“Yes.” Deven reaches around me and rearranges my hair to hang down my back. “You must believe you can, or you have already lost.”
His fingers brush my shoulders, sending delicious shivers down my arms. My senses sharpen in anticipation and soak in his nearness. I wish to push him away and to yank him close, to tell him to leave and to ask him to stay forever. My gaze skims the landscape of his face: full lips, smooth cheekbones, midnight eyes. He reaches for my hands, and I thread my fingers in his bigger rough ones, hard like stone but so gentle.
Deven leans in, and our chests meet, grounding me to him. He smells of sandalwood and leather. I cannot see beyond the brightness of his embrace. My bobbing heart floats to my throat. He lowers his forehead, eyelids growing heavy, and our noses graze.
Yatin clears his throat from the doorway. “Captain.”
“Gods.” I yank myself away from Deven and flee to the balcony. I face outside, chest pumping, and brace for Yatin to condemn us.
“Your mother is ready.”
“Thank you, Yatin. Please wait at the door.” Deven strolls up behind me and rests his hands on my shoulders. “Yatin won’t tell anyone. He’s our friend.”
Yatin may not tell, but what if it had been Manas? Or Parisa or Eshana? Or the rajah? I pull away from Deven and press my palm over my aching sternum. The closer I get to him, the guiltier I feel. I am risking my life, his life, Jaya’s life.
Deven shoves his hands in his pockets, as if he does not trust them to behave. “My mother wants to meet you, but I will have to sneak you into the courtesans’ wing.”
“All right.” I will not pass up the opportunity to meet his mother. I go to my satchel, hanging on the bedpost. “But before we go, I have something to show you. I found a book on my bed.”
“A book?”
“I haven’t had the chance to read much of it, but what I have read is . . .” Disquieting. Confusing. Thought provoking. “Interesting.”
I remove Bhuta Origins from my satchel and hand it to him.
“I’ve never seen a text like this before,” he says, partly awed but, more so, cautious. He flips through the pages.
“This says bhutas are half-gods, and their gifts come from Anu,” I say. “It also mentions the Zhaleh, the book the bhutas think that the rajah stole. If this text is correct and the Zhaleh is real, and if the bhutas believe Rajah Tarek has hidden it, perhaps the Burner is sneaking around the palace trying to find it.”
Deven passes back the book. “I don’t care what this says about bhutas or their damned lost record. Those demons killed my brother.”
I glance down at a passage in the open book.
Every mortal man and woman was created in the likeness of the gods—sky in their lungs, land beneath their feet, fire in their soul, and water in their blood.
My skin bristles in fear. Fire in their soul.
Deven takes the book and slams it shut. “No one can know you have this, or they will think you’re a bhuta sympathizer. Who gave this to you?”
Before witnessing Deven’s reaction to the book, I was going to tell him that I think that the Burner left it. But I have no proof beyond a feeling, and suggesting that the Burner may be creeping around inside the palace will not please Deven. So I say, “I don’t know.”
“I want to show this to Brother Shaan,” he says. “We can trust him to tell us if it’s credible. I’ll ask him to meet with us. Until then . . .” Deven takes Bhuta Origins to the bookcase by the door and tucks it in among other texts. “That should do it. No one will think to look for it in plain sight.”
Then he considers me, his eyes glinting with an idea. “How are you at braiding?”
16
I reach the arched doorway to the courtesans’ wing and face my guards. My hair swings in a braid down my back, and per Yatin’s recommendation, I have changed into a scarlet sari and smoothed matching rouge on my lips. He and Deven cannot come in with me. Everyone knows them as my guards, and with them, I could be recognized.
“My mother is waiting for you in the bathhouse,” Deven says. “She’s wearing yellow. We will follow you inside in a few minutes. Be on guard. The benefactors are indiscriminate about who they touch.”
I swallow a spike of disgust and push through the doors.
The courtesans’ pavilion is as large as the wives’ patio and opens to the sky. I follow boisterous laughter and clinking chalices through stringy clouds of hookah smoke to the end of the portico. On the dim patio, benefactors and soldiers, their clothes untucked and sloppy, lounge on plush floor cushions and sip from amber decanters. Some men smoke from tall ceramic-tiled hookah pipes, expelling puffs of clouds into the midnight sky. Oil lamps are lit throughout, breaking up the shadows without disturbing the intimacy—if there is such a thing as intimacy here. Half-undressed courtesans loiter among the men, beside them and in their laps.
Some courtesans stand off to the side. A man walks up to one and takes her hand. The courtesan goes with him to lie on a floor cushion in the shadows. More men approach the unoccupied women. None of the courtesans refuse a man’s summons, and it strikes me that they cannot. They have no say in choosing with whom they share their company.
I press a hand over my queasy stomach. Are their souls in jeopardy for being with men other than the one who claimed them? Tarek wishes for them to serve his men of court. Do his orders supersede the gods’ warning to be faithful? Whom should the courtesans obey?
I spot the entrance to the bathhouse on the other side. Unlike at the Tigress Pavilion, the portico does not rim the entire patio. I have to go straight across.
Sticking to the shadows, I slip around knee-high tables and lounging couples. A benefactor carrying a wine cask staggers into my path.
“Excuse me,” I say, chin down.
He slips his hand across my bare lower back. “Where are you going, apricot?”
I grab his wrist and twist. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
His eyes scrunch, and he grunts. I let him go, and I briskly walk away—right into the back of Anjali and General Gautam’s floor cushion.
Anjali is nestled up to the general. Neither looks up. I stumble sideways to get around them and then hustle to the bathhouse entrance.
Across the patio, Yatin and Deven enter the pavilion. Deven stares straight at me and then sees his father with Anjali and frowns.
I slip inside the bathhouse, and steam temporarily blinds me. I breathe the steamy air into my pores and blink fast. When my vision clears, I take in tiled ceilings and cool stone floors. A lotus-star-shaped fountain dribbles in the concave middle, ringed by wide raised steps.