Chapter 20
The next morning, Chaaya woke me. “Forgive me, but Parushi says you’re needed in the council room.”
I blinked away the bright flashes that streaked across my eyes. My room was flooded with sunlight, but I was still on the floor with Ektha’s bangle on my wrist and my mother’s payal bells clutched in my fist. Just seeing the bangle made me want to close my eyes again.
Chaaya helped me sit up and get ready to stand, but she stopped short. “What’s that?”
She pointed to the turmeric root and adaiman feather; I must have fallen asleep with them by my side. Although the turmeric was slightly worse for the wear, thankfully the adaiman feather was still pristine.
“I had a visitor last night.” I held the feather up, and it shone in the light—somewhat less brilliant than the way it glowed at night, but admittedly still beautiful.
Chaaya began to pray. I put the feather in my lap and picked up the turmeric. It seemed unremarkable no matter how many times I turned it in the sunlight. Why had the adaiman left it for me?
After finishing her prayers, Chaaya gestured to the feather. “It’s a treasure. Where do you want to keep it?”
She was trying to urge me to get moving. The sun was so bright that I knew it was well past dawn—perhaps even almost midday—and the rest of the fort was already buzzing with activity. I needed to get up and act as rani.
As if I hadn’t just laid my uncle and sister to rest.
As if I was ready to do this.
Gently, Chaaya took the feather and turmeric from me.
She put them on the table beside my bed and must have noticed my mother’s payal bells were missing because she turned back sharply.
She came back to my side and took my fist in her hand.
I didn’t fight her when she opened my fingers.
Chaaya gave an understanding nod upon seeing the bells, but she said nothing.
Instead, she rummaged through some drawers and came back holding a long piece of thread.
She held her other hand out to me and waited.
At first, I didn’t want to give the bells to Chaaya. I was determined to clutch them every moment of every day, until their imprints were as much a part of my hand as the lines that crisscrossed my palms.
“You needn’t hold them to keep them with you, Rani,” Chaaya said, but I only dug my fingernails into my palms harder.
“Raniji,” she murmured. “Trust me, Ji.”
I stared at her when she used the pet name she’d given me as a child.
When I was far too young to understand the importance of my name and the weight of my title, I’d begged her not to call me “rajkumari” and to use “Abbakka” instead.
Chaaya had refused, her eyes alight with a mixture of amusement and pity as I pleaded for her to use a name of love instead.
Any trace of mirth disappeared as I, a precocious five-year-old, explained that my title was a wall.
Every letter was a brick, and every time someone called me “rajkumari”—or, even worse, “Rajkumari Abbakka”—I could feel the space between us growing.
Eventually, she came up with “Ji.” Using the honorific as a name showed the necessary respect, and I rejoiced in having one less person call me by my title.
But the time for pet names had come and gone, and Chaaya had stopped calling me Ji long ago. So when she called me by the name she used to whisper in my ear whenever I needed comfort, I listened.
I handed her the payal bells and the bangle when she pointed to that too.
She accepted them reverently, whispering a prayer for my mother and sister as I dropped them into her palm.
She used the thread to attach the bells of the payal to the bangle, going round and round until she’d formed a bump.
After tying it off and tugging the bells to test them, she slipped the bangle back on my wrist as she said, “If you always keep this on, then we can stack your other bangles in front of it, and you will never have any cause to remove it.”
I flung my arms around her and nestled my head into the crook of her neck as I’d done when I was a child. “Thank you,” I whispered.
I made my way to the council’s chamber, forcing myself to hold my head high even though I could feel the world crumbling below my feet.
Chaaya hadn’t told me why I was needed there, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when the guards opened the doors, but I certainly hadn’t expected to find Thevan, alone, standing over a large map and muttering to himself.
He jumped to attention when he saw me, banging the large table and making the stones scattered across the map clatter as they jostled. He bowed deeply. “Rani.”
Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and he looked even more tired than I felt.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I . . . I’m reviewing the attack.” He raked his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes, but it instantly fell back toward his face.
I stepped closer and examined the map. It was relatively simple, depicting the fort as a rectangle and its wall as a squiggling line.
Beyond it were two dashed lines—one for high tide and the other for low—and then the ocean’s waters.
Small blue stones were scattered along the beach and in the fort, with clusters of black stones in the ocean and on the beach.
“It’s what my father used to do after every battle,” Thevan said from beside me.
He pointed to the black stones. “He’d study the angles of attack and how our defenses had succeeded and failed.
As Samanth and I got older, he let us join him.
We’d go through the whole thing, altering our defenses and trying to think of how they’d respond.
We’d do it over and over until he was satisfied that if the attack happened again, we’d be ready. ”
As he spoke, he moved the stones across the map, creating waves and walls of blue around the Porcugi approach. His hands flew, flying from one scenario to another. “He might be gone now, but this still needs to get done. The Porcugi won’t rest, so we can’t either. We have to be ready.”
He spoke in a nonstop stream, shifting the stones this way and that. Before I could make sense of one formation, he had already moved to another. I covered one of his hands with mine, and he fell silent. “Thevan, what are you doing?”
