Vikram grinned. “Intriguing. I would be interested in speaking to you after the meeting. Or your nap, as it were.”
“I would be honored, Your Majesty.”
The courtier bowed at the hip, and left him in the hall. Vikram watched him go, and a cautious happiness flooded him. Perhaps he was on his way to forging alliances within the empire. He was still learning how to navigate his way through politics now that the novelty of Kubera’s gifts had worn off. The realm still murmured about the Otherworldly games where he had disappeared to for a month, but it was mostly rumor. Most believed he had returned to the ashram and observed the strictest of penances in order to succeed to the throne. Only the council—six men, half of whom wore the shadow of death and the other half of whom were so skilled in lying that not even their wives believed them—had seen his magical demonstration. Their word was the only one that counted. Once he had won their allegiance—or frightened it out of them, more like—he hadn’t seen the need to continue impressing people with the enchanted document. The only thing he found indispensable was Biju. Conversations were far more efficient when lying was impossible.
Vikram stopped in front of the Menagerie and knocked twice. “Father?”
A growl echoed inside the room. “Come in!”
Vikram stepped through and quickly shut the door. The leopard, Urvashi, kept pushing her head against the wooden frame.
“I was thinking I might let her roam around the palace,” said Pururavas, waddling to the door. “She’s become so restless.”
“Roam around the palace?”
“With a leash.”
“With an armed guard.”
Pururavas gasped. “Do you think someone would try to hurt her?”
Vikram stared. “Father, I think sometimes you are too innocent.”
“But that is a yes to letting her roam?” said his father. “That decision falls to you.”
“I’ll consider it.” Urvashi glared at him reproachfully. “Perhaps we could make her a new courtyard. Put things she can jump off of. She does have a tendency to climb.” He pointed at the tables that had been stacked upon one another as a perch for the leopard.
Pururavas nodded approvingly. “I’m glad you thought to visit. There’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”
Vikram braced himself. He knew that his father’s question could only be about one of two things … either Gauri or his marriage prospects.
“You fled with the Princess.”
One out of two.
“I did. And she’s not a princess anymore. She’s the Queen of Bharata.”
When he spoke the last words, pride glowed in his voice. He couldn’t help it.
“And she was with you during this … tournament.”
Pururavas couldn’t make himself say any words about magic even though he had seen the wonders Vikram brought home.
“Yes, she was,” said Vikram. And then his eyes narrowed. “You haven’t been talking about this to anyone, have you, Father? Only you know she was with me.”
“Of course not!” huffed Puru. “But since you’ve returned, Bharata has withdrawn their remaining military units from our borders. The letter from General Arjun came in only recently. We have done the same. I believe now it’s just a matter of formalizing relations. The messengers we sent responded favorably. And the Bharata messengers sent to Ujijain have been nothing short of cordial. They even sent a gift last time, albeit a curious one.”
Vikram bit down his grin. The gift had been a wooden crown with a small note: “for your entertainment.” Some of his council had been inclined to believe that it was an insult, but Vikram understood.
“I wouldn’t mind a crown made of wood though. I might throw it at people for entertainment.”
“Do you think it’s because of your excursion with the Princess?”
“Once more, Father, she’s not a princess but a queen. And I don’t believe she would have found it wise to tell anyone that she, an unmarried princess at the time, spent weeks from her home with a prince and returned unengaged. But I did free her from her prisoner cell. I imagine that would have been reason enough to thaw our relations.”
Freeing Gauri had been the only thorny comment when he returned to Ujijain. For the most part, he had convinced the council that freeing her had been a diplomatic strategy. For the most part, they had agreed. Once the delegates returned with positive reports, the rest of the council breathed a sigh of relief that they had stopped at imprisoning her.
“Then why not—”
Two out of two.
He lived this argument at least twelve times a day. One for every hour that the Emperor Pururavas was awake.
“Father, I know where you are going with this, and the answer is no.”
