“You should have said you were a Tensor.”
“I’m not.” He kept his voice gentle. “The Tensorate and the Grand Monastery aren’t the only ones who know slackcraft. My father had books. Scrolls. He hid them. After we lost him, my mother taught me as much as she could.”
Mokoya’s anger hissed between their teeth, in and out. “I trusted you.”
Thennjay looked apologetic. “I didn’t trust you.” As Mokoya froze, the shock of this revelation wrestling across their face, he said, “I wanted to, I promise. But I couldn’t. You’re still the prophet. The Protector’s child. And I’m just some troublemaking Gauri boy.”
The anger went out of Mokoya: not a dissipation, but a deflation. Akeha almost felt sorry for their twin. The boy was charismatic, after all. Easy to fall for.
Akeha said, self-satisfied, “I never trusted you.”
Thennjay spared them a glance, and in it was compassion, sadness, and a dozen other things Akeha couldn’t parse. “That was the smart thing to do. After all that’s happened this past week? I wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“You must think me a fool,” Mokoya said softly, staring at the tracks they’d left in the ground.
“No.” Thennjay lifted Mokoya’s face by the chin, as something in Akeha’s chest twisted. “You have a good heart. And that’s a rare thing in these times. A beautiful thing.”
Mokoya stepped away from him. “You smell of blood.”
Thennjay quieted and then a muscle worked in his jaw. “They have Kirpa,” he said. “Your Protectorate.”
“What?” Mokoya looked at Akeha in alarm, then back at Thennjay. “Why?”
“The man in there. Jawal. He was their cousin, their guardian. Men snatched Kirpa from his sister’s arms this afternoon. Then someone from the Protectorate came and told Jawal that if he wanted Kirpa returned unharmed, he had to do exactly what they said.”
“To blow himself up?” Akeha frowned. “They asked him to sacrifice himself?”
“They told him, if you do this, all your children will be looked after. He’s been struggling to feed them for so long. They knew how to convince him.”
Ice and fire battled in Akeha’s belly. A swathe of images clawed at them: shy Kirpa clinging to his older sister; Anjal’s ferocity as she shielded him from strangers; the girl’s tearstained face at the circus this evening. She was six years old. She had no business fearing for her little brother’s life like that.
The twins must have been followed that morning, when they first found the circus. How could they not have realized? This was Mother at her best, brutal and efficient.
“Why would Mother do this?” Mokoya blurted. “She killed a man; she could have hurt us. Why?”
Thennjay shrugged, the movement like an earthquake. “She wanted you to be hurt, I think. Imagine how it would look. The Protector’s children, maimed or killed after accepting an invitation from me? Even if she can’t change the prophecy, that would destroy my reputation. I would have no power as a Head Abbot. There might even be war.”
Mokoya seemed torn between incandescent rage and helpless tears. “It’s awful,” they gasped.
“It’s Mother,” Akeha rejoined.
Thennjay had already decided which side of fear or anger he fell on. “You know,” he said softly, “I questioned your prophecy at first. I didn’t know what role I could play in your monastery. But now your mother is trying to scare me. And I don’t scare easily.” He looked directly at Mokoya. “Take me to see her. We have some things to discuss.”
Chapter Nine
“HOW PRESUMPTUOUS OF YOU,” the Protector said, “to think you can come to me with demands, as though we were equals. The audacity of it all. These are not the actions of someone fit for the abbothood.”
The audience chamber of the Great High Palace had the quiet chill of a mausoleum and the emptiness of a mountain steppe. Slate and granite replaced the silk and wood the Protector preferred in her sanctuary, with massive gray columns holding the peaked roof high overhead. The three of them were mere pinpricks as they stood in the vastness in front of the Protector’s dais, flanked by the stone-faced guards lining either side of the chamber. Thennjay was in front, Mokoya beside him, and behind them Akeha stood as an afterthought. They felt less unwelcome than ill-fitting, like a square of tile that was the wrong color.
“It seems that the fortunes have already weighed in on my fitness for the role,” Thennjay said, his voice rolling with the depth of an avalanche. “Unless you wish to contest the prophecy?”
In contrast to their smallness, Mother lorded over everything on her high dais, magnified by the bright yellow of her robes. Her headdress glittered with the light of a hundred jewels, and sunballs suspended over the throne highlighted the sharpness of her cheekbones, the alpine slant of her mouth. Sonami stood behind her, calm and immovable as the stone pillars around them.
“I am aware of the prophecy,” the Protector said. Her voice echoed off the floor and ceiling of the chamber. “I am also aware of its regrettable immutability.”
She gazed unkindly down at the trio. “It leaves me no choice but to address the fact that a malcontent Gauri child born in an unnamed gutter has found an easy opportunity to latch on to power.” She gestured with an operatic sweep. “Already your machinations have begun. I see how you have seduced my children to your side, even after the outrageous events last night.” A predatory tilt of the head. “Know this, boy: I have no obligation to confirm your appointment to the Grand Monastery. My approval will come only with changes to the way the monastery operates. It has had far too much independence, for far too long.”
Unfazed, Thennjay said, “You speak confidently for someone carrying so much sin. Your agents kidnapped an innocent child from my community. You blackmailed their guardian into carrying out a heinous attack that could have killed your own children. These are terrible things to have done. And it would be terrible if they came to light.”
“What wild ideas you have.” The Protector blinked lazily, like a satisfied predator. “Listen to you, trying to blame the reprobate nature of your people on me.” Her teeth showed. “It seems the Gauri are good for nothing save violence and the spreading of falsehoods. I was very accommodating with your community over the matter of the factory fire. Perhaps I should reconsider that leniency.”
“That’s a lie,” Mokoya exclaimed, their righteousness bursting forth at last. “He didn’t do anything, and you know it. How can you command respect if—”
“Silence! How dare you speak to me of respect. After your disgraceful conduct yesterday, sneaking out of the palace like a thief, running around like some common criminal. Now you think to lecture me on how to command respect, when you can’t even earn it for yourself?”