5
Whatever happened in the underbrush was very brief and very violent. The ferns shook, the mongoose squeaked, the cockatrice hissed, and then all was still. The guards converged on the source of the noise and folded back the ferns to reveal Jagdish carefully cleaning the blood from his whiskers and the cockatrice lying dead beside him.
One of the men picked up both animals and held them out to Asha. She took the dead cockatrice by the tail and held it at arm’s length, but Jagdish refused to go near her and instead scampered over to Priya, who picked him up and placed him on her shoulder, where he nestled into her hair and peered out at Asha with small accusing eyes.
“I hope that was absolutely necessary,” the nun said.
“It was.” Asha paused only a moment to stare at the creature in her hand before striding back into the princess’s bedroom and shutting the door behind her.
She knelt down and spread the feathered body on a thick leather sheet, massaged the neck briefly, and then sliced off the head completely. With her scalpel and pins and probes, she deftly slit the cockatrice’s throat open to reveal the venom sacs at the base of the skull, and these she removed and placed in a porcelain dish. Then she tossed the body across the floor, out of the way, and went to work.
After three hours, four spent candles, a dozen silver trays, two buckets of water, and more herbs than she cared to admit, Asha finally sat over a dish of pale red oil in a shallow silver bowl. In addition to the flesh of the venom sac, she had used the shell of the last cockatrice egg and more than a little of the creature’s blood, and now she studied the product of her labors.
Logically, it was right. It should work. She had done everything just as she had been taught to do it, and now all that was left to do was use it.
Still she hesitated. It wasn’t doubt that gnawed at her. It was distaste. Disgust. A true healer did not gamble with life carelessly. A true healer would test the new medicine in the dish first, and in an animal second, and only in a human last of all. But there wasn’t time. There wasn’t even enough of the red oil to use, even if there had been time.
Asha carried the dish to the princess and began dribbling the oil into the woman’s bloodless lips. Then she drew a small amount of the oil up into a needle of blue glass and injected it into the princess’s neck.
Through the evening and the long quiet night that followed, Asha sat by the princess and administered her medicine by every means she could think of. Priya came and sat by the windows overlooking the lake. The maid brought supper, tended her mistress, and left. And at some late hour, Asha fell asleep.
The next day the princess seemed to breathe a little easier. Asha continued to apply her red oil, answered the prince’s questions as briefly as possible, and slept very little.
Days passed. The princess slept easier, even murmuring in her sleep, but she did not wake.
Asha experimented with what little remained of the cockatrice, from the feathers to the beak to the liver, producing similar oils and powders. She tried them all. Some seemed to work better. Most didn’t. And all of them ran out all too soon. There simply wasn’t enough of the small animal’s body to create enough medicine.
After a week, the princess opened her eyes and spent a few precious minutes talking with her husband. Pratap Singh’s voice wavered as he sat beside her, stroking her cheek. But then she fell asleep again and couldn’t be roused.
A month passed.
And another.
Asha stayed beside the princess, rarely leaving her bedchamber, every day trying to coax some new secret from what little remained of the cockatrice until she was left scraping at its bones. But the princess slipped back into her rigid state, her muscles as hard as ironwood, her skin as firm as stone.
And then she died.
At the end, her body was so rigid that the servants couldn’t undress her or even untangle her from the sheets, and were forced to cut away the cloth. But the woman’s face was perfectly serene, unlined and unblemished, smooth and young and strong. Everyone agreed that she was the most beautiful corpse they had ever seen.
Asha and Priya stayed in Jaipur only as long as etiquette seemed to require. The heartbroken prince pressed them with gifts, left his palace open to them for all time, and gave them a place of honor in the funeral procession. But when it was over, they left.
6
Three months later.
Asha stood in the marketplace of Jaipur, haggling with an older woman over a fistful of ginger roots. After overpaying for her stock, Asha sauntered back toward Priya, who stood at the foot of the steps of a temple of Vishnu. The nun frowned. “I could be wrong, but I think someone is following us.”
“How can you tell?” Asha glanced around at the crowd quietly surging past them.
“Just a feeling.”
“Then let’s go.” Asha led the way through the market squares and market streets and found the way to the northern end of the city where the Jal Mahal appeared to float majestically on the surface of the lake. But the palace seemed dimmer and shabbier than she remembered it. Nothing had changed about it physically. It was just a sense. A feeling that this place had already seen its finest days and now was sinking into shadows and sad memories.
They walked on. “Are we still being followed?”
Priya nodded. “I’m certain of it now. A man with an uneven gait.”
Asha looked around again, but there were still too many people about and none of them looked like sinister killers with conspicuous limps. “Let’s just keep moving.”
They followed the main road north and soon came to the small shrine at the crossroads where the princess’s ashes had been placed only a few short months ago. Asha paused to stare at the little stone pillars and flickering braziers. Her memories of the long days and nights at the young woman’s bedside were still fresh. The long hours studying the dead cockatrice, the foul-smelling experiments, the ache in her arm from grinding and crushing one thing after another in her mortar.
“She was very beautiful,” a man said.
Asha looked sharply at the short fellow beside her. His limp black hair barely covered his scalp, and he squinted through filmy, cracked glasses. The shoes on his feet were Indian, but his dark blue robe was from Ming. She swallowed and turned back to the shrine. In a calm and even voice, she said, “Yes, she was.”
“But it wasn’t enough for her. It never is, for some people.” The man smiled. A black leather bag sat on the ground beside his foot.
“So you offered your services?”
“No, not this time,” the doctor said. “I merely sold the prince something that he thought he wanted. A wonderful creature. Very hard to breed, you know. A bird and a lizard. Tricky business. But then, I’m sure you appreciated all of that for yourself.”
“Not really. I was too busy trying to keep her alive.”
“Ah yes. A pity, to be sure,” he said. “I never thought she would eat the eggs.”
“Yes, you did.”
He smiled. “Well, maybe.”
“And the mandrake in Kasar? And the bitter fruits at the mountain hut? More of your little experiments, or were they just very bizarre coincidences?”
He nodded absently, his gaze still fixed on the shrine. Not once did he look at her. “The world is full of sad
