Hunted by the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena

Author:Tanaz Bhathena
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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The serving girls eat in the kitchen courtyard—an open-air space bordered by a wall of pink stone at one end and a water basin to wash utensils at the other. A woman stands next to a table stacked with brass plates at one end and two steaming vats at another. She gives me the same up-and-down look Yukta Didi did earlier, but her brown eyes are kind, and the portion she serves me is the same as the others’.

I find a spot by the water basin, a brief distance from where a group of other girls are already settled. I feel the others glance as I pass them, hear their whispers even after I crouch on the floor behind them.

“That’s the new girl?”

“Queen’s curses, how skinny! She’s not going to last!”

I ignore them and focus on the food itself: a spicy affair of smooth, creamy kadhi and khichdi that tastes as delectable as it looks, each yellow grain of rice melting in my mouth. I’m not here to make friends, and soon enough the conversation drifts from me to other happenings at the palace.

“You were at the raj darbar today, Nargis. What happened?”

I grow still at the words raj darbar. The king’s court in Raj Mahal. I shift around, trying not to seem as if I’m eavesdropping.

“There was a peri there today,” a girl, probably Nargis, replies. Her voice is clear and carrying; she knows she has an audience, and she likes it. “He sang like a dream! So handsome, too. All of us, including the two younger queens, kept drooling over him! Rani Amba was most displeased at our behavior. She called us undignified.”

The girls laugh, sounding delighted.

“Did he have wings?” someone asks eagerly. “The peri.”

“Did he fight in the cage?” someone else adds.

“Of course he didn’t fight in the cage!” Nargis scoffs at the last question. “You know the spectacles take place only once toward the middle of every month, Sunaina. And he didn’t have wings, either. Remember how the peri were when they had wings? They attacked us all with that beast of a Pashu king during the Battle of the Desert. No, they’re better off clipped, I say.”

“I wish I could go to court,” one of the girls says. “If only to see all the creatures the raja brings in from the flesh market. And the spectacles in the cage.”

“I still remember last month’s spectacle,” Nargis says gleefully. “Raja Lohar had brought in five prizefighters from the flesh market and pit them all against an armored leopard. The beast just ripped them apart. If you want to see something like that, you need to get on your rani’s good side. That’s the only way for girls like us to attend the king’s court or even see what Raj Mahal looks like! That, or serve the Scorpion.”

No one laughs this time.

“I hear the Scorpion prefers boys serving her,” someone else says. “I saw her eyeing that dirt licker from the stables the other day. What’s his name? Cavas?”

The morsel of rice and gravy turns sour in my mouth.

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