Sword of the Deceiver

by Sarah Zettel

  But that was four years ago, and Chandra’s dread seemed to have been dispersed as surely as their father’s ashes, cast into the sacred river and carried away. Chandra found the rank of emperor delightful, and quickly had decided that the empire existed to provide him with the pleasures he sought.

  That was not so bad, Samudra had told himself. Hastinapura had survived sybaritic emperors before, and thrived. It would do so again. He, Samudra, could protect the empire, and there were many men of wisdom among the nobles and the high clerks. Behind them all, Queen Prishi oversaw the small domain, where the highest of the bureaucrats were trained, and where so many alliances were forged by marriage and by other, more subtle contacts and promises. Her wisdom would allow the skilled, the subtle, and the careful to rise.

  His brother was who he was. Samudra had loved him and protected him. He could do so now.

  But it was now clear that Chandra was being sheltered from far more than the consequences of his debaucheries. Divakesh, Bandhura and Pravan were quickly taking hold of threads once held by better hands, and Chandra did not seem to notice.

  These were not thoughts that came easily to Samudra. Chandra was the elder brother. It was his place to rule. The Mothers decreed it so. The Throne was his and he was bound by the word of the gods and the dance of the Queen of Heaven. It was Samudra’s place to support his rule, to guard the land of the Mothers and protect the sacred throne with his sword.

  Hamsa’s question came back to him as he stared out through the lattice, watching the white half-moon where it hung in the black sky.

  What will you do, my prince?

  “I will go to dine with my brother,” he sighed to the night. “And tomorrow I will go hear what Makul has to tell me.”

  And then? he asked himself.

  “And then I pray the Mothers will show me what I must do next.”

  Chapter Six

  There is Earth. There is Heaven. There is a place in between where shadows and spirit powers dwell, where the gods go to look down on Earth and see better than they can from the many heavens. It is a shifting place, a place of many truths and many lies.

  In this Land of Death and Spirit, there is an ocean. The waves churn and crash, constantly changing and never ceasing.

  At the edge of this ocean stood a man.

  He was a small man, with slender hands and a face that was lined and patient. The wind whipped at his simple saffron robes. He held an unadorned walking stick in one hand. He faced the ocean, watching the waters as the waves rushed onto the beach at his feet and pulled back, leaving behind only the gleaming sand. He said nothing, he only waited.

  Then a great rumble began. The wind blew hard and cold, whipping his robes hard. Then it was as if the horizon itself had begun to heave up and come forward. A great wave, a wall of green water as tall as the cliffs and as broad as the ocean itself, bore down upon the shore.

  The man did not move.

  The wave broke and the waters poured down. There was no thunder to compare with the sound. An oceans worth of water rolled across the beach, shaking the stone cliffs, shoving boulders up one against another until the stones ground together and broke and were dragged back into the waters by the current as the ocean drew the wave back into itself, leaving behind mountains of sand and sea grass and shattered trees.

  On the beach, new tide pools rippled and glimmered. The cliffs seemed to sag a little from their battering. Stones the size of houses had been buried in the sides of the beleaguered dunes.

  And there was the man, drenched head to foot, loosely holding his walking stick, and waiting.

  “Up! Up!”

  The harsh voice jerked Natharie from a series of confusing and disturbing dreams. The cut she had been given yesterday by Divakesh was a thin line of fire at her throat. She looked up from her nest of plain blankets to see the grey woman standing over her. The room was still dark, except for the light of one lantern a servant girl carried.

  “The queens are asking for you, Princess Sacrifice,” announced Mistress Usha. “We must make you presentable.”

  The woman’s critical eyes raked her up and down; then she turned to the tiny flock of attendants behind her. “She’ll need a bath first,” she said. “Get the hairdresser, the perfumer, and the draper to the bath.” She glowered down at Natharie again. “Do you understand, girl? Up!”

