“Queen’s curses, how skinny! She’s not going to last!”
I ignore them and focus on the food itself: a spicy affair of smooth, creamy kadhi and khichdi that tastes as delectable as it looks, each yellow grain of rice melting in my mouth. I’m not here to make friends, and soon enough the conversation drifts from me to other happenings at the palace.
“You were at the raj darbar today, Nargis. What happened?”
I grow still at the words raj darbar. The king’s court in Raj Mahal. I shift around, trying not to seem as if I’m eavesdropping.
“There was a peri there today,” a girl, probably Nargis, replies. Her voice is clear and carrying; she knows she has an audience, and she likes it. “He sang like a dream! So handsome, too. All of us, including the two younger queens, kept drooling over him! Rani Amba was most displeased at our behavior. She called us undignified.”
The girls laugh, sounding delighted.
“Did he have wings?” someone asks eagerly. “The peri.”
“Did he fight in the cage?” someone else adds.
“Of course he didn’t fight in the cage!” Nargis scoffs at the last question. “You know the spectacles take place only once toward the middle of every month, Sunaina. And he didn’t have wings, either. Remember how the peri were when they had wings? They attacked us all with that beast of a Pashu king during the Battle of the Desert. No, they’re better off clipped, I say.”
“I wish I could go to court,” one of the girls says. “If only to see all the creatures the raja brings in from the flesh market. And the spectacles in the cage.”
“I still remember last month’s spectacle,” Nargis says gleefully. “Raja Lohar had brought in five prizefighters from the flesh market and pit them all against an armored leopard. The beast just ripped them apart. If you want to see something like that, you need to get on your rani’s good side. That’s the only way for girls like us to attend the king’s court or even see what Raj Mahal looks like! That, or serve the Scorpion.”
No one laughs this time.
“I hear the Scorpion prefers boys serving her,” someone else says. “I saw her eyeing that dirt licker from the stables the other day. What’s his name? Cavas?”
The morsel of rice and gravy turns sour in my mouth. Anger, sudden and sharp, spikes through me. I breathe deeply, struggle to hold it in.
“Better him than us,” another girl says.
When lunch ends a moment later, a shadow falls over my plate. A girl I don’t know scowls at me. “Yukta Didi wants you back in the green room. You still have a lot to do.”
Having a lot to do seems to be true, because once I return to the green room, Yukta Didi hands me a broom and tells me to get to work before shutting the door behind her. Around the time my arms feel like they’re about to fall off, she reenters to inspect my work. She glances around the room, frowning at the polished table, the shining mirror, and the gleaming wooden floor. “I suppose this will do for now. Come on. The toilets need to be cleaned as well.”
A gibbous Sunheri glows in the sky when I finally return to my new quarters, sweat and goddess knows what else sticking to me. Even washing afterward with strong lye and honeyweed soap doesn’t do much to improve the smell. I expect one or more of the nine girls I share the room with to comment on this, but no one seems to notice my reappearance. The novelty of taunting the new serving girl must have worn off.
Unlike the others, who fall asleep, one by one, lulled by the relative darkness of the room, I remain awake, my mind turning over the various ways and means I can sneak outside to get my daggers. A part of me knows it’s foolish to hope that they’re still exactly where I hid them—that they haven’t been found already.
You wouldn’t be here if they were, I reassure myself. After that altercation with the princes, it wouldn’t be hard to deduce that I was the one who brought the weapons in. I wouldn’t even need a truth seeker in the vicinity to get convicted. The spiderweb on the wall next to my cot glistens in the dim light.
I wait a moment more before shifting, my bare feet lightly pressing the floor. Unlike the royals, serving girls don’t wear anklets, only simple jootis made of tough brown leather. Tonight, I leave the shoes behind as well and slip out, the door making no sound when I pull it shut. The corridors are dark, lit intermittently by a fanas or two. To get out, I know I must make my way to the main courtyard and find the gate leading to the marbled walkway Cavas pulled me away from only this morning.
Cavas. It feels as if I haven’t seen him for years, even though it has been only half a day. I think once again of what I heard the girls saying about him and Major Shayla before pushing the thought away. I can’t afford to be distracted. Not when I’m so close to avenging my parents.
Spurred by that last thought, I force myself to think, recalling every scrap of conversation I heard today, trying to match it to what I already know about the layout of the palace. Two ramps led into the servants’ quarters, one of which went to the lobby of the queens’ apartments. Where the other ramp goes, I’m not sure. But I know I’ll have to take a chance and find out. Heading farther down the long passageway, I finally reach a dead end. I’m about to head back when a mouse scampers across my foot, nearly making my heart stop.
Turning toward the source of the squeaks, I see the small creature scramble up over stone, lit by a faint light from somewhere above. The ramp here isn’t
