We Shall Be Monsters, page 10
Don’t, she pleaded to Lasya. I can handle this. I can…
Kill him. I can kill him, if I have to.
She thought about grabbing the soldier’s head and smashing it against the cobblestones. She thought about drowning him in the fountain while he struggled, bubbles rising from his mouth until he stilled. It would be better if she took his life, like the rebels with the pujari, if that meant she could prevent the bhuta from getting stronger. Spare Lasya another murder.
Gradually, the terror that had caught her in its stranglehold loosened, replaced with sickening satisfaction. The whine faded away.
“Right,” she said hoarsely. “But I’m…I’m pretty tired now.”
The soldier, Jagvir, slid his icy gaze past her. “What’s that animal with you?”
Jassi’s laugh was mild. “What, you haven’t seen a dog before? He’s my sister’s. Follows her everywhere. It’s adorable.”
He made a face, like Kutaa was anything but adorable. “It’s past curfew, Professor Jasmeet.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It better not.” His hand drifted to his belt. Kajal’s eyesight strained in the darkness to make out the nautilus shape of a leather whip curled there.
The scars on her back throbbed.
Jassi gently steered Kajal toward the dormitories. Kajal managed to get up a couple flights of stairs before her wobbling knees gave out.
Jassi knelt beside her. “I’m so sorry. I should have been paying better attention—”
“There are Vadhia here?” She knew the university was Bakshi’s, but she hadn’t expected his soldiers to bother themselves with it if he never came.
“They sometimes use the soldiers’ housing as a way station, and they technically outrank the university guards.” Jassi shook her head. “I think Jagvir’s in a particularly bad mood since he just got off the road yesterday. He was on some mission that didn’t go well.”
We’re not the only ones who heard about the mishap in Siphar, Vivaan had told her.
“A lot of us don’t like it either,” Jassi said when Kajal shuddered. “But as long as we lie low, they shouldn’t bother us.”
Lie low. How was that possible when she had a prince to resurrect and her sister’s bhuta haunting her, already on the hunt for its next victim? She had managed to stave off the bhuta this time, but there was no telling if she could do it again.
She reached up and touched her neck, sore where the bhuta had choked her on the road. She thought about how it must feel to have a rope digging into her flesh instead, and hoped news of her misdeeds in Kinara didn’t travel south.
Chapter Ten
The banging of fists against wood echoed through the desolate dark. The ungiving surface above her stung her palms with splinters and sent numbing vibrations down her arms. Her breaths filled the cramped space with the frightened pitch of a trapped animal.
Kajal pounded harder, desperate to break free. Lasya. She had to get to Lasya. She had to bury her deep beneath the earth’s surface as if she were nothing but a sprouted root ready to grow and ripen into something once again living.
Smoke leaked through the gaps in her coffin. The first hint of heat nipped her skin, flames crackling while she kept knocking against the lid as hard as she could.
Something took hold of her arm. Like the bhutas that had clawed at her ankles, wanting to drag her down into the earth, down and down until—
With a scream, she was pulled from the coffin, from the darkness, from the smoke and heat. Her eyes flew open.
She stared up at a ceiling she didn’t recognize. She turned her head and found Kutaa, his jaws around her forearm in a soft bite. Seeing she was awake, he let go and backed away, ears turned toward the central room of Jassi’s flat.
Last night returned to her in a rush. She had been led here, nerves jangling, to find there wasn’t only a bed waiting for her, but a whole room. The floor and walls were dark, the bed frame, like the table and desk, made of rosewood. There was also a trunk for clothes, though she had nothing to store in it.
Someone was knocking at the door. Kajal cursed and struggled against the sheet she’d gotten tangled in. Warm sunlight slanted across her legs; she briefly wondered if that was what had inspired the flames in her dream.
“Coming!” she croaked. Thankfully, she was already dressed, too paranoid to sleep in her underthings in case she had to flee during the night.
She lurched into the central room. A rug of green and gold was spread over the floor, and a round table with two chairs was situated at the window, stained with cup rings. There was also a desk against the left wall, covered in papers and books dragged from what was now Kajal’s room and what she suspected was formerly an office. Through a door on the right was Jassi’s bedroom, the bed unmade, the professor gone.
Kutaa stood braced in the middle of the room as Kajal flung the front door open wide. The person on the other side jumped, hand held up to knock again. They were about her age—a student, she guessed—dressed in a colorful embroidered kurta of blue and green. Their hair fell in a straight sheet to their shoulders, and their aquiline nose glinted with a gold septum piercing.
“Finally,” the student said. “I didn’t think you’d still be asleep.”
Kajal was about to demand what else she’d be doing so early in the morning, but the sunlight coming through the window indicated it must be closer to noon. Considering how little sleep she’d gotten the previous two nights, she supposed that was fair.
Kajal scratched her scalp, grimacing at the tangles in her hair. “Where’s Pro— Jassi?”
The student smirked. “You don’t have to pretend in front of me. I know about the Insurrectionists.”
Kajal stopped trying to undo a particularly gnarled knot and gave the student another once-over. “You do?”
