The Go-Between (The Nilaruna Cycles Book 1) (18 page)

Manoj rows as close to the beach as he can get, then steps out of the
boat and tows us to shore. He holds the boat steady as I stand.

My legs barely hold me up.

“Steady, my lady,” Faaris says.
He hoists me into his arms as though I am a child and carries me to the sand.
The sun is beginning to peek out over the horizon, and I can finally see his
face clearly. He’s breathtaking.

He sets me down gently and keeps
me upright with an arm about my waist. “Can you walk?” he asks.

I nod. “Just have to get the
blood flowing. I’m a bit stiff.”

Faaris opens his mouth to speak,
but Manoj pops him on the arm. Faaris chuckles. I have no idea why.

“It’s a short walk to your home
now,” Manoj says. “Your parents must be eager to see you.”

There’s no way I’m going home.
Not to the stinking fish hut when Faaris the brave and Manoj the clever are
standing right in front of me.

“I…I can’t go home. No, please,
don’t make me go home!” I force my body to shake.

“Why do you not want to go home? You’re
safe. The kidnappers are gone.”

“Not kidnappers,” I say, thinking
fast. “Slavers. My father sold me to them. Please! Don’t make me return to that
horrid man!”

Manoj and Faaris exchange a
glance. “Your father sold you into slavery?” Manoj asks.

I nod. “He was in debt, I was
pretty, and he thought me useless. I cannot blame him, I mean, he had no
choice.”

“Of course he had a choice!”
Manoj says, indignant on my behalf.

“We were so poor,” I say, “you
cannot imagine. I went without a fight. If it meant having bread on the table
for my family…how could I not go?” I start to slide to the ground.

Faaris keeps hold of me, though.
He lifts me into his arms again, staring at me with concern. “Do not fear,
Saphala. We will not return you to the slavers’ den. We will find another way.”

“There is no other way,” I say
mournfully. “I’ve been gone for six cycles. No one remembers me, surely. I have
no one else to care for me.”

Faaris and Manoj begin to walk up
the sand. “You have Nilaruna,” Faaris says. “And now you have us. We will see
that you are safe and cared for. Nilaruna will be the princess, and she will be
eager to have a friend in the palace. Would you like that?”

I gasp. “You mean, you would take
me to the palace, in Indrapur?”

“Yes.”

I grip the edges of his tunic and
bury my face in his chest. Tears burn my eyes, for real. “Oh, Faaris, my lord,
thank you for rescuing me. Thank you. I am truly blessed.”

Sobs wrack my body, and I cry a
flood of tears.

Faaris nuzzles my head with his
chin. “It will be alright,” he says. “You’re safe now. No harm will come to
you.”

I force myself not to laugh.

Nili
is limping heavily by the time we enter town, but she doesn’t slow. She forces
herself to keep up with me, and my respect for her grows.

“What exactly is causing the pain
in your leg?” I ask her.

“It’s mostly the muscle,” she
says. “I lost half the muscle in my thigh and most of the muscle in my calf in
the fire. They had to cut the damaged tissue away. The muscle that’s left tires
quickly and cramps easily.”

“You said mostly. What’s the
other part?”

“The scar tissue. My skin is
stretched beyond its limits. I don’t have free movement of my leg, and the
stretching hurts when I move at all.”

“And yet you’ve climbed a
mountain,” I say. “Several times.”

“I’ve slowed you down,” she says.

I stop walking. “Why do you
always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Put yourself down when I give
you a compliment,” I say.

“I do that?” she says, genuinely
surprised.

I nod, and we resume our walk.

“I know the insults are coming,” she
says. “I think it’s just easier for me to voice them myself, rather than to
hear others speak them. Remind me, will you? If I do it again, remind me to
stop.”

I smile at her. “Are you asking
me to be good for you?”

She smiles back. “I guess I am.”

***

I get Nili settled in the room next to ours, and I pay the innkeeper
to bring us both a meal and a hot bath.

We choose to bathe first, and
then I join Nili in her room for our meal of vegetable stew, spiced cakes with
honey, and candied figs. It’s not fancy, but it’s hearty and filling.

“I hate figs,” Nili says,
spooning them off her plate and onto mine without asking me.

“Any particular reason?” I ask
her. Her face is twisted in such disgust that she must dislike them for more
than just the taste.

“We have a fig tree outside our
home,” she says.

“And?”

She looks at me blankly.

“And so you were forced to eat
them all the time as a child?” I guess.

“They were always thrown at me,”
she says. “Every time I stepped out of the house. And instead of collecting them
and eating them, if they hit me, my father made me throw them away.”

