Sword of the Deceiver (25 page)

She must have seen all this in his face, but she offered no apology, not even with her eyes. Instead, she offered a flat statement. “Queen Bandhura sent me.”

“Bandhura? Bandhura is using you?”
Bandhura did this to you?

“Yes.”

He could not look at her. He could barely stand to be beside her. After all that had just passed between him and Makul his nerves were already stretched taut. After all he had thought and dared to believe about … this woman before him, how could he begin to confront her this way?

“Why would the first of all queens send you here?” Hamsa found the words that had eluded him.

Natharie gave a small, mirthless laugh. “You cannot guess,
Agnidh?
”

Samudra hung his head. He looked up to Heaven. He saw the black glimmer of the queen’s fountain and the burning blue of the sky and the silent green gardens in the glare of the midday sun. He saw everything but an answer he could understand. “Why would you do this?” he cried.

Natharie did not flinch. She did not even blink her eyes. “Because she offered me freedom and threatened my life.”

“She
what
? How?” Samudra felt the blood drain away from his face, and from his heart. He looked across to Hamsa. Hamsa had gone white.

Natharie sighed. She toyed with the flower stems in her basket. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters!” Anger, so familiar, so useless flooded him. Anger at her, at Bandhura. Anger at himself for not having prevented this, all of this, every last wrong, broken, treacherous event that now surrounded him. Anger at Mother A-Kuha for driving him to this place with her riddles and her bloody, bloody dance.

Into this storm of anger, Natharie’s voice dropped like iron. “Samudra, what matters is that you have caught me, and I have heard what you said to the man in the priest’s dress.”

He folded his arms, the anger churning through him stirring all his arrogance. What was Bandhura thinking, sending such a woman out to spy on two soldiers? “What is it you think you have heard?”

Natharie smiled as she read the thoughts, but the smile was grim and without triumph. “I have heard that you are pretending to join a rebellion in order to bring it down. I also know that Queen Bandhura will use that pretense to denounce you to the emperor.”

And Chandra will listen
. Not even drowning beneath his anger could Samudra pretend his brother would do otherwise. “Will you tell her?”

“I must tell her something.”

“You can say that you failed.”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

“Why? Pride?” Samudra regretted the tone more than the words as soon as he had spoken.

“No.”

“Then why?”

She did not answer him and his anger flared again. “Do you know what the penalty is for one of your rank leaving the small domain? If your judge is feeling generous, you will only be beaten with bamboo strips until you fall unconscious. If not, you will be trampled to death.”
See, now I have power over you. If no one else ever hears me again, you must hear me now!

But again, Natharie made no answer and Samudra felt himself tremble from the fury and the fear and the love; yes, the broken and disappointed love that tore at his heart.

“Why did you do this to me?” he whispered, unable to hide his anguish any longer.

In response, Natharie’s face went hard as stone. “That question is unworthy of you, Samudra.”

And she was right. Again. Samudra watched his hands as they curled into fists.
You are not a boy. You are not a vain and foolish child. You are a man and you are a prince, and you are here with this woman. She is who and what she is and you must face it all. All of it, Samudra, not just what you wish you could see
.

Samudra bowed his head, gesturing his apology. “No it is not unworthy of me, it is unworthy of you. Natharie …” Her name caught just a little in his throat. “What will you do?”

She bit her lip, glancing back toward the white walls and ivory gates of the palace.
What is in your mind, Natharie? What is in your heart?
“I will return to my mistress, and I will tell her what I saw. I think, however, I did not hear every word correctly.”

Samudra lifted his head. Hope that pierced almost as deeply as anger within him. “You will do this for me?”

She nodded. “My home needs you strong, and if you will not … if you cannot be emperor, then you must be the emperor’s sword arm, not this Pravan, and most of all not Divakesh.”

It was as if the sun rose in his private darkness, and by that light within he was able to see past his own danger and his own fragile schemes. “Bandhura will have yet more power over you.”

