“Thirteen!” I spit out. “I will be fourteen in two months!”
Something shifts within the black depths of the woman’s eyes, and for a second, I wonder if I’ve amused her.
“Truth.” Kali laughs softly when I flinch. “She has seen thirteen moons. Still a baby, though. Probably just broke her blood barrier.”
I feel my face grow hot. I am small for my age; it’s something my mother always lamented when she looked at me, worrying over my narrow chest and my narrow hips, wondering if I would ever be strong enough to bear children. “I do not want children,” I told her fiercely back then and never understood the weight that settled over her at my response.
“She’s old enough,” Amira says. Her heart beats like a war drum against my back. Her fingers dig into my shoulders through the cloth of my tunic. I am now beginning to regret the bites I took out of her.
“So you’re going to hand me off to the thanedars, then.”
The woman tilts her head to the side. “What makes you say that, girl? Why would we do such a thing?”
“To get a hundred swarnas. To gain favor with Raja Lohar.” The latter is even more valuable than a hundred gold coins. If Ambar is our world, then King Lohar is its god, able to close shops, burn villages, and drain the most powerful magi of their powers with a snap of his fingers. “Besides, the penalty of hiding someone like me is—”
“We know what the penalty is,” the woman interrupts. “Amira, release her.”
“But, Didi—”
“Do it.”
Amira drops her hand to the side and suddenly, shockingly, I find myself free. I collapse to the ground, air burning my windpipe, and wonder if she was planning to choke me to death.
“You can go,” the woman tells me dismissively. “But don’t expect to survive. The food you’ve been filching from the zamindar’s kitchen will go unnoticed for only so long.”
I no longer bother wondering how she knows this. Perhaps she, too, can read minds like the truth seeker. Or perhaps she simply possesses the one thing that Papa said does not seem to exist among many of our kind: common sense.
“I can take care of myself,” I say defiantly.
“What are you going to do?” Amira asks. “Piss again when the Sky Warriors capture you?”
She is close, and I am angry enough to lose my mind with that comment. Like a bull, I charge, ramming my head right into her belly. She grunts but does not fall—probably used to worse blows than mine—but I can tell I have taken her by surprise.
A pair of slender fingers wrap around my arm like a band of newly forged iron. They burn into my skin, and I almost faint from the pain of the sensation. Another hand muffles the scream that emerges from my mouth. In the background, I hear Agni’s furious neighs, the sound of her hooves clomping the dirt as she struggles against her bonds, trying to get to me.
“… control that horse…”
The woman’s black eyes glow red. Her words stifle the air, make breathing difficult. As I gulp a lungful, my head grows light. No. No, I can’t faint now!
To remain conscious, I try to focus on something concrete. For some strange reason, a tiny wooden figure pops up in my mind: the statue of the sky goddess at our prayer altar at home. I have not prayed to the goddess in three years, but now I find myself doing so out of desperation: Goddess of the sky and the air, let your hand guide mine …
The Samudra woman’s shouts are followed by the sound of Agni’s terrified neighs. Abandoning all attempts at proper prayer, I unleash my fury at the silent sky goddess. You abandoned my parents when they needed you. You abandoned me. But Agni is innocent. She does not deserve to be ensnared in this fight. If you really do exist, Sky Goddess, do something. Help Agni.
The birthmark on my arm begins to burn. In my mind, the goddess’s eyes glow green, and I am suddenly split in two, observing the scene from two vantage points: my own and Agni’s.
Even though I am still being restrained by Amira, I feel the bind of the rope around Agni’s mouth and head, feel the way her strength is muzzled by the spells woven into it. The air she breathes pricks my insides like ice. Danger, I hear her saying over and over. The little girl is in danger.
I’m all right, I try to tell Agni. I’m all right, Agni, I promise.
Another lungful of air, and suddenly I’m Gul again—only Gul—struggling against Amira, returned to my body. Whole again, I think, until the pain of the woman’s spell makes Agni double over, combines it with my own.
My vision clouds over. The world turns black.
When I come to, a pair of gray eyes look worriedly at me. “I’m sorry,” Kali says. “I only meant to stop you from hitting Amira, I swear. The spell I used must have been too strong.”
Kali reaches out with a hand again, but I crawl back against the wall. “Don’t touch me.” I force myself to my feet. I now can sense that Kali’s powers do not work if she’s not touching me. I do not need her probing the layers of my mind, discovering that I somehow momentarily slid into Agni’s.
Whispering. That’s what they call this kind of magic, where humans can telepathically communicate with animals. Before the Great War, whispering was a rare magic prized by many, including the Ambari royals. But as time went on and wild animals were domesticated, whispering became less and less important. Animal handling is now delegated entirely to non-magi. There are hardly any whisperers left in Ambar, most having gone to other kingdoms or to lands beyond the Yellow Sea.
For years, I’ve dreamed of discovering my own magic; as a child, I even prayed for it to the sky goddess. I don’t understand why the goddess
