“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 “But since you’ve returned, Bharata has withdrawn their remaining military units from our borders.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.”
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?”