Of light and shadow, p.24
Of Light and Shadow, page 24
“Then if we find firestones here—”
“We still have done nothing to prove Subedar Yazad is after them,” she pointed out. “Also, you’re not the only one who thought to look for firestones here.” A couple of days into the downpour, Roshan had found several clan members hammering at the walls of the mine and chipping away shiny rocks of unusual colors. She pulled one out of her pocket now and held it out for Navin’s inspection. “Here’s what Chotu found.”
“Glass opal.” Navin sighed.
“Exactly.”
The iridescent black rock crackled with color in the sun and had been fashionable among the aristocracy over fifty years ago. But, lovely as glass opal was to look at, it did nothing to amplify magic.
“I had to put a stop to the hammering and talk to Vijali Fui,” Roshan said. “Her grandfather had worked in a firestone mine. He used to say that if firestones are present in a mine, you can feel their magic. They’re far too powerful to go unnoticed for months on end.”
On the morning of their fourth day of confinement, the sun finally emerged. Chotu was the first one out of the hideout, his skinny form cartwheeling in the air.
“About time,” Roshan said out loud, her heart lifting. “I felt ready to bite off an arm.”
“Me too,” Navin spoke, which was a surprise because he hadn’t complained once about the rain these past few days. When Roshan mentioned this, he grinned. “I know you think I’m spoiled, Roshni, but even I must concede to the sky goddess and her annual spate of melancholy every monsoon.”
“Is that why it’s called the Month of Tears? Because of the sky goddess?”
When Navin nodded, she laughed. “I didn’t even realize that! But it’s so obvious now that I think of it.”
“Some truths are always staring us in the face. You taught me that.”
The sun burnished his hair, revealing the black roots under the brown. Once again, she felt the urge to bury her hands in it. To pull him close and suck that soft lower lip into her mouth. He wouldn’t have resisted. Roshan was not a soul magus, but she was no stranger to desire—evidenced now by his darkening eyes.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” she said, reluctantly breaking the spell. “I don’t think you’re spoiled. Not anymore at least.”
The last time, when they’d been alone in her room and not surrounded by people, Navin had been the one to step back. To draw a line between what was real between them and what wasn’t. Frustrated as she’d been, Roshan knew she wouldn’t cross the line first.
Was that surprise she saw on his face? Disappointment? The expression was gone so quickly Roshan couldn’t tell. Navin put a hand to his chest, gracefully bowing. “I’m going to take that as a compliment and not an insult, jaan-e-man.”
Roshan laughed, though a pang touched her chest at the endearment.
Jaan-e-man. Had she been anyone’s beloved?
Apart from her fling with Lalit, Roshan’s romances—if they could be called that—were usually brief: limited to hungry kisses or occasional rolls in the hay with strangers behind taverns in Surag or other big cities where she remained invisible in a crowd. She barely remembered those boys or their faces, was certain they’d forgotten her, too. But now, as she watched the couples and trios around her, the secret smiles, the subtle brushes of a hand against a lover’s back or hips, she wondered if there could be more.
Jaan-e-man. Roshan buried the endearment deep, next to the ache left behind by Baba’s death and the parents she’d never known. She was the Shadow Bandit. She didn’t have the luxury to dwell on feelings or on anything else that couldn’t be held in the palm of her hand.
“All right!” she called out, silencing the chatter. “Let’s get moving. We need to visit Raigarh today, maybe even Mohr. See what the situation is like there.”
Treks to the far west of the valley were always longer and more treacherous, the land full of curves and bends and steep hills. The rainfall had made things worse, flooding parts of the river and blocking old, well-worn pathways, forcing the clan to find new routes or carve fresh paths through rock, mud, and silt.
By the time they approached the village of Raigarh, the sun was nearly halfway across the sky. A pair of shvetpanchhi battled over the bloated carcass of a tusked jackal floating in the water nearby, their screeches ringing in the heat. Roshan swallowed hard, noting that the bajra fields had been flooded over. More grain would be lost and more blood tithes would be borne by the villagers—unless they did something about it.