“I’m the youngest child of the Sodhi family.” When Kajal made no sign of recognition, the student put their hands on their hips. “Really? No one explained any of this to you?”
Then it clicked. “Ah, the nobles, right? The ones who want to depose Bakshi?”
“Say it a little louder. I don’t think the students on the next floor heard you.” They crossed their arms and leaned their long, lanky body against the door frame. “But yes. Part of the reason my parents ultimately agreed to send me here was to ‘keep an eye on things.’ ” They rolled said eyes, which were the light brown of cinnamon bark. “Never mind the only things I want to keep my eye on are books. Anyway, Professor Jassi told me about you this morning.”
“Where is she?”
“She has classes and got roped into some meetings, the latter of which was definitely code for ‘I need to go see a guy about some stuff.’ Supplies for you, most likely. She apologizes and says she’ll meet up with you later. In the meantime, I’m supposed to show you around. At least until I have— Oh!”
Their voice strangled at the end, and Kajal immediately saw why: Kutaa had stalked to the door.
“I was told you had a guard dog, but I’ve never seen one so big.” The student extended a hand. Kutaa sniffed their thin fingers and protruding knuckles before he wagged his tail in acceptance. Emboldened, the student patted Kutaa’s head. “Who do we have here?”
“Kutaa.”
The student raised both eyebrows but didn’t comment. “I’m Dalbir. Please don’t refer to me as ‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”
“I’m Kajal. Or Nishaa, I suppose. ‘She’ and ‘her’ are fine.”
Dalbir gave the dog one final pat and glanced meaningfully at Kajal’s hair. “I’ll give you a moment to clean up. When you’re ready, meet me in the hall. I’ll bring you to the commissary.”
Kajal closed the door and turned to Kutaa. “You have to stay here until I come back. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself.” Kutaa gave a single wag of his tail, which she took as consent.
Once Kajal had tamed her hair, brushed her teeth with neem leaves, and unsuccessfully tried to straighten the wrinkles in her clothing, she followed Dalbir out. It was surprisingly noisy in the dormitories. They passed a couple girls fighting over a hair clip, someone calling down the stairs to their friend below, and a student sweeping their floor while singing off-key.
“Quiet hours don’t start until late afternoon,” Dalbir explained. “A lot of students go to the library to get work done during the day.”
Her heart fluttered. “There’s a library?”
“Of course. This is a university, what did you expect?”
She really didn’t know. The only schools she’d encountered were small, with no-nonsense teachers and cramped classrooms and a yard for calling attendance. Where the children almost always wore simple uniforms and were required to keep their hair and nails at appropriate lengths. Kajal had wanted to attend one until she learned teachers hit students’ palms with a stick if they gave wrong answers. Being here was wholly outside of her experience, and a hefty dose of trepidation was mixed in with her excitement.
Now that it was daytime, she took care to observe her surroundings, the same way she had when she and Lasya went somewhere new. Jassi’s flat was on the top floor, and there were windows she could crawl through to climb onto the roof. Down on the first floor were archways that seemed good for hiding behind, and if worse came to worst, there were plenty of students she could grab and threaten. A chokehold would work well enough, but a knife would be even better.
“How long do students attend the university for?” Kajal asked as they crossed the Serpent Court, the air already congested with incense from the temple.
“The average is three years or so. But it depends on how quickly you can find an advisor who’ll help you transition into a profession.”
They passed under the archway and into the university’s central courtyard. It was bustling with people, some lounging before a star-shaped pool with a marble fountain, others hurrying between buildings. One of the pavilions had its curtains drawn, affording a view of a professor leading a sleepy group of students through guided meditation.
Like the Serpent Court, the central courtyard was hexagonal in shape, and there were two additional courts to the west and north. Above each gate loomed a stone statue of one of the yaksha deities: the Elephant, the Tortoise, and the Serpent.
Kajal went to sneak a glimpse through the Tortoise archway, but Dalbir grabbed the back of her shirt.
“That’s the housing for the senior professors, staff, and guards,” Dalbir explained. “We’re not allowed in unless the temple is open for a special occasion.”
The warning came too late. Kajal had already noticed the whipping post at the far end of the courtyard.
Her blood turned to rime along her veins. She stared numbly at the post, elevated on a wooden platform, until her vision blurred.
There was no limit to the number of punishments for someone like her. She had stolen more times than she could count. She had punched a merchant’s son for touching her sister. She had broken the window of a sweets shop because they refused to sell her Lasya’s favorite kind of burfi, on account of her dirty face and shoeless feet.
But the post—that had been for raking her nails down a soldier’s face.
She still carried a couple of raised scars along her ribs and between her shoulder blades where buckskin leather had bit her skin. Because the one who had whipped her had not held back on account of her being young or a girl; because they had wanted not only to teach her a lesson but to give a warning to everyone who’d watched and done nothing.
Do not oppose us.
Her body was a jumble of sensory memories. Sun flashing on teeth, and the brass pips of a blue-and-marigold uniform. A trickle of blood down her spine. Lasya sobbing, begging them to stop.
Dalbir followed her gaze. “The Vadhia built that after a professor was overheard bad-mouthing Bakshi.”
