“You will be all right?” she inquired.
I nodded. “I have Ravindra’s bells to warn me, and the twilight to protect me.”
“Very well, then.” Amrita smiled. “I hope your sleep is peaceful.”
I smiled back at her. “I daresay it will be.”
For a mercy, it was. After I had helped Amrita dress and seen her safely into the custody of her guardsmen, I returned to my bed, which smelled of flowers, spices, and love-making. The bright lady was pleased, and so was I. I didn’t think Amrita understood how great a gift she had given me. It wasn’t just that she had quenched the fire of yearning that Kamadeva’s diamond had ignited in me. I was Naamah’s child, and I needed love and aye, pleasure, almost as much as food and water.
Until tonight, I hadn’t known how starved I was.
Tomorrow, I thought, I would consult my diadh-anam and pray to every god I knew that I could figure out what to do about Bao, the bedamned Jagrati, and Kamadeva’s bedamned diamond.
Tonight, I would sleep and be grateful for the profound gift I had been given.
And so I did, deep and dreamless, wrapped in the lingering grace of Naamah’s approval….. until I awoke in the small hours of the night with my diadh-anam blazing like wildfire, and a shadowy figure in the bedchamber with me, the length of a staff strapped across its back.
I sat up and stared. “Bao?”
SIXTY-FOUR
Shh!” In the space of a heartbeat, the shadowy figure crossed the room and fell upon me, pinning me to the bed and clamping one callused hand over my mouth, setting the point of a dagger at my throat.
Bao.
It was Bao.
I stared up at him, scared and bewildered. I should have known. I should have felt him coming; but my awareness had been too entangled, first by Kamadeva’s diamond, then by Amrita’s loving kindness and Naamah’s grace.
“I need to know!” Bao hissed at me, his eyes wild and shimmering, his expression desperate. “Who are you? What are you? Why are you here?” He prodded the hollow of my throat with the tip of his dagger. “What happened to Moirin?”
I tried to reply, but his hand muffled my words.
Realizing it, he frowned. “Promise you won’t scream?” The dagger prodded me again in warning.
I nodded.
Bao removed his hand from my mouth. “Tell me.”
I took a deep breath, and then another. “Gods bedamned, Bao!” I hissed back at him. “It’s me! And if you will not believe the proof of your eyes and the proof of my diadh-anam inside you, I do not know what else to say! I’ve spent the last year of my life following you halfway around the world, while you’ve been marrying Tatar princesses whose fathers betrayed us both, and falling under the spell of the bedamned Spider Queen, and do you know what? I’m very, very tired of it, you stupid, stubborn boy!”
He blinked. “Moirin?”
“Yes!”
Bao stood, swaying a little. “How…..?”
I sat up and kindled a lamp. “I told you, it was the Vralian priests. They had chains that bound my magic. It took me a long time to escape.”
His throat worked. “I thought…..”
“I know,” I said softly. “But it was a lie. It was always a lie. I’m here. It’s me. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh.” Bao glanced around, still swaying; and I realized there was something wrong with him beyond the influence of Kamadeva’s diamond. He blinked at me again. “Moirin, why does it smell of sex in here?”
And then he collapsed, sparing me the need for a reply.
Much of what passed immediately afterward is blurred in my memory. I know I went to the door of my bedchamber, rattling Ravindra’s warning bells and summoning guards. The palace roused quickly, already on high alert. A pair of guards shifted Bao from the floor of my chamber into my bed.
He was weak, sweating, and racked with tremors.
Nonetheless, Hasan Dar insisted on questioning him. “Did you come as one of Tarik Khaga’s assassins?” he asked in a hard voice. “Did you come to kill her highness the Rani Amrita Sukhyhim?”
“No.” Bao shook his head, lolling it from side to side. “No, I said I would, but it was a lie. I do not wish your Rani or anyone else dead. I only wanted to find out about Moirin.”
“How did you gain entrance to the palace and Lady Moirin’s chambers?” Hasan Dar demanded.
“Vaulted the wall.” Bao made a listless gesture in the direction of my balcony. “Climbed a tree in the garden, tied a rope, swung, and jumped there.”