Not quite. The answer wasn’t no, so much as he hoped it was “not yet.” She would come to him when she was ready. At least, he hoped she would.
Pururavas sniffed. “You spent a month with the girl, and you feel nothing? She is a powerful queen. Don’t think that just because I spend all day in my Menagerie that I don’t read those reports! She’s ruled for hardly two moons, and already she is Queen Gauri the Great—”
“I read the reports, Father, I know what she’s done.”
Vikram smiled. He expected no less from her. In the short time that she’d been queen, she had changed the structure of power with the fractious tribes bordering Bharata by bestowing a title of governorship to Lady Nalini, the daughter of a powerful chieftain and wife of General Arjun. She’d also banned conscription into Bharata’s army, reinforced the village militias so that the villages could defend themselves and commissioned new gurukul school systems throughout the kingdom.
“So why wouldn’t you pursue anything with her? An alliance would be powerful indeed.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Pah! That is what I think of your reasons.”
Vikram found the nearest chair and sank into it. His father could lecture him for hours before tiring himself out. While Pururavas began to pace the room, shouting about the necessity of marriage and heirs while his leopard doggedly guarded him, Vikram lifted Biju from his neck. He tried to restrain himself to asking only once a day, but today he couldn’t help it:
“She is ready.”
Vikram waited for the familiar tightening sensation around his arm.
But for the first time, Biju didn’t move.
47
UNSPENT DAYDREAMS
GAURI
The glass hand twitched. It always twitched whenever I stood in the weapons room. Sometimes I thought it was holding its breath, wondering when it was supposed to turn brittle and lifeless. My left arm ached, but I swung the practice sword through the air anyway, checking it for balance and weight. I wasn’t as nimble as I used to be. But there was some advantage to training with the left hand. People always defended themselves from a right-handed attack. The left surprised them.
I liked being a surprise.
Outside, everything smelled fresh. Raw. My first edict as queen was to raze the garden and start anew. My reign would carry no memory of Skanda. I brought in new seeds from foreign cities that promised trees where the fruits were as bright as gems, with rinds dark purple and softest pink, and flesh that was sweeter than a dream. I even uncovered a secret among the gardeners: my father’s garden hadn’t been entirely ruined. The palace gardeners couldn’t bear to see it destroyed, so they had preserved seeds and cuttings, and grown them in secret. Damask roses and sweet-limes, neem and almond tree saplings set down their roots in once-familiar earth. That garden was every hope for my reign. It was slivers of the past nestled alongside the present, silver roots tangled like histories that would one day eclipse the seeds from which they unfurled.
Concentrating on the weapons before me, I tried to take my glass hand by surprise and grip a practice sword. It turned brittle on contact, sending small waves of shock rolling through my arm. Wincing, I shook it out.
“Well played.”
<
br /> The glass hand settled back into liquid movement, although I couldn’t help but think it felt a bit smug. Since I had returned, there hadn’t been any need for me to wield a weapon. Ujijain’s diplomats had arrived at Bharata no more than a week after Skanda named me queen and “retired” to a quiet life in an ashram. Together with my ambassadors, we’d begun constructing a treaty. I had even sent Vikram a gift. I spent the whole week waiting. Ridiculous daydreams kept sliding into my thoughts—that he would arrive disguised among his messengers, that he would burst through the doors and declare that he’d ridden on horseback the moment he saw my gift. But then my messengers came back. They confirmed he’d received it. And that was that. Disappointment curdled in my gut. I wanted to press them for details—did he smile, what kind of smile, were his fingers tented like always or were they at his side—but I didn’t want to seem overeager in the face of rejection.
Every time Bharata’s ambassadors returned, they carried new tales of the Emperor—his clever designs to reorganize the city, new ways of farming to maximize crops, even bits of his philosophical treatises that he’d begun to publish at the beginning of every lunar cycle.
“Gauri?”
