The Oleander Sword (The Burning Kingdoms, #2)

by Tasha Suri

A beauty, they called her. One day she’ll break hearts. The emperor will want to watch her closely.

I miss you, she thought, speaking to nothing in the quiet of her heart. I will always miss you.

Unbidden, the thought of Priya rose in her mind, as it so often did. What would Priya think of the sea? She could not imagine Priya out there. In her mind’s eye, all she could see was Priya as she’d been in the forest, waist-deep in water, hair sleek, loose, and soft in Malini’s hands. The feel of Priya’s mouth against her own.

But forgetting or not forgetting Priya was not a political concern. It was a thing of her heart: the husk of a flower she wore on a chain around the throat. It was the memory, preserved green and shining in her mind, of the two of them lying by a waterfall, gazing at one another, water glinting on Priya’s dark hair, her smiling mouth.

And even an empress may send a kindly letter now and again, to an old ally.”

Malini should not write it, she knew. But she wanted to. I have looked upon the ocean, she wrote. And it made me recall the tale of a river. And of a fish, searching for a new world on its bank. And I remember a tale of garlands. And ill stars. And two people who found their way to one another. Tell me, do you remember it too?

That Malini had gone one step further and written to her, had put down some of what bound them permanently in ink, was—well. It made Priya feel soft and tender, and stunned by Malini’s foolishness.

I made you a promise once. Say my name, and though it makes me a fool—and I know it does—I’ll find my way. I’ll come.

Priya, Of course I sought out grand tales. I do not like my own ignorance. And those tales were the ones that made you. Surely, you learned them as a child. Surely they were as much the milk that shaped you, as tales of the mothers were for me. Don’t you realize I want to know everything about you? That even now, when I should have forgotten you, all I desire is to know your heart better than my own?

Sometimes I think of my army as a wave. I never placed my feet in the sea when I had the chance, but now I think of my army as the waters that carry me. And my throne—my throne is the inevitable shore. We have fought Chandra across the empire. In Dwarali. In Alor. He has no gift for keeping allies. He wants people to bow and scrape and beg for his scraps, but why would they, when I have offered them so much more? So his armies crumble, and I stride onward, and bind myself to allies with vows and deals and promises. I have so many debts, Priya. Debts to my men. Debts to you. I never forget my debt to you.

I miss you, she wrote to Priya, and to herself. But not as you miss me, I think. I miss you because I let myself care for you. For a brief time, I let you into my heart. And I find now that I am empress, now that the world lies at my feet, my heart is a closed door. I am meant to be someone beyond mortal feeling—someone shaped by fire and prophecy into more than flesh and bone and want. What I was with you, I can never be again.

And an empress’s power? Well. There had been no empresses before Malini. So she had carved out the rules and requirements of empress-hood herself, and hoped that throwing together the authority of one role and the visage of another would be enough.

You can do no less. Know your place, Princess Malini. And see what women braver than you have wrought.”

A priest’s hair. A priest’s face. Another priest, she thought with a kind of hysterical surprise. By the mothers, had all priests of the mothers taken up armor and blades? Why had one chosen to try and kill her, and another chosen to die for her?

Priya rejected the offer with as much as grace as she could muster, which wasn’t much.

“I think,” he’d said slowly, “that packing my body into that little palanquin won’t make me look grand. People will laugh.” “They wouldn’t dare,” Priya said. And then, with a sidelong glance at some of the watching guards, she’d raised her voice and said, “But if you refuse the palanquin, I suppose we can both walk—”

Priya had seen her sister’s face, narrow-eyed, staring down at them. “Priya, you’re taking the palanquin.” A pause. “Both of you.”

“Well, Elder Bhumika has spoken,” Priya had said cheerfully. “Cheer up, Ganam. Maybe if you keep on accompanying me, someone will build you a bigger palanquin.”

Elder Priya, thrice-born.

