And the Spider Queen and Kamadeva’s diamond awaited at the top, a danger not to be underestimated a second time.
Throughout his ordeal, I tended to Bao and did my best to ease his suffering. The Rani’s physician was right, nothing really helped, but at least I could change his sweat-soaked linens and clothing, give him peppermint tea to drink, and see that his chamberpot was exchanged for a clean one—the cursed Jagrati’s harsh words on the matter of human ordure ringing in my ears as the latter task was accomplished.
My lady Amrita was right. I did not disagree with what Jagrati had said. The stench of ordure could be washed away. It was foul deeds that made a person unclean.
Amrita visited several times a day, bringing Ravindra with her that he might witness Bao’s suffering and appreciate it as a cautionary tale, lest opium tempt him one day. I was not entirely sure it worked, for despite Bao’s obvious misery, Ravindra was more interested in and awed by his feat of swinging from the branch of a sprawling banyan tree in the garden to gain my balcony.
“That was a very long leap, Bao-ji,” he said with respect.
“Heh.” Bao flashed a grin at him, the first one I’d seen from him since he arrived. “I know, highness.”
“Were you afraid of falling?” Ravindra inquired.
Bao scoffed. “I never fall.”
Amrita shook her head in mild despair. “I fear he is not such a very good influence, your bad boy.”
“No.” I ruffled Bao’s damp hair. “But he seldom boasts in vain.”
Despite her gentle teasing, it was clear that Amrita too was kindly disposed toward Bao, solicitous of his suffering, and grateful for the warning and incredibly valuable information he brought.
Bao liked her, too. “Better be careful, Moirin,” he murmured after their first visit. “Your White Queen, she will be jealous of that one.”
I winced in unexpected pain.
“What?” He searched my face. “I’m sorry, was that cruel to say?”
“No.” I dipped a clean cloth in a basin of cool water, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “No, you couldn’t have known.” The words brought a lump to my throat, but I forced them out anyway. “I learned in Vralia that Jehanne died giving birth to a daughter.”
He caught his breath in a sharp hiss. “Oh, Moirin! I am sorry.”
I nodded my thanks. “You always liked her, too, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.” Bao smiled a little. “She did whatever pleased her, and never apologized for it.”
“Like Jagrati?” I asked carefully.
His face clouded. “I do not want to talk about her yet. After all, you haven’t told me half of what happened to you in Vralia.”
“Nor will I, until you’re recovered.” I wrung out the cloth. “Fair enough.”
“No, not like her,” Bao said after a time. “Your Jehanne, she was not angry at the world. There was no hatred in her, only much passion. Also, she saved you from that conceited Lord Lion Mane,” he added. “And she gave much honor to Master Lo. So yes, I liked her, and I am very sorry she is gone.”
I wanted to ask him more about Jagrati, but it would wait until he was ready. And I had not told him the whole truth about Vralia yet, because I was afraid it would send him into a fury that would delay his recovery. My stubborn peasant-boy and I had a great deal to talk about.
For now I was just glad to have him back.
On the fourth day after Bao’s arrival, two things happened—both of them good, for once. The first was that the worst of the opium-sickness seemed to have passed, leaving Bao weary and drawn, but no longer racked with pains or afflicted by sweating, nausea, and worse.
I was grateful.
The second thing was that Hasan Dar’s disguised guards had caught the poisoner Divyesh Patel.
Thanks to Bao’s advice, they had been on the lookout for any strangers selling edible goods in the markets of Bhaktipur—and that was exactly what they found. One slight, nondescript, unprepossessing fellow who approached the Rani’s kitchen staff with an enticing offer of fresh-caught river fish, plump and gleaming.
The Rani’s staff dickered.
The slight fellow smiled when they came to accord, handing over his fish.
I daresay it took him by surprise when Hasan Dar’s guards seized him, discreetly pushing up his sleeves to look for the tell-tale markings of tattoos on his forearms. By all accounts, Divyesh Patel did not fight or protest when they hustled him away. He was an assassin, not a warrior, and poison was his weapon.