I turned to see Arjun leaning in the doorway. He looked a little forlorn, as he always did whenever Nalini had to return to her new governing seat. She wouldn’t be in Bharata for a while. After Nalini used the wish, I’d convinced Skanda—with a not entirely true tale—that it wasn’t the only power I’d brought back from my travels. That, in addition to Arjun and Nalini’s fury, was enough reason for him to abdicate the throne and name me queen.
“Need a partner?” he asked, frowning at the practice sword in my left hand.
“How hopeless do I look?”
He laughed. My heart lightened. I hadn’t heard Arjun laugh in what felt like centuries. Everything in Bharata was something to experience all over. I felt as if I I were relearning the friends that been my family. It was not unlike practicing with the sword in my hand, going through the movements that I had taken for granted. And like a new muscle, it ached.
We sparred for nearly an hour before a trumpet sounded, signaling the arrival of one of my courtiers. I dropped the practice sword and reached for the red silk glove. After that first night in Bharata, I limited the number of people who saw the glass hand. People hungered after what they didn’t know and couldn’t see, and I liked the enigma and mystery of it. My people made up their own tales, claiming that it was a mark of magic or a sign of transparency. They said that it would turn red whenever someone had a murderous thought and that when I looked into the glass palm, I could watch my citizens. I liked their stories far better than the truth.
“Your Majesty,” called the courtier. “There is a woman who is knocking on the gates of Bharata demanding to see you.”
Arjun touched his sword. “What did my men make of her? Does she seem like a threat to the Queen’s life?”
“The men thought she…” The courtier trailed off, bright spots of color lighting up his cheeks.
I smiled. I knew who was at the gate.
* * *
A month later, Aasha leaned out the window, propping her chin in her palms and sighing loudly. In the second month of my reign, Aasha had showed up outside the city gates demanding that I fulfill my promise of a place in my palace. In the first week of her arrival, she’d foiled two assassination attempts simply by sniffing out the thoughts of whatever nobleman or noblewoman wished to meet with me.
“Can we go outside?” she asked. “This tires me.”
Shock lit up half my attendants’ faces. Aasha was one of the few people who never simpered. She didn’t know how and didn’t care to learn. Dismissing the attendants, I joined her on the balcony. The garden had grown lush and green in the three months since I’d pulled up the courtyard by the roots and started anew. I never walked along the paths. There were too many reminders tucked into the perfume of those blossoms. When I walked through the gardens, the reminder that something—someone—was missing from my life was impossible to ignore. I thought I saw him in every lean shadow splayed across the ground. I thought I heard him in every laughing fountain. When I came back to Bharata, it had been easier to push aside the ache of missing him, because I dedicated every moment to the restructuring of Bharata. But now I had settled into a rhythm. Every day looked a little more normal. I was even getting better at sparring with my left arm. Which meant there were too many moments where the absence of him gnawed at my heart.
“I know you’re tired, but no, we can’t go outside,” I said. “I have papers to review.”
Aasha frowned. “But you want to go outside.”
Groaning, I covered my head with my hands, as if that would somehow stop my wants from betraying me.
“You also want to see him.”
“Go away.”
She leaned a little closer, sniffing me. “And you want food. Why do you always want food?”
“Please stop.”
“Why don’t you see him?”
“Because I’m busy!” I said, flicking a dead insect off the windowpane.
Aasha raised an eyebrow. “Lie.”
“I will. Soon. I think,” I hedged. “He never sent back a present after I gave him that crown.”
Folding her arms, Aasha stared at me as if I had just announced that I was handing over the throne and taking up a new career in professional flicking-dead-insects-off-windowpanes.
“What is the word you taught me yesterday when I bit the rose that stung me?”
Yesterday, a handsome nobleman had left a scarlet rose for Aasha. She’d picked it up only for one of the thorns to prick her thumb. Growling, Aasha had bit the head off the rose. The nobleman ran in the other direction.
I sighed. “The word was ‘petty.’”
“Ah. Yes. That is you.”
