The Tigress Pavilion is an unroofed courtyard in the center of the wives’ wing. A portico borders the black-and-white-tiled area. Silk fabrics flow from the eaves, where they are pinned. At the center of the patio, a fountain gurgles a tranquil song. The carvings on the fountain’s base complement the outer walls, which are covered in a plastered pattern of Tarachand’s scorpion emblem.
I circle the area, staying under the shady portico. The pavilion is broken into two parts. In one area, young women lounge on overstuffed floor cushions, where they read books or play games with tiles. The other section is a training ring. I stop by one of the columns that divide the pavilion from the portico and look out at the courtyard. Women wield khandas, haladies, bows, slingshots, metal-tipped spears and shields, axes, javelins, and even an urumi—a weapon made of several flexible whiplike blades. Generally treated as a steel whip, it is the riskiest weapon to master. One lash from an urumi and a victim’s flesh could be sliced so deeply in several places that he or she might never recover.
A knife zips past me and sinks into the closest column. I step back and look around the pillar at Parisa. Her hair is pulled back, revealing a deep-purple scar from her ear to her neck. A piece of her earlobe has been hacked off. She flings another dagger, embedding the razor end through a target tacked to the post.
“Too far left,” Eshana says from a bench nearby. Her attention appears to be on the book in her lap, but her assessment was accurate. Parisa missed the center of the target pinned to the pillar by a hand’s width to the left. “Goddess Ki would not approve of that throw.”
“Why don’t you get off your rump and do it then?” Parisa challenges.
Eshana rises and accepts the throwing knife that Parisa offers her. Taking her stance, Eshana hurls the dagger with impressive form. The silver blade revolves in the air, gleaming like a spiraling star, and stabs the center of the target. Eshana reviews her mark and turns to smile at Parisa. “Ki would approve.”
Parisa notices me in the shadows and purses her lips. “You clean up well,” she says.
“Don’t mind her crankiness,” Eshana says. She comes to my side and pulls me out into the open. “The rajah sent his summons for tonight, and her name wasn’t on it. He hasn’t summoned her to his bedchamber in six moons.”
“Five!” Parisa shouts to our backs.
Eshana tips her head toward me. “Six, and the last time she was summoned, she had to share him with another wife and three courtesans.”
I shudder in repulsion and glance back at Parisa, who is throwing another knife. Her aim is still pulling left. “How did she get her scar?” I ask.
“A souvenir from her rank tournament.” Eshana sits back down on the bench, just out of the range of two ranis practicing swordplay, and I see that the book in her lap is Enlil’s Hundredth Rani. Jaya’s recitation comes to mind, and longing for her stretches through me. “Many of us will be glad when the rank tournaments are over. Every time another takes place, we cannot help but remember our own.” Eshana rests her palm on the book, and I see the number eighty-nine dyed in henna on the back of her hand.
“What’s that?” I ask, touching the number.
“My wifely rank. We all have them.”
I search the women before us, looking past their weapons for the numbers on the backs of their hands. Those were not strange lines that I saw on Lakia. They were ones. I consider my own hands, picturing what they would look like with the number one hundred branded on them.
Eshana rubs the book cover. “Most people’s favorite part of Enlil’s Hundredth Rani is his viraji winning the tournament, but what happened next was more important. Do you know the rest of the tale?”
I shake my head slowly. I have never heard that there is more to the story.
“I didn’t know the rest until I found this text in the palace library,” Eshana says. “It says that after Enlil married his final viraji, men began to emulate the gods and institute their own rank tournaments. But Ki soon became wrought with the loss of so many of her daughters, and she formed a band of young women and trained them for battle in secret. Her followers became warriors in the Sisterhood. By the time the next tournament was proposed, the sister warriors loved each other so much that they laid down their weapons and refused to fight. Their bond made them stronger together than they were apart. The land-goddess’s tradition of raising girls to be warriors became the cornerstone of the Sisterhood and carries on today.”
I scan the new passages in the book, seeing the full story for myself. I was taught that Ki established the Sisterhood, but the rest of the tale was never disclosed. “Why did the sisters tell us only part of the story? Why not teach us peace, like Ki taught the sister warriors?”
“I have often wondered the same.” Eshana watches the sparring wives with severe focus. “Whatever the case may be, the virtue of sisterhood has not been upheld as well as the tournaments.”
That may be so, but these ranis are established sister warriors. Their preparation saved their lives in the arena. “Does everyone here plan to challenge someone to a duel?” I ask.
“Any rani could try for first-wife rank, but Lakia has yet to be challenged.” Eshana smiles sadly. “Many practice to forget our past battles. We all bear scars.”
I study the women closer. Most scars must be deftly concealed by clothes and jewelry and their long hair. But as I look, signs of their hard-fought battles become visible below this flawless veneer. I spot faint scars on arms and legs. Even the impeccable Eshana has a scrape on her back, seen beneath her blouse and extending down, disappearing beneath the waistline of her silk sari.
A gong chimes across the courtyard. The ranis prop their weapons against the wall racks and then pass through a lattice archway bursting with vine flowers.
Eshana and I cross the patio with everyone else. As we walk past the weapons rack, I ask, “Have you mastered all of these weapons?”
“All the rajah’s favored four have. They are Lakia, me”—Eshana blushes—“and two courtesans, Anjali and Mathura. Mathura has lived in the palace almost as long as Lakia, since they were our age.”
Past the archway trellis, we go into a candlelit dining cove. Servants rush to fill chalices with wine. The wives kneel on cushions, congregating around knee-high tables stacked with lavish place settings and mouthwatering dishes smelling of turmeric and coriander.
Parisa beats us to a table. “Eshana! Viraji!”
Heads snap in my direction, and snatches of whispers fly. The comments I overhear pertain to my lankiness or plain looks. Nothing is said that I have not heard before, but the judgments still sting. The ranis’ flaws—their battle scars—are not at the forefront to be gawked at. But my lack of attractiveness cannot be concealed behind a sari.