"Mother, what if the sabhasad rebel?"
She sat in the courtyard, watching Pranvi cut the air with clean, decisive strokes.
Sunlight skittered along my sister's blade, and the same fire that grief had smothered now burned bright in her eyes. Mother's smile was faint, admiring, and untroubled.
I did not approve of her watching only Pranvi!
"The sabhasad are dead, my son," she said, calm as stone.
Ice ran through me.
They are dead.
The words rang like a bell inside my chest. Then the warmth surged back, burning my doubts from the other side.
'If they threatened our house, is this not justice?' Two voices pulled at me—one born in this world, one that refused to die from the last.
"What of their families?" I pressed, my face tightening despite my effort to appear composed. "They're sure to take up arms once they learn what transpired in the Great Hall."
"Your brother, Varanth, is presently dealing with the issue," Mother replied without so much as a tremor. "He shall ascertain that your reign is free from plotting and intrigues within our janapada."
'Did she just confess to killing the families of those sabhasad?' I swallowed. 'No, surely I'm mistaken. Surely…'
"Mother," I said, voice thinner than I intended, "please don't tell me you asked Varanth to kill them all."
She turned to me then, really turned, eyes measuring, breath steady.
"Son, you misconstrue the situation. I did not ask your brother to do this on a whim. It is the law of our land. Besides, are you so foolish as to believe that sparing their families is mercy befitting a ruler?"
Her tone rose, clean and edged, pushing me back without her hand lifting.
"Mercy is a tool of the weak. Respect takes no root in the minds of the free folk. It is born of fear, tempered with a hue of compassion. Let the wounded lion go, and it shall take your head the next time it sees you. A ruler must not be too forgiving."
Her words made sense, but I stood conflicted, foolish or not, between her rationale and my morals.
"Remember, straight trees are cut first. Mercy is a virtue better reserved for the deserving."
The courtyard seemed to cool. Her eyes, for a heartbeat, belonged not to a mother but to a sovereign stripped to iron.
'Is this what I will become?' The older part of me asked.
'Or is this what I must become to keep them safe?' The newborn part retorted.
The heat returned—love as rage, rage as love, until I could not tell which side of the flame I stood on.
I sat straighter. She read my surrender, and the steel in her gaze softened, lips curving into her familiar smile.
"I understand, Mother," I said carefully. "But what of the people in those aharas? Will they not rise against the tyrant who killed their lords?"
"Were this Simhagiri, your worries would be justified," she said, fists tightening as if holding years of helplessness. "But this is Aranyavarta. The people here can scarcely afford a meal for two. Tell me who, in your opinion, they blame for their misery."
"The Samanta… and his retainers?" I ventured.
She nodded, and a knot in my chest loosened.
"Those wretched sabhasad extorted what little the people managed to gather every month. Resentment has been simmering for years. You, as their new Samanta, have offered it an egress. While this will not sate their hunger for justice, it grants us room to breathe without glancing over our shoulders perpetually."
Her clarity left me both awed and afraid.
'Am I learning how to rule or how to harden?' The question lingered for a moment longer than I expected.
"Then, what shall be our subsequent steps to appease the populace even more and bring prosperity to Aranyavarta?" I asked with inquisitive eyes.
Having a mother who had such a stellar grasp of the situation in the janapada was indeed a blessing.
"That," she said, the smile returning with a glint, "is the job of the Samanta, not the former Samanti."
'Huh? Wasn't she supposed to guide her son?' My shoulders slumped.
"Samanta Amogh Ashanra!"
Her voice cracked across the courtyard like a banner unfurling. I jolted upright; even Pranvi froze mid-swing and looked over with wide eyes.
"Have no misgivings about the mire this path will lead you into," Mother said. "If you so wish to emerge victorious, make haste and rivet your thoughts. A capable ruler brings prosperity to his lands. An incapable one brings suffering to his people."
Her gaze held me, cruel and kind in the same breath. My older life recoiled at the severity. This life demanded I learn to bear it.
"I understand, Mother," I said. "I will be a ruler who is feared but also honored. Loved, yet respected. Willing to hear counsel, but never shackled by it."
"Good, my child." Her tone eased. "I shall wait for the Samanta to devise a scheme to secure his reign and thrust Aranyavarta into an era of prosperity. You have until dawn."
