by Sarah Zettel
She was supposed to be eyes and ears for her family now. If Hamsa was watching her, she would also be watching Hamsa, and any knowledge she obtained in conversation, she could find a way to use, somehow. Natharie remembered how the woman had stood silent and ineffective behind Divakesh, and she wondered at that. She needed to understand who these people were and how the power between them stood. She had lived her whole life among the schemes and plans of Sindhu’s royal court. She was ignorant, but she was not naive. She could learn and she would learn, and quickly.
Anything, any game, was better than sinking into the shadows of her own thoughts.
Chapter Three
When Natharie left Sindhu the sun set in Queen Sitara’s heart. She wept the day away alone in her room. At night, she lay still on her bed. Her husband sent his body servant to her, asking that she come to him, and she refused. She tried to remind herself that Kiet was Natharie’s father, that he too had lost a daughter, and now he needed the comfort of his wife and queen.
And she still could not move.
In the middle of the night, she woke to the sound of bare feet pattering against the floor, and a small, warm, familiar shape wiggled into bed next to her.
“Mama, I miss Natharie,” whispered little Bailo, her youngest son.
All she could do was wrap her arms around him and hold him close. She stared into the darkness, looking for someone who was no longer there.
When at last she felt sleep overtake her child, Sitara rose. Cradling him close, she gave him back to his nurse with a kiss, and then, without apology, she roused her sleep-tousled maids so that they might dress her, and sent her chief woman, Rintu, to ask her husband if he would meet with her privately. She knew, with an instinct born of long years of life and love, that he too lay awake in his room. Silent, Anun watched all this, and the queen saw approval in the guardswoman’s sharp eyes.
While she waited for her answer, Sitara went out onto her terrace. Night came late to Sindhu in the summer months, and when it did come, it laid itself down thick, heavy and sultry, stifling breath and movement and setting the whole land longing for the great rains that would wash the season away. Sitara knelt on the bare wood and stared into darkness. Mosquitoes whined about her ears, heedless of the dragonflies that darted here and there, or the great bats that flapped their leathery wings overhead. The tent of fine gauze that would have given her shelter waited empty a few feet away, its platform and pillows unused.
She heard a most familiar step on the floor behind her, but she did not turn.
“Your suffering will not bring her ease, Sitara.”
Kiet: her husband, a good king, a wise man, a kind father, the man whose embrace could quicken her heart and blood like nothing else in life. He moved closer. She felt him behind her, heard his breathing, smelled his scent. He laid his broad hands on her shoulders. The night turned their skin damp and despite the broad garden that surrounded the palace, they both breathed dust. Of its own volition, her hand covered one of his.
“I want to go to the forest, Kiet,” she said. “I want to go to the sorcerers.”
“Sitara, that is not wise. You mourn. I mourn as well. The sorcerers will not change that.”
Sitara turned without standing. She looked up at her husband. “They can offer her some safety, some blessing.”
Kiet sighed. “The Hastinapurans are not barbarians. She will not be ill-treated.”
In the face of her husband’s reasoned statement, Sitara found only anger. “She is a slave. Our child is made a slave to the Hastinapuran emperor’s whim! Had I the strength, I would have killed her before it came to this.”
Slowly, Kiet knelt before her, and in the dust-choked moonlight, Sitara saw the fullness of the sorrow he held back by the strength of his own silence. She saw heartbreak and grief that matched her own. “It is as it must be,” he whispered.
These were the right words, the wise words, but no place in her could hear them. “Why?”
Kiet stood, turning away. He walked to the edge of the terrace, resting his fist on the carved railing. He spoke to the prey and the predators that flew together beneath the moon. “Because, Sitara, they are great, and we are small.”
Why could she not go to him? This was her husband and her king. Why could she not put her arms around him, hold him and be held, for comfort, for strength, for life in the midst of loss. She felt as if she were yards away from her own body. She could not reach her hands to make them stretch out to her husband, nor her heart to will it to proper feeling for another’s grief.
“We are full as ancient as they,” she heard herself say. “Our spirits are as strong as theirs.”
“And our army is ten times smaller!” Kiet swung around, suddenly swollen with his rage and his grief, his great hands now both made into fists.
Stop. Stop. Sitara pleaded with herself. Remember silence. Remember wisdom.
Instead, she met her husband’s eyes. “Then perhaps we must find a greater army.”
“Oh, Sitara,” Kiet breathed slowly. “Be careful what you say.”
He was right. She could offer no retort to that admonishment, not even as far away as she was. They must be careful. They must be as careful as the mongoose stealing up upon the cobra’s den.
“We have powers we have not yet begun to draw on,” she whispered. “They wait in the forest for your word.”
Kiet’s eyes searched hers, flickering back and forth, quickly, searching to see how serious she truly was, trying to see past the anger and the grief, down to the core of her. Sitara stepped back and drew herself up, meeting and matching his gaze, returning his silence with her own. Look, then, husband. Understand. We must call on our own strengths, and on those of the enemy of our enemy.
She bowed to her husband. “I will go to the sorcerers,” she said. “I will go to their monastery and offer prayers for our daughter’s safety.”