I clench my fists.

I carry my plate to the window
and pull back the curtain. “No figs,” I say. And I toss one to the road below.

Nili giggles, and I hold the
plate out to her.

She joins me at the window and
looks out. “Do you think I can hit them?” she asks.

I look at the two men she’s
pointing at, chatting together across the road. “Do you know them?”

“Merchants. Importers, actually.
The tall one had an eye infection last year and refused to pay Father after
learning I was at home while he was being treated.”

I hand her a fig. “Fire away, my
lady.”

Nili grins, cocks back her arm,
and throws the fig. It bounces off the man’s forehead with a crack. Candied
figs are rather hard.

Both men cry out and look up at
us. We duck down beneath the window sill, both of us in stitches.

“Thank you,” Nili whispers to me.
“That was immensely satisfying.”

I smile at her. She’s still
laughing.

I reach out slowly and brush a
lock of hair from her face.

Nili freezes.

I let my fingers linger, gliding
them softly down her cheek.

She’s still frozen.

I lean into her. I give her
plenty of time to pull away.

But she doesn’t.

I place a tender kiss upon her
lips.

And Nili responds, just a bit.
Her lips mold to mine, just as tenderly.

“Not yet,” she says against my
mouth. But she doesn’t move back. “I’m with you, but it’s too soon.”

I nod.

I climb to my feet and pull her
up beside me. Nili leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

“That was fun,” she says.

I rest my head atop hers. “It
was. You’re quite good at mischief.”

“I’m hoping it will be an asset
when we run into the assassins.”

I turn and take Nili in my arms.
After a good long hug, I kiss the top of her head.

“On that note, I need to visit
the temple. Is there anything I should know?”

She explains to me the night she
left Maja and stole away to the village, how she saw the high priest and his
apprentice Larraj, to whom her father has betrothed her.

“Wait,” I say. “Go back. You were
betrothed to another man?”

“He’s just a boy of ten,” she
says. “I can’t marry him.”

I rub my temples. “This is
getting more complicated by the minute. So I have to break your engagement.”

“Unless the high priest has
spoken to my father already. I don’t know if the high priest actually visited
as he said he would.”

“And you say they were looking
for you in the middle of the night, but you didn’t get a sense of why?”

Nili shakes her head. “I don’t
have any concrete evidence that the high priest is crooked. I just know
something is amiss. Don’t trust him.”

“I won’t,” I say.

“Maybe you should wait for Faaris
to accompany you,” she says.

And then we hear a scuffling
outside in the hallway, and a knock sounds at the door.

I reach for my veil automatically and settle it over my head.

“My prince, open up!” Faaris
shouts.

Kai grins and opens the door.

And there, sheltered between
Faaris and Manoj, is my old friend.

“Saphala,” I shout, and she runs
to me and throws her arms about me.

“Nili,” she says, chanting my
name like a prayer. “How can I ever thank you? Oh, heavens, it’s so good to see
you.”

“And you,” I say holding tight.
“Are you hurt? Are you hungry? Are you tired?”

She pulls back and eyes my veil
speculatively. “I’m well now, thanks to you. And to Faaris and Manoj. They’ve
taken excellent care of me.”

“How could they not?” I say,
pulling her back to me for another hug. I straighten and hold her out at arms’
length. “Look at you! Kidnapped and rescued from a boat in the dead of night,
and you still look beautiful! Kai, call for a bath, will you?”

Saphala raises an eyebrow at me.
Perhaps I need to be a bit more formal addressing my betrothed when we have
company.

“And thank you, my lord,” I say.
“Of course, a servant should call the innkeeper. I’m just a little excited.”

Kai comes over to us and puts an
arm over my shoulder. Saphala’s mouth drops open. He gives her a small bow.

“Welcome, Saphala. I am Prince
Kai, and I am lucky enough to call Nilaruna my intended. We are happy that you
are safe and at home once again.”

Saphala snaps her mouth closed
and returns a deep bow to Kai. “My prince, I am honored. Thank you for sending
Faaris and Manoj to my rescue. I owe you all my life.”

Huh. Saphala has changed since I
knew her. I don’t think I’d ever seen her bow voluntarily before —there’s
not one bit of deference in her body. Then again, she’s never met the prince
before.

As I reach for her hand, she
looks up at Kai. She’s still bowing, but there’s a hint of something on her lips.
A question? No, she doesn’t move to speak. And then her lips curve, and she
bats her eyelashes.

I blink. Saphala is flirting with
my fiancé!

