Ana touched my back. The warmth of her hand shot tingles all the way down my spine. “Wait, Sohan,” she said.
Just as I predicted, the soldiers responded to the noise. They circled the poor horse, who was now screeching and baring his teeth. I sighed as they captured him and dragged him off to the nearest stable. Rising, I prepared to trail along behind, but I found Anamika standing still, staring up at the window. The girl was leaning out watching the men drag off the horse, and she was in tears; the faint sounds of her weeping carried to us across the courtyard.
As I watched the men and the horse disappear into the shadowy darkness, I shook my head. “They’ve made a real mess of this,” I said to her.
“Yes,” Ana replied distractedly as she took hold of my outstretched hand. “Or, perhaps, we have.”
“We have?” I asked her. “None of this was our fault.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction the horse had been taken. “The guy’s been bumbling around for hours.”
Ana didn’t answer. Her entire mood was fretful. She bit her lip and allowed me to lead her toward the stable without even cloaking us. Unlike the young man, I knew how to be silent and unseen. The darkness melted around us. With my heightened sense of smell and hearing, it was almost too easy to avoid detection.
We crept into the barn and found our charge banging his feet against the wood of his stall. More time passed before he finally settled down and the last guard departed. Ana approached the young man and patted his side. “I am sorry that this has happened. We will do the best we can to fix it.”
The horse whickered and blew air out of his nostrils. Ana touched one hand to the amulet and kept her other against the side of the horse. She closed her eyes and drew upon her power but nothing happened. Again she tried. The torches outside flickered and went out. Air stirred the bits of hay in tiny whirlwinds. Her hair lifted from her shoulders and fanned out all around her.
Even I could feel the strength of her power. It filled my frame and made all the hairs of my body stand on end. The ground shook with a tremor, and it was the possibility of causing an earthquake that finally made her stop. “I cannot change him back,” she said. “The amulet will not allow it.” She sunk down onto the hay and buried her face in her hands.
The horse-boy lowered his head and blew a breath onto her hair.
“Hey,” I said, crouching down next to her. “The kid’s fine. We’ll just leave him here and go find the girl on our own. Once we get her out safely, we’ll break him out and set them up on a nice silkworm farm somewhere far, far away.”
“You make it sound so easy, Sohan.”
I gave her a winning smile. “Not everything needs to be hard, Ana.”
Taking her hand, I pulled her up and saw a shining tear fall onto her cheek. Lifting my fingertip, I gently caught it and thought of the time she’d turned one of Kelsey’s tears into a diamond. Just as I thought of it, the sparkling tear transformed. Ana gasped in awe as I moved the diamond to my palm.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I saw you do it in one of your temples, and I was just remembering that when it changed.”
She touched her finger to it, rolling it around on my palm. “What did you do with it? The one I created for you?”
“I…I gave it to Kelsey the day I asked her to marry me.”
“I see.”
“It’s a tradition in her time for a man to give a woman a diamond ring when he proposes marriage.”
For some reason I felt very uncomfortable telling her about Kelsey and our engagement. It wasn’t like she didn’t know. I stammered, “She still wears it, you know. When I saw her on her wedding day, she wore a mangalsutra. Ren had it made for her and the diamond was there.”
She turned away from me. “We are wasting time,” she said over her shoulder.
I captured her arm to stop her from leaving. “Ana, I…”
Her eyes met mine and there was something there I’d never seen before. “You do not need to explain, Kishan. I was merely curious.”
Taking a step closer, I cupped her arm gently. “I think I prefer it when you call me Sohan,” I said, my voice low and gravelly.
Her breath caught and we stood immobile, just looking at each other. The hoot of an owl startled both of us and she blinked and stepped back. “We have work to do,” she said.
I nodded and followed her out of the stable. We spent several hours tracking the girl. It was easy enough for me to catch her scent after we backtracked to the window, but once we were inside the palace, her scent was gone. It was like the girl had never once left her room. Finally, we found it only to discover her room was now empty. All of her belongings had been moved.
The sun rose and we used the scarf to disguise ourselves, but Ana was summoned down to the kitchens to work when we passed by the head cook. It took me an hour to get her since she was surrounded by people and we didn’t want to cause alarm by disappearing. By the time she changed from a kitchen worker to a palace servant and found a water jug to carry, I had been called upon to help a group of men lifting a cart to put on a new wheel.
When that task was completed, we wound our way through the palace, checking room after room, getting lost more than once, before I finally caught the girl’s scent again. I followed it to a large room blocked by a guard. He took one look at me and stuck out his hand, denying me entrance, but he opened the door for Ana.
She shrugged and ducked inside. Moving far enough away from the man so he couldn’t see or hear me, but close enough to watch for Ana to exit, I wore a hole in the fine rug with my pacing, but at last, she emerged and we met at the corner of the building. “It was a harem. A rather big one,” she said, her eyes gleaming with intensity.
“So? Was she there?” I asked.
“No. But a lot of her silks were.”
My shoulders fell. “Then we need to keep looking.”
“No, Sohan. I know where she is.”
“Where?” I asked.
“She is being prepared for her wedding. The girls will be leaving soon to dress her.”
I took hold of her shoulders a bit too harshly. “Then we’re too late?”
“No. We’ll follow the women. They’ll lead us right to her.”
We waited but the women never came.
“I’ll check with the guard,” Ana said. When she returned, she said, “They have already gone. They left through a back way. I told him I was to be summoned and he gave me directions. Follow me. We must be quick!”
We hurried through a maze of corridors and finally came upon a bathing chamber. There were a few girls mopping up water. “Are we too late?” Ana asked. “We were to bring a gift for the emperor and his new bride.”
“They’ve already gone ahead,” one girl said indifferently.
“Thank you,” Ana muttered and we sped out the door. To avoid too many interruptions, we phased out of time and finally came upon a grand chamber. The door opened as a servant scurried out. We both ducked inside, passing the two guards before the door closed. I heard a voice shouting and the cry of many people. It sounded like battle or soldiers marching in formation.
We stalked closer. The thick carpet would have muffled any sounds we made even if we hadn’t been cloaked. A man’s voice echoed in the expansive chamber, and we came upon the girl we were seeking and the emperor, her betrothed. They stood on a balcony overlooking what must have been a practice field.