Kiet nodded, and turned away. Sitara watched her husband’s broad back for a long moment, straining to find some word, some gesture that would let him know she loved him still. But none came, and in the end she could only walk back into her chamber. She stood in the middle of her room, among all the things that were as familiar to her as her own name, and found she could not think where she was or what she had meant to do.
“Sitara.”
Now she did turn toward Kiet. Now she did open her arms and he came rushing to her, wrapping her in his embrace. Frantic with need, anger, loss, and fear, they kissed each other hard, again and again, and held on tightly as they lay down together, forgetting everything else but their need.
When they were both spent, they lay together, arms and legs and breath entwined. Kiet whispered to her, “Do as you must, my queen. Do what I cannot.”
It was then she understood that she had not been alone in her thoughts. In his own room, Kiet’s mind had walked the same paths as hers, but he had not known how to ask her to take part in this deeply dangerous thing. He had meant to let her pull into her grief and be protected. Was he relieved now? Disappointed? She could not find words now. The only reply she could find was to gather him close and lay her head against his shoulder. It was in this way Sitara finally found sleep.
The river Liyoni was the only road to the sorcerers’ monastery. Queen Sitara traveled in the royal barge beneath the carved and gilded canopy that shaded her from the sun. Twenty oarsmen sped the boat along. By night they camped on the shore, sleeping underneath tents of fine linen to keep the flies away. By day, they moved against the current to the rhythm of the oars.
Queen Sitara spoke little, and did not welcome conversation. Her ladies, who had been beside her since her wedding day, knew better than to try to coax her from her silence. She needed this time to think her thoughts. When she set foot on the shore, she would begin to act. There would be no more time for thinking once events were set in motion. She must do her planning now. She must be sure.
At twilight, she prayed. At dawn, she prayed. She counted her beads and her
own doubts to the clack of the blocks beating time, and the cries of the master and the oarsmen. When the forest rose dark and impenetrable around the sacred river, she put both away. She was not going to turn back. Her doubts would serve her no longer, nor would they serve Natharie where she had gone.
Nor would dwelling on the scene that played out on the docks as Sitara left for the monastery, but her troubled thoughts returned time and again to it.
It had happened just as she lifted up one foot to step over the barge rail. An unexpected voice wailed from behind.
“Great Queen!”
Sitara turned, her heart in her mouth. Radana, chief among her husband’s concubines, red-faced and in disarray, ran down the dock.
“What is it?” Kiet? The children? Are they already paying for what I am about to do?
Radana dropped down to her knees and took Sitara’s hand. Tears shone in her eyes and Sitara suddenly wanted to shake her hard to get her news out of her.
“Please,” Radana said in a small, breathless voice. “Great Queen, let me go with you.”
The request was so at odds with all her sudden fears that for a moment Sitara could only stand and stare. “Radana, why?”
Radana lifted her face. Tears shone in her eyes and streaked her pale cheeks. She had not, Sitara noticed, painted that face at all this morning. It was harder, she mused, to look beautifully pitiful with great rings of kohl around your eyes and black streaks down your face.
“I fear for you, Great Queen.” Radana pressed her forehead to Sitara’s hand. “I fear for your peace of heart. Please, let me go with you and wait upon you.”
Sitara cast a glance up the dock. Yes. There were guards and servants there, paused to listen to this drama, and she saw faces on the palace terraces. This moment provided plenty of witnesses to see how much Radana loved her queen.
Sitara raised Radana to her feet. She clasped the concubine’s hand, feeling the tiny tremble there. “Radana, your place is here,” she said kindly. See, I too can put on a good show. “The king will need your comfort while I am gone.”
“But Great Queen …”
Sitara felt her patience straining. She could not permit anger now. Not before all these witnesses. “We all must serve, Radana, and we do not all get to choose the means of service.” She spoke clearly, slowly. She wanted to be well understood by those who stayed behind. “I thank you for your care,” she added, reaching out to wipe away the tears that fell so artfully from the concubine’s eyes. She rested her hand on the woman’s bowed head in blessing. “Go now. Let me leave while I still remember my dignity.”
“Yes, Great Queen.”
Sitara watched Radana turn sorrowfully and walk reluctantly up the dock, casting many a backward glance to make sure Sitara saw the tears in her eyes. For a moment, Sitara’s heart quailed within her. To give Radana free run of the palace for any length of time could be dangerous.
No, she told herself firmly. Kiet is no fool. He knows the extent of her worth as well as I do.
So Sitara sailed on to the rhythm of the oars and the river, afraid for her home and afraid for herself, but never once turning back. The forests rose thick and green on either side. The dusts did not reach here. The rains never ceased to fall, and all was warm and green, and thick and close with life, wild and strange. It was in the forests the demons and the serpentine naga lived. It was to the forests the heroes and hermits went, for adventure or for enlightenment.
It was to the forests that Anidita sent the sorcerers to take them away from the danger of the corruption from their own power.
