by Sarah Zettel
Makul bowed his head. Samudra was startled to see the first streaks of grey in his battle-father’s thick hair. “It is my belief they work together, but that they have separate aims. Bandhura’s goal is the absolute security of the emperor’s rule. Divakesh’s is the unchallenged reign of the Mothers.”
“How can either of them see these things as threatened?”
Makul looked at him, and his eyes were thoughtful. “You truly do not know, my prince?”
Samudra sat back on his heels. Divakesh … Divakesh was drunk with his power. It had happened to better men, it should not shock him that it could happen even to one so devout. But Bandhura? What made her so sick at heart?
He thought of the day he had first seen Bandhura. It was as she had been carried into the small domain ready for the marriage ceremony. He himself had been struck by her beauty. Chandra had smiled to see her, his eyes lazy and covetous.
She had from the first been scrupulously polite and eager to please. His mother had remarked several times on how shy and deferential she seemed.
Seemed. She had always seemed happy to see him, and glad to speak with him, especially when their conversation concerned Chandra. Chandra’s health and well-being were always of minute concern with her. She had teased and coaxed Samudra in those early days to tell story after story about his brother.
He had been pleased that Chandra should have such a careful and solicitous wife, and he had been pleased when Chandra told him she was to be elevated to the position of first of all queens.
Was it after that the changes had come?
“Why would Bandhura set her hand against me?” His whisper had become a croak. “I have always been a friend to her. She knows I am loyal to my brother.”
“You are,” replied Makul. “But then you came home with the Lohit treaty, and those who were less than loyal began to look at you differently.”
Those words sank into him, and his frozen mind broke open. Samudra found himself on his feet. “Who are these men? Who speaks against my brother?” he shouted, and Hamsa hissed a warning. Samudra ignored her. If there were those who plotted against the Throne, he would have their names shouted so loudly Mother Jalaja would hear them in Heaven.
Soldier that he was, Makul remained calm in the face of Samudra’s sudden fury. “If I named them now, my prince, what would you do?”
“You know what I would do, Makul!”
“Then I will not speak.”
So black was his rage that Samudra’s first instinct was to reach for his sword. Then, he saw afresh that it was his teacher, his battle-father, his friend, who knelt before him, his face utterly dispassionate. Samudra sank back onto the pillows, his hands suddenly weak.
It was not until Samudra knelt that Makul spoke again. “I will tell you this much: Queen Bandhura knows there are those who speak your name with longing. She may even know who some of them are.”
Samudra lifted his head, now utterly bewildered. Nothing was as it should have been or as it had seemed. He wanted to run in terror as he had never run from an open battle. “How would she know these men?”
“She has servants, and she has spies. As first of all queens, she has much wealth and favor to dispense as she sees fit. The small domain is sheltered from the world, but not apart from it.” Makul explained this slowly, patiently, as he had done when outlining the fine points of strategy and logistics to the young Samudra. Impatience flared in Samudra, and its sparks threatened to ignite his anger again, but this time he held himself in check.
“Why does she not tell my brother?”
Makul took a long drink of tea and set the cup down. “Because she wants your downfall first.”
Think. Think. See the situation for what it is, not what you want it to be. “Because without me, these men have no hope,” Samudra said slowly, a stupid child, picking out letters and forming them into words. “And may be picked off at her leisure. It is only around me that plans may grow.” It will come, you know … those who will try to use you to bring me down. “If I am gone there also remains no risk the emperor would hear my voice more clearly than hers.” Memory came then, of what Makul had said to him the day before by the exercise yard. The Mothers themselves have surely ordained that wherever there are soldiers, my prince will find friends. Samudra understood that Makul not only knew who these men were, but he knew their councils.
Makul was one of these men.
I should strike off your head, Samudra thought dazedly. I should have you taken in chains to those below the palace who will make certain you tell all you know before you die.
Samudra looked directly into his Makul’s aging eyes. “She cannot believe I would have a part in such plans, or that I would stand between husband and wife.”