“He trained as an acrobat for many years,” I murmured.
Bao nodded, closing his eyes and shuddering. It must have taken almost all of his flagging strength to accomplish the feat.
I could feel his diadh-anam inside him, and it was stronger and clearer than it had been, calling to mine. Whatever ailed him, it was an affliction of the body, not the spirit. I felt at his brow. Despite the sheen of sweat, his skin didn’t feel fever-hot. “Are you ill?” I asked him. “Is it the mountain-sickness?”
“No.” He gave another lolling shake of his head. “Opium.”
“Opium causes this?” I was unsure. “Why were you smoking opium?”
Bao opened his eyes and grimaced at me. “To dull the pain of thinking you were dead, Moirin! They grow it in Kurugiri; it’s everywhere. But I stopped after seeing you in the meadow, because I had to know.”
“Enough!” Hasan Dar caught Bao by the front of his tunic, yanking him partially upright. “If that’s what ails you, you’ll live,” he said grimly. “You’ll want to die for a few days, but you’ll live. Tell me, are there other assassins coming?” He gave Bao a shake. “Tell me everything you know!”
I winced, but I couldn’t blame him. My lady Amrita’s life was at stake, and mayhap Ravindra’s, too. “Please, tell him anything that might help, Bao,” I said. “Trust me, you definitely don’t want the Rani Amrita’s death on your conscience.”
“What is it with you and royal ladies?” he complained, squinting at me. I had the urge to shake him myself, but Hasan Dar did it for me. “All right, all right! One moment! It is not urgent yet.” Bao gestured feebly toward the north. “They will wait a few days until they’re sure I failed, then they will send another. Not one you expect. Divyesh Patel is his name, and he will come by day. His weapon is poison.”
Hasan Dar lowered him. “You’re sure?”
Bao managed to nod. “Put a guard on your stores now. Alert your kitchen staff. Don’t let them admit any strangers, don’t let them serve any food or drink that hasn’t been under lock and key. Sooner or later, Divyesh will approach one of them.”
“Oh, I will do better than that!” Hasan Dar looked thunderous. “I will personally taste every dish that is prepared for their highnesses until this poisoner is caught.”
“No, no, my friend.” Amrita had entered the room unannounced, attended by several more guards. She looked ashen, but resolved. “I brought this danger on myself, and I will not allow you to risk yourself. I will taste my own dishes, and Ravindra’s, too.”
“Highness—” her commander protested.
She raised one hand, silencing him. Reluctantly, he acquiesced with a bow. She frowned at Bao. “It is the opium-sickness that ails him?”
“So he says,” I replied.
Amrita glanced sidelong at me, raising her brows. “I take it you did not sense his presence as he approached this time.”
I shook my head. “No. Kamadeva’s diamond, and….. well.” I could not say aloud that the overwhelming relief of Naamah’s grace had distracted me even from the approach of my own divided diadh-anam, but it had. “No, my lady, I did not.”
Her mouth quirked. “I will send for the physician, eh? Perhaps there is something that may help your Bao through the worst of the pangs.”
“That would be good,” Bao said through gritted teeth, shivering violently. “Thank you, highness.”
Roused from sleep, the bleary-eyed physician came to examine Bao and confirmed it was opium-sickness. “Very little will help, I fear,” he said apologetically. “Give him peppermint tea to soothe his stomach when the vomiting begins. Beyond that…..” He shrugged. “Your system must cleanse itself, young man. How long has it been since last you took opium?”
“Two days,” Bao muttered. “I think.”
The physician patted his shoulder helpfully. “Expect to feel like dying for a few more, then. But it will pass.”
After ordering a second bed brought into my chamber, as well as clean linen and sleeping attire for Bao, who was sweating through his woolen tunic and breeches, the Rani Amrita returned to the hidden room with her escort of guards.
She took me aside, first. “I must admit, I feel a bit foolish, Moirin,” she murmured. “If you had known your Bao was coming, I would not have made the offer I did, nor would you have accepted it, I think.”