He had thought he would see her tremble, but instead, Natharie smiled once more, and this time that smile was sly. “Perhaps not.”

He cocked his head toward her. “There is something else?”

She nodded, but before he could ask what this something else was, she asked, “Samudra, will you trust me?”

He looked into her eyes for a long time. Was it only her beauty that he saw there? It was beauty enough to bring any man to his knees for her. Did he truly see her heart? She had courage, but she was also capable of subterfuge, and perhaps better at it than he. Was she lying to him with those eyes now?

It seemed to Samudra that his next words would change the whole of the dance, for good or for ill, and change it forever. “Yes, Natharie,” he said. “I will trust you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and he knew she understood how grave this was. “I hope it will not have to be for long.”

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her and do so much more, to take his comfort in her beauty, even as she was in the clothes of a slave, her strong, fair face bare to the harsh sunlight. “I must let you go before you are seen.”

“Yes.” She bit her lip again. She reached into the basket and pulled out a branch of scarlet blooms. “Take these. If anyone wonders, you can say you were speaking to a gardener about the best tokens to bring me to show your affections.”

He stared at the delicate flowers she laid across his palm, and then looked up at her, and this time he knew the ache and the conflict he saw in her was real, because he felt its echo within his own breast.

“Take care, Great Prince.” She made obeisance as a servant would, then, resting the basket on her hip she left him, heading toward the shadow of the palace walls without once looking back.

“Take care, Natharie,” he whispered. “Take very great care.”

Then there was nothing to do but turn and walk the other way.

Natharie forced herself not to run across the gardens. She trudged. She was a weary laborer, going home to get out of the sun. The gardeners had a barracks to themselves, dug out of the earthen berm by the palace’s inner wall. Its turf roof was as carefully tended as the rest of the garden. Unless you knew the location of the narrow stair down to the doorway, you would pass the dwelling by.

Inside it was cool, but dark as a cave. The floor was packed dirt and the walls were glazed clay. By the light of the hearth fire, Natharie picked her way between the sleeping bodies of the gardeners, snoring and wheezing away the middle of the day when it was too hot for any but madmen and spies to be out. It was the old woman who dozed beside the cookstove who had let Natharie stash her other clothes here. They were actually Ekkadi’s clothes. The woman had believed Natharie’s story that she was a maid of the small domain come to deliver a love note to the prince. She would probably entertain all her confederates with the story tonight.

But all she did now as Natharie crept past to retrieve her bundle was open one knowing eye and wink. Natharie winked back, snatched up the pile of borrowed clothing, and slipped out the door as quickly as she could. Although the foot of the stairwell was open to the sky, it was about as private as any other place she would find outside the palace. She quickly shed her soiled and sweat-soaked gardener’s clothing, and wrapped herself in Ekkadi’s simple servant’s garments. She left the others outside the door along with the silver ring she had promised the old woman, and ran up the steps.

The inner walls of the palace had a number of small doors in them for those who had no business coming and going through the grand gates as if they were the emperor. Each of these was guarded, of course, but at times some of the guards were more sympathetic to errands of love and mischief than others. Ekkadi, naturally, knew which these were and fortunately, Samudra and Makul’s conversation had not lasted past the time for shift change. Natharie was able to reenter the palace as easily as she had left it. She tried not to count how many men had now seen her come and go. She felt absurdly exposed. Already, she was becoming used to the idea that modesty required that she be closed away.

And it’s only been a few months. What will I be after years of this?

She bit her lip, remembering Samudra’s blunt recitation of the penalties should she be caught.
If I have years yet
.

She emerged from the dim and dusty servants’ stairs to be surrounded once more by the opulent confines of the small domain. She hurried at once to the library. There, Master Gauda knelt beside a figure wearing ruby-red silks and sliver veils and made a great show of dunning an ancient text into her. It was Ekkadi, but to the casual eye, she could be Natharie, as long as she was sitting down. Without a word, they retired to the dressing alcove to exchange their costumes and assume their proper stations in the world. With that, all was done and she could breathe again.

