Empire of Bones

The Conjuror's Daughter Varanasi, India, 2030 I used to be a goddess. Not that that's much use to me right now, Jaya thought as she stood angrily in the hospital corridor. Catching a glimpse of herself in a laminated display cabinet, she had to stifle a smile at the notion of deity. They'd issued her with a shapeless nylon gown; she looked small and bent and old, somehow out of place in this gleaming new ward. She gripped the edge of the cabinet to steady herself. "Mrs. Nihalani," Erica Fraser said, with barely concealed impatience. "This is the fourth time this week! Whatever are we going to do with you?" "I want to leave." Jaya tried to sound calm, but her gnarled hand shook as it clasped the edges of the cabinet. She could feel her body trembling. "I'm not a prisoner here." That was true enough; this was nothing like jail in Delhi, nothing like Tihar. "Well, I'm afraid you can't. You're in no condition to go wandering off. And where would you go? When we found you, you were living on a waste dump. You're crippled with rheumatoid arthritis. Mrs. Nihalani, we're only trying to help." "I know that," Jaya said, through clenched teeth. "And I'm grateful, but--" It was a lie. She knew she should have felt a little more thankful, but Fraser was so patronizing. Every day, Jaya was reminded in one way or another of how fortunate she had been that the UN medical team had chanced across her crumpled body and brought her here to this shining new hospital wing. She was safe now, the doctor told her. Here, she would be cared for, perhaps even healed. Inside a little bubble of the West, sealed off from the unspeakable chaos of her country, which Jaya called Bharat, and the doctor called India. She was very lucky, Fraser told her each morning. It was starting to sound like a threat. "And what about other people?" Fraser demanded now. "This part of the world's seen a dozen new diseases in the last ten years alone, and I'm damned if I'm going to release another one into an overpopulated area." There was nothing she could say to that, Jaya thought. How could she tell the doctor that she knew her illness wasn't contagious, presented no threat to anyone but herself? And how do you know that? Fraser would ask. Jaya would have to reply: Why, because the voice in my head tells me so. But if she said that, any chance she'd have of getting out of here would be gone. She felt her hands clench into fists, the joints stiffened and painful. "I don't understand why you want to leave," Fraser said plaintively. Jaya could almost hear the unspoken thought: Why are these people so ungrateful? "You told me that you've spent the last few years scavenging for medical waste on the dumps, ever since you were widowed. What kind of a life is that?" The life of a jackal, hunting the edge of sickness, where life wears thin. The voice echoed in her head, a little wonderingly, as though the notion was new to it. For the thousandth time, Jaya asked the voice: What are you? But there was no reply. "Mrs. Nihalani!" Fraser said, sharply. "You're looking very tired. I think we'd better get you back to bed, hadn't we?" She took Jaya firmly by the arm. For a crazy moment, Jaya wondered what the reaction would be if she turned to the doctor and told her: Sorry, can't stay. I've got a voice in my head and a revolution to run. Well, that would really put the cat among the pigeons, to use Fraser's favorite phrase. The truth was one luxury Jaya couldn't afford. How could she tell the doctor who she really was? There had been a time, after all, when a photo of her face adorned every wall from Mumbai to Calcutta. It was a miracle that she hadn't been recognized already; she supposed she had the unwelcome transformations of the illness to thank for that. If Fraser realized that shWilliams, Liz is the author of 'Empire of Bones' with ISBN 9780553583779 and ISBN 0553583778.