My lady Amrita asked Bao to confirm his identity, and although he was a bit shaky on his feet, he did.
The little poisoner paled when he saw him in the throne room. “You!”
“Me,” Bao agreed.
Divyesh Patel was indignant. “You betrayed her?”
“No,” Bao said softly. “I traded a lie for the truth.” He glanced at the Rani Amrita and her son, Ravindra. “There are two kinds of men in Kurugiri, highnesses. Those who sought to serve with their killing arts, and those caught in her web through no fault of their own. This one…..” He gestured at the poisoner. “He is one of the former.”
Amrita twined and steepled her fingers in a complex mudra, one that inspired trust. “Is that true?” she asked the fellow gently. “I beg of you, do not fear to answer. No one is beyond redemption.”
The little poisoner coughed, bending over double and bringing his fist to his mouth. Bao swore and spun into action, his staff a blur as it swept in a horizontal arc. Something went flying and clattered on the floor. Bao’s staff caught Divyesh Patel behind the knees, upending him. Before anyone else had a chance to react, he had the butt of his staff poised to crush the assassin’s throat.
“What…..?” Amrita was on her feet, her voice trembling slightly. “What was that?” I moved quickly to her side and she took my arm, her nails digging into my skin in an effort to maintain her composure. With her free arm, she held Ravindra close to her side.
“Poison dart, I believe,” Hasan Dar said grimly, holding up the object that had gone flying, a hollow tube.
“Oh, gods!” She shivered.
“You want me to kill this one?” Bao inquired.
“No.” The Rani’s commander gestured to his guards to form a protective line between Amrita and the assassin. “Not until I’ve had a chance to question him at length.”
Pinned beneath Bao’s staff, Divyesh Patel flailed suddenly, his hands scrabbling at his throat. Bao swore again and gave him a sharp jab in the chest, but it was too late. The assassin hadn’t been trying to escape. There was a pin-prick of blood on the side of his throat, and a tiny needle jutted from a ring on his right forefinger.
He’d taken his own life.
Whatever it was, the poison acted quickly. The fellow jerked once, then stiffened. A little froth came to his lips, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Is he….. dead?” Ravindra whispered.
“Probably.” Bao prodded the corpse with his staff, then glanced at Hasan Dar. “Better you cut his throat and make sure. He knows lots of poisons, this one. Maybe even one that makes it only look like he’s dead.” He leaned on his staff and exhaled hard, grinning wearily. “Lot of action for my first day out of bed.”
Ravindra gazed at him with shining eyes. “I think you just saved my mother’s life, Bao-ji!”
“I think you did,” Amrita agreed. Releasing my arm, she approached Bao and took his left hand in both of hers, pressing it warmly. “Thank you very much indeed for your swift and courageous action.”
Under her lustrous regard, my incorrigible peasant-boy actually blushed. “You are welcome, highness.” He shuffled his feet. “I hate poisoners. One of them killed me, you know. And….. I fear you are only in danger because of Moirin and me. So I will do anything I can to protect you.”
“And I am grateful for it,” she said gravely, pressing his hand once more.
His blush deepened.
I raised my brows and smiled at him.
“What?” Bao scowled at me. “Don’t smirk at me, Moirin. We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to figure out how to save the Rani and her son.”
“Yes, my hero,” I said. “We do.”
SIXTY-SIX
Around and around we went, trying to conceive of a plan that would get us up the path to Kurugiri without sustaining untenable losses, and deal with the problem of Kamadeva’s diamond at the top.
Hasan Dar, Amrita, and Ravindra hadn’t had any success, the latter chastened and made uncertain by the failure of his first plan.
Bao’s knowledge was helpful, but it didn’t eliminate the obstacles facing us. I listened as he discussed the treacherous path with Hasan Dar, sketching out the likeliest places for assassins to lay in waiting on a map based on his tattoos.
“The problem is that they will always have the higher ground,” he said. “See, here, here, and here. We will always be coming around blind corners, where they can pick us off one by one.”
