by Sarah Zettel
Makul? What is this? The message should be from Tasham.
Samudra dismounted to accept the message. He broke the seal and read:
My Prince,
Captain Pravan returned yesterday from facing the Huni in the mountains. He was defeated utterly and over half his men are dead. You must come at once.
Makul doa Rahish Irashapad
Samudra stared at the message. Disbelief and confusion assailed him. Beneath them, the anger that he had controlled so carefully all this long year broke. It raced through his blood, making his face burn as his hands crushed the unwelcome message. Pravan? Pravan had been sent to face the Huni while he, Samudra, had been sent wandering about the country collecting tribute as a coarse reminder of Hastinapura’s power? Pravan returned in defeat, and it was Makul who sent him the missive that should have come from the emperor?
Blood of the Mothers! Where is Tasham?
“What is it, my prince?” asked Hamsa.
His teeth grinding in rage, Samudra stuffed the crumpled message into her hands. Without even looking back to see her reaction, he threw himself onto his horse.
“Clear the way!” he shouted to the crowd, vaguely aware that at the same time, Hamsa was calling for her horse. “I must get to the palace! Clear the way!”
Servants and soldiers, Makul’s man first among them, plunged into the crowd. “Way! Clear the way for the first prince!” they cried. Conches and horns sounded. Slowly a lane began to open in the crowds and Samudra was able to urge his mount forward, with Hamsa right behind him on her brown mare.
… The Huni in the mountains … defeated utterly … over half his men are dead … These words made a drumbeat in his mind as he rode through the twisting streets. Masses of people scrambled to get out of the way. Others stood and stared to see him ride past. Samudra had never before been so tempted to lash out at the slow carters and the clumsy beggars as time and again he had to rein Rupak up short until his hastily assembled entourage could clear the way.
Over half his men are dead.
Who were the dead? Yasuf, maybe? Ojas? Even Pravan would not go to war without Tamin to head the cavalry. Who else had been chosen to fight under Pravan? Pravan the fool. Pravan the flatterer who had his brother’s … his emperor’s ear and was invited to private banquets in the zuddhanta, no matter how many times Samudra tried to tell Chandra the man wasn’t worthy.
Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I realize that with me gone, Pravan would seize his chance? Why didn’t I think?
Because I was too caught up in the insult Chandra dealt me to think on wider implications. Samudra now wanted to lash out at himself, to beat his own back until the blood flowed down. These dead, whoever they were, however many they had been, did not belong only to Pravan.
Why did I get no word they had even gone to the mountains?
Tasham should have gotten me word, or Mother. They would not have let this happen without warning me.
Which only left him to wonder why that had not happened. His anger and the fear deepened as the streets broadened, rising up to meet the palace gates.
The great timbered portals were closed when he reached them. His entourage stood before them, shouting up at the men on the walls, who shouted down at them. Samudra rode up to the gates and hollered above the babble.
“What is this delay!”
“Sir, you were not expected! You have not been …”
“I have been gone too long! Open the door! Do you disobey the Throne?” I am still prince. You will hear my word!
There was no more argument. The smaller gate to the right of the great one was pulled open and Samudra rode through into the vast green park that was the palace garden. A road of crushed shell and stone led to the inner court. Free of crowds and obstructions, Samudra was able to launch Rupak into a gallop, not caring how far he outpaced those who were supposed to prepare his way. The thunder of Rupak’s hooves found its echo in the gait of Hamsa’s mare, as the sorceress clung grimly to her saddle and reins, doing her best to keep up.
The inner court had its own walls, and its own gates of carved ivory. These too were shut fast. Now, however, only one man in a wealth of scarlet robes stood on the wall above. Samudra reined Rupak to a halt and stared. As fast as he had been, word had flown ahead. Asok, Di-vakesh’s first acolyte, waited above the gates, his wiry arms folded in defiance.
“Asok, open the gate!” Samudra cried. “I have urgent business with the emperor.” Where were the guards? The men on watch?
Asok made the salute of trust. “I cannot, my prince. You have not been purified from your travels among the barbarians.”