It was a struggle to speak. “They whipped a professor?”
“They’ve done a lot worse.”
The noose. Any feeling that had begun to return to her in increments fizzled back to numbness.
“Apparently, it was to ‘dissuade others from following the same sentiment.’ ” Dalbir shook their head in disgust. “Come on. We shouldn’t linger here.”
A distant whistle blew past Kajal’s ears. She hurried after Dalbir, putting distance between them and the post.
They passed under the statue of the Elephant and into a courtyard flanked by two towering minars. Colonnades gave way to latticed marble windows in a glimmering sandstone building that loomed above a small temple.
Kajal noticed a blocked-off archway behind it. “What’s that for?”
“It leads to the old palace. Nobody uses it, and we’re not allowed inside.” Clearly uninterested, Dalbir ushered her down a stone pathway that led to a squat side building. “The majority of classes are held here, but the commissary is this way.”
The commissary was littered with tables and floor cushions on thick rugs. Students’ chatter filled every nook and cranny, making Kajal’s shoulders tighten. She kept imagining that their eyes were fixed on her.
“I don’t have any money,” Kajal admitted. Living as she had, not much embarrassed her, but the way Dalbir peered at her now made her flush.
“Students and professors don’t pay for food,” they explained. “You take a plate, and the servers hand you whatever you want, but you have to clean the plate yourself at the wash station before you return it.”
She didn’t have to pay for food? It seemed far too good to be true. Under Dalbir’s encouragement, Kajal grabbed a couple of rolled-up rotis slathered with ghee, feeling odd in her own skin.
She paused when she saw a knife on the other side of the counter. It wouldn’t take much to distract the server and grab it. Her fingers twitched, envisioning the Vadhia she’d run into last night. The whip coiled at his belt. The post. The noose.
As she was about to make her move, a bell tolled a deep tune somewhere close by. Dalbir rearranged the bag slung over their shoulder.
“You have a class?” Kajal guessed.
“Mythic History. I’m studying to be a lorist. I trust you remember the way to Professor Jassi’s flat?”
She didn’t want to go back to Jassi’s flat. She wanted to explore, to poke and prod and discover, to pretend she was just another student. But she doubted she could blend in so easily; the university’s rules were completely foreign to her. Also, she didn’t like the idea of walking through the grounds alone while that soldier was here.
Taking a bite of roti before someone decided she couldn’t have it after all, she gestured with the other toward the door. “Can I see the classrooms first?”
Dalbir allowed her to follow them to the main building. She licked the ghee that rolled down her wrist as they trotted through long hallways that sported vaulted ceilings and were flanked with frescoes and marble relief panels.
Up a flight of stairs, students her age streamed by like schools of fish, the ruckus even more intense than in the commissary. Dalbir led her to a pear-shaped archway, beyond which was a room situated with tiered benches facing a wall covered in a dusty blackboard. It smelled of parchment and dust, the air buzzing with murmurs.
“There, you’ve seen it,” Dalbir said. “Happy?”
Figuring she had some time until Jassi returned with supplies, Kajal ignored Dalbir and made her way to the bench farthest back. Dalbir sighed and followed her. She had no materials—no paper, no pen, no way of taking notes—and she gazed longingly at the sheaves of parchment the students had, missing her captive notebook.
As she was sliding into an empty spot, she accidentally knocked into the girl sitting in the row ahead. The girl rocked forward with a great deal more force than Kajal suspected she’d hit her with, and her pen spilled a slash of ink across her parchment.
The girl whirled around with murder in her dark eyes. Kajal was alarmed by how beautiful she was, her dark bronze skin smooth as nacre and her heart-shaped face framed by curly reddish-brown hair. The two girls on either side of her—sisters, if their similar features were anything to go by—gasped in unison.
“Well?” the beautiful girl said in a low voice after a moment of strained silence. “Aren’t you going to apologize?”
Kajal had run into a wide variety of people during her travels, both with Lasya and on her own. She immediately knew what sort of person this girl was—the spoiled upstart, the cherished daughter who walked through the world with the confidence of one who would inherit more than they were worth.
A smile bloomed on Kajal’s face. “I was going to, but now I don’t think I will.”
Dalbir groaned, and the girl’s friends gaped. They were beginning to draw attention from the other students.
The beautiful girl narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Forced apologies are meaningless. Although I suppose you’re used to hearing empty words.”
Before the girl could form any sort of retort, a middle-aged man walked into the classroom. The students shot to their feet until the professor gestured at them to sit. Dalbir took the opportunity to shove Kajal farther down the bench, away from the trio of girls.
“What was that?” Dalbir hissed. “First you barge your way into a class you’re not enrolled in, then you make enemies with the university’s top student?”
Kajal’s smile soured. “Top student? Her?”
“Yes! All the professors and students love Vritika. You’ll only paint a target on your back if you get on her bad side.” Dalbir shook their head, rummaging through their bag for a piece of parchment and a pen. “Then again, you’ve probably already done that. You should have just apologized.”
Kajal sneered. She had survived far worse than one stuffy girl who didn’t like being told no. She’d had entire towns out for her blood.