No, not quite yet
.

“You had better let the first of all queens know we’re back.”

“Of course.” Ekkadi strode away, head bowed, the picture of the humble, obedient maid. Natharie in her turn started back toward the library. She wanted to talk with Master Gauda about Ekkadi, before the maid returned — about how to build a defense against her, just in case he was right, just in case she was the hidden knife.

This place bristles with knives. I am a knife myself. Whose knife are you, Drama Master?

But she had not yet reached the filigreed archway when another servant stepped up to her. It was Damman, Queen Prishi’s woman.

“My mistress the queen mother bids you attend her, Great Princess,” she said.

Natharie swallowed. She had not expected this, not yet, and the timing strained the rest of the careful deceptions she had piled together today. She would have to make do. She could not refuse Queen Prishi.

Swiftly, she took her leave of Master Gauda and hurried down the corridor.

Queen Prishi’s chamber was a place of shadows even at midday. The curtains about her bed were sheer, but layered, creating a close twilight that stank of illness and old roses. In the dim light, the old queen was little more than a wrinkled bundle of silk in the middle of the great bed.

The waiting woman knelt by Queen Prishi’s head. “The princess Natharie is here.”

Natharie knelt. Had the queen fallen asleep?

No. She stirred and opened her pale eyes. “Ah,” she sighed. “Very good. Come here, daughter.” Her scabbed and withered hand lifted from the blanket and waved Natharie forward. “I would have you soothe me with one of your tales.”

“Certainly, Majesty.” Natharie took her cue from the waiting woman’s nod and settled herself on the other side of the queen’s pillow. “What would you have me tell?”

Very, very softly, Queen Prishi said, “I would hear how you came to find my poison.”

Natharie’s heart thumped. She glanced at the waiting woman. The queen saw the reason for her hesitation. “Have no fear of Damman. She has known when to keep her mouth closed since she was four years old.”

I wonder if Ekkadi would take lessons from her?
Natharie nodded in acknowledgment. “It is in the vermilion and saffron box, in a skin cream. I don’t know exactly what it is, but …”

“The venom of the green snake mixed with antimony,” the queen answered.

Natharie stared.

“I made it up myself. You see, my dear, you were wrong about who was poisoning me. I have done this to myself. Damman administers the dose every night.”

Incomprehension choked her. Natharie stared again at the queen, and then at the placid Damman. “Why?” she finally managed to say.

The queen smiled weakly. “Ah. Now, there is the great question. Tell me, why did you believe it was my daughter-in-law who made up this special medicine for me?”

Natharie swallowed hard and groped for words. The smell of sickness pressed closer and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled as fear crawled across her skin. She could only find the truth. “I have seen the way she looks at you. She is contemptuous of you. It was upon your illness that she gained her power. I … know how such things may happen.”

“In your own home?” inquired Queen Prishi.

“In history, it has happened,” answered Natharie stiffly. There were rumors from the concubines’ quarters when she was still young, about how one lady in particular had met her end, but she was not going to tell the old queen that tale.

Fortunately Queen Prishi seemed to accept her answer. She let her head drop back onto the pillow. “It is a good guess. It fits the facts as they can be seen by those with a will to do so. I am only sorry you are the one who made it.”

“What?” Natharie’s fear grew colder.

“Nothing. Nothing. This … I am tired and not so careful as I should be sometimes.” A glance passed between mistress and maid and Damman lifted the old queen with great care, pushing several pillows underneath her, so that Prishi could look at Natharie more easily. “Why did you decide to tell me? You can hardly love those of us who keep the keys to the small domain.”

There were a hundred answers Natharie could give, ninety-nine of them lies, which she felt sure the queen would sense. So, she once again gave the truth. “For the prisoner, the character of the jailer makes a difference. I would rather have you hold those keys than Bandhura.”

“Very good, very good.” The queen smiled a little, and the smile was not pleasant. “You could have said for love of my son, and then we would have both known what you want here.”