“Asok, do not …” began Samudra dangerously.
But the acolyte shook his head. “I have my orders from my lord Divakesh. We will not affront the Mothers by letting the impure tread in the heart of the sacred dance. Not even my prince.”
“Asok …” Where was the guard, damn them? They were his men. Why weren’t they here?
“You must be cleansed and make sacrifice before you enter the palace,” said Asok as firmly and as calmly as a man saying the sun must rise tomorrow. “These are the Mothers’ laws, and I will not break them. I will not of my own will open these gates.”
Beneath the fire of his rage, Samudra knew Asok did no more and no less than act according to divine law. There was ritual that must be performed after an extended journey, to shed the outer world and re-embrace the inner, to reweave the steps to match the rhythm at the center of the dance. To disrupt this was to disrupt Hastinapura itself and break the compact the first emperor made with the Queen of Heaven. Samudra knew this. He had done it scores of times, returning from a campaign or from some diplomatic journey at his father’s side.
But Samudra also knew what Divakesh did under the cover of that law. This was payment for what had happened in the court of Sindhu. This was Divakesh reasserting his power and authority.
In thinking of the dead, Samudra had forgotten all these lesser things.
The dead, unnumbered and unnamed, the dead laid low by Pravan’s incompetence and his own thoughtlessness. This truth washed away the shame brought by his forgetfulness of holy rite.
“Asok, there is no time. We are defeated. I must speak with the emperor and I must speak with Captain Pravan. We cannot delay!”
“All you say shows how polluted your thoughts have become,” said Asok stubbornly. “In this, my master’s rank is higher even than yours, and his duty to the protection of the emperor and the Pearl Throne even greater. No one will open this gate to you until the sacrifice is ready.”
Slowly, regally, the acolyte turned, and descended from the walls, vanishing from Samudra’s sight. Samudra was left before the locked ivory gates, with no sound but the garden’s birds to break the ringing in his ears, and no one but the servants and Hamsa to hear him shout.
It was Hamsa he turned on, his anger blotting out reason. “What has happened here?” he demanded. “What is being done to me?”
Hamsa, who was supposed to be his first friend and best advisor, could only say, “I don’t know, my prince.”
“Why! You are the sorcerer, you speak to the Mothers and scry the future. Why didn’t you see this!”
Hamsa bowed under his shouted words, turning her face away. Samudra regretted his outburst at once. “Never mind, Hamsa. It is not your fault.” You were sent with me. They knew they had to get you out of the palace as well.
For a moment, her mouth moved without sound before she made the salute of trust, covering her face with her hands and bowing low before him.
In that moment of silence, he heard a new sound, a familiar sound. The clash of metal on metal, the faint shout of men’s voices.
The training yard. There were exercises happening in the training yard. The guard, his men, were outside the walls.
Fool! He cursed himself and wheeled Rapuk around, riding swiftly around the great curve of the inner walls. The Mothers, their heroes, saints, and the lesser gods looked d
own on him with stone eyes as he passed by. He knew that Asok was right. That he had been ready to toss aside the requirements the Mothers themselves laid down for the sake of his anger … if that was not the sign of pollution he could not have said what was. But his anger would not ease, nor would his urgency. He had to see his brother, now. But he could not. Walls of stone and law barred his way. His anger turned inward and it felt as if he would choke on it.
The practice yard stood outside the walls because no violence was permitted within the sanctum of the Throne. It was a broad bowl of grassy ground with a few stone outbuildings for its border. Beneath the green turf waited a maze of tunnels and storerooms for the soldiers’ use. One of them even ended in the vast stables. Samudra could have used that to get back into the palace, but the idea of sneaking like a thief back into his own home, and possibly being thrown out again, was more than pride could bear.
At the center of the exercise arena, men drilled closely with their spears, responding to the brusque shouts of their officers and instructors. On the far side of the rim, archers took aim at straw targets of men, or tried to shoot over false wooden walls. On the near side, Captain Pravan dai Vanash Itorapad, proud and splendid on his black-maned roan, watched over them all surrounded by a crowd of captains and high officers.
