“Are you ready for your walk, Rajkumari?” The tutor’s smile does not reach her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” the princess answers demurely.
Today, Malti is dressed in yellow and white, tiny daisies embellishing her blouse and ghagra and the ends of her two braids. Her eyes glint with mischief when she sees me, and I force myself to suppress a smile.
“Here.” The tutor hands me a yellow-and-white parasol. Her mouth looks like it has been perpetually sucking on sour grapes. “Make sure the rajkumari does not get a sunburn.”
She does not see Princess Malti’s scowl or hear the groan she makes later when we are left alone.
“I hate that thing,” she says, pointing to the parasol. “It doesn’t let me play!”
“We’ll have to take it with us to the garden, Rajkumari. Perhaps you can play under a shady tree?” I suggest. The last serving girl who let Malti play without a parasol had left Queen Amba’s room in blood and tears.
She grimaces, unconvinced.
I glance around uneasily before quietly saying: “I don’t want to get into trouble.” Not before I kill your father at least.
My stomach twists. I should not feel guilty, I tell myself. King Lohar is a murderer. A man responsible for the destruction of so many families, including my own. The royal family, from what I’ve seen of them, are little better.
Except Amar. And Malti.
Malti reminds me of the girl I was. The girl who had to learn what it’s like to lose a father. I push away the last thought. A pair of female guards discreetly flank the main entrance to the garden. The moment we step inside, one of them leaves her position and shadows us from about six feet away. Malti leans over to sniff an Ambari rose.
“Siya! Look here!”
As I crouch down, she whispers: “Do you want to lose her? The guard?”
I am careful to keep my body relaxed, even though my senses are suddenly on high alert. I lean over and sniff the flower lightly, my nose brushing its yellow-red petals. Losing the guard would allow me to look around the garden more closely, perhaps even spot where the rekha is.
“How?” My voice is little more than a breath, released softly in the air.
Malti grins. “Watch me.”
She lets go of my hand and begins twirling on glowing feet. I leap back to avoid being hit by the shower of gravel she kicks up, along with grass and dirt—so much of it and so high in the air that she’s completely obscured. And then, the dirt collapses, and Malti is gone, leaving behind a hole in the ground—one in which I instinctively knew she would never hide. The guard—a woman with gray streaks in her hair—races in my direction.
“You fool!” she says. “Why did you let go of the rajkumari’s hand? Now we’ll have to spend hours searching for her again!”
I say nothing, even though I suddenly spot Malti perched on a high tree branch, holding her finger to her lips.
“Have you lost your tongue?” the guard demands. She curses under her breath. “Check the west end. I will look in the east end and also outside, in case she’s slipped out again.”
Once the guard is out of sight, I look up at the tree and nod.
Malti lightly drops to the ground and grins.
“Nice trick,” I say. “Where did you learn that?”
“I’ve always been able to do it. It’s why Rani Ma makes me wear these.” She holds up a pair of simple ankle bands set with tiny polished gray pebbles. “They hold in my magic. Here—you can touch.”
I run a finger over the smooth links of metal, the mirror like polish on the pebbles. My mind slows the way it does on drinking a sleep draught, limbs tiring so rapidly that I’m forced to drop my hand and draw in a breath. Even a light touch makes me feel as if something vital within me is being drawn out, reined in. But Malti doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort.
She puts the anklets back on and smiles. “Can we play now?”
I lean the parasol against the tree. “Of course we can.”
Malti chooses hide-and-seek, a game I’ve always been terrible at when it comes to the seeking. I think I spot a glimpse of yellow in a tree, but on closer observation, note it’s only a small bird on a branch nearly level with my eyes. Instead of flying away, it tilts its head, staring at me with its black-black eyes.
“Aren’t you pretty?” I whisper.
It whistles, and I am tempted to believe it understands me. Birds are harder to establish a connection with than other animals, and unlike insects, they cannot be easily controlled with whisper magic.
“Do you know where Rajkumari Malti is?”
It whistles again and suddenly takes off, startling me. I’m about to follow when a voice from the other side of the hedge behind me stops me in my tracks.
“The general is in the Brim again, isn’t he?” Major Shayla asks, her voice careless, lazy. “I could take advantage of that, I suppose. Find that dirt-licking stable boy he’s so fond of…”
Another voice murmurs in response: a man.
All thoughts of the bird and the princess have evaporated from my head. As silently as possible, I head in the opposite direction, alongside the hedge, trying to keep track of the voices moving on the other side. A few moments later, I find myself before a doorway with a pointed arch carved into the hedge—apparently, the entrance to a maze. There are no guards in sight.
Tricky, Cavas called the palace and its magic. The kind that makes you slip up. The kind that betrays. Then again, when has my own magic not betrayed me? I step forward, brushing aside the strange ticklish sensation that comes with crossing the threshold—a disturbance in the air that vanishes the moment I step onto the
