Gul says nothing. A furrow appears in the space between her brows, making me wonder what she’s thinking.
“It wasn’t like that before.” I recall the story Papa once told me. “Before Raja Lohar took the throne, Rani Mahal was the seat of power. Some say that the old queen, Megha, wanted another heir—a daughter.”
Gul looks at me askance. “Rani Megha didn’t have children of her own.”
“That’s the official version. But there were also rumors that she did have a child. An illegitimate female heir. When Megha died, Raja Lohar set out to quash the rumors by drawing every bit of power to himself. This included changing the succession to male heirs only. It’s said that on her deathbed, Megha ranted and raved about a queen who would come, who would be the true ruler of Ambar. The palace vaids say that she had gone quite mad by then, of course.”
There are other rumors, too—about how the king poisoned his way to the throne, killing every potential threat, including Rani Megha herself. But I don’t say any of that out loud.
“Do you want to move out to the rain?” I ask, a few seconds before we get sprayed by more water and wind. We hasten to the shade of the stables, our feet leaving behind tracks in the earth that’s now softening to mud, and stand in silence. Gul stares again into the distance, her lower lip caught between her teeth. I am tempted to smooth away the indents with my thumb.
A faint whistle weaves through the wind in a tune that sounds like a children’s song—only it’s like no children’s song I’ve ever heard:
Rooh was born without a heart
Some say without a soul
But when he ripped his chest apart
He found a girl of gold
Gul frowns. “Did you hear…”
Her voice trails off, eyes locking with mine and widening. The wind shifts, spraying the roof—and us—with more fat drops of rain, but all I can see is how one of them pauses in the parting of her hair before sliding into it like a melting jewel. Behind me, a door opens, followed by a voice:
“Cavas, I need you in here,” Govind says. “The storm is making the horses anxious.” Even though I can’t see the stable master, I hear the disapproval in his voice. Feel it like a touch on my nape.
My hand, which was on its way to Gul’s face, curls into a fist. I draw it back.
“Go on, boy,” she says coldly with a swift glance behind me. “The stable master is looking for you.”
It’s the way she would behave if I were a stranger, exactly what I told her to do a little earlier today. I ignore the tightening of my heart, the bitterness I taste at the back of my throat. I give her a quick bow and walk toward Govind, who is waiting for me by the stable doors.
22CAVAS
The rain grows vicious once I step inside, spewing from the sky like rice grains from a torn gunnysack. The wind howls. Water hammers the wood. Some of the horses whose stalls are closest to the windows get spooked, and it takes a long time for us to calm them down.
“You’d think they’d be used to it by now,” a stable boy mutters, then jumps nearly a foot in the air when a flash of lightning splits the sky.
I’m filling a stallion’s trough with new hay when I hear a throat clearing behind me.
“Have you thought of getting bound, boy?” Govind asks.
Heat crawls up my neck. I don’t dare look into the stable master’s shrewd eyes.
“You should find a good non-magus mate for yourself,” he continues sternly when I say nothing. “At your age, I was already bound to my Kamala, and we were already on our way to becoming parents. A mated man is harder to distract from his work.”
I nod. What girl will bind with someone who earns ten rupees a month, whose money goes entirely into keeping his sick father alive?
“You’re a good boy,” Govind says, a sudden, surprising pronouncement that makes me look up, even though he’s frowning in the way he does before launching into a scold. “I don’t want you to lose your way at the sound of a pretty laugh.”
“I won’t.”
Even though my mind tells me it’s too late for that. Too late since the time I first clashed eyes, then lips, then words with Gul. Too late since Latif ensnared me in this strange web of sorcery and deceit. But Govind does not know my thoughts. He simply nods and tells me to put more buckets outside to fill with fresh water.
The rain falls through most of the day, tapering off only when night falls, Sunheri a waning crescent in the sky. I squelch across the grass, mud coating the soles of my thin leather shoes. My stomach rumbles—the palace provides lunch to day workers like myself, but no evening meal, and I’m already longing for the onion pakodas Ruhani Kaki makes on rainy days in the tenements, along with moon-shaped rotis that fluff up to the size of a man’s face.
I might have not noticed, perhaps not even cared about who else was around, if I hadn’t heard the whistling again:
The golden girl that Rooh found
She had a heart of stone
She caught his wrists and had him bound
She chewed him to the bone
This time the words are distinct, as clear as if they’d been whispered in my ear. A giggle breaks the haunting melody, and I spin in its direction, squinting against a sudden fog. Trailing the sound of the whistle around the back of the stables, I pause at the front of a small marble edifice near the queens’ palace, a pair of moons filigreed over its entrance.
Chand Mahal. A palace forbidden to everyone except Queen Amba and the king—a palace the queen was