“Then I am glad I did not know,” I said honestly.
“You do not mean that!” Amrita admonished me. I smiled at her. She tilted her head and reconsidered, flushing slightly, not entirely displeased. “Or….. perhaps you do, eh?”
I touched her cheek and stroked it gently, letting my fingertips linger against her skin. “Out of the kindness of your heart, you gave me a very great gift, my lady, and Naamah’s blessing is on you because of it. I hope you are not sorry for it.”
She shook her head. “Not sorry, no.”
I smiled again. “Well, then. Nor am I.”
This time, Amrita smiled back at me, looking tired and worn and beautiful. “You are more than a little bit of a bad girl, Moirin. Go and tend to your bad boy. I think you must deserve one another.”
When she had gone, I turned back to find Bao regarding me with half-lidded eyes, dark crescents glinting in the lamplight. “Ha!” he said. “I knew it.”
I pointed a finger at him. “You do not have leave for blame, my stubborn boy. You let Jagrati make you her toy.”
“You would have, too,” he said. “I saw it. Only—”
“Only my lady Amrita refused to allow it.” I knelt on the bed beside him, tugging at his sweat-sodden tunic. “So. If nothing else, we have established that I have far better taste in royal ladies than you do. Although I must say, your wife Erdene still loves you, and she proved helpful in the end.”
“Did she?” Bao smiled faintly. “I’m glad.”
“Yes.” I tugged harder, to no avail. “Lift your arms, won’t you? Else I’ll have to summon Hasan Dar to aid me.”
Bao shifted obligingly and lifted his arms, and at last I was able to ease his soaked tunic over his head, removing it.
I caught my breath.
There were new markings on his corded forearms—fresh, stark, and unfamiliar. Vivid black tattoos inked onto his skin in a complicated zig-zag pattern that forked like lightning, each turning marked with a symbol in a strange alphabet. Remembering old tales, I wondered if they were part of some charm or spell that further bound him to the Spider Queen.
I traced the pattern. “Bao? What is this?”
“What?” He glanced at his forearms. “Oh, that.” He shrugged. “It is the path through the maze to Kurugiri, Moirin.” He lifted his right arm a fraction. “This way is up.” He let it fall, and lifted the left. “And this is down.” An involuntary shudder racked him. “Do you think it will be helpful?”
I kissed him, reckoning it was best done before the vomiting began. My diadh-anam sang happily within me, reunited with its missing half.
“Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes!”
SIXTY-FIVE
Bao was miserable for days.
He trembled and shook, racked by bone-deep pains. He tossed and turned and sweated, unable to find ease, unable to sleep. There was vomiting and worse, as though his body sought to expel every foreign substance within it along with the dregs of the opium he had smoked for months.
It was perhaps the most spectacularly unromantic lovers’ reunion in the annals of history.
Still, he had done something no one else had ever done. He had walked away from the Spider Queen and Kamadeva’s diamond of his own will, breaking the spell that bound him to her.
And he had brought the secret of the path to Kurugiri with him.
Hasan Dar was cautiously elated. The entire palace remained on high alert, watching for the Falconer’s elusive poisoner. Guards in civilian clothes were posted over every storeroom, watched over every well, accompanied the Rani’s cooks to the market. Meanwhile, the commander took counsel with the Rani and her clever son, trying to forge a plan that would take advantage of the maze’s key.
Bao’s presence was kept a secret that we might not alert our enemies to his betrayal. Let Tarik Khaga and Jagrati think he had failed, that he had been captured or slain, and the nature of his tattoos remained a mystery.
In between bouts of agony, Bao told Hasan Dar everything he knew about Kurugiri’s vulnerabilities.
Some of the news was good. Due to the stronghold’s apparent unassailability, the Falconer didn’t maintain anything like an army, relying instead on his impenetrable maze and over a dozen skilled assassins.
The bad news was that the path was narrow and twisting, filled with switchbacks and blinds in which assassins could lurk alone or in pairs and defend the path against an oncoming army. Superior numbers would prevail in the end, but gaining the peak would come at a steep cost.