Unlike yesterday afternoon, which was an exception, I learn that the royal family rarely sits down for their meals together and that I can take my meals in my room if I choose. This would be a relief, except that I’m now constantly watched by an attendant over an otherwise delicious breakfast of sweet halwa, methi bajra puri, and fried onion kachoris. The attendant, a fragile-looking girl around my age, is overwhelming in her solicitousness. I pick up a bajra puri and crunch into the deep-fried bread to hide my frustration, the scent of spices and fenugreek rising in the air.
“I was wondering…” I begin, carefully watching the way my attendant’s slender fingers clutch at the front of the dupatta covering her hair. There’s an anxious look on her face, and it makes me soften despite my annoyance. “Does the kitchen have any rose sherbet? Or chaas?” I ask, naming two cool drinks that weren’t normally served during the Month of Tears. “If it’s too much trouble—”
“No! Of course not!” The girl’s face brightens. “It may take the cooks some time, but I’m sure they can make either of the drinks for you. Shall I bring both, Siya ji?”
“That would be wonderful.”
I wait until her footsteps have faded down the corridor and then slip out in the opposite direction: across the courtyard and out of the palace, toward the stables. I’m hoping Cavas will be there alone, even though I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to tell him. That Amar—and possibly someone else—knows about us? That there’s this vague sense of danger that has been haunting me ever since I won my freedom at the cage, or perhaps even earlier—when I heard Major Shayla talking about Cavas across the rekha.
A pair of voices argue in my head:
You owe Cavas no explanations. You are here to kill the king, and that is it.
But if he’s in danger, shouldn’t he know? Don’t you owe him a warning, at least?
I’m still debating this when Cavas steps out of the building, an empty bucket in hand. For a long moment, we both freeze in place, staring at each other. Every thought I’ve had disappears as he gazes at my freshly scrubbed and painted face. He frowns when he sees what I’m wearing: a blue choli and matching ghagra intricately embroidered with flowers and leaping silver gazelles. It’s one of the many outfits the crown prince had delivered to my room last night. The blouse is so snug that it’s nearly suffocating, tied in crisscross strings at the back, the sleeves ending at the elbows—as is the fashion these days. My attendant found me odd for wanting to dress myself, even though she marked it up to shyness this time around. She refused to let me do my own hair, and I know it’s only a matter of time before someone sees my birthmark, before this whole charade blows up in my face.
But right now, I can think of only Cavas, the way his brown eyes narrow at the sight of my borrowed finery, the taut set of his jaw. He gives me a stiff bow. “Siya ji. How may I be of service?”
I hate the formality of his voice, the cool, subservient tone that he usually reserves for the royal family. I am not bound to the crown prince yet, I want to tell him. And I never will be. But I bite back the words. We might be watched, perhaps even be listened to, right in this moment. But it may be my only chance to warn him. “Cavas, I need to talk to you. It’s important—”
Before I can finish, a shout goes up behind me: “Siya ji! Siya ji!” Feet pound the earth, followed by the sound of my attendant’s gasps. “I was looking everywhere for you! Please don’t leave the palace unattended again! You’ll get into so much trouble!”
“Can it wait?” I ask impatiently. “I need to—”
“It can’t,” she interrupts, even more anxious than before. “Rani Amba wants you. Immediately.”
My heart sinks. Whatever my new position in the palace, even I can’t dare evade a summons like that.
“Shubhdivas, Siya ji.” Cavas’s deep voice is filled with a warmth that doesn’t reach his eyes. I want to tell him to stop. To wait. But all I can do is listen to my attendant’s reprimands and watch helplessly as he walks away, a lonely figure in white carrying a bucket to the trough.
My attendant forces me to put on new shoes when we enter Rani Mahal—“Your old ones are muddied from being outside!”—and then escorts me directly to the gold room, where I find the three queens seated next to one another, straight-backed and unsmiling, on red velvet cushions.
“There you are, Siya.” Queen Amba’s voice is cool, her eyes hard and assessing as they go over my attire. I force myself to stand straight and not wince. Shortly afterward, Amba nods; I must have passed the inspection. “I believe everyone is now here, Farishta—every woman of childbearing age, as your, er, guests requested.”
I wonder if I’m supposed to remain standing, but then my attendant ushers me to a cushion on the side, a little away from the queens. I settle down, doing my best to adjust the daggers strapped to my thighs without drawing attention to myself. Farishta murmurs something to a serving girl standing quietly beside her. The girl leaves the room and then reappears a few moments later, followed by a pair of bald figures. Sadhvis, I realize. Holy women garbed in loose brown garments, their faces smeared with vertical lines of blue-gray ash. They pause a couple of feet from us and bow low, their voices rising and falling in perfect rhythm:
“Our greetings to the queens and the future crown princess.”
A shock goes through me as I get a closer look at them, and for a moment, I wonder if I’m wearing shackles
