“This is the one.”
As I reacquainted myself with the spear, I noted more and more people stopping at the edge of the field. There appeared to be servants and courtiers alike gathering.
“I think news has spread,” Yudhajit murmured. “We have an audience.”
“Why?”
“The story of the warrior princess of Kekaya has inspired people here. We even have a few noble daughters who train now. They do not fight in battle, but they can defend themselves. Several are excellent at driving chariots.”
Change. Even here, despite the censure of the gods, things were changing. To my mortification, tears welled in my eyes.
“Are you crying, Kaikeyi? Some warrior radnyi you are,” Yudhajit teased, but he rubbed the tears from my face with his thumb.
“I’m going to hit the target,” I said, then strode past him.
In the short walk to the mark, my hands turned clammy. I took a deep breath but could not shake the intense awareness of the crowd behind me, watching. If I missed, would they remove the young girls from their lessons? Would years of progress be erased? Would news of my failure reach Dasharath? Despite all the accomplishments I had accrued over these many years, my old insecurities rushed in to greet me here on the grounds of my childhood home.
I closed my eyes and let the whispers of the noblemen turn into the cries of the battlefield.
Never take your eyes off the enemy, Yudhajit liked to say, but right now, the people watching me were not the enemy. The target was my enemy.
I leaned the spear against my body and wiped my hands against my traveling breeches, designed by Asha. They were an iteration of the warrior garb she had cobbled together in an encampment over a decade ago, and that memory gave me adrenaline now. The target was my enemy. My nerves stilled. My muscles tensed. I hauled the spear into position. There was a taut silence, broken only by my grunt as I released the spear with a mighty heave.
The spear ripped through the center of the target. I stayed motionless for a moment, legs spread, one arm forward, basking in the sheer joy of it.
Cheers rang out behind me. Rama and Bharata rushed forward, jumping up and down with glee. “That was incredible, Ma!” Bharata called.
My eyes sought Yudhajit, my lips automatically responding to his ridiculous grin. He ran toward me, lifting me up in the air and spinning me. “Put me down!” I scolded him, acutely aware of the number of eyes on us. “I am the ambassador from Kosala! You cannot treat me this way in public.”
He laughed and set me down, not looking at all contrite. “I am so happy to have you back,” he said.
“I thought Father had returned to the palace,” I said to Yudhajit when we convened in his council room after the feast. I had met Yudhajit’s wife, Mohan’s wife, and Rahul’s wife, which still amazed me. Rahul had been only eight when I left. Now he was twenty, married, and considered the most brilliant warrior Kekaya had produced in decades.
While the rest of the palace had changed, in the council room my father’s presence hung heavy all around. As a child I had never been allowed in here, relying on Yudhajit to report its happenings to me. But looking at it now, I could see Yudhajit’s descriptions had been quite faithful: a bare stone room, a window covered in stretched animal-hide, a large circular table. Yudhajit had clearly not made any alterations, and the severity of it brought memories of my father flooding back.
“He went back north to the mountains, to take in the air.”
“The moment he found out I was coming, I presume.”
Yudhajit tipped his chair back. “He left a week before we even found out. He does not hate you, you know.”
“I doubt that.”
“He did not know what to do with you. He wanted sons, and he got them, and he didn’t know how to speak to a daughter, so he didn’t. But he never hated you.”
I shook my head, but something compelled me to enter the Binding Plane. Our bond lay quiet, the truth of Yudhajit’s belief evident. For a moment, I considered telling him what I had learned from Dhanteri about our mother. But I thought better of it. I did not know what her life there might be like, or what would be accomplished by spreading the pain of the knowledge that she lived just beyond our reach.
“Kaikeyi, Father has grown ill, more gravely than I even let on in my letters.” Yudhajit had apparently taken my conflicted silence as leave to keep talking. “Resigning the kingship has not eased his sickness. Ashvin thought his only chance of seeing out the year was going north and consulting with some of the sages who reside there.”