“Teach them,” Amrita echoed.
Bao nodded. “From that one thing, ten thousand things will arise.”
“I like this notion,” the Rani said decisively, and Ravindra nodded in agreement. “Only… I think I shall wait until Hasan Dar is recovered to announce any sweeping changes, eh? Pradeep is a good man, but not as strong-willed and courageous.”
“Do you think there will be trouble, my lady?” I asked. “That folk will protest and resist?”
“Some will,” she said soberly. “It is inevitable. Both priests on high, angry at having their authority undermined, and low-caste workers, resentful at having to share their ranking with folk they despise.”
“But you are minded to do this?” Bao asked softly.
“Yes.” Amrita’s lovely face was set and grave. “I am. The gods sent three women all bearing the same message to me. First Moirin, then Jagrati, and now the tulku Laysa. I cannot turn a deaf ear to them.” She smiled a little. “Maybe when men fail to heed them, the gods turn at last to women, eh?”
“It took them long enough,” I observed.
Amrita shook her head at me in mild reproach. “The time of gods is not like the time of mortals, dear one.”
“Yes, my lady.” I ate another of the sweet, fried dumplings. “So are Laysa and her daughter staying?”
“No, no. Only through the winter. When the high passes are clear, I will send them to Rasa with an escort. The others are staying,” she added.
“Ah.” I smiled. “So you’re keeping the harem.”
My lady Amrita laughed and flushed the slightest bit, narrowing her lustrous eyes at me. “I am not keeping the harem, Moirin. They could not return home after what they have endured, for their families would reckon them disgraced. I have offered them sanctuary here, and they have accepted it.”
“Why would Mama-ji keep a harem?” Ravindra asked in bewilderment.
“Moirin was only teasing,” Bao informed him.
“Oh.” He continued to look puzzled.
“It is a grown-up kind of teasing, jewel of my heart,” Amrita said to him. “A very D’Angeline kind of teasing.”
Ravindra shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Anyway, it is very nice. It’s almost as though we have the big family you always missed, isn’t it, Mama-ji?” he asked. She nodded. “Would you like to come see?” he inquired. “We have opened a whole row of chambers along the lower level of the garden that have been closed for years.”
“I would like that very much, young highness,” I said.
After breaking our fast, we strolled in the great central courtyard garden. Although it was warm in the sunlight, there were no flowers blossoming in the winter months, but it was lush and green nonetheless, filled with towering rhododendrons that would be spectacular in bloom, and the immense banyan trees with their gnarled roots. Monkeys leapt and chattered in their branches, and birds with emerald, scarlet, and blue plumage flitted from tree to tree like living jewels.
And beneath them, children laughed and chased one another, watched by indulgent mothers. Chamber doors that had been sealed for years for lack of inhabitants opened onto patios where the women of the Falconer’s harem sat and sipped tea or the spiced yoghurt drink called lassi, chatting with one another while keeping half an eye on the playing children.
The women greeted the Rani Amrita with glad smiles and deep bows, palms pressed together.
The young Prince Ravindra was hailed with bows and happy shouts, especially from the older boys, who quickly swarmed him and Bao, all yelling at once. It was obvious that Bao’s fighting prowess had been the topic of much conversation, but only Ravindra had seen him in action.
“What’s that?” Bao cupped his ear. “Surely, you don’t think his highness exaggerates!” He scoffed, freeing the bamboo staff lashed across his back with a quick twist. “Stand back and watch.”
Bao put on a show for them, fighting an imaginary opponent-ten imaginary opponents. He whirled like a dervish, the staff spinning in his hands until it was as blurred as a dragonfly’s wings. He crouched low, his staff sweeping the grass. He leapt high, lashing out with both feet in opposite directions and his staff in a third. He hurled his body in the sideways spinning kick parallel to the ground that seemed to defy the laws of nature. Bao vaulted and somersaulted, turned handsprings and backsprings, sending his staff soaring high into the air and catching it upon landing upright once more.
The children shrieked with delight, raising a deafening cacophony that made me smile and wince at once.
The women clapped for him.
“He’s quite something, your bad boy, isn’t he?” Amrita took my arm, smiling. “Moirin, would you consider staying here, you and Bao? It would please me very much if you made Bhaktipur your home.”
I hesitated, not wanting to refuse outright, a part of me not wanting to refuse at all.
“Look.” She squeezed my arm. “Ravindra dotes on him, eh? Your bad boy makes my serious boy smile. And you…” She searched my face, shook her head and laughed her chiming laugh. “You are a little bit of a great many things to me, young goddess, and I do not know how to name the sum of its parts. I only know that I am very, very fond of you, and I would rather not lose you.”
Since Bao and I had been reunited here, I had not consulted our shared diadh-anam. Now I did. It whispered the same message it had at our first reunion in the Tatar encampment a year ago. And it was not urgent, but it was persistent.
West, it called to us. Westward.
Somewhere, oceans beckoned.
“We can’t, Amrita,” I whispered, tears in my eyes. “I can’t. I wish I could, because whatever home means to me anymore, it is so very far away. If I could call any other place home, it would be this place with you and Bao and Ravindra in it. But I can’t. The gods are not finished with me. And… and I miss my mother, too.” I sniffled. “I hate to think of her never knowing what became of me.”
“Oh, Moirin!” Amrita fussed over me, wiping my tears away with the draped hem of her sari. “Of course you do. Forgive me, I did not mean to make this harder for you.”
I smiled at her through my tears. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It was a kindness. And I am always grateful for your kindness.”
“Ah.” Unexpectedly, Amrita kissed my lips, sweetly and gently. “Yes, I know. I have not forgotten. Your demonstration of gratitude was very memorable. Will your gods let you stay a while, at least? Until spring comes? It will be much easier to travel then. I would be grateful for your aid in changing the world, Moirin. And I have promised to see you and your Bao wed. I would like to see it done when all the flowers are in bloom.”
My diadh-anam did not speak against it.
“Yes,” I said gratefully. “We will stay until spring.”
Bao fetched up alongside us, sweat glistening on his brown skin. “I am too old for such acrobatics,” he announced. “It makes my bones ache. Moirin, why are you crying?”
“Because we will have to leave this place,” I said.
He frowned and glanced unerringly toward the west. “Not yet, surely?”
“No.” I rubbed my face. “But it makes me sad to think on it.”
“I know.” Bao stroked my back. “We’ll just have to make the most of our time here, all right?”
I nodded. “That we will.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Alone in the bedchamber with Bao that night, I found myself feeling suddenly and unwontedly shy for the first time since… ever.
It had been so long since we’d been intimate, and so much had happened to us both. He had survived Kurugiri and Jagrati’s favoritism. I had been the instrument of Naamah’s blessing, and the near-victim of Kamadeva’s diamond. As much as I wanted this, I didn’t know how to be an ordinary, mortal lover anymore.