“How lovely you are.” It’s Kali, reaching out to touch Agni with a hand. Not a chance. Agni snaps her teeth together, forcing Kali to jerk back.
“Strange. Horses usually aren’t this afraid of me.”
“Leave the animal alone.” The other girl—Amira—says with a yawn.
“She’s acting like she’s protecting someone. Is there a foal?”
“Let me see.” It’s the woman again. From the shadows, I can see her face quite clearly: high cheekbones, slender lips, shrewd eyes that are as black as the sky outside the stable window. She must be least forty years old.
She begins murmuring words in an incomprehensible language that makes me think of sand under my feet and wind in my hair. She waves a hand over Agni’s head, snapping her fingers once, releasing fine sparks that glow and smell of sandalwood. I feel the tension in the air dissipate. And sure enough, Agni’s ears emerge from the back of her head. She dips her head into the feeding trough, nibbling a bit of the hay.
The woman wipes her forehead with the edge of her sari. “Amira, get me some light, will you?” There’s a soft sound not unlike marbles rolling across the floor.
“You’re scrying with your shells? Again?” Amira places the lantern on a hook near Agni’s stall, casting light upon the shadows. I hold my breath, doing my best to blend in. If I had a choice, I would turn invisible. But invisibility is a difficult spell for even the most advanced magi, and I can barely produce a spark. My best hope, I know now, is to slide against the wall toward the girl-size gap behind the wooden partition that splits Agni’s stall from the one I normally sleep in. As the woman and Amira argue with one another, I begin inching away from my hiding place.
“Didi, do you think it’s wise to do a reading now?” Amira is saying.
Didi. The Common Tongue word for “elder sister” gives me pause. The Samudra woman and Amira look nothing alike, are perhaps not even related by blood. But you wouldn’t know that from the worry and frustration lacing Amira’s voice.
“You know how those shells affect you,” she tells the woman. “They misled us today, taking us to that awful moneylender all the way near the edge of the desert. He would have turned us in to the thanedars if I hadn’t tied him up!”
“The shells never lie, Amira.” The woman’s voice, barely louder than a breath, is the only indicator of her exhaustion, of the toll her magic took on her. “That there are indications of Sky Warriors being here confirms this. Someone in this village needed our help. Perhaps they still need our help. The only way to know is by doing another reading.”
“But, Didi—”
I’m nearly inside the next stall, so close to freedom that I don’t hear the way Amira’s voice abruptly cuts off or the shift of her feet as she lunges at me in the darkness, her arm winding around my neck.
“By Zaal!” she screams when I sink my teeth into her skin. But she does not let go. Her arm tightens its grip, so hard that for a moment my vision blurs. In the background, I hear Agni’s loud neighs, the sound of her hooves hammering the earth. The stall’s wooden beams shudder.
“Immobilize her!” the woman shouts.
“I can’t!” Amira’s hands are hot with magic. But the birthmark on my arm burns hotter, sends a shock through her body. “Aaah! It … it doesn’t seem to be working.”
I kick backward, the sudden movement nearly making Amira stumble. A hard hand winds through my tangled hair and tugs sharply. It forces me to loosen my teeth and, in the process, feel cold steel pressed sharp against my throat.
“Another sound and you will no longer have a voice.” I only have to look into the Samudra woman’s cold eyes to know she means every word. “Understand?”
As if I didn’t get the point already, the blade at my throat stings. I take a deep breath and force myself to go limp. My unreliable magic may have protected me from Amira’s spell, but it will not shield my throat against a dagger.
From the corner of the stable, a horse whinnies. “Someone’s outside,” Amira mutters.
The blade bites my skin once more: a warning.
Kali is already at the stable door, speaking to someone. “No … no, it’s all right. One of our horses got spooked by something moving outside. Thank you for your concern. Please tell the zamindar that all is well. Anandpranam.”
Once the door is firmly shut, the woman turns to face me again. Her nose wrinkles, and suddenly I’m very aware of the sour smell coming off me. But then her gaze falls on my right arm, bared to the cool night air from my scuffle with Amira. She pushes aside the torn sleeve of my tunic and stares at my birthmark for a long time.
“What’s your name?”
3GUL
“Havovi!”
I blurt out the first name that comes to mind, belonging to a girl my cousin Pesi was smitten with.
A finger runs lightly down my cheek. “She’s lying. You have both succeeded in terrifying the poor thing.” There’s a hint of sympathy in Kali’s wide gray eyes. Up close, I realize that she’s younger than I first thought—perhaps only sixteen or seventeen years old.
“It’s true! I’m Havovi!”
“Silence.” The woman’s knife does not move from my throat. “Kali’s gift is seeking out truths, scouring them for lies.”
I bite my tongue. So Kali is a truth seeker. I’d seen one before, in a village square, accompanying a thanedar to interrogate a prisoner in the constabulary. But I’d never met one in person.
“Don’t worry, girl. I will not force you to tell me your real name. It’s not important to me in either case,” the woman continues. “Though I must give you some credit for having the guts to lie with a dagger pressed to your throat. For a girl who has barely seen twelve blue moons in her life,
