“No. For a moment it looked like some sort of severe arthritis, but no. I’ll examine her body now for any splinters or cuts. It may take a while.”
The nun nodded as she petted the mongoose in her lap.
3
Asha spent the rest of the morning examining the princess. She studied the woman’s skin in detail, but found no punctures with infected motes floating beneath the surface. She studied the woman’s joints and muscles, and then her ears and nostrils, and with the door locked she looked everywhere else. But she found no cause for the princess’s strange condition.
At noon the maid entered to spoon-feed the princess a bit of colorless mash, which Asha laced with several herbs and spices. The maid cleaned her mistress’s hands and face with a damp cloth, and left.
Asha then spent the afternoon prowling through the palace, poking into jars and lamps, scratching at the cracks and holes in the mortar in the walls, sniffing the guards’ boots, and banging about in the kitchens in search of nests, hives, spores, and molds. She found several of each, but none that could harm a healthy young princess.
Guards, valets, and maids responded to her every question, her every request. Unlock this. Open that. When was this last cleaned? What is that? Where did this come from? Every question was answered and every answer led nowhere.
Her fruitless search brought her back to the walled garden in the inner courtyard. She sat on the wall and gazed blankly at the ferns and mangos and foxtail orchids. Her poisoned ear brought her the soft harmonies of the floral spirits. She heard the tinkling bells of the flowers, the muted gongs of the trees, and the windy whistling of the crickets. Nothing she hadn’t heard before.
But then she did hear something new. It was a high reedy note and Asha frowned as she tried to recognize what sort of soul made that sound when she realized one of the guards was staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing, madam. You just looked confused at the bird call.”
A bird call? It was a real sound, Asha realized. I’m starting to confuse what’s physical and what isn’t. “That’s right, I didn’t recognize the call. What sort of bird is it?”
The guard shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. But I hear it now and then. Just that one note, just like we heard a moment ago.”
Asha waited for the bird to call again, but it did not oblige. So she strained her right ear to track down the noise of the creature’s soul, but all she heard were the cranes far across the lake and a handful of fish deep in its waters.
The supper hour found Asha sitting by her patient’s bed, staring out the open windows at the sun setting across the lake, and muttering to herself about pollen and fleas. One of the guards knocked and politely invited her to join the prince at dinner, but Asha declined, insisting that she needed to remain with the princess. But Priya was more than happy to play the proper house guest and she followed the guard to the dining room.
The maid came with another bowl of colorless mash, which Asha laced with another mixture of herbs and spices. The maid cleaned her mistress’s hands and face with a damp cloth, and left.
Every half hour, Asha inspected her patient, carefully measuring out the shallow breaths and faint heartbeats, but she couldn’t tell if there was any change from that morning. Priya returned from dinner in a very good mood, but Asha ignored her recitation of the evening’s culinary and conversational delights. Eventually Priya fell asleep.
And eventually, so did Asha.
The click of the door woke the herbalist and she sat up slowly, wiping the saliva from the side of her face as the timid young maid entered with her small tray bearing the familiar bowl of mash for breakfast. But when the maid knelt by the princess, Asha saw a hint of yellow in the dish.
“Something new today?” Asha nodded at the bowl.
“New?” The maid blinked. “Oh no, nothing new. Just her eggs. She loved them so much. I thought I would keep adding them to her breakfast. I thought she would like that.”
“What sort of eggs?”
The maid hesitated, her eyes blank.
Asha sighed. “Don’t bother lying. Just tell me the truth. Where are the eggs from? If it’s not important to her condition, I won’t tell anyone.”
The maid swallowed and nodded. “Peacock. They’re peacock eggs. The prince bought the peacock last year for my lady. She loves that bird. Loves to look at it. She said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And she…”
“She wanted to eat the eggs to make herself more beautiful.” Asha rolled her eyes.
“It’s not the eggs, is it?” The maid’s hands trembled. “Did the eggs make her ill?”
“No. At least, probably not. I’ll take a look at the bird to make sure it’s healthy, but no, cooked peacock eggs are perfectly safe. If not silly. Still, it’s better than what they do to tigers in the east.”
“What do they do to tigers?”
Asha shook her head. “Never mind. After you finish up here, you can show me the peacock so I can make sure it’s healthy.”
It only took a few minutes for the maid to feed and wash her mistress and Asha followed her out to the kitchen. The maid set the tray and bowl aside and then led Asha back out to the walled garden in the central courtyard.
“It’s in there,” the girl whispered, pointing into the ferns. “I don’t see it often, but its nest is back here in the corner.” She parted the emerald fronds to reveal a small circle of twigs and leaves on the ground. “Every morning there is a single egg, which I collect for my lady’s breakfast.”
Asha frowned. She’d seen more than a few peacocks, and heard their calls, and heard their souls, too. She couldn’t hear one now. “Peacocks are pretty large birds. I’m surprised that one can hide in a garden this small.”
“Oh, it’s a very small peacock. Some sort of pet breed, I think.”
“A hybrid?” Asha frowned a little deeper. “Thank you for your help. If my friend asks for me, tell her I’m out working on the case.”
The maid bowed and scurried away.
Asha glanced around the courtyard at the four guards by the far doors. None of them were looking in her direction, so she leaned down and slipped over the low wall into the garden and lay down flat beneath the thick ferns where no one was likely to see her or her yellow sari. She backed away and arranged herself on the lumpy earth so she still had a clear view of the peacock’s nest, and settled down to wait.
She fell asleep four times. Each time she jerked awake to see that the nest was still empty and the sun had crossed a bit farther overhead. She tried chewing on a sliver of ginger, and then on a few old tea leaves, and she was wondering what else she had to spare when she fell asleep again.
Asha awoke in the dark. The stars winked down through the ferns, the cicadas creaked, and the palace was shadowed and silent. A foul odor hung in the sultry night air, clinging to her nostrils.
Did I really sleep all day? How late is it now?
She blinked and stretched, and froze. The nest was no longer empty.
A small plump bird sat there, prim and unconcerned with her new human companion. The bird blinked, turned its head, blinked, shivered, and blinked again. The starlight shone dimly off the bird’s blue and green feathers. A long folded fan of tail feathers rested on the ground behind it.
“Well, a miniature peacock,” Asha whispered. “That’s new.”
The peacock shivered again and stood up to reveal a pale little egg between its legs. With another shiver, it stepped carefully out of the nest and strutted away into the garden. Just as it passed out of view, it lifted its tail feathers to hide its body behind a green and blue screen.
Asha inhaled sharply. Beneath its tail feathers, the peacock had a second tail, a green scaled whip of a tail stretched out just above the ground.