“I do not know what the first of all queens truly believes. I only know what she has said, and …” For the first time, Makul hesitated. “… that the emperor has willing ears, my prince.”
“No,” said Samudra flatly. “That I do not believe.”
“That you must believe.”
Samudra could no longer sit still. He rose and paced across the floor. Hamsa watched silently from her corner. He had not forgotten her, but neither had he spared her a thought. His head was too full, too confused. If his mind was reeling, what turmoil was inside her, she who hated and avoided all palace scheming. He looked toward her worried face now, but did not ask what she thought. “I know my brother,” he said aloud to them both. “If I know nothing else, Makul, I know Chandra.”
“Yes, my prince,” murmured the old soldier.
Makul fell silent then, giving Samudra’s troubled thoughts plenty of time to grow and bloom within his troubled mind. He knew Chandra. He knew Chandra hid his true heart and thoughts behind the sybaritic show. He knew Chandra could be easily frightened, and fear could turn him vicious.
He knew that in Chandra love was seldom stronger than jealousy.
What did Bandhura know? For all she and Samudra had talked so often, she had seldom volunteered any story of herself. He had not been resident in the zuddhanta for more than a month at a time since their marriage. There were the campaigns against the Huni and the care and work to keep the new protectorates together while his father lay dying …
Samudra knew that the Palace of the Pearl Throne was a place of plots and many kinds of poison, and that the heart of these machinations was the small domain. He had grown up wary of those who smiled too broadly or watched too closely. His mother had taught him the intricacies of politics and the secret world, not just beneath the Pearl Throne, but wherever there was a court. He thought he had learned so well. What he had not learned was to be wary of his own kindred. His father and mother had lived as twin spirits, the one ruling the outer world, the other ruling the inner. He and Chandra had grown up loving and hating each other as full-blood brothers will. Their half-siblings and cousins had all been content with their places, as their mothers, all well provided for, had been. That Divakesh had turned his eye against him, Samudra, was hard, but at least it was comprehensible. That Chandra had, on the word of his wife, decided Samudra was dangerous was not to be imagined. Nor was the thought that Makul had listened to the words of men who thought that Samudra might turn traitor … This was poison. Samudra should not even contemplate it. He could not.
He needed to get out of here. But to do what? What advice could he seek against all he had heard and understood here?
It was then Samudra remembered Chandra’s dream, and Divakesh’s assessment of it, and Hamsa’s.
He turned.
“I must go, Makul. I thank you for your hospitality.”
Makul did not seem in the least surprised. He made the salute of trust. “As you will, my prince. Your litter will be readied.”
Samudra smiled. “I think I will walk a little, my friend.”
That did startle the old soldier. “My prince, that is not wise.”
“I know, but … I need some air, and I need to think.” To think, to pray, to w
alk a fool’s useless path before the weight of this all crushes me.
“If that is what you want, my prince,” Makul murmured.
“No, but it is what I need.”
Makul once more gave him the salute of trust, and Samudra touched the top of the man’s greying head, in thanks and in hope. Then, with Makul watching anxiously behind him, the prince walked out into the dark courtyard, out to the very edge of the pool of light the lanterns made. Hamsa followed him every step of the way, and when he halted and turned, she saluted him briefly, and stepped back.
Without a word Samudra removed his golden cap, his arm rings, and all but one of his finger rings. He handed these to Hamsa for safekeeping. As he did, he met her eyes. For a moment, he saw what she would be if she were not so constantly worried. In another life, she would have been beautiful, without the lines of strain on her face, and the work and workings that gnarled her hands. He had done this to her, and she had done this to herself. For a moment, he envied his brother the company of Yamuna, who was flush with power, and who did not doubt.
And who did not tell Chandra that it was the Queen of Heaven who called on him in his dreams.
“You are not going to insist on going with me?” he inquired of her.
He saw regret in the way her face tightened, and something of fear. “I do not think I can, my prince.” She looked into the darkness. “This night is for you.”
