Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [220]
“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