“Never try to become a poet, Pri,” Sima said. She’d spent the day tending to the running of the mahal and was about as tired as Priya, but mellowed by liquor. She smiled a little. “I was a poet to her,” Priya said quietly, letting the confession slip free. “I . . . I wrote to her, you know.” “How is your empress?” “Who knows.” Priya shrugged. She suddenly felt a little exposed. Her face was warm. “But we’re not talking about that.” “You’re the one that mentioned her.” “Look, she’s—she’s not important. What matters is this, okay? I can’t fix a field,” said Priya. “Not of rot sufferers, I don’t mean field like I meant ladle, but—oh, I should never have turned poet at you, you’re right. Look, the plain truth of it is this: There’s so much work to do, and I can’t do it alone.” The words exposed a hollow ache in her chest—a sheer knot of anxiety that she couldn’t ignore any longer. “We need more elders. More thrice-born.”

“I don’t. I don’t want that for you. I don’t think you really want that for yourself, either. You’re too smart for that.”

Their sole purpose seemed to be to keep her in her place: a life with narrow walls and standards of purity that pressed her thin, erased her to nothing but her blood and her good bones and the worth of a pleasing face. A life where she would never contemplate ruling; a life where she would obediently bare her neck for a knife, or gladly embrace the pyre.

You would never have spoken to me so, she thought, her blood a deep river of anger that swelled and moved inside her, threatening to flood the plains of her heart, if I were either of my brothers. And yet I am a better leader than both of them, in every way.

“If you chose the empire’s future over your father’s ambitions and errors, you could ask me to vow that your sisters would be protected and given a future unbound from your father’s fate.” Deepa swallowed. “I am not a son,” she said. “And I am not an emperor. So what will you do, Lady Deepa?” She looked away. She looked at Lata and Raziya and Sahar; at Swati, watching quietly. Slowly, the panic seemed to bleed from her face. “My father bid me to serve you, and I did not say no. I did not even try to refuse.” She met Malini’s eyes again. “I wanted more. Is it selfish, to want even more than this, Empress?”

She needed a weapon no one else had. She needed—she wanted—someone she could trust. Someone who had loved her even after a knife to the throat; who had held Malini’s face in her own two hands, warm and alive, and said, I know you. I know this face, and it is mine. She had dreamt of writing to Priya again so many times. She had written to Priya so many times.

I am always thinking of you. I think of you in battle. I think of you in the dark of night. When my mind is silent or full, you wait there for me. It galls me that I want you as much as this. That my heart so thoroughly belongs to you. The power you have over me, Priya. Why does it refuse to fade? I think of the way the earth would yield to your hands, flowering for you. I think of what you could do for me, if I put you to use. And I should put you to use. Somewhere, you must wonder why I haven’t.

I think of how you could have made a weapon of anything. Do you think of me, ...

When she is crowned in jasmine, in needle-flower, in smoke and in fire, he will kneel before her and name her. He will give the princess of Parijat her fate. He will say: 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. He will name her thus, and she will know.

I came to tell you what happened. I came to ask for your help. I came to tell you that Malini is fighting to make those men obey her, and I fear this will break her control of them, and you . . . Aditya, I don’t know why she allows you to live, when you’re a threat to her, and I hate myself for even thinking it, but as long as you’re here—

“I know,” Bhumika had replied, trying not to sound too proud. Bhumika had never thought she’d be the kind of woman who would play with a child like this. As the wife of the governor of Ahiranya, she had known she would be required to uphold a certain image. Holding children was all well and good, but running with them, chasing them like a maidservant? That would have been unacceptable for a woman of her status. But she was not the governor’s wife any longer. She was free.

Khalida thought Bhumika overindulged her child. That was fine. That was a mother’s prerogative. Let her daughter be a terror, at least for a time. Some believed they could ready a child for the cruelties of the world with punishment and unkindness, callousing the heart before the world could set its knives upon it. But Bhumika was raised a temple child—taught to excise her softness and weakness, and to face the world with her teeth bared. And still, every loss she had experienced had hurt her. Still, she carried the scars of her own choices, and the choices made by others. She wanted a different path for her daughter. Perhaps all lives became brimful of pain, eventually. Well, then. Let her daughter’s start painlessly, in joy. Let her have at least that.

“Well, we have a good division of labor,” Priya said with a shrug. “I deal with the fields and the sick, and those gangs out in the villages, and you deal with the highborn and the politics.”