She knew what he meant to seek in the darkness, and as ever, kept her counsel. He should find some way to thank her, some way to help her, but his tongue would not move, and in the end all he could do was walk away.
The city at night was a strange and shifting place. Lamps and torches made pools of light to show doorways that were themselves black as caves. Everywhere was the smell of life and death, dust and heat. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood advertised the houses where women waited. Spices told of foods for sale. The sweet and sour smell of fermentation wreathed the wine shops. Dogs barked. Voices lifted in song, in shouts, in the endless, rapid cadence that said hard bargains were being driven in the shadows. The stars and the moon looked down on it all, spelling out their omens for the bright-eyed astrologers to read.
It was a rare thing for Samudra to walk the streets of the outer city, alone. There was freedom in it, and also danger. He did not fear the thieves and footpads. He trusted in his own ability to defend himself. Nor did he fear the pollution against which Divakesh stood such stern guard. Hamsa and the priests she trusted would take care of that as needed, as they always had before. What he feared was less certain, closer to the fear of shadows and reflections in dark mirrors. Out here he was beyond his place, with none of the protections of his role as prince and commander. Out here he was a man only, and that was a thing he’d had little time to become used to.
Where to seek the Queen of Heaven? The temerity of the question made Samudra smile. She had appeared to many heroes in innumerable guises: flower, fire, tiger, snake, all these shapes were hers, as well as queen, warrior, priestess, dancing girl, whore, and, if Hamsa was right, beggar. Should he go to her temple and pray? He could have stayed in the palace and done as much. Go to a house of women? He smirked. There, he was far more likely to find the dirt and demons Divakesh feared than Mother Jalaja.
In the end, Samudra directed his steps toward the river. If the Palace of the Pearl Throne was the heart of the Mothers’ dance, the sacred river was its soul. If Mother Jalaja waited anywhere, it would be on Liyoni’s banks.
The air grew dense with the smoke wafted on the breeze. Here, the smell of death and fire was constant, reminding him of battlefields, and of the night he had stood on the steps with his brother, his father’s ashes smearing his face and hands. He had felt so weak as he said his final farewells and Liyoni bore his father away. Suddenly he recalled how Natharie looked as she lifted her chin to Divakesh’s broad sword, her face white and sick. He had known then she felt loss as he had, and knew what it was to have to face her own death. Like her, he also now knew what it was to find home and the future to be hostile and foreign lands.
Perhaps that was why he had thought of her so frequently since he had returned.
The river flowed black and silent, a serpent of night cutting the city in half. The funeral pyres burned brightly on either side. The priests chanted, their voices becoming one soaring hymn to all the gods in Heaven. Broad steps led down to the water. Depressions had been worn in their surface from hundreds of years of feet making the descent he did now. Samudra saw the naked forms of bathers as they rinsed themselves in the shining waters. It was a common thing for astrologers to advise their clients to bathe in the sacred water by the light of this moon or that, to rinse off their sin and bad luck.
Perhaps I should bathe, or drink.
A hiss and a beam of light on his hand made Samudra turn from the river. Behind him flickered a sputtering oil lamp, giving off just enough light to show a ragged tent. A woman swaddled in greasy, colorless robes sat beneath the battered canvas. A stick with a snake’s skin wrapped around it had been planted in front of the tent, the traditional sign for an astrologer.
Smiling to himself, Samudra approached the rickety shelter. The woman looked him up and down, her eyes gleaming. No doubt she saw the one gold ring he still wore on his hand, and used it to weigh the wealth hidden in the purse he had concealed beneath his tunic.
“Come forward, my son, come forward.” She beckoned with a bony hand. “What question plagues you this night?”
Samudra squatted down until his eyes were level with hers. “Tell me, mother, where will I find the Queen of Heaven?”
To his surprise, the crone didn’t even blink. “She is not here tonight.”
Samudra rested his arms on his thighs. She spoke so solemnly and so plainly, he found he did not know what to say.
“Did you expect her?” The ancient astrologer cocked her head.
Samudra shrugged. “I hoped,” he said honestly.