“What they would have wanted me to do,” he said quietly. He flipped his hand so he was holding mine, and lifted it off the map.
I frowned. “But how . . . how do you make yourself keep going?”
He laughed hollowly. “I don’t give myself a choice. I have an obligation to the people of Ullal, and I will fulfill it.” He squeezed my hand. “And I know you will too.”
“I don’t know how to start. I want to, but without them, I feel so empty.” My hands were trembling. I wasn’t meant for this. I was the second daughter; that throne was never meant to be mine.
“I know.” The pain in his voice seemed to take his breath away. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt. But we have to continue. We’re not starting over; we’re carrying on. It’s what they would have wanted. It’s what Ullal needs.”
“I don’t know how.” My chin trembled, and I tried to push my tears back down.
“Yes, you do.” Thevan’s eyes were tired and bloodshot, but they were earnest and true.
“You can do this, and you will do it better than you ever could have imagined. I’ve trained beside you since you were just a child.
Everyone who met you—every tutor, every soldier, every statesman—everyone saw the fire within you.
You can do this. You just need to start.
Start and don’t let anything stop you. Just keep going. ”
“But what if they were wrong?” I wasn’t cold, but I was shivering. I tried to tighten my shoulders to prevent them from moving, but that just made it worse.
Thevan hesitated for a moment and then pulled me close. He put his arms around me, his broad shoulders encompassing mine and filling me with warmth. He took deep breaths, rustling my curls with every exhale, and he held me until I stopped shaking.
I didn’t want to let go. I’d never been held like this.
Even Ektha’s hugs, which were filled with love, had never enveloped me like this because of her slight frame.
I wanted to stay here—to take refuge and never leave.
To let the world and all its problems fly past us as our breaths rose and fell together.
To stay safe in his embrace until the pain of all this loss quieted from a scream to a whisper.
But he pulled away.
I grabbed his hands and held them tight. He blushed but didn’t protest.
“You can do this,” he whispered. “It’s what they would have wanted.”
He nodded to himself, and his voice shook less when he spoke again. “They would have insisted that we keep going. We can do that.”
His last words sounded more like a question, and he looked at me with raised brows.
I squeezed his hands. “Yes, we can do that. For Ullal.”
“For Ullal.”
The doors creaked open, and we jumped apart. Chaaya came in carrying a heaping bowl of kadambam on a tray. She put it down on the far side of the table and set out four smaller plates as Parushi and Nikith entered behind her.
I tried to cool my hot cheeks, but there was no denying Parushi’s smirk or Nikith’s frown as their eyes traveled between us.
“Good, you found him,” Parushi said. “I hope you’ve convinced him to eat. He’s been up all night, poring over that map and frantically moving those stones this way and that.”
She must have asked Chaaya to send me here, knowing I needed him to find a way forward, and he needed me to break him out of his maniacal battle analysis.
“I wasn’t frantic!” Thevan protested.
“Yes, totally normal for a person to shove stones around on a map for hours on end.”
Thevan wouldn’t give in so easily. “We need to plan! If the Porcugi attack again, we need to be more prepared.”
“I agree with Thevan,” Nikith said. “Ullal is vulnerable, and it’s only a matter of time before the Porcugi find out. The question is, Can Ullal ever be prepared enough for this fight?”
My stomach growled before Thevan could reply, and everyone turned toward me. “That settles it. It’s time to eat.”
If Thevan could carry on, then so could I. I would just keep putting one foot in front of the other until I got to where I needed to go.
I picked up one of the bowls of kadambam that Chaaya had dished out and took a hearty bite. Cardamom, mustard, coconut, and hing exploded on my palate as I savored the sambar-infused rice, lentils, and vegetables. I continued to eat as Chaaya served the others, but nobody else touched their food.
“Eat, everyone,” I said. They looked at each other. “Yes, that’s a command. We won’t be able to think properly if we’re starving, and there’s a lot of work to do. Chaaya, summon Tara. Tell her I’m calling the first meeting of my council.”
“Your council?” Parushi said in surprise.
“Yes, my council.”
I didn’t elaborate, even though I understood her confusion.
Parushi was just a soldier, and Tara was a healer.
Neither of them would typically be advisers to a rani.
Nikith’s ties to Ullal had been established less than two years ago, and there were those who would question his loyalty now that his wife was gone.
Even Thevan hadn’t earned the same respect as his father and brother, because he was the younger son.
But they were the people I trusted most.
“If you’ll agree.” I desperately wanted them to say yes, but I wouldn’t force them.
Parushi and Thevan nodded quickly, but I was most curious about Nikith’s response. He had every right to return to Bidanur after the death of his wife. But I’d seen his love for Ullal, and I hoped he would want to stay. It would be like having Ektha by my side.
“I can think of no better way to honor the memory my wife.” Nikith bowed his head. “Thank you.”
I tried not to show my relief. “Good. Let’s eat. And then we’ll make a plan for Ullal.”