The sky lightens further to a dusty blue by the time two other figures emerge from the alley leading to the temple. A tall woman in a gray sari walks toward me, her face partly veiled with a thick blanket. She’s followed by another woman, shorter in stature, similarly garbed. Their jootis, I observe, are not nearly as mud-encrusted as mine; they must have ridden to Ambarvadi. The taller woman pauses a few feet away from me, watching. Sensing her hesitation, I pull away the edge of the blanket covering my face, revealing it to her.
“Are you Juhi ji?” I ask, adding the honorific at the last moment, some old remnant of the manners Papa drilled into me when I was a small boy.
“Yes,” the taller woman says, sounding surprised. “But you’re not Xerxes.”
The blanket covering the lower half of her face drops. Juhi might have passed for another Ambari woman if not for her midnight eyes and the deep-blue tinting of her hair. She looks younger than I expected, or perhaps it only appears that way because of the magic suffusing her blood and the privilege that comes from living in a place that is not the tenements.
“No,” I say. “I’m his son, Cavas. My father is ill. Tenement Fever.”
Juhi’s face tightens slightly. “I didn’t know. Ruhani Kaki didn’t tell me.”
I nod. I’m about to say more—that there is nothing I can do for her—when her companion, who had been silent all this time, gasps.
“You!” she exclaims. The sun has risen by now, light pouring through a crack in the clouds. Its hazy glow reveals the sharp, familiar contours of the girl’s face, a thick lock of frizzy, soot-colored hair that she impatiently pushes off her forehead. It’s her. The gold-eyed thief from the moon festival.
“You.” The word slips out of my mouth without warning, the single syllable holding so much fury that the girl takes a step backward.
“You know each other?” Juhi asks.
“I saw her pickpocketing at the moon festival in Ambarvadi two months ago,” I say.
“I was not!” the girl protests before turning to Juhi. “He saved me from a merchant who thought I was pickpocketing him.”
“I saved you because I thought you needed it. Because I thought you were like me. I never would have stepped in if I’d known you were a privileged brat with magic in her veins.”
Silence. Even after turning away from her, I feel the girl’s gaze burning the side of my face.
“I am sorry to hear your father is ill,” Juhi says finally. “He’s a good man. I knew him well.”
“How well did you know him?” I demand. “Papa wouldn’t tell me.”
“There was nothing scandalous about our relationship, I assure you.” I detect amusement in Juhi’s voice. “But if Xerxes didn’t tell you how we knew each other, then I’m not sure it’s my place to do so.”
I push aside the frustration her response brings. Why does it matter how Papa knew this woman? I already know what I’m going to say to her.
“I read your letter to Papa,” I tell Juhi. “It’s only at his insistence that I came here to see you today. You need to know that there is no way I can get her into Ambar Fort.” I gesture to the girl, observe the way she stiffens. “As for Raj Mahal—you can forget about it.”
“I know what I’m asking for is difficult—” Juhi begins.
“It’s not only difficult. It’s dangerous. Besides, I don’t hire the palace servants. I barely have any power as it is,” I say bitterly.
“But you know enough to get the clothes and identification she’ll need to pass off as a servant,” Juhi says, her eyes shrewd. “I can offer you seven swarnas for your trouble. Every month, if you wish.”
Her offer brings Major Shayla’s words to mind, pricking at a sense of pride I didn’t know I possessed. These dirt lickers will do anything—even sell their own mothers—for a bit of coin.
“So much to get an ordinary thief into the palace?” I ask coldly. “I may be desperate, Juhi ji. But I am not a fool.”
“Name your price, then.”
“No price is worth the danger.” I force myself to not look at the girl. I haven’t forgotten Latif’s words. Or the unease I felt when I pictured her lying dead outside the barracks in the Walled City.
Juhi grabs hold of my wrist. Her palm is rough and hardened with calluses. My stomach drops. I am not one to make impulsive moves. But I wonder now if this single moment of spontaneity of coming here to talk to these women will have me blown up by some spell.
“Listen. I know you don’t believe me, but Gul isn’t an ordinary thief. Show him your right arm, Gul.”
“What?” the girl cries out. “Are you mad, Juhi Didi?”
“I don’t need to see anything,” I begin, but Juhi cuts me off with a squeeze on the wrist. I bite my tongue.
Juhi and the girl—Gul—are having a silent conversation with their eyes. Gul inhales sharply as if bracing herself and moves aside the blanket covering her shoulders. She slowly rolls up the sleeve of her right arm, bit by bit, her eyes trained on me. Four fingers above the thin green veins in the crook of her elbow, I see it: the raised black ridge of a birthmark, shaped into a perfect star. A blink of an eye later, Gul whips it back into the depths of her blanket, but I’m still staring at her, a feeling like ice in my throat.
“I believe she can help us with our fight,” Juhi says, her voice quiet, serious. “I believe she may be the One.”
The One, whom magi call the Star Warrior. A marked girl destined to bring forth a revolution, leading to a new era of peace in Ambar.
“I don’t care for your magi