She turned her head so that she regarded him archly from one eye. That eye caught the lamplight, causing a single star to burn within its depths. “But it was not you she called, was it?”
Samudra felt his jaw drop open. The crone just smiled, and straightened her bony shoulders. Was it only his surprise, or was she younger than she had seemed at first?
“What do you know of it?” he demanded.
Her smile broadened and opened, revealing a row of stained, sharp teeth. “Ask another question, Son of the Moon. You have so few left.”
Samudra swallowed. The chants and the pyre smoke swirled against his back. His heart beat slow and heavy within him and his throat threatened to close around his words.
“What is my place on the wheel?” he croaked.
The woman sighed and shook her head. Her hair was white beneath her ragged veil, but still streaked with black. “That is the wrong question. You know your place. You are the second son. You are the protector and the defender. You are keeper of sword and honor. Yours are the snake’s eyes, not the lotus.”
“But I do not understand what that means!” cried Samudra, plaintive as a child. His dignity was lost, and his home, his sense of self and place. Here he was only a man, and he knew nothing, nothing at all.
“Oh, my son,” breathed the woman. “You hide so much from yourself. You are a master of deception and yet you do not know it.” She stood, and Samudra saw he had been wrong. She was not old. She was young and straight and strong, and her robes were not tattered at all, but whole and rich, and it was only the ashes of the sacred dead that made them grey. “When you are ready to speak from who you are, we will talk again.”
She walked away, leaving her ragged tent and her lamps and her sign, vanishing into the darkness down the steps to the sacred river. Left behind, Samudra stood slowly, staring at the dusty street where her footsteps had fallen, for behind her she left a trail of bloody footprints. Samudra bowed at once, until his forehead pressed into that scarlet dust.
This was not the sign of t
he Queen of Heaven. Jalaja left lotus petals behind her. The bloodied footprint was the sign of Vimala, the Mother of Destruction.
Who also bore the name and aspect of A-Kuha, the Deceiver.
You are a master of deception, and yet you do not know it.
Samudra shook. Cold seized hold of him, and yet he felt sweat trickling down his brow.
He turned from the tent and the river and the sign of the goddess. As he had never done in battle, Samudra fled. He ran through the streets without seeing them, instinct alone guiding his steps, his breath coming in frantic gasps, tears stinging and blinding his eyes and his fearful thoughts blurring in his mind.
When at last he could run no more, he collapsed against a stone wall. It was cool against his sweating skin and strong enough to make up for the weakness that had seized his legs and allowed him to keep upright.
He had come out seeking the Queen of Heaven, but the Queen of Heaven would not speak to him. He could not even find Indu, the Mother of War, to whom he had dedicated his life. The Deceiver had called him her son. Samudra leaned his head back until it rested against the wall. He had striven to be honest, to be honorable in word and deed. He wanted to pray, to pray for the grandest sacrifice of all so that any other of the goddesses would hear him and speak comfort to him, but even as he thought this, he quailed. Mother Destruction, Mother Deception, Mother of Snakes and of the ever-changing moon, was merciless to those who rejected her. But why, why would she choose him? He had never been any of hers.
And yet … and yet … while he played the dutiful prince and soldier, in his bosom he harbored doubt, and even revulsion. He had questioned what his brother had become. He had defied orders in battle, only to achieve greater victory, true, but it was defiance still, and unless he was forced to, he had told no one. Only Hamsa knew, and she knew only because she had seen what he had done, not because he had spoken openly, like a true man.
Samudra pushed away from the wall. Steady now, he walked the last of the way to the palace. The streets around him widened, and the number of people fell away until he was alone once more. This time when he came to the gates, he only looked up at the watchmen when they called the challenge. He did not know what they saw in his eyes, but whatever it was, this time there was no talk of pollution or delay. They only hurried to open the side portal and let him in. He crossed through the gardens, raising his hand to guard his stained brow from the fine sprays of the fountains carried on the night wind. He did not wish the blood of the goddess to be washed away.