I caught my breath, seeing too much.
Jagrati gave me a tight smile. “You see things, don’t you, oh so pretty dakini?”
“Yes.”
“Untouchable.” She released my hand, regarding her own, dark creases in her pale palm. “That is what they call us.” Her gaze flicked toward Amrita. “That is what you call us.”
“I am coming to believe otherwise,” Amrita murmured.
“Untouchable,” Jagrati repeated, a catch in her throat. She laid her palm against my cheek and I let her, my pity giving way to genuine sympathy. “And yet it never seemed to matter when no one was watching. Men were happy enough to touch me when it suited them, so long as no one saw it. It is a man’s world. Men make the rules, and men decide when it is acceptable to break them. Even your precious Rani is only waiting for her son to grow old enough to take her place.” She took her hand away, her expression hardening. “But I made a difference. Here, I carved out my own place. Here in Kurugiri, I ruled. I made the choices.” She glanced at Bao. “Didn’t I?”
He gave her an inscrutable bow, his staff tucked under one arm. “Yes, my dark lady. You most certainly did.”
Another bitter smile twisted her lips. “You have an uncommon streak of willfulness. I should have cut my losses when your Moirin returned from the dead. But you… you were one of my favorites, Bao. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“I was not yours to keep,” he said in a flat tone. “None of us were. And yet look around, my lady.” He gestured. “You have lost everything.”
Jagrati raised her voice to a hoarse, rasping shout. “Do you think I don’t know it?” The words echoed off the walls, falling into a thick silence. No one answered. She glanced around the chamber, taking in the sight of the dead and wounded with no visible emotion on her face. “Is this how you mean to make the world a better place, little Rani?”
“No, Jagrati,” Amrita said quietly. “This is what you forced me to do, you and Lord Khaga. I take responsibility for the choice, and for the deaths of my brave men. I will not take responsibility for your sins.”
“So noble.” Jagrati’s lip curled again. “Do you know, little Rani, that the untouchables of Bhaktipur live in squalor on the outskirts of the city, tending to their dung-heaps? They are pathetically grateful to you for seeing to it that they have a well that draws clean water, since they are not allowed to use the public wells or fountains. And yet twice I had promising young lads taken to serve me, and there was no outcry, for there was nowhere for their families to turn, no one to protect them.”
Amrita’s brows rose. “And you are proud of this?”
She shrugged. “I treated them as human beings, not living filth. I gave them better lives than they would have had otherwise.”
“You treated them as living playthings, Jagrati,” Bao said. “Was it a better life for those who died fighting for the honor of sharing your bed?”
Jagrati laughed her dark tearing-silk laugh. “At least they died fighting for something they believed worth dying for, didn’t they?”
“Believing a thing does not make it true.” Bao shrugged. “You are not the only one in the world to have suffered, lady. The world can be cruel, even to men. I was sold into bondage when I was scarce more than a babe. I know what it is like to be used badly. I have not let it poison my heart.”
She met his eyes. “But you have been fortunate in the companions life has given you, have you not?”
Bao glanced at me, and didn’t answer.
“How lucky for you.” Jagrati gave him her bitter smile. “The peasant-boy found a noble mentor, grew up to be a hero, and won the hand of the fair maiden.” She clasped one hand over the other fist as though she meant to bow to him in the Ch’in manner. “The only luck I found, I made myself. All my old life gave me was the stink of human shit and cruelty.” She looked sidelong at Amrita. “Forgive me if I am not willing to return to a world where I must grovel when you pass lest my shadow soil your pure flesh, where I can only dream of the honor of touching your perfect feet.”
“Jagrati-” my lady Amrita began.
The Spider Queen’s long-fingered hands tightened, driving her fist into her palm. “Good-bye.”
There were jeweled rings on almost all her fingers, gleaming in the lamplight, and belatedly I remembered the poisoner and his ring with the hidden needle. But even if anyone had been minded to stop Jagrati, it was already too late. Her tall, angular body jerked and stiffened, and she fell gracelessly, a little foam rising to her lips.
The Spider Queen of Kurugiri was dead.
SEVENTY-THREE
It was a long, difficult night.
There was a great deal of work to be done, little of it pleasant. But at least it began on an auspicious note as Pradeep came to report that the harem had been secured without any difficulty. The churlish messenger had been the only one to resist, and he was dead.
The Rani insisted on visiting it straightaway. It was crowded with women and children, and dozens of additional servants who had taken shelter there. None of them seemed to have been harmed in an obvious way, but they greeted us with profound gratitude, many of them weeping with joy and relief, overwhelmed at being rescued from captivity in Kurugiri.
I watched my lady Amrita go among them, talking to the women and some nine or ten children of varying ages, assuring them that they were safe and would be well cared for. It made me smile for what felt like the first time in years.
One of the women caught my eye and returned my smile. She had Tufani features, and her smile was as gentle and radiant as dawn breaking through mist. I remembered the boy-monk in Rasa giving me a message for the yak-herder’s daughter.
“Are you Laysa?” I asked her.
“Yes.” There was a little girl who looked to be five or six pressed against her side, and Laysa stroked her hair. “How did you know?”
“I met a young monk in Rasa, a… a tulku.” I dredged the word from memory. “Tashi Rinpoche. He said he was one of your teachers in your last lifetime together, and that it puzzled him that he was born younger than you this time. But now it makes sense, for you have lost ten years of your life. He is waiting in Rasa to teach you again.”
Her radiant smile widened. “That is very good news!” She kissed her daughter’s brow. “Is it not, my little Kamala, my little lotus?” The girl nodded warily, staring at me. Her mother whispered something in her ear, making her giggle and hide her face. “She was frightened by your green eyes,” Laysa said. “I told her it is because you are a magical deva sent to look after us. Now she is shy.”
My throat tightened.
It seemed impossible that such goodness could endure and blossom in this cruel place. The world had been unkind to Laysa, mayhap not as unkind as it had been to Jagrati, but near enough. Her family had been slaughtered, and she had been forced to endure servitude in the Falconer’s harem. The thought of Tarik Khaga with his hawk-nose and muscular paunch heaving and grunting atop her sickened me.
He’d gotten her with child; and she loved the child. A child she had been compelled to raise in fear that one day her daughter would be forced into an incestuous union with her own cursed father.
And still, there was joy and kindness in her smile.
“Why are you weeping, deva?” Laysa inquired, hugging her daughter. “Today is not a day for sorrow!”