What if the past two months of ruling had changed him and he was just happy with the gradual unthawing of the diplomatic relations and nothing else? Wouldn’t he have sent some sign? Then again, I did say to stay away … but why would he stay away for that long? Wasn’t the wooden crown a clear indication that I wanted to see him? I hated boys.
“What’s that other word you like?” asked Aasha.
“I like a lot of words.”
“True, but the word you use whenever you talk about someone for whom the desires in your mind turn to slow torture or a wish for their mouth to fall off their faces?”
“‘Fool’?”
“Yes!” said Aasha brightly. “That is also you.”
“You are the worst friend.”
“That is not what your mind is saying.”
“Stop reading it!”
Aasha rolled her eyes, and the blue star on her throat disappeared.
“Happy?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I do not need the Blessing to see that you are lying.”
I was going to argue when the throne room doors were thrown back. I glanced at the sun, still high in the sky. Today, the Ujijain delegates wished to meet with me personally, but I hadn’t been expecting their visit so soon.
Aasha pulled a silk head scarf over her face and around her neck just as the bright blue star glinted back into being. A group of Ujijain delegates entered the room, walking single-file and dressed in their finest crimson insignia. Aasha touched my shoulder: a sign that they came with no harm for me in their thoughts. But then her fingers tightened and her brows scrunched in alarm. Not a threat to my life. Something else. My thoughts flew to Vikram. Had something happened to him that the delegates knew and hadn’t revealed immediately?
“Your Majesty,” they said, bowing.
I walked back to my throne and sank into the seat.
“Welcome.”
“Your Highness, Emperor Vikramaditya is pleased that your kingdom has been so gracious and amenable as we seek an alliance between our two realms. We wish to strengthen that bond.”
My heart raced. I knew what a strengthened alliance bet
ween two kingdoms could be: a proposal of marriage.
“He hopes that you might be amenable to a discussion in four days’ time when his official coronation takes place.”
“Four days?” I repeated, frowning. He hadn’t given me much time to travel. It took three days to travel to Ujijain. Unless he hadn’t wanted to invite me. Or worse, unless he had forgotten until the last moment. I didn’t know which pummeled my heart more.
The diplomat nodded. “He would be honored by your presence. Or by a delegation. Whichever Your Majesty sees fit to send. As our nations work together, we also hope that you will be in attendance for the Emperor’s future wedding.”
Now my heart froze. “Wedding? To whom?”
“His Majesty has yet to choose a bride.”
“But there have been invitations for marriage discussions sent out to prospective brides?” I asked. I should have forced myself to keep quiet and not reveal so much obvious interest, but I couldn’t help it.
“Yes,” said the diplomat.
I let this information sit. Vikram was choosing a bride.
I was not on that list.
My first instinct was to refuse the invitation. That urge to latch up my heart flared inside me like an old wound. But I couldn’t be scared. When I didn’t talk to Nalini, I nearly wrecked our friendship. When I didn’t listen to the Serpent King, I nearly destroyed his love.
I was scared to let go—scared to cough up that last bit of control and bare myself—but I was more terrified of what I’d lose if I never spoke up.
“I will be at the coronation,” I said. Briefly, I sucked in my cheeks before flashing a terse smile at the diplomats. “Bharata is grateful for this personal invitation. We look forward to peace between our countries.”
They bowed. I left.
I felt light-headed. Ever since I had returned from Alaka, marriage had hovered over me like a phantom. I heard the unspoken pressure in my council’s demands and noticed the pile of gifts and letters from the eligible nobility. My council spoke of strong ties and advancing our history.
But I knew what I wanted.
I wanted a shadow curled around mine in the night. A hand that was never too far out of reach. I wanted someone who carried a secret light within them, so that I would never be in the dark. When I thought of that, I felt Vikram’s fingers softly threading through my hair. I remembered how the feast of fears left my heart gaunt, how I had offered my own hollow body as a distraction. He hadn’t accepted that. Instead, he had fed my starving heart with bright bursts of laughter and feather-light secrets. Until I ached, not from emptiness, but smiling.
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