Page 29 of Her Soul for a Crown

The converging clouds tightened Reeri’s shoulders and sent his shadow squirming.

Morning rang out in the inner city with the sounds of animals and humans alike.

Courtiers lazed through stalls of fine meats, foreign fabrics, and breathtaking jewels.

They hawked and haggled, for those with deep pockets rarely touched their seams. It should have felt inviting, the memories cheering, but the whispers following him set his teeth on edge.

“My raja.” The people bowed as Reeri made his way through the streets, Calu at his side. A contingent of guards followed a distance behind so the new raja could be seen by his courtiers.

It had been far too easy, the change in leadership. Usurpers, it seemed, were all too common, even ones who stole into the night without an army. The ministers swallowed the story Bithul and Viran, the former raja’s adviser, fed them and regurgitated it for the masses.

The Kingdom of Anuradhapura was brimming with half-truths.

Raja Siva the First was not a usurper but a senior gate porter at the palace—the closest guard Reeri could sense and direct his shadow into.

That part was not so easy. When the poison had wrested him from Chora Naga’s body, his shadow attempted to return to the aether, while the tether chained him to the earth, to Anula, stretching his being in multiple directions.

It was not something he wished to experience again.

If Anula was to be believed and it in fact had been a mistake, then he had nothing to fear.

Anula was cunning. She had strategically told Bithul of the Yakkas and her bargain with them, a decision that indeed helped Reeri return to her when all was blood and shadow and near death.

If not for Bithul’s knowledge, mayhap she would have died, the bargain and the freedom of the Yakkas disappearing into the blackness of the cosmos.

Anula was also calculating. If her memory-nightmares and lists held weight, she had not bargained for the throne on a whim.

She had mastered poisoncraft for a reason, met with ministers, and selected guards in support of it.

She acted for her dead, for the loved ones she saw at night, for the blood she could not save them from.

They were not dissimilar in that, and Reeri would not fault her for it. Yet he could not let the action go.

This was his only chance.

There was no room for failure, no choice to return to the Heavens empty-handed and try again next year. Anula might be many things, but Reeri needed to know if she was a true threat.

“Here.” Calu thrust a fish patty in Reeri’s face. “Eat while you brood.”

Reeri pushed his hand away. “I do not brood.”

“You have done nothing but brood for centuries. Your face is stuck like that.” Calu bit into the patty and groaned in a way indelicate for public hearing. “Heavenly wretches, I missed these.”

The longing in his voice pinched Reeri’s chest. He had stolen this from him, from them all.

“Anula has not been near these.” Calu cocked a smile, offering it once more.

Reeri leveled a glare.

“What? If you cannot laugh at yourself—”

“Then at least you will always laugh for me.”

Calu stuffed the rest of his patty in his mouth. “I see we are not in a humorous mood.”

Reeri gifted another glare.

He chuckled. “If you are so angry with her, why not lock her up? Let Kama watch her until we are done. The distance between you two seems fine now; the tether has not tried to kill any of us in nearly an hour. Mayhap she was right—she only has to be near one of us.”

If Reeri were still made of shadows, his edges would flick and snap.

Anula had been right. Proximity was necessary, yet proximity to whom was interchangeable.

At least he did not have to look at her today.

While he and Calu searched the inner city, she and Sohon explored the outer city.

It had been her suggestion, after she had tired of his silent treatment.

Though he did not want to risk the wrath of the tether again, she refused to be in his presence any longer.

Something about being too pretty to be ignored.

He scoffed at her gall but had not argued.

It was her skin on the line, and if he was being honest, he wanted time to consider her actions.

If she was a threat, she must be subdued.

“You think walls will cage her in?” he asked Calu, as they made their way through the city streets. Another point on which Anula might be right: perhaps a market, not a shrine, hid the Bone Blade relic.

“Do you? You know her best.”

Reeri snorted. If the memory-nightmares and sparks of thought he had seen when they touched were any indication, he did not know her at all.

Yet did he?

His hand flexed at the thought. At her bee-stung lips—the way they had crashed against the threat of the man in the dark alley. At the fear that filled his lungs in the night, the list of dead, the echo of Ratti’s screams.

They were not dissimilar.

“She acts for a purpose,” he said. “She believes she must have the throne to protect people.”

“ Ah ,” Calu said, touching smoothed stones and figurines on a table. “Love always offers the most outlandish things.”

“So does ambition and revenge.”

“But she tried to kill you last night. Why would she not do it again?”

Why, indeed? Anula’s soul was bittered and burdened. The wounds of her past drove her in ways he had not seen in another offerer. Fear of failure drove her more wildly. But would he not act with wild abandon if his plans were disrupted? Was that not what he was considering now?

“She only threatened death,” he said, chewing on the thought. “If she wanted me dead, there would have been no threat. She wants the bargain completed. She wants the throne. Now she knows there is only one way to her goal: the Bone Blade.”