I thought of an offer I had made Snow Tiger once when we faced an ambush—and a warning my mother had given me. “Unless they can’t see us,” I murmured.
Bao gave me a sharp look. “Your twilight.”
I nodded.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, Moirin. I will not risk you again.”
“No, I do not like it either,” Amrita said unhappily.
“What is she talking about?” Hasan Dar asked, bewildered.
It was easier to show him than explain. I had them close their eyes and summoned the twilight, wrapping it around Bao and me, then letting it fade before their open eyes. Ravindra and Hasan Dar stared in awe; the Rani Amrita, who had seen me call the twilight before, just looked worried.
“And you could kill a man thus concealed?” her commander asked. “Or Bao could?”
My mother’s words echoed in my thoughts. It is a grave gift and one never to be used lightly. Only to sustain life. Do you ever use it for sport or any idle cause, it will be stripped from you.
Snow Tiger’s, too, her voice gentle and firm as she refused my offer. What you suggest is dishonorable.
But when I glanced at Amrita’s beautiful, worried face and her son’s thin, clever one, I knew I was willing to take the risk. “I could. I cannot speak for Bao.”
Bao frowned, fidgeting with the bands of steel that reinforced his bamboo fighting-staff. “I would have no trouble killing those men who serve them willingly,” he said. “They are assassins who kill by stealth, and it is fitting that they should die thus. But I would not like to kill those who were trapped as I was.”
In the end, it remained a moot point, for we could devise no plan for dealing with Kamadeva’s diamond.
“I could accompany you,” Amrita said quietly. “I am not affected by it, at least not with Jagrati wielding it.”
“No!” Four voices spoke in emphatic unison.
Bao reckoned we had a few more days’ grace before the Falconer and the Spider Queen decided that Divyesh Patel had failed and sent a new assassin in his place. After our initial attempts at group strategy failed, Bao suggested in private that he and I go alone. Since my diadh-anam had been twinned, I could hold him in the twilight as easily as myself. If I could hold it long enough, the two of us alone could approach Kurugiri without ever being seen, without alerting the Falconer’s assassins.
“We could steal Kamadeva’s diamond rather than take it by force,” he mused, stroking my hair.
Lying in his arms, I shook my head. “I don’t trust myself around it. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Bao admitted. “Here, with you….. yes. I walked away from it once. But…..”
“What if Jagrati got me to betray myself utterly, Bao?” I shuddered. “What if she sent me against my lady Amrita and her son? I can summon the twilight. I know where the hidden room is located.”
“And you are rather deadly with a bow,” he added. “No, you’re right. It’s too dangerous.” He toyed with my hair, which had grown out well below my shoulders, but was still much shorter than it had been. “Why did you cut it, Moirin?”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
His brows furrowed. “Whose was it?”
For the first time, I told Bao the whole of what had befallen me after the Great Khan’s betrayal—the journey and the whole long, awful ordeal in Vralia, the chafing chains that bound my spirit as surely as my flesh, the Patriarch and his incessant demands that I confess the litany of my sins, Luba and her shears, cold water, and lye, the endless scrubbing of the temple floor, my knees aching, the ever-present threat of being stoned to death.
I wept.
Bao held me. “I could kill them ten times over for that!” he said fiercely, his breath warm against my temple. “Do you want me to?”
“No.” I sniffled and laughed. “No, I don’t ever want to go back there.”
“How did you escape?”
I told him about Valentina and Aleksei, although not the part about Aleksei and Naamah’s blessing.
Bao suspected it anyway, regarding me with a wry look. “I swear, Moirin, you fall in love as easily as other people fall out of a boat.”
“I don’t!” I protested.
“You do.”
None too gently, I tugged on a hank of his longish hair. “Why did you let it grow? I thought it gave enemies a handhold in combat.”
He didn’t answer right away. I withdrew a little, propping myself on one elbow and watching his face, watching Bao decide whether or not he was ready to talk about his time in Kurugiri.