Kai snaps his fingers, and Manoj
exits the room. “We’ll have a bath drawn and food sent right away. Has your family
been notified of your return?”

Saphala eyes flutter in her head
and she swoons. Faaris moves fast, catching her about the waist and easing her
down on the edge of the bed.

“She’s not going back to her
family,” Faaris says. “I told her she can come to the palace with us.”

“But why, Saphala?” I ask. “Your
father’s been so worried. And your sister—”

“It’s a long tale,” Faaris says.
“She needs to rest. We can talk more this evening.” He kneels at her feet,
whispering comforting words to her.

I lean into Kai. Saphala has
obviously been traumatized. She will need my friendship now more than ever.

Curse my uncle and his stupid plans and his stupider spies! The
entire kingdom has changed since I left, and no one in Bhutan has a clue!

Prince Kai is marrying an
untouchable, and he’s doing it without the least bit of coercion. He truly
likes Nili, at least he seems to. He openly spoke of their betrothal.

And she ordered him about, like
he was a dog trained to fetch a pipe. That is not how the noble women of Bhutan
act, and I’ve spied on many of them in private moments with their husbands.
Noble men brook no arguments, take no sass, and rule the home with a switch in
their hands. My aunt would have been beaten for speaking to my uncle thusly.

The prince is a lost cause, at
least for me.

But then there is Faaris, the
most handsome of the three men by far. I’ve got him in the palm of my hand, as
he is a natural hero. Give him a beautiful woman in danger, and he comes alive.
I suspect he’s “rescued” quite a few women in his time, which means I need to
be more than helpless to trap his heart. Once I’m safe and whole, he’ll drop me
like a hot coal. I need to develop an actual connection with him.

Or I could go after Manoj. He
hasn’t said much to me personally, but he expressed outrage at my situation,
and I can tell he’d be receptive to my advances. But I’d have to play shy and
demure. Manoj is a traditionalist at heart.

Either way, I have options. I
will create options. I
will
live in
the palace, no matter what I have to do to make it happen.

“Do you wish to speak of it?”
Nili asks me.

I’m soaking in a wooden tub of
lukewarm water, Nili beside me, rinsing the soap from my hair. Her touch is
comforting, even with her gnarled hand. She goes to great lengths to make sure
it doesn’t brush my skin, and I’m grateful for that.

“Speak of what?”

“Any of it,” she says. “I just
want to know you’re okay.”

“I don’t wish to speak of it
now,” I say. “It’s still too fresh. Can you distract me? Tell me how you met Prince
Kai.”

Nili smooths her hands gently
through my wet hair. “He came to Dabani to speak with Maja,” she says. “I am
the Go-Between, and we met during his visit.”

I turn around in the water, and
my hair slides out of Nili’s fingers. “You can give me more than that,” I say.
“Tell me the romantic bits. How did you fall in love?”

She ducks her head. “We just got
to talking. We talked about all sorts of things. I think…I think he likes that
I’m not like all the other women he knows. I speak my mind. He wants a true
partner in his marriage, and I’ve always dreamed of that, too.”

I snort. “Men don’t want a
partner. Not in my experience. They want someone who will bed them and leave
them alone.”

“Prince Kai’s not like that,” she
says.

“And what about your caste?” I
ask. “It isn’t an issue?”

Nili shrugs. “Of course it’s an
issue. He’ll have to do some fancy political maneuvering once we’re home. But
he’s prepared to do it.”

“Has he seen your scars?” I ask.

She nods. “Not my whole body, of
course, but my face, yes.” She giggles. “He’s even kissed me.”

I raise an eyebrow. “He has?”

“It was just one sweet kiss,
nothing forward, but it showed me, and him, I think, that my scars are not too
horrible. I mean, they are, but he loves me anyway.”

I fall back into the water and
let my neck rest on the lip of the tub. “It’s unbelievable how things have
changed since I’ve been gone,” I say. “An untouchable on the throne…we dreamed
of it, didn’t we?”

“You did,” she says, and we both
laugh. “I just wanted someone to treat me as an equal. And I’ve found that. It
is rather unbelievable.” Nili sits back on her heels. “Faaris seems quite
attentive to you.”

“He’s very sweet,” I say. “And
handsome. I rather like him.”

Nili stands and grabs a length of
rough-spun cloth the innkeeper left for me. She unfolds it and holds it out
like a curtain. I stand and climb out of the tub, and Nili wraps me up, rubbing
her hands down my arms.

“He’s a good man, Saphala,” she
says. “The very best kind. A match between you would be a blessing.”

I smile. I have a champion in my
corner.