“Gul!” Juhi screams. “Gul, no!”
A sound like thunder rattles through my head. I’m thrown backward into the crowd, stars bursting before my eyes. I hear my name again—once, perhaps twice. The world goes black.
“… my apologies. She was distraught. It … it’s been a difficult morning.”
“I’m letting her go this time for your sake. But Juhi ji, you must control your ward. Or the next time I’ll be forced to arrest her as well.”
Their voices seep into my consciousness, float in from somewhere above. Instead of the ground, I feel something softer underneath: the netting of a cot, a pillow—my pillow. My head still feels sore, as if it’s been battered continually from the inside.
I slowly rise to a sitting position. Sunlight pours from the courtyard window into the empty dormitory. Outside, Uma Didi’s ringing voice lectures the novices on Ambari history—a pretext that is often put up for the benefit of the thanedars: “In the twelfth year of Rani Megha’s reign, an ordinance to limit non-magi holdings was introduced. Acharya Bindu, who would go on to write the Tenement Laws, suggested various—” Her voice cuts off abruptly. “Juhi! What’s going on? What did the thanedar say?”
“It’s all right, Uma. He’s gone now. You can resume your usual Yudhnatam lessons. Yes, yes, Gul is fine,” Juhi says. “I’m going to see her now.”
And she does, a few moments later, entering the dormitory with a wary look on her face.
“Well,” she says. “You’ve had quite a morning, haven’t you?”
“What happened?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“I tried to stop you from moving forward. So did the head thanedar. Our spells must have collided, knocking you out.”
“Not to me,” I say. Anger seeps in, straightening my spine. “The baby. What happened to the baby?”
Juhi says nothing.
“They took her, didn’t they?” I taste something bitter at the back of my tongue. “They took her, and we did nothing!”
“We couldn’t do anything,” she snaps. “It was impossible!”
“You could have intervened! Modified their memories—”
“There were about fifty people in the square,” Juhi says sharply. “Even I can’t modify so many memories—not at once. Someone would have seen, would have grown suspicious. Saving that child would have meant exposing the rest of us.”
“Protecting the unprotected,” I recite the Sisterhood’s motto out loud. “So that only matters when it’s convenient, is it? It’s the only time your so-called samarpan counts.”
“By the gods! Be sensible—”
“I won’t. I won’t be sensible if it means turning a blind eye every time another girl gets arrested just for having a birthmark! That girl … she was a baby, Juhi Didi!”
I dimly grow aware of silence falling in the courtyard; I must have been shouting.
Juhi’s body tenses, and for a moment, I think she might smack me or hit me with another spell. But then her shoulders sag, her face looking older than I’ve ever seen it. “Yes. I know samarpan stands for ‘sacrifice.’ But every sacrifice requires a choice, and I had to choose between saving one life and twenty girls who live with me day in and day out. I chose those girls. I chose you.”
Instead of making me feel better, her words make me feel worse.
There’s a creak as Juhi settles down on an empty cot next to mine. “What happened this morning in the square got me thinking again. Amira was right. It was wrong of me to be so hasty. To push you so hard when you’re so young. I got so consumed by my own desire for revenge that…” There’s a pause followed by a soft hush of breath. “This is my fault. I failed. Not only that child, but also you.”
I say nothing. What happened with Cavas this morning feels like a distant memory, an embarrassment I barely feel. I don’t know when Juhi leaves the dormitory or when the other novices enter.
“What’s up with her?” I hear someone say.
“She and Juhi had a disagreement,” I hear Kali say in her cool voice. “Gul? Gul, are you all right?”
I don’t answer, and eventually, as the day goes on, they stop asking. The afternoon meal goes by. So does the evening one.
“You have to eat sometime, princess.”
I look up from the plate full of lotus sabzi, dal, and rice and into Amira’s dark eyes.
“No one cares, do they?” I ask. “About girls like us.”
Something shifts in her gaze, something I don’t quite understand. “Eat,” she says again before leaving the room.
I don’t.
I sit there, unmoving, until the lantern is blown out and the other novices’ light snores fill the room. They mask the sound of my feet, the darkness shielding my movements, turning me into another shadow moving across the wall.
15GUL
A hundred yards from the main bazaar at Ambarvadi, a flesh market is held every day during the first week of the month. Sold here, along with horses, bullocks, and landfowl, are humans—Ambari citizens who voluntarily put themselves up for indenture at the palace or elsewhere for a period of ten years, usually to pay off a debt, sometimes even incurred by a previous generation. Prostitution is forbidden—though that doesn’t always stop some from forcing indentured boys and girls into it. As the old saying goes: Everything sells in a market. All you need is a buyer.
I stand at the edge of a sweets stall with Agni, the thin gray pallu of my sari drawn over my head, shielding my face from the heat and passersby. Was it only a couple of months ago that the moon festival happened and I kissed Cavas? Only a week earlier, I might have blushed at the thought. Now, I feel nothing except hollow in the pit of my stomach.
I turn around, unclipping the bundle hanging from Agni’s saddle. “Go home.” I stroke her velvety nose. “Quickly. Before the stallkeepers start coming in. No, Agni, I can’t take you with me. You promised.”
Horse theft is not uncommon in Ambarvadi, even though Agni will never accept anyone’s touch except mine—and occasionally Juhi’s. Agni whinnies irritably, but eventually she turns