“Are you sure? Because if she makes good on that threat, if she steals the relic or finds a way to kill you…”

“I know,” Reeri snapped. “I know what is at stake.”

“I am only trying to help.”

“No need,” Reeri growled. “I have it under control.”

He did not need the other Yakkas’ help, nor their shadows shredded from a whip in his hands if he failed.

“All right,” Calu said, hands up. He led them around a corner, a stretch of street revealing more vendors and a view of the main courtyard.

Prophet Ayaan carried a lantern through it, acolytes following in a line behind.

They paused at each person, twirling smoke and spraying blessed water in their faces.

Penance cleansing. Reeri had not witnessed it in centuries.

It was a ritual performed leading up to the Festival of the Cosmos, a weeklong celebration of the Heavens’ mighty powers, their love and favor, beginning on the Maha Equinox.

A gust of wind chilled Reeri’s shadow. “Let us go to the shrine.”

“Why? We have only searched half the market.”

“Not for the relic,” Reeri said. “I want blood.”

***

Reeri and Calu needed only to touch the offerings in the inner-city shrine to hear their prayers.

“Great Blood Yakka,” an elderly woman crooned, “hear my prayer—heal my grandson of these bleeding boils. My husband has spent all our money on healers, but they cannot do the miracles you can. Please, we need help in the fields, or else we will all die. I offer the last of our Yala harvest.”

The scent of longing and heartbreak drifted on the air.

Yet it was not the offering Reeri sought.

He whispered back into the cosmos, where the woman would hear, either by faith or knowing.

“You seek healing of the blood, so blood must be offered. First, bring a vial of your grandson’s blood, and your bargain will be accepted. ”

The order for an elevated offering sang on the wind.

Mayhap it would be as easy as that. Blood was simpler to find than a relic, especially when the wish was for a loved one.

Those had been Reeri’s favorite bargains to make—the ones that brought joy and peace.

The ones that balanced the cosmos and tightened the sense of communion.

That was what life was: beauty from darkness, and the thread of community through it all.

A deep yearning bloomed. He reached for another offering, another piece of communication, another ghost of the past. Yet Reeri tamped it down, wrenched his hand away.

The fault lies entirely with you.

Reeri had stolen that life from the Yakkas. It was only right that they lived it again before him.

“I believe Ratti would have liked Anula,” Calu said, standing after ordering his own elevated offerings.

Reeri darkened at the turn of conversation.

Calu knew as well as the others that he did not like speaking of their brethren and what he had sentenced them to.

Yet he also knew that, oftentimes, Calu could not help it.

His pain leaked like a damaged irrigation tank.

The least Reeri could do was listen. “Why do you say that?”

Ratti was the oldest sister of the Yakkas of Love, the Yakka of Passion. She cared for all in a loving manner, like a mother hen to her chicks. She raised no walls and poisoned no creature. She was pure love. A far cry from what he had seen of Anula.

Calu gazed at a mural of the Second Heavens.

“Ratti loved everyone. The real person. She always helped those who sought love find it after first loving themselves. She taught people not to hide their true selves. Anula is solely herself, not even willing to hide. She is as Ratti told me to be, fearless.”

Reeri’s shoulders fell. “Fearless of what?”

“Of them.” He nodded to the door. “You were too busy with your schemes and your communion to notice, but she did. The humans did not connect with me like they did you. I was not invited to birth celebrations or gatherings of any kind. I did not have a gaggle of women fawning over me, bargaining with the Ladies of Lust.”

Reeri flushed. “They did not—”

“They held back with me,” Calu asserted. “Who could blame them? I could make them think whatever I wanted. So they constantly second-guessed whether they truly liked me, truly trusted me, or if it was an illusion bestowed upon them.”

“They still prayed.”

“Oh yes, they prayed. For protection or revenge. But they never communed with me. I tried to be affable, caring, like Ratti, but that made them suspicious. So I tried being cavalier, like you.”

“I was not cavalier.”

“Of course not.” Calu rolled his eyes. “Eventually I gave up. Ratti saw it immediately and disapproved. She told me that you had not worked so hard for me to wallow in a mud puddle. She told me that if I were my true self, that energy would flow through the cosmos to resonate with the right people, and that I must try because without connection, I was not truly living.”

A beat of silence passed, the wind whistling through the window. Had Reeri been so blind? Cavalier, Calu had called him. Was he still?

“I will not be afraid next time.” Calu stroked a finger along Ratti’s depiction in the painting. “I will make Ratti proud.”

Reeri closed his eyes. He did not need to hear Wessamony’s condemning words. He knew this was his fault. But he would fix it. He would give Calu a second chance. He would ensure their eldest sister was there to see. Their lives were within his grasp, and he would not falter this time.

Anula would not make him.