“No revenge, no justice?”

“If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.”

Fingers slipped the lighthoek behind my ear and the curving lines on the floor leaped up into mythical creatures studded with stars. Makara the crocodile, Vrishaba the bull, the twin fishes of Meena; the twelve rashi. Kanya the dutiful daughter. Between them the twenty-seven nakshatars looped and arced, each of them subdivided into four padas; wheels within wheels within wheels, spinning around my head like blades as I sat on Sul’s marble floor.

“You know I can’t make any sense out of this,” I said, defeated by the whirling numbers. Sul leaned forwards and gently touched my hand.

“A ride in triumph, a fall through a window into love, a marriage, and a mourning. Window to widow. Trust me.”

~ * ~

“Young girls are truly beautiful on the inside.” Dahin the dream doctor’s voice came from beyond the bank of glaring surgical lights as the bed on which I lay tilted back. “No pollution, no nasty dirty hormones. Everything clean and fresh and lovely. Most of the women who come here, I never see any deeper than their skin. It is a rare privilege to be allowed to look inside someone.”

It was midnight in the chrome and plastic surgery in the basement of the Hijra Mahal, a snatched half-hour between the last of the consultations (society ladies swathed in veils and chadors to hide their identities) and Dahin hooking into the global web, settling the lighthoek over the visual centre in yts brain and pulling on the manipulator gloves connected to surgical robots in theatres half a world away. So gentle, so deft; too agile for any man. Dahin of the dancing hands.

“Have you found it yet?” I asked. My eyes were watering from the lights. Something in them, something beyond them, was looking into my body and displaying it section by section, organ by organ, on Dahin’s inner vision. Traditionally, the hijras were the only ones allowed to examine the bodies of the zenana women and reported their findings to the doctors outside.

“Found what? Finger lasers? Retractable steel claws? A table-top nuke wired into your tummy?”

“My father said over and over, I’m a weapon, I’m special... I will destroy the House of Azad.”

“Cho chweet, if there’s anything there, this would have shown it to me.”

My eyes were watering. I pretended it was the brightness of the light.

“Maybe there’s something... smaller, something you can’t see, like... bugs. Like a disease.”

I heard Dahin sigh and imagined the waggle of yts head.

“It’ll take a day or two but I can run a diagnostic.” Tippy-tapping by my ear. I turned my head and froze as I saw a spider robot no bigger than my thumb move towards my throat. It was a month since the night, but still I was distrustful of robots. I imagined I always would be. I felt a little flicking needle pain in the side of my neck, then the robot moved over my belly. I cringed at the soft spiking of its sharp, precise feet. I said, “Dahin, do you mind me asking—did you do this?”