  Natharie just stared, her mind too blurred by sleep and alien surroundings to feel anger as she scrambled to her feet. She was taller than the other woman by at least a head, but the grey woman carried herself as one who knew she was mistress of all around her, and Natharie felt gawky standing so tall in front of her. At their feet, girls and women stirred, pulled from sleep by the barking voice and yellow light. Some lifted their heads; some turned away, burrowing under their coverings, trying to find sleep again, or just hoping not to be noticed.

  Remember yourself. Natharie straightened her shoulders, which had begun to hunch together. “Who are you?” The Hastinapuran words felt strange and slippery, but she would show here and now that she was not completely ignorant.

  That stopped the woman. A small smile twisted her lips. “I am Usha jai Ruverishi Harshaela.” She spoke the syllables of her name slowly, making sure Natharie heard each one. “I am steward of the zuddhanta. It is my duty to tell you that whoever you were outside the gates, whoever you called master, you now belong to the Mothers, the queens, and me.” The emphasis on the last word made it easy to tell which of these she thought was the most important. “And you are slow, and a barbarian and you need a bath, and you will come with me unless you want me to tell the first of all queens you are also disobedient.”

  For a heartbeat, that was exactly what Natharie wanted. She wanted to sit down right here and make whoever followed Steward Usha drag her out. Why shouldn’t she? What had she to lose?

  She caught a glimpse of motion behind the steward. A girl had raised her head. She looked at Natharie, and shook her head quickly, as if she knew what Natharie thought and was warning her against it.

  The heartbeat gave Natharie a moment to think. What had she to lose, but what had she to gain? To let them see her heart, her fear and her anger, this would give her nothing, not yet.

  Natharie. closed mouth and heart. She dropped her gaze, folded her hands, and bowed over them. Usha grunted and turned on her heel. Her sandals sparkled in the lamplight, gold or silver, Natharie couldn’t tell, as she followed. She did see the same girl who’d given her the warning. She’d seen this girl on the docks when they were all waiting to be shunted into the procession. She also was a piece of tribute, but she clearly felt neither remorse nor fear at this. Even now, this bold other smiled slyly at Natharie as she passed.

  Natharie, however, was not the only one who made note of her. “You!” snapped Usha. “Since you’re so eager, you can come get this one get presentable. She clearly needs help.”

  The girl bowed quickly, pressing her head to the floor, and scrambled up at once to join the procession that followed the steward. Natharie could have sworn her smile only grew broader as she did.

  Beyond the door, the world was filled with sunlight. Breezes stirred the sultry air, enlivened with the scents of greenery, citrus, and incense and the sounds of voices. Dozens of voices. Natharie blinked and, in her first astonished glimpse of the women’s quarters, barely remembered to keep her mouth closed.

  “What is it like … inside?” she had asked her father one night when they sat together, watching the stars.

  “In the women’s ring?” He shook his head. “I do not know. I have never been permitted entry.”

  Despite her best efforts at stillness, Natharie twisted her hands together in her lap. “So, they are allowed in then … men other than the emperor?”

  Father nodded. “His high council and advisors, other members of the family, his trusted favorites. They are permitted entry.”

  And surely when your daughter is there, you will be permitted entry. Natharie thought this, but neve
r said it, because she could not bear to hear her father say “I do not know” yet again.

  Now she saw this secluded place with her own eyes, and it was none of what she expected. It was larger than she had ever imagined. She had not been able to shake the image her brothers had spun, of a single chamber filled with half-naked women lounging about, eating artfully sliced melons and cucumbers. What she saw instead were small children shrieking with laughter as they played an elaborate game of tag between the plants and the pillars. Grandmothers alternately petted and scolded from their seats beneath fans of palm fronds and peacock feathers that were waved by clean and well-fed slaves. Two beardless men of middle years stood in a patch of sunlight, talking animatedly. A cluster of girls in blue and white dresses bent over their needlework under the supervision of a dried-up, bony-looking woman, who said something that was answered, to Natharie’s surprise, with a fleeting round of giggles. On the other side of the court, a group of boys was gathered around a plain-robed tutor who peered at the work on their tablets of wood-framed clay. Here, he administered a word that might have been praise. There, he cuffed a boy on the ear.

