew more of Malini than she thought she did. And Malini was struck, absurdly, by how much she liked the woman Priya had made her be, however fleetingly. I know you.

“Will you let this Parijati whore murder you, to spite me?” “You shouldn’t be so rude to women holding knives,” Malini said, holding Priya tight, tight. “It isn’t wise.”

“Will you fight me, as I am?” Bhumika asked, placing one hand on the curve of her belly. She quirked an eyebrow in challenge. “I’ll fight you if it comes to it,” Ashok said roughly. “But I don’t want to.” “It’s odd how you never want to fight, and yet you always do.”

The baby was small and did not smell pleasant, and when she was placed in Priya’s arms, Priya felt something overpowering—a kind of terror and wonder at the revolting beauty of life, that made her want to hand away this small human as quickly as possible, and also hold on to her forever.

The moment I saw you, I felt a tug. You are the feeling of falling, the tidal waters, the way a living thing will always turn, seeking light. It isn’t that I think you are good or kind, or even that I love you. It is only that, the moment I saw you, I knew I would seek you out. Just as I sought the deathless waters. Just as I sought my brother. Just as I seek all things—without thought, with nothing but want.

“You’ll always be welcome,” Malini said abruptly, as if the words had been wrenched out of her. “When you come and find me—you’ll be welcome. Now, Priya. Please.”

“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.”

He kneeled as a man kneels before a king. An emperor.

“When she is crowned in jasmine, in needle-flower, in smoke and in fire, he will kneel before her and name her,” repeated Rao, in common Zaban. And suddenly Malini was shivering, every inch of her afire with a mad elation that rose up, up in her blood. “He will give the princess of Parijat her fate: He will say…” He swallowed. Raised his eyes, which were fierce and wet. “Name who shall sit upon the throne, princess. Name the flower of empire. Name the head that shall reign beneath a crown of poison. Name the hand that lit the pyre.” The silence was deep; a drumming tense silence, drawn taught as a bowstring. “He will name her thus,” finished Rao. “And she will know.”

“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 saw Aditya watching her. There was a bleak, accepting look on his face. No joy. He looked at her as if he saw her death upon her. Well, let him. Let him. She would not grieve. 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.

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.