“Yudhajit taught me a few things. That is all.”
“More than a few things. And she’s excellent,” Yudhajit said, ruining my attempt at deflection. “But far better at spear-throwing.”
“Come show us!” Rama begged. “Can you? Please?” He seemed so like an eleven-year-old boy that it was nearly impossible to think of what he had become at the banks of the river. I studied his excited face, trying to reconcile the heart-stopping fear with the love that filled me at his enthusiasm. I wrapped an arm around him in a quick hug, feeling a sense of relief.
“Well, Kaikeyi?” Yudhajit asked. “Have you kept up with it?”
I had, though with decreasing frequency over the last few years.
“Are you not raja?” I teased. “Have you nowhere more important to be?”
“Nothing more important than diplomacy on behalf of the kingdom,” Yudhajit answered, winking at me.
We all followed Yudhajit down to the training yard. It was strange to walk there without any questioning looks—and stranger still to have Yudhajit freely accompanying me. I had spent many hours staring longingly down at my brothers from an upstairs window.
In my mind, the training fields of Kekaya had always been a large, shadowy place, but now in the open I realized they were smaller than the grounds in Ayodhya’s palace, although they were far better equipped. Kosala, with its strangely polite rules about war, liked to limit its weaponry to swords and spears and arrows.
“Well, what do you think?” Yudhajit asked.
Rama and Bharata looked around in delight, gravitating immediately to the stands of heavy iron clubs. Bharata reached to take a flail off the rack and nearly dropped it on his foot.
“Careful!” I called out, walking briskly toward them. As I approached, Rama picked the flail up, moved a few paces from Bharata, and gave it a measured, perfect swing with an ease uncommon even in a fully grown man.
“Strong boy,” Yudhajit said, catching up with me.
“Yes, he is,” I said softly.
Yudhajit looked down at me, sensing my distress, so I forced a smile onto my face and tried to dispel his concerns with a tug in the Binding Plane. The radiant blue cable shifted slightly, and his attention glanced off my discomfort. By then, such little manipulations came as naturally to me as breathing. It would have taken more effort not to use my magic. “We are very proud. He will be a great warrior.”
Yudhajit studied me for another moment, then turned toward Bharata and Rama. “Boys, have you ever seen your mother throw a spear? She is absolutely deadly.”
Bharata ran up to me and threw his arms around me in a rare display of affection. “Could you, Ma?” His manipulation was so obvious, and yet I could not resist. I nodded to my brother, and he waved a hand at an attendant at the other end of the yard.
A straw target was set two hundred paces away. It was far, but within distance for me, even with my skills rusty from lack of use.
Yudhajit pointed me toward the array of spears. “Practice or—” He broke off as I reached for one that called out to me, long and slim with a wickedly sharp point. I weighed it carefully, my palms recognizing the feel of the polished shaft like an old friend.
“This is the one.”
As I reacquainted myself with the spear, I noted more and more people stopping at the edge of the field. There appeared to be servants and courtiers alike gathering.
“I think news has spread,” Yudhajit murmured. “We have an audience.”
“Why?”
“The story of the warrior princess of Kekaya has inspired people here. We even have a few noble daughters who train now. They do not fight in battle, but they can defend themselves. Several are excellent at driving chariots.”
Change. Even here, despite the censure of the gods, things were changing. To my mortification, tears welled in my eyes.
“Are you crying, Kaikeyi? Some warrior radnyi you are,” Yudhajit teased, but he rubbed the tears from my face with his thumb.
“I’m going to hit the target,” I said, then strode past him.
In the short walk to the mark, my hands turned clammy. I took a deep breath but could not shake the intense awareness of the crowd behind me, watching. If I missed, would they remove the young girls from their lessons? Would years of progress be erased? Would news of my failure reach Dasharath? Despite all the accomplishments I had accrued over these many years, my old insecurities rushed in to greet me here on the grounds of my childhood home.
I closed my eyes and let the whispers of the noblemen turn into the cries of the battlefield.
Never take your eyes off the enemy, Yudhajit liked to say, but right now, the people watching me were not the enemy. The target was my enemy.
I leaned the spear against my body and wiped my hands against my traveling breeches, designed by Asha. They were an iteration of the warrior garb she had cobbled together in an encampment over a decade ago, and that memory gave me adrenaline now. The target was my enemy. My nerves stilled. My muscles tensed. I hauled the spear into position. There was a taut silence, broken only by my grunt as I released the spear with a mighty heave.
The spear ripped through the center of the target. I stayed motionless for a moment, legs spread, one arm forward, basking in the sheer joy of it.
Cheers rang out behind me. Rama and Bharata rushed forward, jumping up and down with glee. “That was incredible, Ma!” Bharata called.
My eyes sought Yudhajit, my lips automatically responding to his ridiculous grin. He ran toward me, lifting me up in the air and spinning me. “Put me down!” I scolded him, acutely aware of the number of eyes on us. “I am the ambassador from Kosala! You cannot treat me this way in public.”
He laughed and set me down, not looking at all contrite. “I am so happy to have you back,” he said.
“I thought Father had returned to the palace,” I said to Yudhajit when we convened in his council room after the feast. I had met Yudhajit’s wife, Mohan’s wife, and Rahul’s wife, which still amazed me. Rahul had been only eight when I left. Now he was twenty, married, and considered the most brilliant warrior Kekaya had produced in decades.
While the rest of the palace had changed, in the council room my father’s presence hung heavy all around. As a child I had never been allowed in here, relying on Yudhajit to report its happenings to me. But looking at it now, I could see Yudhajit’s descriptions had been quite faithful: a bare stone room, a window covered in stretched animal-hide, a large circular table. Yudhajit had clearly not made any alterations, and the severity of it brought memories of my father flooding back.
“He went back north to the mountains, to take in the air.”
“The moment he found out I was coming, I presume.”
Yudhajit tipped his chair back. “He left a week before we even found out. He does not hate you, you know.”
“I doubt that.”
“He did not know what to do with you. He wanted sons, and he got them, and he didn’t know how to speak to a daughter, so he didn’t. But he never hated you.”
I shook my head, but something compelled me to enter the Binding Plane. Our bond lay quiet, the truth of Yudhajit’s belief evident. For a moment, I considered telling him what I had learned from Dhanteri about our mother. But I thought better of it. I did not know what her life there might be like, or what would be accomplished by spreading the pain of the knowledge that she lived just beyond our reach.
“Kaikeyi, Father has grown ill, more gravely than I even let on in my letters.” Yudhajit had apparently taken my conflicted silence as leave to keep talking. “Resigning the kingship has not eased his sickness. Ashvin thought his only chance of seeing out the year was going north and consulting with some of the sages who reside there.”