I chanced a glance at Dasharath, who sat several feet away and looked half-asleep. “I’m glad of it,” I said. “Why do you ask?” I did not think Kaushalya would harbor reservations about it, at least not in secret.
She shuffled the cushion on which she was seated closer to me, in a movement that should have been ungainly but looked completely graceful on her. “It seems a silly name, does it not?” she whispered. In the Binding Plane, our ebony bond was solid and still, and I chanced a glance at Kaushalya. She was giving me a mischievous smile, her golden jhumkas winking in the torchlight as if they too knew her joke. “Your advice the other day stopped a panic that might have spread dangerously. It’s the sort of work the Mantri Parishad could do, if they bothered with the problems of serving girls.”
I smothered a laugh, for I did not want to attract too much attention. “Agreed. But you do not like us being called the Women’s Circle?”
“I would not say I have a particularly strong feeling about it,” Kaushalya said. “Just that it sounds frivolous.”
“We could make it less frivolous in other ways,” I offered, the idea coming to me as I spoke. “Asha spoke of invitations. But instead, we could hold an open audience, the way Dasharath does. The radnyis of Kosala attending to the people’s problems. It is certainly more imposing an image than the idea of a… matron’s sewing circle.”
“The people?” Kaushalya raised an eyebrow at me, astute as always. “Beyond the servants, you mean?”
The music quieted for a moment, and we both split away, sitting up straight for several moments as the man hummed. I saw Dasharath open his eyes hopefully and only barely school his disappointed expression into feigned interest as the man launched into the next verse. Next to me, Kaushalya shook her head, an affectionate smile on her face.
When it was safe to continue the conversation, I whispered, “We could use the public gardens, near the main marketplace. It’s like you said. The men do not—” I narrowly stopped myself from saying care and glanced around to make sure I had not been overheard. “They do not have time to listen to such small matters. But we do. We already are.”
I could sense Kaushalya was skeptical, and so I plucked at our bond, holding in my head the image of us, providing counsel to women, giving aid and comfort as we stood among our people. I could see it now, women young and old gathered before us, all of us filled with hope at what futures we might build together.
“Perhaps,” she said, considering. “But who would come to such a thing? Only the most desperate, surely.”
“Is that not who we should seek to aid?” I asked. “We are radnyis, are we not?”
At that moment, the man finally finished with a flourish. There was an awkward silence for a moment, before Dasharath began giving lukewarm applause. Kaushalya and I joined in, politely tapping fingers against our palms until the moment was over and we could rise to our feet. “There are those who would be offended,” Kaushalya said. “First the new rules about the marketplace—no, don’t say anything, I know that was your proposal—and now this? Surely if it pleased the gods, this type of council would have been established long ago.”
“Those rules were written long ago,” I argued. “But these are different times.”
“Different times indeed,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I have an idea, then. Let us simply call it the Women’s Council.”
And so, once a week, in the evening, Sumitra and Kaushalya and I went to the public gardens in the heart of Ayodhya with several of our staff and held audiences. It came together in fits and starts, such that it was hard to say the first time we truly became a council. The first meeting, a few palace servants who we had turned away throughout the week sought our audience, and it was as if we were simply back in our rooms. The next time, it was much the same, small and unassuming. I struggled to ignore the gaping of passersby, the imagined titters.
But slowly, week by week, the number grew. The gaping stopped. It began to feel like something more. Like a Women’s Council.
I was the unspoken leader of the group, and both Sumitra and Kaushalya deferred to me when it came to major disputes. And yet without them, the Women’s Council could never have been. For they spread the word among the noblewomen, the elite social web that I still remained on the outskirts of, despite the fact that I now dressed fashionably and moved confidently about the palace. I supposed that I had made more efforts to strengthen my relationships with the noblemen of the palace than the women—but now, with this council, that was slowly changing.