Samudra’s hands began to shake. Rapuk whickered and danced, and the prince climbed down from the saddle. He was distantly aware that a man ran to take the reins from him, and that Hamsa slipped down from her horse to join him.
A member of Samudra’s entourage ran up to Pravan, who leaned down from his horse to listen closely. Then, slowly, with great dignity, Pravan turned and looked down at Samudra. He was a magnificent sight, his armor gleaming and each detail of him just as it ought to be. No one would know that just recently he had returned in defeat, and that today he reviewed a decimated corps.
Anger, boiling and unreasoning, poured through Samudra’s veins as he saw Pravan’s thin, dry mouth spread into a smile.
“My prince …” Pravan began.
Before he could say more, Samudra crossed the distance between them, jerked Pravan from the saddle, and threw him into the dust.
“Coward!” he shouted. “How many are dead because of you! How many!”
Pravan began to struggle to his feet. Samudra lunged forward to knock him down again, but Pravan caught Samudra’s wrist, pulled him off balance, and sent Samudra rolling over his own shoulder.
Samudra came up on his feet to see Pravan crouched low before him. “You are my prince,” Pravan hissed. “I owe you all honor, but no one calls me coward.”
“I say you are a coward,” Samudra answered, his voice steady and sharp. And a dead man. Pravan had struck him, the First Prince of the Pearl Throne. Pravan was dead, no matter what happened next. He was dead and he deserved to be, and Samudra would carry out the sentence with his own hands. “I call you a coward and a fool who led his men to death and saved his own skin at the cost of defeat.”
Pravan charged, and Samudra, ready, dodged. The other man pivoted quickly and Samudra had time to see what a fool he was to attack in anger. For Pravan charged again, this time with his knife in his hand. Samudra stepped sideways and kicked at Pravan’s ankle, sending Pravan sprawling on the grass. He leapt, rolling the other man over, until he came up kneeling on his armored chest, holding his own knife at Pravan’s throat.
“You are a coward and unfit to lead men,” Samudra said through gritted teeth even as he panted for air. “I should kill you here and now, and deny the emperor the chance to make that mistake again.”
“Now, Prince Samudra.” Pravan smiled despite the steel against his flesh. “Do you say the Father of the Pearl Throne made a mistake in appointing me to command? Do you think you could have made a better choice?”
Samudra froze and Pravan continued to smile. Samudra had just criticized the emperor. Publicly. There were at least thirty men close enough to have heard his words. Anything, anything Samudra said in answer to that question could be called treason, and a hundred armed men stood at his back, all loyal to the Mothers and the emperor. Except, perhaps, those who were loyal to him.
Samudra lifted the knife and stood back, letting Pravan rise. He did so slowly, straightening his armor and clothing carefully. Then Pravan made his obeisance, all correct and proper.
“Had I been aware my prince desired to sharpen his skills as a wrestler, I would have dressed for practice. I ask forgiveness.”
Samudra’s impotent rage burned so bright that for a moment he saw only red. He was aware of nothing except the knife in his hand that Pravan had not bothered to reclaim.
“My prince.” Another voice, close by, startled him. His vision returned and he saw Makul beside him, also making obeisance, his face ashen grey. “I am sorry to disturb you, my prince, but there is a matter I would discuss with you. Will you honor me with a hearing?”
Samudra realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out, and took fresh air in. He tasted dust, and blood where he had bitten his tongue. “Yes, Makul, of course.” Then he took two steps forward and handed the knife to Pravan. “You dropped this, Captain.”
He was rewarded by the smallest flicker of fear in Pravan’s eyes as the man received his knife and repeated his obeisance.
Before his rage could take him again, Samudra walked away with both Makul and Hamsa following close behind. The sorceress said nothing. What had she thought of his little display? What did it matter? She could not, would not have done anything, and yet he still felt shame that she had witnessed his loss of control. But Pravan did not deserve to live. He had taken men to die for nothing, nothing at all, and he lived in defeat without shame or loss of stature.
