I remained on the ground, content. “I’m not your brother.”
“You wrestle in the dirt, you like weapons and fast horses, you’re smart,” Yudhajit listed off. “I’d say you’re more man than woman.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s idiotic. Women can be all of those things. Intelligence doesn’t make me less of a woman, and I would think that you knew that.” The contentment faded. His words hurt, more than I could tell him.
“Don’t take offense,” Yudhajit said. “It’s a compliment. Who wants to be a woman?”
The words were callous, careless, a joke. He was my brother, my twin, and I thought at the very least he believed me his equal. I had fooled myself into thinking I could be an exception, an intelligent woman in control of her own destiny. That he saw me that way too.
But now I was to be married off, and he would be a king.
For now, though, I was still his twin. I took his hand when he offered it, let him haul me up from the dirt, and walked with him shoulder to shoulder to our horses.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I RETURNED MANY TIMES to my mother’s note, to Ahalya’s story, and dreamed of finding a man who might allow me some measure of power. Of possessing more control than my mother had been granted. This hope made the idea of marriage seem easier to tolerate, and I made my peace with it. Perhaps I would only understand its pleasures once I was married. And a swayamvara—some measure of choice—was something to be savored.
Manthara was the only person I told of my impending marriage, well before my father announced the plan to the greater court.
“I don’t mind the thought of a husband, but I wish to be a person my husband will listen to. How do I accomplish that?”
She cocked her head at me. “What do you want him to listen to you about?”
It was a hard question, for my future plans were so half-formed I could not articulate them. “I want to live my life freely,” I said at last, and that much was true. “I do not want the life my mother had.”
“That is more a matter of choosing the right husband.” There may have been a time when Manthara watched her words around me, but it was long gone.
“Still,” I said. “You have been preparing me for years. Certainly, you know what I must do.”
“You’re already doing it,” she said. “Learn to run a palace and a household. And be irreplaceable.”
I took her words to heart. And I returned fully to the Binding Plane.
I did not need to force anyone to do things against their will and put myself, or them, at risk. My relationship with Neeti had never recovered. She turned away from me in the halls, glared at me when nobody else was looking. Instead, I used my connections to solicit information. Rather than aiming to accomplish particular small goals, I used my connections now at random. I would often enter the Binding Plane without even realizing it, grasping my bond with a servant or minor noble and tugging to ask, Do you have something to tell the princess? One of the servants would tell me, “I think Arya Karan is ill.” The next time Karan’s cousin approached me at court, I would inquire about Arya Karan’s health. My bonds within the palace increased in number and strength. This was armor of a different kind.
I sat with Manthara in the evenings, trying to work out how to manage it all. “I want to oversee Rahul’s training tomorrow, as he was complaining about his instructor at dinner. And some of the ladies have invited me to a gathering, but I wonder whether it will be completely frivolous. Might I offend them if I do not go? Because there is to be an offering to the gods in the main square of the city at the end of the week, and I want to talk to some of the servants to make sure the preparations are moving smoothly.”
“You do not need to attend the gathering,” Manthara told me. “They want to discuss suitable matches for some of the younger nobles—you were invited as a courtesy.”
“I can go to Rahul’s lessons directly after my tutoring, then, and speak to the servants in the evening.”
“Are you even learning anything in your lessons anymore?” Manthara asked. “Surely you can read and write better than your tutors.”
My tutors did not even glance at my work. But I liked having the time to sit and read old texts and scrolls and write my thoughts, to learn new stories and histories and to think without interruption.
Similarly, my lessons with Yudhajit were no longer about new skills, but to hone my abilities. This had another purpose too. Through him, I could absorb as much information about the council and the men’s work as possible.