“You can’t do that!” I screamed, slamming my fists against the door. “I am telling you someone was in here. If you’re truly merciful, let me out, let me speak to the Raja.”
Footsteps resounded in the distance. I screamed after her, but my sounds chased nothing but echoes. Mother Dhina had left. The panels of wood chaffed, scuffed and scratched beneath my fists, but they never budged. Again and again, I threw myself against the door. I screamed until voice was an echo of something I once knew. I yelled until I felt unspooled and even whispering made me wince. I slid against the door, cradling my bloodied knuckles to my chest.
Perhaps this was a dream, some horrible illusion that would soon collapse into shards of nightmare. I had heard of something like this once. When my father swore to the envoys of the rebel kingdoms that not a single hand would be laid upon the prisoners of war, he had found other means to torture them. Sleep deprivation. But he kept his word. No one touched them. No one needed to. I had listened in the rafters to their horrible testimony, to the nightmare of ears forever ringing, eyes hollow with sleeplessness. The mind was its own escape artist, and who knew what it would concoct in the absence of rest.
That had to be what I was seeing. I was tired, I whispered to myself. That was all. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. I rocked myself back and forth, muttering the words into the cupped hollow of my palms like they were sacred. I closed my eyes and let my body curl around my hurt until eventually, sleep claimed me.
5
A GIFT TO FREE
The next morning, I woke to the other wives assembling in the halls. I stared at my hands, saw the scabs and scrapes, felt the crust of tears along my jaw and knew this had been no dream. Even then, my reality was a muddled thing. In the space of a day my room had become alien and unfamiliar. The voice of my intruder roped around me, tight as a noose. Had she even been there? I didn’t know. Or was it like the tutor from yesterday whose stretched form had been nothing more than shadow play?
I pulled my hands through my hair, shivering in my empty room. The air was watery and thin with pale morning light. No matter where I looked, everything bore the telltale signs of a trap. If the sky had ever hinted its secrets in the past, it yielded none now. Twice, I had tried to lift the bars from my windows. I had sawed at them with a rock and dug at their foundations until my fingers were bloody. But there was no escape.
Outside, the wives lined up in front of my door, preparing to recite the wedded tales of their mothers and sisters and selves. The tradition was meant to be joyful, but they would give me no such false hopes. I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful or horrified. I couldn’t separate one voice from the other, each one melded into the other, until it swelled into a chorus of pain. The wives told me of sisters murdered by vengeful husbands to safeguard their honor, of wives sewn up to guard their virtue when their husbands left for battle, of the torrent of blood on the first night of marriage. They told me of bruises covered beneath golden bangles, veils meant to hide dislocated jaws, the fear of raised voices. I tried to shut them out. I tried to convince myself that their stories were only meant to scare me. But each time I closed my eyes, all I saw was a menacing man with unforgiving eyes and a cruel mouth.
*
Night tugged a starless blanket over the palace. I had hardly moved all day. Even when the harem wives’ stories burned, even when Gauri slipped drawings under the door, nothing moved me. I tried to imagine the whole of the universe leaning forward to test me. Was this what it wanted? I could conjure fearlessness like a veil. Maybe if I just kept at the illusion, I would fool myself too.
When the kingdom fell silent, I finally moved to light the diyas in my room. Near the corner of my room, a pillar carved in the shape of the lion-headed Narasimha grinned wickedly. It was a gruesome tale, of blood and angry gods, but for some reason it gave me hope. The flames flickered bright in the lion-headed statue’s eyes, but they yielded no warmth. Everything was a spell of cold. To make matters worse, I had no way of knowing whether my assailant would return. I had gone over her words, but none of it made sense. I need you to lead me. Lead where? For all I knew, she was nothing more than a nightmare conjured from stress.
But if she wasn’t, I would be ready. From the drawer beside my bed, I pulled out a blunt shard of flint. I set my puny weapon beside me and stared at the balcony, willing her to make herself known. Something about her voice had filled me with regret.
A scratching sound startled me out of my thoughts. I lunged for the rock when a voice cut across the room—
“Mayavati, come to the door.”
I tensed, my arm still raised. A heavy feeling settled in my gut. I had heard that voice a hundred times, listened for it from my spying place and imagined it saying kinder words. Father.
The door gave way with a sigh and my father’s silhouette loomed into the room, a blot against the darkness. He stood alone, no familiar retinue of guards flanking his side. At once, I bolted upright. He wasn’t one to flout tradition and yet he’d gone to the trouble of visiting me in secret. For a half-moment, I wondered whether some unknowable power had answered my wishes and freed me. But experience told me otherwise. Father was far too cunning for sentiment.
“I have come with a gift,” he said, extending a hand toward me. “One to free you from this marriage.”
From the folds of his robe, he withdrew a small violet flask. I took the flask and removed the stopper, careful not to spill its contents before taking a whiff. All the blood slipped from my face. I knew that scent. My breath came in a rasp and a dead chill swam under my skin. It was mandrake soaked in milk—poison.
“No matter who you marry, they will wage war against us. My spies have heard it, my councilors suspect it and my instincts know it,” said the Raja, his voice calm and even. “The best chances for the realm are to bring the war to us, instead of letting it play out on the outskirts of our borders. Their attendance at your swayamvara is critical in bringing them here. Your death will nullify the bonds of guest hospitality and we may dispatch the rebels on the spot. Your sacrifice would ensure the safety of all our people.”
I shook my head, my mouth bone dry. I was no bride. I was bait. The walls stretched above me. An invisible thread running from my head to my feet yanked me, threatening to topple me onto the ground. I inhaled a shuddering breath, but it felt clammy in my lungs.
I hoped that by letting you see, you might forgive what I must take from you.
He wasn’t just taking away my independence. Or home.
When I spoke, my voice was hollow, scraped—
“You want me dead.”
6
THE WEDDING
Seconds collided into hours, decades, centuries. Eternity itself moved through me, stretching the moments after I’d spoken. In a whirl, I saw my life compressed, folded and distilled into the vial of mandrake poison in my hands.
Clearing his throat, my father clasped his hands behind his back.
“It is not a question of want,” he said. “It is a matter of need. If this is what it will take to keep the realm safe for our people, then I have no choice.”
Our people. My stomach knotted. Only the thump of my heart told me I was alive. Not yet a corpse. I glanced at the frail vial. If I wanted, I could throw it in his face, pour it on the ground or smash the vial altogether. But of course I couldn’t. The vial was Bharata’s hope distorted, and I held it in my hand.
“You must understand that your contribution to the realm will exceed that of any of your siblings and any of my councilors. What I am asking of you—”