  She didn’t know what surprised her more, the sight of all these busy activities, or the realization that the sun was well up and the place already bustling. She and the others had clearly been allowed to sleep late.

  The windows were broad and numerous, but were not open. All were screened by elaborate, lacelike ivory carvings that allowed glimpses of the gardens below.

  The Mothers were everywhere. They watched from the walls. They danced across the beams overhead. They stood among the plants and kept watch over the smallest growing thing.

  And they watched her with their eyes of stone and paint. They watched her closely.

  You are in our place now, little girl, their eyes told her. Remember the blood you spilled to us yesterday. You too will join our dance.

  Natharie shivered and bowed her head so she didn’t have to see anything but Usha’s silver sandals as she was led from chamber to chamber, and at last, with a breath of cool, fresh air on her face, to the bath.

  The bath was set against the mountain that backed the palace, and, Natharie now realized, formed part of its wall and foundation. It was a great stone pool on a sheltered terrace nestled into the living stone itself. A waterfall ran down the cliff face, constantly refilling the basin and watering the ferns that sprawled out of nooks in the living rock. There was yet another statue on the cliff where the waters ran down. The woman held a up bowl into which the waters fell and then spilled out the side.

  Like the rest of the quarters, the bath was already busy. Several women washed themselves in the fresh water, wringing out their hair; servants, their skirts tied up around their waists, scrubbed their mistress’s backs and limbs. More women and girls were busy around the pool. Nothing seemed to be done for its own sake, everything a lesson. A woman braiding and dressing a lady’s hair had a girl beside her to hand her the brushes and absorb the art. Another woman, presiding over cosmetics, lectured a trio of young apprentices on the preparation and quality of ingredients. A skinny, white-haired, hard-eyed woman presided over all, rapping out sharp orders to both the girls and their tutors.

  “Well?” Usha glared at Natharie. “I assume in Sindhu you know what to do with clean water.”

  Which, despite her resolve, was more than Natharie could stand. “We do,” she replied calmly. “I was only taken aback to find that the Hastinapurans do too.”

  She braced for the blow she saw in the steward’s eyes, but the woman only reached out with one finger, and ran its tip along the line of Natharie’s cut, making her shiver with anger and fear. “One, Princess Sacrifice, and that is all I will allow. Get yourself clean.” She marched away toward the door and was immediately joined by the white-haired woman, who started gesticulating so broadly her multiple bracelets slid up and down her skinny arms.

  “That’s Sevvi, mistress of the ewer. She has charge of the bath.”

  Natharie spun. Behind her was the young woman summoned to follow her. To Natharie’s embarrassment, she had forgotten the other was there.

  Before Natharie could form a question, the other girl pointed to the woman leaning over her pots of creams and powders. “Jula, the cosmetics mistress. Valandi, the perfumer, is with the first of all queens right now.”

  “I … how …?” Natharie stammered.

  In return, she got another of the girl’s broad smiles. “Start learning quickly, Princess Sacrifice,” she whispered. “It’s the only way you won’t get trampled and sold off in such a place.”

  “How …” Natharie tried again.

  “I learned at my mother’s knee. I’m Ekkadi,” she added. She gazed around her, and Natharie saw a strange mix of envy and satisfaction in her quick eyes. “I didn’t grow up anywhere so grand, but it’s pretty much the same. My mother sacrificed eight sheep to Jalaja to get me here.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  This finally made Ekkadi stare. “Because you need a maid and I need a mistress, or I’ll be trampled on and sold off. Come on, let’s get you washed. It doesn’t do to let queens grow impatient. Even you must know that much.”

  Her mind’s eye showed Natharie her mother sitting straight and still in the audience chamber, her brow furrowing and her jaw tightening. Yes, that much she did know.

  She made no further protest as Ekkadi quickly and efficiently stripped her down. The maid stood aside so Natharie could walk down the steps into the water. The water was ice cold and the shock of it made her gasp, but the sun was hot, and more than anything Natharie wanted to wash off the blood that still smeared her face. It itched, and felt as if it had leached into her skin. She knelt, ducking her head down while she scooped up handful after handful of the pure water, never minding the cold. Just get rid of the blood. Just be clean again.