He did not deserve to live.
Samudra had no idea where he was going. He still could not see clearly, let alone think clearly. Makul steered their steps toward the white and saffron pavilion that would shade the men when they took their meals. It was a wise choice. Here they could talk out in the open, without being overheard by any hidden person.
Servants hurried forward with pillows and tea, and Samudra sank down to sit beside a low table. Hamsa stationed herself nearby, watching the exercises that continued below and at the same time watching for any would-be spies. Makul knelt before Samudra and poured two cups of tea. Makul was a big man, ten years Samudra’s senior, and the one who had taught Samudra the science of war. The first commander pushed one of the simple white cups toward Samudra. Samudra cradled it so that warmth seeped into his palm. He sipped slowly, letting the spices spread through his mouth and linger against his palate. He soon found he could breathe, could see, could think again.
“That was not a wise move, my prince.” Makul looked down into his half-empty cup for a moment. The lines care had carved around his eyes and mouth were now deep clefts. “Pravan was expecting it.”
“One might think he engineered defeat by the Huni so I would attack him,” replied Samudra with a bland disinterest that was the opposite of the turmoil surging within him.
“No.” Makul took another sip of tea and looked out across the training field. The exercises with all their shouting and clashing had begun again. “I do not think he plotted that well.”
“An interesting choice of words,” said Samudra, but Makul did not reply. To elaborate on his statement now would be more than dangerous; it would be foolhardy.
Samudra longed to ask Makul about Tasham, but he held back. As much as he trusted Makul, Samudra had not told him that Tasham was his right hand inside the small domain. This was strategy Makul himself had taught Samudra. Let no man know the names of all the spies, not even the spymaster. “Tell me what happened with the Huni,” said Samudra softly.
Makul sighed and finished his tea, but he did not pour himself any more. He just stared at the empty cup.
“It was the month after you left. Pravan had an audience with the emperor. I was not invited to attend.” He pushed his cup an inch to the right. “When he emerged, Prava
n called the captains together and announced that he would be leading an attack against the Huni outpost in the Iron Pillar mountains.”
Samudra felt his heart seize up. “But to do so they would have to take the army through Lohit Province.” Unless they went three days out of their way. “I swore there would be no imperial troops on their soil as long as they kept the peace …”
“I know,” said Makul quietly.
Just before Chandra ordered him to oversee the horse sacrifice, Samudra had been sent to Lohit, one of the lands where the worship of the Mothers had given way to the teachings of Anidita, the Awakened One. Although Anidita taught against violence, word had reached the Pearl Throne that Pairoj, Lohit’s new king, had used the excuse of worship to begin a rebellion and slay the soldiers in Lohit’s Hastinapuran garrisons. Samudra had been sent to the coast to stop that rebellion, and to punish the instigators. He had set off hot with righteous anger. But on the long and grueling march, his blood had cooled, and thoughts of the Mother of War had given way to thoughts of the Mother of Increase. He arrived in Lohit, marched to the capital, surrounded the city walls at a safe distance, and sent Hamsa to one of the monasteries where the sorcerers in Awakened lands were forced to dwell. She brought their father abbot and mother superior to him. Samudra gave them tea and sat with them for long hours, questioning them about the one they followed and how he was worshipped. When he had learned what he needed to know, he thanked them for their patience and sent them back to their forest home, with Hamsa as their guarantor of safe passage.
Then, he had his scribes write a message using all the language he had learned from the monk and the nun. He spoke of the importance of knowledge and the folly of acting from ignorance, of enlightened dialogue between differing minds and the preference of peace over war. He asked the king to send a messenger, to speak of his grievances.
The plan met with success. First came a messenger, then an ambassador, then the king himself beneath his umbrella of state, to sit with Samudra in his pavilion and talk about the havoc the Hastinapuran soldiers had wreaked on his capital, about how the priest who served the garrison said the sons of the Mothers had the right to plunder and despoil those who falsely worshipped a man as a god.
