37CAVAS
The tunnel is as black as pitch, endless. It allows my thoughts to run away with me for the first time, registering Papa’s absence.
“Take me with you,” Papa had insisted. “Use me as a distraction while you bring Gul out of the palace.”
I never should have listened. Should have insisted he stay at home. Safe. Away from magi and the murderous fire of their atashbans. I suppress the voice that insists they would have come for us later, that they would have killed him anyway.
It’s my fault. All mine.
I release a sharp breath. It turns into a sob.
Gul places a hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off.
“Cavas,” she whispers, sounding equally tearful. “Cavas, I’m so sorry—”
I pause, spinning around, forcing her to crash into me. Though I can’t see her in the darkness, I can feel the scrape of her heavily embroidered blouse against my fingers, hear her rapid, uneven breaths.
“I wanted to run,” I spit out. “But Papa insisted you were in danger. That’s why we were even in that palace of horrors, why we weren’t halfway to Havanpur by now. But now Papa’s gone, and you and your friend are here, and I don’t even know why I’m still alive!”
My last sentence is a shout that echoes horribly in the silence. Ahead of us, I hear the other woman—Kali—stop in her tracks. I know she’s waiting, listening to our conversation in the dark.
I turn away from Gul, even though her answering sob cuts through me like a blade. Deep down, I know I’m being unfair. That it isn’t Gul’s fault Papa died. Papa wanted me to be here—to save her.
Use me as a distraction, he’d said.
Well, I did that, didn’t I? I think bitterly. I did that so well.
“It’s my fault,” I whisper.
If I’d only chosen not to listen to him, he’d still be alive.
The air smells of decay and rats.
I feel one race over my feet, and I jerk back, swallowing the vomit rising to my throat. A bloodbath and my father’s death didn’t make me throw up, but somehow a rat in the dark nearly does. Perhaps it’s the effect of the adrenaline wearing off, our run slowing down to a crawling trudge.
I’m tired, I think. So tired.
“I think we should rest here for a bit,” Kali finally says, speaking for the first time in the tunnel. “As far as I can tell, no one’s following us.”
Fingers snap in the silence. A small lightorb rises up from Kali’s hands and floats overhead, illuminating a tiny part of the dark tunnel. Kali pulls up the hem of her long tunic to reveal pockets in her flowing trousers. She unbuttons one and pulls out a small bundle … that turns out to contain food. A mix of dried yellow grams with cracked brown shells, moong dal, puffed rice, and fried sev—the sort that people carry on pilgrimages or other long journeys. She offers the bag to each of us in turn, and I take a handful, my stomach growling.
The mix is dry, and there is no water to wash it down. But it tastes good, and before I know it, my handful is gone. I close my eyes and lean back, pretending to ignore Gul and Kali’s conversation.
“Crossing the rekha was the most difficult part,” Kali is saying. “We didn’t know what to do—or how. But a little princess helped us. Dark eyes, beautiful clothes, haughty little voice.”
“Rajkumari Malti?” Gul says.
My eyes open of their own accord.
“Probably. She never told us her name,” Kali says. “She was following us—had been following me and Amira since we arrived, apparently. Tried to bury us in the ground at one point—I’ve never seen such strong earth magic before. Somehow we convinced her that we were on your side and that we wanted to help you.” Kali pulls out a little gold chain with an elephant hanging from it. “She gave us this token and said it would help us cross the rekha unharmed. Don’t know where she got it from.”
“She got it from her brother,” Gul says, frowning. “Rajkumar Amar. He designed the rekha.”
“The conjurer who tried to kill us?” Kali sounds more interested than angry. “You two seemed to have had some sort of … understanding.”
I hate how my every fiber is now focused into hearing Gul’s answer. But all she does is scowl at Kali and says, “Had is the key word here. He will likely be king now that his father and brothers…” She wraps her arms around herself, and I notice she’s shaking. Her lower lip is indented from being bitten.
“We’ll worry about that later,” Kali says abruptly. She turns to me. “A couple of days after Gul left for the palace, Juhi managed to get in touch with a living specter named Latif. She says you know him as well. That you’ll be able to summon him.”
My back stiffens of its own accord. “Why?”
“Juhi said our next destination would be a city that only the living specters know of. Latif has promised that the specters will guide us and show us the way.”
The green swarna feels heavy in my pocket. The thought of summoning Latif, who promised to get me and Papa out of the tenements, who got me into this mess in the first place, is too much to stomach in this moment.
“Does it have to be Latif?” Gul speaks my thoughts out loud. “You said the specters know the way, so it can be anyone, right?”
“Do you know more than one living specter?” Kali asks, astonished. “What are they like?”
Gul doesn’t answer. She simply watches me with her clear gold eyes, and I have the uncanny feeling that she understands the thoughts running through my head—exactly the way she did when I first told her about my plans to join the army. I try not to think about how the very same army has my signature now. How it’ll allow them to start
