“There,” he said, smiling back at Rao. “Now the king can contemplate the distant horizon. Much more fun than war, I think.”
“Pretty sure that’s against the rules,” Rao had teased.
“That’s all right,” Aditya had replied. “I don’t care for catur anyway.”
And Rao had laughed, and clapped him on the back, and said, “If you’re that tired, then come and have a drink with me instead.”
He’d believed, then, that there would be time for Aditya to grow into a good emperor.
He should have known, as a devotee of the nameless, that the king standing beyond the edge of the board had meant something. That a man can sometimes see his true fate unwittingly.
“A prophetic name is not always something whispered by a priest at a child’s birth,” a priest of the nameless had said, when Rao had asked why he had to be burdened with such a name, why him. “Even beyond our faith, there are people who discover their fates by chance. Their fate finds them—in dreams, in stories, in happenstance. Often they do not recognize truth when it graces them, and the knowledge of the prophecy passes them by. But your fate would have found you, young prince, whether you had been Aloran or no. Be glad that your faith leaves you forewarned of what is to come.”
“It must be strange,” Rao had murmured. “Not to know your fate, even when you see it.”
“Perhaps,” the priest had said, smiling benevolently. “But you are of the faith of the nameless, prince of Alor. You will recognize exactly such a prophecy when you see one. You may save another man from walking his path in ignorance one day.”
Rao had not.
Rao found Aditya in a small garden replete with songbirds. Aditya did not turn, so Rao turned him, making the man meet his eyes.
“Your brother is coming for you,” Rao said raggedly, his hands on Aditya’s shoulders. “My prince, my emperor—my friend. Chandra has sent his men here. He will kill you. We need to flee.”
“Just a little longer,” Aditya murmured, looking away from Rao, out at the birds, the sky. Rao wondered what factors he was weighing up in that skull of his: how justice measured against ethics and against strategy, amounting to nothing but the stillness of his body, his distant eyes. “Just a little longer, and I will know what needs to be done.”
“There is no more time! There has never been time.”
Aditya closed his eyes. He looked like a terrible weight lay upon him—a crushing weight that bowed his shoulders as no court politics, no war, no thing they had experienced together as princes in Parijat ever had.
“You don’t understand,” Aditya whispered.
“I do. I do. I’ve kept to the tenets of this faith my whole life, Aditya. My sister died for it. But I can’t allow you to do this.”
Aditya met his eyes, finally. Dark eyes. Severe brows.
“If I am your emperor, you must give me the time I require. My word is, after all, law.” His voice was sudden iron. “And if I am not your emperor, then go and fight your war without me. It’s simple enough.”
Rao thought of that long-ago catur board; of Aditya’s frown, of the desire to step off the board. But there was no leaving this game. Aditya was a piece that had to move, if anything was to be won or lost.
“No,” Rao said firmly. “I won’t make this choice for you. This is your task, Aditya. Not mine. If you’re to be emperor, if you’re to lead us—you have to take the first step. You have to decide. I won’t choose for you.”
Aditya slipped from his grasp. Turned and walked away. And Rao bowed his head, thinking of his sister, who had burned, and the terrible weight of his own name. The hope of it.
The reality of Aditya, bound by a vision. Unwilling to rise.
MALINI
It took one of the Srugani lords and all his associated followers—a not insignificant number of men—abandoning the monastery for Malini to learn the full truth.
“The messenger dragged himself from his dead horse,” Lord Narayan proclaimed, pacing. “Risked his life to bring this to us. And now—nothing. Where is Emperor Aditya? Prince Rao, do you know?”
Rao shook his head. Said nothing.
“Chandra cannot be sure that Aditya is here, or he would have sent far more men,” said another lord.
“He may be targeting every monastery to the nameless,” Rao said. “Or we were followed, on the seeker’s path.”
“Targeting every monastery would be foolish at best, an affront to the faith at worst,” another voice said, appalled. “No sane man would do it.”