  Ekkadi had soon hitched up her skirts and waded in beside Natharie, her hands full with soaps and brushes she’d acquired from … somewhere. She was not overly gentle, except when it came to Natharie’s injured throat, but she was thorough. She scrubbed all the dust from Natharie’s skin and doused her repeatedly with the frigid water. When she was satisfied with the cleanliness of Natharie’s body, she turned her attention to Natharie’s hair, pouring a measure of perfumed soap over her and working it in well.

  “So,” Ekkadi said as she reached for the comb tucked in her waistband and began to pick the knots and tangles out of Natharie’s hair. “Where are you from that you don’t know what’s going on?”

  “Sindhu.” Natharie tried to hold still and enjoy the sunshine, but her feet were beginning to go numb.

  “Oh.” Ekkadi paused in her work for as long as it took to say that word. Then she gave Natharie’s hair a twist, wringing the water out. “You’re an Awakened one, then?”

  “I follow the teachings of Anidita,” Natharie acknowledged.

  “Do you really think your brother’s a pig?”

  “What?” Natharie jerked her head around, and was rewarded by her hair pulling hard.

  Ekkadi shrugged and wound Natharie’s hair up into a knot on top of her head to keep it from trailing into the water again. “That’s what they say, that Anidita teaches that men are brothers to pigs.”

  She’s offered me help, and I need help. It will do no good to vent anger on her. But she still could not muster a courteous reply. “They are ignorant liars,” she muttered.

  “Funny, that’s what I’ve heard about your people. Let’s get you out of here before you get wrinkled.” Ekkadi sloshed to the edge of the bath, climbed the steps, and held up a towel for Natharie.

  While Ekkadi dried Natharie off, the draper made her appearance. Mistress Panna — Ekkadi whispered the woman’s name in Natharie’s ear — was a tall woman with an unwaveringly erect carriage and a train of little wide-eyed girls following behind her in silence. The dress she wore could have graced a queen, it had so many colors and was so beautifully trimmed with pearls and gold. She eye
d Natharie with a gaze as piercing as any of the goddesses. Then she gave a series of orders to the girls behind her at such a clip that Natharie could not understand a word she said. The girls scattered like sparrows and when they returned each bore some part of the costume Natharie was to wear for her appearance before her new mistresses: a breastband and pantaloons of dusky green silk; a length of blue silk so dark it shimmered like twilight, to be hung across her shoulders and belted with silver; a veil of translucent blue to cover her hair, which Ekkadi had braided and coiled so that it hung in three loops down her back; silver and amber for her ankles and wrists; and a silver collar so fine it might have been woven of silken threads rather than crafted of metal that wrapped her neck and hid her thread-thin wound. There was yet more silver to hang from her ears and to drape across her forehead.

  The perfumer came next. No girls followed her. Instead, she had a trio of tan-skinned, broad-bellied, broad-shouldered eunuchs. Each bore a wooden chest, which he set down and opened. The mixture of scents that rose from them was dizzying. Mistress Valandi came up close to Natharie, staring at her even longer than the draper had, her nostrils quivering and her tongue flicking out to lick her lips. Natharie felt she now understood what a bird felt as it was mesmerized by a snake. At last, the perfumer turned to her trunks. She alone, Natharie realized, had no students and gave no lesson. She opened bottles and boxes picked from her trunk and ground and mixed these mysterious substances in her mortar. It was she herself who anointed Natharie’s wrists and throat with something that smelled of musks and flowers and things Natharie could not name. They all bore cool, refreshing scents that made her think of the evening her dress was colored after.

  At last, Mistress Valandi stepped back. “You may now tell the steward she is ready.”

  Ekkadi bowed at once and ran to do just that. Natharie stood where she was, trying to keep her composure under the weight of her new finery and at the same time trying not to lean nearer the rippling bath waters to glimpse her reflection.