Protesting against the governor and his Brights, however, wasn’t an idea the village council was willing to entertain—even with Navin by the clan’s side.
“We can’t do it.” The village head, Sarpanch Daria, was quiet yet firm in her refusal. “Not at the risk of our people.”
“The Shadow Clan would protect you.” Roshan hoped she sounded reassuring. “I give you my word.”
“I know you would, Sardar Roshan.” Daria shifted her dark gaze, unable to look Roshan directly in the eye. “I’ve seen you fight, know that you would have your own turban knocked off to protect ours. But your clan cannot save us from being beaten or being arrested for public disturbance. Not even with a former rajkumar on your side.”
Former?
“What do you mean by former?” Roshan asked, her voice growing sharp. “Rajkumar Navin is still second in line to the throne.”
She glanced at Navin, but he appeared to have gone stiff, reminding her of the time she’d frozen his vocal cords.
“He isn’t the rajkumar anymore. But please. Don’t take my word for it,” Daria said, nodding to one of her councilors. “Here, Sardar Roshan.”
Roshan slowly unrolled the scroll, the familiar curving letters of the Jwala Khabri floating before her eyes.
“Kiran Mahal has announced,” she read out loud, “that hereon, with immediate effect, Navin of Clan Behram, son of the late Yuvrani Athiya and Peri Tir, has been disinherited and stripped of his title. Henceforth, he will no longer be a prince of Jwala.”
THE WORDS FROM THE KHABRI SANK INTO HIS BRAIN AS IF through holes in a sound barrier, a persistent buzz accompanying each one.
For as long as he could remember, Navin had never taken his title seriously, acutely aware of the distinction between the prince and the crown prince, the distance he’d had to maintain between himself and Farhad during every state ceremony. Always four steps behind, as the palace steward had instructed. Never allowed to catch up.
Farhad’s letter should’ve tipped him off to the situation. And it had—if Navin was being honest. He just…he hadn’t really expected to be stripped of his title and disinherited.
A moment later, the scent of cloves and summer air wafted to his side. “Do you want to go back?” Roshan asked quietly. “We can visit Mohr on another day.”
His heart said yes. He was tired. So tired of everything. But when he spoke, the words that emerged from his mouth were different: “The weather’s been bad and we only have twenty-five days left. I don’t want to waste more time.”
Hemant’s one-month ultimatum did not bother Roshan, who’d shrugged it off whenever Navin mentioned it to her. But the thought hung over Navin’s head every day, kept him awake at night while she fell asleep. He may have lost his title and inheritance, but he didn’t want Roshan to lose credibility with the Shadow Clan—the only family she’d known.
Navin’s family had given her people enough grief as is.
The village of Mohr lay across the river, accessible via a rickety wooden bridge. “It’s more of a hamlet now,” Roshan explained. “The only non-magus settlement of farmers left in the valley.”
“What happened to the others?” Navin asked, forcing himself to concentrate.
“They left. It’s hard to grow crops in this land with magic. Without any, it becomes near impossible.” Roshan frowned. “I thought it would go easier with Sarpanch Daria—she’s always been cooperative in the past.”
“The Brights probably threatened her village before the rains began,” Lalit said. “It isn’t exactly a secret that Navin came here with you after escaping Prabha.”
It took a second for Navin to realize that Lalit hadn’t called him by his title the way he usually did. There might’ve been a flash of pity in the other boy’s hazel eyes. Navin averted his gaze, unable to confirm the same in his aura. Did the Shadow Clan also think him useless now—like the sarpanch of Raigarh?
“We don’t know what has happened in Alipore, either,” Lalit was telling Roshan. “If the sarpanch there has been able to convince his panchayat.”
“Navaz Didi will find out,” Roshan said. “I sent her and Khizer there today to talk to the sarpanch and also to scout the area around the old firestone mine.”
Navin reached up to touch the outline of the feather he always kept tucked in an inner pocket of his jama. It was tempting to reach out to Tir, to ask his father to come fly him away from this.
But where would I go?
