But last night, before I went to bed, the green swarna in my pocket grew warm. After checking to make sure Papa was already asleep, I slipped outside our house and found Latif waiting for me.
“Bring her to the palace,” Latif said. “That girl you saw this morning.”
“Why?” I demanded. “What does she have to do with you?”
“What she has to do with me is not important. What she has to do with you is. It’s exactly why I told you to remember what she looks like.”
I vehemently shook my head. “No amount of swarnas will entice me this time.”
“I’m not offering swarnas. I’m offering you a way out of these tenements. For good. Perhaps as early as the end of this month.”
A long silence. “That’s impossible. General Tahmasp said the only way to get out was to—”
“Join the army, isn’t it?” Latif shrugged. “He isn’t exactly wrong. You could join. Stay a few years. If you don’t break your back loadbearing, the army may let you fight. Perhaps they’ll make you a captain. Even give you a house. But a simple perhaps isn’t enough—and you know it.”
“You were spying on me?” I asked furiously.
“I don’t need to, boy. The general makes the same pitch to every potential non-magus recruit every year. He’s been doing it for two decades.”
“Well, I don’t see what you can do that the commander of the armies can’t!”
“I have my ways. You’ll have to trust me.”
I don’t, I wanted to say. Govind implied that I shouldn’t trust Latif completely—and I knew he was right. But I thought of Papa sleeping inside. What if Latif can get us out? Will saying no mean that I’m throwing away my father’s last chance of surviving the Fever? Of getting cured?
“What must I do?” I found myself asking Latif.
“Get the girl into the palace, and I’ll get you out of there as well.”
“But how do I find her? I don’t even know where she lives!”
“Don’t worry. You’ll know soon enough.”
The message came in the midst of saddling one of the royal horses this morning, when Govind told me to drop everything and go to the flesh market to bid on a horse.
“Our usual bidder fell ill this morning. Food poisoning,” Govind said, frowning. “You go instead, Cavas. You’ve been to the market before. You know how it works.”
I did not need to talk to Latif to know that he had something to do with the bidder’s sudden illness.
Now I steal another quick glance at Gul. She is not Bahar. If Bahar were a gentle breeze, then Gul is a hurricane, a storm constantly brewing in her glorious eyes. I’m quite sure that if I hadn’t been there to stop her, she would have sold herself at the flesh market without thinking once of the consequences.
So why did I tell her she reminded me of Bahar?
Gul squints against the morning sun now, as if in deep thought. She’s had the same expression ever since she tripped and fell and I laughed at her and she refused to be helped up. I wonder now if I should apologize and then shrug it off. She needs to develop thicker skin. Or a better sense of humor. There’s a natural haughtiness in her disposition—meant for queening over people or kingdoms. Or maybe it’s not haughtiness at all. Maybe she’s just shy.
I snort at the last thought. She glances at me, her frown deepening into a scowl. Well, she isn’t wrong about whom I’m laughing at. I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t want her sold—to anyone. Unlike non-magi, who are born powerless, indentured magi are bound to their buyers by a deadly magical contract, unable to use any of their own powers to protect themselves, forced to submit to their buyers’ every whim. As the old Vani saying goes: None more wretched than the non-magus, save the indentured. It’s the sort of life I wouldn’t wish on an enemy.
I glance at her once more. No, Gul isn’t my enemy. What she is, however, is a question I won’t be answering anytime soon.
The back roads leading up to the palace are rough and unpaved. Gul, to my surprise, does not complain, even when we navigate a patch of sharp stones, one catching the hem of her too-long ghagra, nearly tearing it. She doesn’t allow me to carry her bundle for her, either.
“Don’t trust me?” I ask.
She scowls and pulls up the cotton dupatta that keeps slipping off her head. “And give you an opportunity to say that I’m another magus who can’t carry her own burdens?”
It is exactly what I would say, but I refuse to admit this. “Burdens lessen when they are shared.”
“I am not as weak as you think.”
We both walk in silence for a long time after that.
“Weakness is not always a terrible thing,” I tell her finally. “It can be used as a shield to hide your true strength.”
I can tell she doesn’t believe me, even though she says nothing in response. It makes me feel … disappointed. A part of me wants her to argue back and tell me I’m wrong, do anything to break this strange tension simmering between the two of us.
I focus on the path ahead,
