Rhumia dragged her back, and Jaya screamed as she felt a strand cut into her shoulder.
“I am of the Kingdom of Moksh,” Rhumia called out, “and I have caught this assailant under the command of my general. Stay your guns—”
A pulse ripped through the air, missing them. Rhumia snarled. Her hair lengthened, sharpened, and as it did so, she relinquished her pressure on Jaya. Jaya twisted immediately, ducking under her reaching hair and vaulting forward.
Pulses fired behind her. Jaya covered her head with her arms, her heart a flightless thing, pumping wildly in her chest. She saw the orb. Ten paces, five, three—but then a pulse slammed and shattered the glass.
“No!”
The flame roared forward, sensing the pulse shot’s heat, swallowing it, growing. Jaya shrieked.
This couldn’t be happening. She was so close.She was so fucking close!Panic, desperation, fear swallowed her alarm, her pain, as she tried to scoop up the flame, tried to save it.This can’t be happening. This isn’t—
A pulse flared past her ear, singeing her skin. Jaya fell back with a cry. More pulses shredded the air, and she crawled forward, glass biting into her hands and knees as the flame cackled, leeching heat from the pulse fire. Dimly, a part of her noted how strange this was. An Agni flame usually could not live without a host, or a sustained environment like the orb, but then Jaya heard Rhumia’s curses and the wet, startled cry of a guard.
She did not turn back.
She ran.
Down the hall, into her room, slamming open the window, and tumbling into the garden. Her hand swelled with pain. But she did not stop. She rushed to the wall and shimmied up with her good hand. She was halfway up when she felt a hand on her ankle.
“You little bitch,” Rhumia snarled.
Jaya kicked wildly, and her ankle connected with the stub of Rhumia’s ear. The Yumi screamed, falling back, and Jaya used the last of her strength to pull herself up and over the wall. She fell into the canal, water surging up her nostrils, into her ears. She broke the surface, retching.
“JAYA!”
Rhumia’s voice thundered above her, and Jaya saw a black shape reflecting off the water. For all her worth, all her training, Jaya failed to find a clever strategy now. She swam desperately, messily, her limbs screaming with effort, with pain, fueled only by her wretched instinct to survive above all else.
Her broken hand smashed against the hull of the boat, and Jaya inhaled sharply to scream. A mistake. Water flooded her mouth, and she coughed, her nose stinging with pain, when another splash sounded down the canal. She turned to find Rhumia, swimming toward her with the awful elegance of a shark.
Fear swept up her pain, and she hauled herself onto the boat. A bridge curved above them, empty for now, but Jaya knew the guards would come racing down in minutes. Blearily, she fired up the panel.
“Come on, come on,please.”
With a groan, the boat rumbled to life. Her heart soared, beating with a wild, senseless hope, when a wet thud came from the back.
She whipped around to see Rhumia slowly clambering onto the boat.
“Jaya,” she said.
Her voice echoed underneath the bridge, seeming to come from everywhere all at once.
“Jaya, stand down. Now.”
Maybe it was her fear, or her grief, or the sudden, vicious desperation to salvage what had been lost, that moved Jaya as she opened her holopod. Holos sprouted to life. In the blue light, she saw Rhumia’s eyes widen.
“Jaya, don’t—”
“You should have left me in peace.”
A sudden, terrible roar reverberated through the air. Rhumia dove into the canal, turning back to the palace, toward her general, and Jaya zipped forward into the canal without waiting to see her lotuses bloom.
CHAPTER 67
SAMSON
The Sesharian is, at his heart, a coward. That is why their rebellions never see a full moon’s cycle. They lack the spine and cleverness to rise against us.