She rose and bowed.
"Now, I shall take my leave, my lord."
I stared at her face, stunned.
'It's past noon, and she wants a future by dawn. Cruel hardly begins to cover it.'
"Samanta," came a playful voice.
Pranvi, white armor bright in the sun, stood grinning, barely strangling a chuckle. "Pardon my indiscretion, but I suggest you take your leave and start crafting a plan."
She was enjoying it far too much. I considered demoting her for all of half a heartbeat but then, yesterday's image of her blade, red to the hilt, chilled the thought to death. Bad idea.
I gave her a wry smile and turned away.
Before mother or I could walk away, a sudden clatter of sandals on stone slapped across the courtyard.
A breathless messenger stumbled through, fell to one knee, and bowed so low his forehead kissed the dust.
"My lord, the market at the lower gate… Indivara's men roused a crowd. Torches, stones, shouts for 'blood-price' and 'widow's shame'." His chest heaved. "Dandanayaka Varanth has ridden to disperse them. He bids the court hold fast. He says… he says he expected this."
Mother's face did not change, but a thin seam of satisfaction tugged at the corner of her mouth.
She flicked two fingers. The messenger backed away, head still low.
The ice and the heat collided in me again.
'If Varanth fails, people die. If he succeeds, people die. Regardless of the outcome, I bear the stain.'
My hands trembled, so I laced them together until the shake found no room.
"Go," Mother said, gentler now, as if she had heard my bones creak. "The dawn draws closer."
I glanced at her one last time before turning away. Somewhere in my heart, I knew I had nothing to worry about.
Instead of returning to my chambers, I walked to the manor's library.
The door complained as I pushed it open; stale air and dust greeted me like a curse.
A true library should stand as a monument to a nation's reverence for knowledge. That one however, was shrouded in darkness, not by the presence of mysterious texts but by the lack of them.
Three modest cases half-filled, spines dulled and furred with neglect.
'Like the janapada itself,' I thought. 'Starved. Waiting to be made anew or to be buried.'
I trailed a finger along the shelves and coughed as dust leapt into the light. The few books I found were stubborn. A water-warped chronicle, a worm-bit bestiary, and a ledger of grain tithes thirty years out of date.
Resigned, I began rummaging for anything useful.
A cracked volume refused to slide free—a thin, leather-bound history of Aranyavarta's riverworks.
I pulled harder. A panel shifted with a sigh, revealing a narrow cavity behind the books.
Inside lay a wrapped bundle and a slim ledger bound in plain brown.
My heartbeat found my throat. I took a deep breath.
I set the bundle aside and opened the ledger first. The columns were neat to the point of vanity; entries of coin and grain, traced across aharas with different inks, different hands. Names leapt like fish: Indivara, Jayant, Vatsal. And a sigil beside several lines—a three-pronged mark like a forked spear.
I turned the page. The handwriting changed, but the arithmetic did not.
Shipments diverted at night. Prices doubled in two years. Compensation to "island traders." A note in the margin, sharp and thin as a knife's whisper—"The Isles do not raid for free."
I swallowed. 'Could it be Varunad?'
I unwrapped the bundle with hands I tried to keep steady. Inside was a sheaf of letters, bound with fraying blue thread. The topmost bore my father's seal, cracked but unmistakable.
I read the first line. Then the second. The ink bled in my vision, and the room seemed to lean.
Yamvitha, if this letter reaches you, the floods have taken the dams. The sabha pressed me to empty the treasury to rebuild, but something is wrong with the market; grain vanishes between dock and gate, and prices rise as if by witchcraft. Someone is tightening a hand around Aranyavarta's throat. If I fail to loosen it, teach our children to strike where compassion falters.
My fingers closed reflexively around the page until the parchment crackled.
Outside, somewhere far beyond the window, the courtyard lifted brief shouts—angry, afraid, then distant again.
I pressed my palm to the ledger where the forked sigil repeated, cool through the leather.
"You have until dawn," my mother had said.
I looked from Father's letter to the secret accounts to the shifting dust motes that drifted like ash in the library's dead light.
"Very well," I whispered to the empty room. "Then I shall strike."