Carefully, I turn the key and leap back as the doors swing open, bats rushing out in a flurry of brown fur and leathery wings. They swing left first, crashing into a vase, toppling it to the floor.
“This way!” I shout, pointing to the window. “By the goddess, this way! No, no! You promised!”
A bat swoops down at Yukta Didi, who closes her eyes and screams, stabbing uselessly at the air with her poker. I swear I can hear the bat cackling. She wants to kill us, does she? the bat says. She can’t even look at us. Sorry, girl. I couldn’t resist.
With a parting screech, the bats finally fly out the window, black shadows swirling like dried leaves caught up in the wind.
“They’re gone,” I say, watching them disappear. “Yukta Didi? They’re gone. You can open your eyes now.”
One eye opens, then another. “They’re gone? For certain.”
I can’t help but smile. “For certain.”
“Well, then.” Yukta Didi rises to her feet, cool dignity back in place. “Get to work, girl. That silver mirror needs polishing.”
I suppress a sigh. What did I expect? A pat on the back? A well done?
It doesn’t take long for Yukta Didi to realize I’m hopeless at household spells, and it makes her irritable. “You should have told me that before. Wait.” She exits the room and reappears a few moments later with a bucket and a rag in hand. She tosses the rag at me. “Use this. And make sure you squeeze out the tamarind juice properly or you’ll stain the floor.”
“Yes, Yukta Didi.”
The work is tedious, smelly, and unforgiving, and soon I’m sweating despite the open window. It’s a waste of time when I could be doing something else—like trying to find a way into Raj Mahal. But that is next to impossible—especially with Yukta Didi still present, eyeing me like a predatory bird.
“Your polishing is satisfactory,” she says now. “And you aren’t afraid of hard work. That’s a good thing. So many girls these days think honest labor is beneath them. They absolutely refuse to do anything without the aid of magic.”
I dip the rag back into the bucket and squeeze hard. “My, uh, old mistress taught me that there is no shame in working without magic. Even if you are a magus.”
I glance into the mirror, spot the older woman’s approving nod. “That is what my old mistress, Rani Megha, taught me as well.”
I wonder if she thought the same way when she decided to tax the lives out of the non-magi and brand them traitors, I think. Out loud, I say: “You worked under Rani Megha? Goddess! What was that like?”
I must sound appropriately awed, because Yukta Didi gives me a small smile—the first she’s directed my way. “Megha was a brilliant rani and an exacting mistress. We were lucky to serve her, and we knew it. Well, some of us did. There were other girls who wanted more. A lot more than they deserved.”
The words send a chill down my spine. “What more could they possibly want than to serve their rani?” The question is innocent—too innocent perhaps for the likes of me. But I keep my eyes wide and open, and soon the suspicion drains from Yukta Didi’s face.
“When you become a serving girl, you cannot bind with anyone; you are bound to the palace. It’s a hard undertaking for anyone—and many don’t realize how hard until they come here. You seem like a good girl, Siya, so let me warn you from the beginning—don’t be foolish. The girl you replaced—her name was also Siya. She got caught last week with one of the serving boys in the garden. Major Shayla nearly skinned them both alive.”
“Aah!” I bite back a scream, stifling it to a gasp. Blood trickles down my finger, cut by a part of the mirror that my hand slipped up against when I heard the name of the woman who murdered my parents. The taste of copper floods my tongue.
“Queen’s curses! Did you get blood on the floor?”
“No.” I force myself to focus on the mirror again. “Major Shayla. Who is she?”
“Someone you don’t want to come up against if you can help it. They call her the Scorpion in the Sky Warriors’ barracks. She’s one of the few women apart from the queens who can move freely between both palaces. Keep your head down if you see her. With the Scorpion around, you’re better off invisible.”
“Why do they call her the Scorpion?”
“Because you never know when she’ll sting.”
Juhi would say that the gods had played a role in arranging this. For the other Siya to be sacked and Cavas’s sudden appearance at the flesh market. The altercation with Amba’s sons. For the woman who murdered my parents to be so close. I should feel happy—everything seems to be falling in line with my plans—but unease churns my gut. Once again, I have the sensation of being watched, of being listened to.
In the distance, a gong goes off. “That’s the servants’ lunch bell,” Yukta Didi informs me. “It always goes off after the queens finish eating. Leave now or you won’t get any food until midnight. The work will still be waiting for you.”
The serving girls eat in the kitchen courtyard—an open-air space bordered by a wall of pink stone at one end and a water basin to wash utensils at the other. A woman stands next to a table stacked with brass plates at one end and two steaming vats at another. She gives me the same up-and-down look Yukta Didi did earlier, but her brown eyes are kind, and the portion she serves me is the same as the others’.
I find a spot by the water basin, a brief distance from where a group of other girls are already settled. I feel the others glance as I pass them, hear their whispers even after I crouch on the floor behind them.
“That’s the new