He turned, found a pair of familiar dark brown eyes watching.
“You don’t have to do this.” Roshan’s aura reflected her truth. “You can go back home to Prabha. Tell Parasmani Bhairavi you made a mistake.”
Navin breathed in the hot air. His mouth was exceptionally dry, every blister scar within aching. His feet hurt and his stomach felt as if it were filled with lead. Yet somehow, despite everything, he was still here. Standing.
“In Prabha, people call me the Peri Prince,” he said. “But few see me as a person. In Aman, I’m my father’s child but still not considered fully peri. Those places aren’t my home, Roshni. Haven’t been for a long time. There’s nowhere to go.”
Nowhere but forward, one step after another, until they were inside Mohr, the dusty trees and huts a blur around him. Only the girl walking next to him was clearly visible, her aura a blue cloud around her head, her troubled silence weighing on him.
Breathe, he told himself as they approached the village elders. Focus.
“Shubhdin.” Roshan joined her hands in the greeting. Everyone else around her did the same.
One of the councilors tottered to his feet, a man who must have seen eighty blue moons in his lifetime. His bushy brows were burnished gold with age, and his heavy white turban nearly covered one eye. The long bamboo staff marking him as village head appeared to be the only thing keeping him upright. Navin noted the lack of an aura around his weathered face and the stiffness of his puckered brown lips. It was like meeting the parasmani again, except this man had no magic in his veins—nothing to repel Navin except sheer determination.
Intrigue bubbled somewhere under the thick fog in Navin’s skull. Before they’d arrived at the villages, Roshan had asked him to scan the auras of the councilors to see if he could influence them. Raigarh, of course, had been a disaster. But now as Roshan spoke to the old sarpanch, Navin forced himself to listen and pay attention to the man’s body language and gestures. The bracelets at his wrists warmed, his soul magic reaching out…hitting a wall of mist and earth, a complex, shifting barrier that let no emotion seep through.
“Roshan Chaya,” the sarpanch said, the rumble in his voice reminding Navin of Tir. “We would help you if we could. But we are non-magi. Surely you understand how much you ask of us. Especially since we cannot protect ourselves against the Brights and their cruel spellwork.”
“I understand your fears,” Roshan said, her voice and aura brimming with compassion. “But we both know that things are not going to change for the better. The villages around you were swallowed by ravines. Many had to move or abandon the valley altogether. If this continues, you might have to do the same.”
“If so, what?” the sarpanch demanded. “We will be safe, won’t we?”
“Do you truly believe that, Sarpanch ji?” Navin found himself saying, his voice quiet, yet clear. “Or is that your hope?”
Heads turned in his direction, and Navin wondered if he’d made another blunder. But then Roshan nodded, pushing past the haze of annoyance in her aura. Go on.
“This is your land, Sarpanch ji.” Navin met the village head’s flinty gaze. “Yours, not Subedar Yazad’s. When Jwala was breathed to life by the fire goddess, Parasmani Behram had vowed to keep its inhabitants safe and also help them thrive under the leadership of old clans like the Aspas, who’d chosen him as their king. What’s happening now in Ashvamaidan valley is a violation of that vow, and it must be challenged in a court of law.”
The magic in Navin’s veins itched to be used. But he held back, watching the auras of the councilors who sat behind the sarpanch. Waiting until the pale blue of suspicion darkened to curiosity.
“I have no right to ask you anything,” Navin went on. “I am not a rajkumar anymore, and I have nothing really to speak of—except for my mind and the clothes on my back. I am also afraid of the future.” He pressed a hand to his heart, which was pounding under the feather in his chest. “But, despite everything, I am more afraid of doing nothing. Of sitting, hand folded over hand, watching the life around me drain away.”
Moments trickled away in silence. No one spoke. But Navin could tell they were listening, bandit and councilor alike. Faces pinched. Breaths held. Waiting for the sarpanch to respond.
