“So what?” My grip on the bundle containing my daggers tightens. “I’m not completely helpless. Why do you care what I do, anyway?”
He opens his mouth as if to say something, then shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
The words hang between us, making the fine hairs on my skin rise.
“If I have any hope of getting into the palace, I need to go back there.” I point toward the auctioneer’s stage. “It’s not like I have a choice.”
I see him register the words, his frown deepening. There’s a part of me that wonders for a brief moment if I should try to beg him for help again. But then I shake my head. It would be foolish to try—not after he rejected me so firmly the last time around.
“… twenty-five hundred!” the auctioneer shouts. “Going once, twice…”
“Shubhdivas,” I say curtly. I’m nearly halfway back to the stage when I hear Cavas shout a single word: “Wait!”
Don’t, I tell myself, even when I hear him jogging to catch up with me. Keep walking to that stage, Gul.
He blocks my way, forcing me to stop. “What if you do have a choice?”
We remain hidden until the auction ends—the girl in red going for three thousand swarnas to a minister’s household in the Walled City. For some reason, the name I gave Ghayur isn’t called out. I see Ghayur’s female companion look around before shaking her head.
“Many people change their minds before the auction,” Cavas tells me, as if sensing the question. “But more than that, Ghayur and Shirin are good people. They don’t magically bind anyone to a contract before the auction itself.”
“You know them?” I ask, surprised.
“I’ve been coming to the market for the past four years,” he says. “Once my father fell ill, the stable master, Govind, started bringing me in to handle some of the more aggressive horses. This year, he let me come here on my own to bid on a spare horse for the palace.”
He falls silent at that, which makes me ask: “Did you win the bid?”
“No. A zamindar from Amirgarh outbid me today.” He speaks the words with an ease that suggests the truth—or a practiced lie. “It doesn’t really matter. If the king really wanted a horse, he wouldn’t have let Govind or me handle the sale.”
Why does it matter if he’s lying? I ask myself. He saved me from selling myself. From possible abuse at the hands of some unknown minister for years on end. As ready as I was to be auctioned off, a part of me can’t help but feel grateful for his unexpected aid.
“Come,” he says quietly once most of the crowd has dispersed. “We still have a lot to do.”
The orange-and-yellow ghagra-choli we steal from one of the washing ghats in Ambarvadi has a blouse that’s too loose to be a properly fitted choli and a skirt that’s much longer than the kind of ghagra I usually wear. Thank the goddess for drawstrings.
“Are you going to have us both arrested after this?” I mutter to Cavas as we slip behind a thick peepul tree.
Cavas silences me with a finger pressed to his lips and gestures to a bare-chested launderer slamming a few soaking wet clothes against a rock several feet away from where we’re hidden. I’m not sure if the clothes we stole belong to his pile. They certainly aren’t washed, if the smell of sweat in the armpits is any indication. I wrinkle my nose.
Really, the only thing working in favor of this outfit is the king’s seal embroidered near the hem of the yellow ghagra in dyed blue thread, identifying the wearer as a palace worker. More specifically, a serving girl in Rani Mahal, or the queens’ palace, as Cavas explains.
“See that?” Cavas points out a pattern running throughout the dupatta: an alternating pair of moons. “When it catches the light, it instantly differentiates the queens’ serving girls from the laundresses or the cooks. Only the supervisors inside the palace wear saris.”
I glance down at the sari I wore early this morning, tied in its usual kaccha style. It’s not like I will miss it. I rarely wore saris outside the Sisterhood’s house, preferring the ease of a ghagra or a long Jwaliyan tunic and dupatta over leggings.
“Won’t someone notice the clothes are gone?” I ask Cavas.
“Probably.” He grimaces. “Which is why you should get dressed quickly so we can leave.”
Cavas keeps his back turned while I slip into the clothes and toss the matching yellow dupatta over my right shoulder in a practiced motion. A serving girl doesn’t have time for styles that require pins and fussy pleats, so I simply draw the flowing front end of the cloth across my chest and tuck it into the back of my ghagra. As a final touch, I pull the flowing back end of the dupatta over my head and around my ears, allowing the rest to hang behind my left shoulder.
“How do I look?” I ask him, and try not to blush when he scrutinizes me from head to toe.
“Acceptable,” he says curtly before turning away. We sneak back onto the street behind the ghats, passing three large bonfires where rubbish is being burnt.
“Wait,” Cavas says. He grabs hold of my gray novice sari and tosses it into one of the heaps. When he points to my necklace, though, I shake my head, pressing a hand protectively over the three silver beads.
“Not this.” Never this. I will fight anyone who tries to take my last tangible memory of Ma from me. Perhaps Cavas senses this from my expression, because he simply nods.
“You will need to have a false name there,” he says. “A false childhood, a false everything.”
“Siya. From Ambarvadi.” The rest will come later. When he reaches for the bundle holding my daggers, I pull away. “That’s fine.”
I expect Cavas to take us through the