The monastery was a place of wood and thatch. The walls were made of ancient timbers painted red and carved with the hideous faces of demon fighters to warn away evil. Sitara felt their unsleeping eyes on her as she was helped from the rocking barge. The simple gates stood open wide, and the father abbot waited before them to greet her.
Father Thanom was a short, wiry man. His head was shaved to indicate his holy calling, and simple robes of saffron and burgundy wrapped his thin frame. Except on holy days, the abbot never wore any regalia that marked him as different from any of the other monks in this place. He bowed low before her, and Sitara returned the gesture, holding the pose until she felt his rough, warm hand touch her head in greeting and blessing.
“You are welcome among us, daughter.” His voice was strong and deep. “Come and meditate for a while.”
Sitara let herself be led across the yard toward the temple of the Awakened One, knowing that her people would be respectfully greeted and well looked after. The father abbot walked with her through the shadowed gardens, past the broad pools and drooping trees. There were no flowers here, only rich and varied greenery. The few times she had been here before, Sitara found herself with the strange feeling that the shadows were tended as carefully as the plants. The monks bowed as she passed them, and she nodded to them in return. There were no nuns in this garden. Their convent waited on the other side of the high wall; it was with them that she and her women would be housed this night.
Outwardly, the temple was a simple building; long and low, made of heavy timbers that were painted red, green, and gold. Inside there were mats for prayer, brass receptacles for the incense, and the great image of Anidita, his hands folded and his eyes closed in meditation. Like the rest of this place, this image had been carved from the forest, but it had been gilded and then robed in precious white silks. Heaps of colored rice lay in lacquered dishes on the altar between the bowls of burning incense that filled the air with the scents of precious resins.
Sitara had thought she would enter and sit, counting her beads and going through the motions of meditation as she had so many times on this journey. But as she paused on the threshold, in the presence of the Awakened One’s image, she stopped, and could not make herself go forward. Never had her body felt so heavy and so weak at the same time. At last, her knees gave way under her and she dropped across the woven matting, prostrating herself.
It is anger, it is vanity. It is sin. I know it is sin, but I cannot let them keep her. I cannot leave them free to crush our land and wipe away Anidita’s teachings here. I cannot.
She looked up at the Awakened One, seeing him through a film of tears. Please, give me a sign. Tell me I am the one who will take this sin into the next life. Let my husband and my children be spared. Give them strength to stand …
Stand what? Stand with her? Stand against her? She closed her eyes and the tears fell down her cheeks. This was wrong. She should have the strength to let the wheel of time turn and to accept destiny for herself and her family. But even as she thought this, she saw again the Hastinapuran priest’s glittering eyes and heard him proclaim that her children were the property of Hastinapura’s gods.
I do not have that much strength.
Sitara wiped her eyes and prostrated herself again. Then, shaking, she pushed herself to her knees and turned toward Father Thanom. At some point, he had knelt next to her, and waited in silence beside her through the storm of her weeping. She had an apology poised on the tip of her tongue, but the abbot spoke first.
“Is there anything you wish to tell me, daughter?”
Daughter. It had been a very long time since she had been less than “my queen,” to any man but her husband.
The idea of not being who she was, of being daughter to someone again, sang to Sitara. She had meant to keep her silence. Speech was not safe, not even here. But when she peered toward the future and saw all the ways that she must be strong, she hungered for a last moment of weakness.
So, kneeling there, she told Father Thanom all that had happened when the Hastinapurans had come with their doomed black horse. She told him how Natharie had volunteered to follow them as token sacrifice, and how Kiet had not only let Natharie go, but had let Sitara go to the monastery with her heart full of hate.
Father Thanom considered all this for a long time. “Your husband wishes you to cleanse yourself, so that you may return to your duties as wife a
nd queen.”
She shook her head. “I cannot. I will not.”
“Your children will miss their mother.”
She turned her face away. “My children will be taken from me, one at a time, one way or another. It is already done.”
“Then what do you mean to do?”
With that, the moment for weakness ended. Sitara straightened her shoulders and took up her new role, as queen and as traitor. She must show the courage Natharie had shown, and she could never falter again. “Father Abbot, I cannot tell you,” she said. “I ask your forgiveness, but you are a holy man and I cannot taint you with knowledge of what I carry in my heart.”
She thought Father Thanom would rebuke her, but he only said, “Will you walk with me, daughter? There is something I think you should see.”
Wondering, Sitara followed him from the temple. The night was closing in fast, bringing with it the insistent song of frogs and the drone of insects to counterpoint the croaking, laughing sounds of the evening birds. The whole animal world sang, so at first it was difficult to hear the song of the human beings. Gradually, however, Sitara became aware that the thrum rising and falling beneath the wild noises grew clearer as they approached the low, plain structure before them. Unlike the other monastery buildings, this one was made of slats of wood and paper screens, in the style they used in the southern provinces of Hung-Tse. What was even more odd, she now saw, was it breached the wall, so that half of it sat in the monastery, and the other half was in the convent. Lamps were lit within, making the white paper glow golden. Smoke rose from a short, squat chimney. Shadows collected on the other side of the translucent walls, and the droning grew louder with each step until Sitara’s skin began to shiver.