The old man cleared his throat. “You say you are no longer a rajkumar,” he addressed Navin. “This is unfortunate because I don’t doubt your sincerity. But when I became sarpanch, I made my own vows, along with the council behind me, to the people of this village, who now depend on my protection. Do not think us ungrateful,” he said, turning to Roshan. “The Shadow Clan helped us when no one would. You still do so. But I am sorry. Right now, at least, the councilors of Mohr and I stand firm in our decision.”
Roshan’s body was coiled tight, her fists held close to the sides. But when she spoke, her voice was calm.
“I understand,” she said. “Shubhdin, Sarpanch ji.”
“Shubhdin, Roshan Chaya. Young man.” The old councilor looked sad. “Goddess be with you both.”
“STAY ALERT,” ROSHAN WARNED THE CLAN AS THEY LEFT THE village, her hand on her katar.
Ever since Baba was killed in a village nearby, she’d never liked traveling to this part of the valley, her mind flashing images of his severed head floating ahead of her on a pike.
It wasn’t until they were well beyond the western pass that Roshan allowed herself to breathe. To evaluate everything that had happened. She’d anticipated failure on some level, of course. But with Navin at her side, she’d also expected to do better. She glanced now at the prince, who appeared lost in thought, having forgotten to put up his mask.
She tucked it into place. Like the caring lover she supposedly was.
“You didn’t use soul magic on them.” She kept her voice low, hoping it didn’t sound as cold as the fury in her chest. “I could tell you wanted to. I felt your magic reaching out.”
She’d been surprised to sense it—much like she would a magical barrier, only more delicate. More probing.
“You could? Interesting.” The surprise was clear in his gold eyes. “Must be our bond.”
Her stomach flipped. “Our bond?”
“Yes, Roshni.” She had the feeling he was smirking at her now and instantly regretted masking him. “We began bonding as early as our first meeting, when you spoke my name. An old soul magus trick. But for you to sense my magic is unusual on many levels. It’s the sort of thing that comes with a deeper relationship. With trust—on the soul magus’s end.”
Guilt warmed her cheeks. But Roshan still needed an explanation.
“So why didn’t you use your magic?” she asked. “I understand Raigarh was a bust, but you could have influenced the sarpanch of Mohr.”
He sighed. “Imagine this. You see someone’s house. To enter, you can knock on the door—or break it open. Knocking would work, if someone trusted you. Breaking in would be a last resort—an incredible violation. Now think of the house as a mind. Sheltering someone’s emotions.”
For long moments, Roshan didn’t speak. Then: “Was there no window?”
Gold eyes shuttered slightly, as if baffled. “What?”
“Was there no window to peek into the sarpanch’s hou—mind?”
A soft laugh escaped him, and she got the feeling it was real.
“No,” he said, focusing on the land ahead of them. “There wasn’t. In a way, I wasn’t surprised. Jwala may have ended magical segregation earlier than the other kingdoms of Svapnalok, but non-magi, in general, still distrust magi. A certain level of suspicion—even dislike—is needed to create the sort of walls that repel soul magic so thoroughly.”
Roshan was grateful he was turned away from her right now and couldn’t see the embarrassment—and the desire—that was surely lurking in her aura. Dislike wasn’t an emotion she’d felt for Navin in a while now.
“I thought you’d take the easy way out,” she admitted.
“In the past, maybe. My old tutor always said that the best soul magi used their power at exactly the right time. Back then, I didn’t understand what he meant. Now I do. Using my power on the sarpanch would’ve worked in the short run. But once we were gone and my magic wore off, we’d have been worse off than before.”
Frustration crept up Roshan’s spine. His words made sense. But noble as his intentions were, they did little to help their cause.
At the hideout, Navaz Didi and Khizer brought more bad news.
“Sarpanch Sohail and Parvara ji were not able to convince all the councilors to protest,” Navaz Didi told Roshan grimly. “It was three against two. They said they’d try again. But they didn’t seem very hopeful. Especially with today’s…” her voice trailed off as she glanced at Navin uncertainly.
“It’s all right,” Roshan said with a sigh. “We know about the Khabri. What about that abandoned firestone mine, Khizer? Did you see anything suspicious?”