“Ah, Bhumika,” Priya said. “Do you really want me to advise you? We’ll only disagree.” “If I can take advice from people like Lord Chetan, I think I can stay calm with you.” “I don’t know about that. I can be very annoying when I want to be.” “Priya.” “See?”

“Tell me,” Priya said eventually, voice softer, “how Padma’s been. Does she still yell all the time?” “Yes. Because she’s still a baby,” Bhumika said in her driest tone. “Come and see her in the morning, if you like. She misses you.”

What was rightly Priya’s? Are you rightly mine? Can I keep you too?

They sat. Priya kept her face slightly turned away, hands clasped in her lap. It should have looked respectful. It made Malini want to take Priya’s face in her hands. Turn her head. Look at me. Foolishness.

“I am going to kill you for this,”

“I don’t want or need the help of an Ahiranyi witch whore,” one of the men snapped. At least this one hadn’t spit on her. “‘Witch whore’ is a bit of a mouthful,” she said, baring her teeth at him in a grin. “I prefer ‘temple elder’ or ‘Elder Priya.’ You can pick.”

She woke in the sangam. Bhumika was before her—had heard Priya, perhaps, crying out as the fire hit her. Bhumika’s eyes were molten. “You fainted,” she said. Priya sat up. “I don’t faint.” “That isn’t true. You did. You’re here.” “I was in—a battle. An unexpected battle and . . .” Priya scrambled, touching her fingertips to her side. She hissed. There was a wound. Sap poured from it, strange and unreal in the sangam. Bhumika tutted. “That’s not good,” she said.

“A dream from the nameless god, I think.” “Surely you know, priest,” Rao said, but there was nothing cutting in his voice. Only curiosity. Aditya hesitated. “I saw your eyes, shining like stars.” “Stars?” Aditya nodded. “What had happened, to make them shine?” “I don’t know,” Aditya said. “But Rao—perhaps one day we’ll meet again, on the other side of this war, and you will be able to tell me.”

“I’ll tell you anything you like,” Malini said, letting the tenderness she felt seep into her voice. “Just ask, and it’s yours.” Priya gazed back at her. Her lips parted slightly, a temptation, an invitation.

But the other was this. Because I need her. Because she saw me once, for everything I was and could be, and wanted me anyway. And she sees me and wants me still, over the chasm that should make enemies of us. And yet it does not. Cannot. It was a truth like a wound, like a fragile heart exposed, and it frightened and awed her in equal measure.

“You’re very good at being invisible when you choose to be,” Malini said, fondness bleeding into her voice. Priya kneeled by Malini’s cot. The light was so muted here that Malini could barely see her. But she was keenly aware

Oh, I am like her, thought Priya, even as she said nothing, even as she stared at the opposite bank—at the spindles of distant trees, and the lush fronds dipping into the eddying water. I just wear my anger on the outside.

“I threw a river,” Priya laughed. “Threw it—and you think I’m going to fall over?” “Yes.” Priya froze, limbs trembling. She bit off a curse as she fell. Malini managed to catch her, leaning her back against one of the tent poles. And Priya lolled back in her arms, smiling, weeping

“I barely understand it, the way I would willingly kneel for you, anywhere, for anything. The way I would fight for you. The way I want to be at your side. Is that what love is, Malini? Is that how awful love is? Because if it is, then I love you, the way that roots love the deep and leaves love the light. It’s—the way I am. And no matter how much I try to be good, to do right—I’m all flowers in your arms, for your war, for you—”

Your gifts are you and you are your gifts, I don’t love you in pieces, I don’t separate you into parts.

“You may think you break yourself on loving me,” Malini whispered. “That it makes you bow and makes you—you serve.” A hitch, a stumble. She pressed on, still curved, her head against Priya’s throat. “But you cannot be broken by my demands. You cannot even be broken by your own. I could try and break you a thousand times, with all my weapons, with knowledge of your every weakness, and still I—” A hand tightened on Malini’s jaw.

“I found two of his allies in a nearby pleasure house.” “They do like to complain about the economy. I’m glad they’re doing their part to keep it running.”

“It’s never wise,” Sima said, taking his hand, “to bet on arm wrestling against an ex-laundress.”