A Kingdom of Spoken Vows

The balcony stones still carried the masons’ chisel-marks, sharp against Arjun’s bare soles. He had come up barefoot on purpose; the small pain kept his thoughts from scattering. Below, Indraprastha crawled outward like a living thing—mud roads hardening into permanence, scaffolding clotting the sky, laborers calling to one another in a dozen dialects. Twelve years ago this had been scrub and dust; now it pretended at empire. He flexed his right hand. The calluses from the bowstring were almost gone, replaced by the soft burn of parchment. A diplomat’s blister. He hated it.

Morning heat lifted the smell of wet lime and fresh-cut sandstone into his throat. Somewhere beneath that was the river, green and sluggish, carrying away the soil they scraped aside to make room for palaces. Everything smelled provisional, as if the city might decide tomorrow to sink back into the earth and forget them. He understood the impulse.

Footsteps behind him: a guard clearing his throat, then retreating. Courtesy, not deference; they were still learning how to treat a man who had once been exile first, prince second. Arjun stayed at the rail. From this height he could see the skeleton of the great hall where his brother would soon receive envoys who did not yet believe the Pandavas were real. Envoys from Dwarka, especially—men who spoke Balarama’s name the way priests speak of sunrise. He pictured their faces when they understood the exile had returned with an army of carpenters instead of soldiers. Would they laugh, or would they simply leave?

A kite wheeled overhead, wings slanted against the wind. He followed it until his eyes watered, envying the clean arc of its flight. The Gandiva leaned in its unstrung rack inside the chamber behind him, waxed and oiled, the curve of its limbs reflecting nothing. He had not touched it in forty-three days. At night he felt it breathing, a second heartbeat under the bed. Sometimes he dreamed he drew the string and released only dust.

He pressed his palms to the stone. The balcony was wide enough for two chariots, yet it felt narrower than any forest trail he had slept on during the exile. Here the stakes were measured in cubits of marble, not spilled blood, and the ambiguity chafed worse than iron fetters. Bhima wanted war drums; Yudhishthira wanted ledgers. Arjun wanted—he stopped the thought before it formed, ashamed of its smallness. A warrior did not yearn for quiet; he carved quiet out of chaos and called it victory.

Down in the courtyard a girl chased a chicken, both of them shrieking. The sound rose, thin and human, then dissolved into hammer strokes. He wondered what Subhadra would make of this half-born city if she ever saw it. The name surfaced before he could prevent it, sharp as a splinter under skin. He had never met her, yet she lived in his brothers’ cautious sentences: Krishna’s sister, Balarama’s jewel, the key Dwarka kept close. He whispered the syllables once, testing, then crushed them against the roof of his mouth. Promises existed for this reason.

The sun cleared the eastern scaffolding and struck the balcony full force. Sweat slid along his spine, tracing the scar an naga arrow had left on the southern road. He lifted his hair, letting the breeze find his neck. Somewhere below, a foreman cursed in Magadhi; timber cracked; men shouted numbers. Each sound was a brick in the wall their future would stand on or die against. He inhaled until his ribs protested, trying to store enough of the raw, dusty air to drown the taste of uncertainty.

When he turned back toward the chamber the Gandiva caught the light, a dull gleam like a hawk’s eye at dusk. For a moment he imagined stringing it, sending a single arrow into the sky so it would fall miles away, beyond the river, beyond the exile, a message no ambassador could misread. Instead he stepped inside, letting the curtain fall behind him. The city could rise without his blood for now; there would be time enough to feed it later.

The curtain swung shut behind him, cutting the clang of masons’ chisels to a muffled pulse. Draupadi waited inside, arms folded so tight the bangles bit her skin. She had left her entourage at the door; even the maid knew when husband and wife needed the bare room.

“Balarama’s envoy arrives before the gong,” she said without greeting. “He will ask for a tribute calculation. You will offer the river customs. He will refuse. Then we bargain.”

Her tone was the same she used to tally grain in the exile camps: exact, bored. Arjun watched a droplet of sweat slide from her hairline to the collar-bone. He remembered tasting that salt on nights when five bodies pressed under one torn blanket. Now the palace loomed around them and she still spoke like a quartermaster.

“I promised you never again,” he said. The words felt rehearsed; he had murmured them to the balcony stones minutes ago.

“Promises are for children,” she answered. “Kingdoms run on counter-promises.” She stepped closer; the scent of sesame oil clung to her from morning toilette. “If we must eat shame,let us serve it on silver.”

A conch blew far below; the envoy had crossed the outer gate. Arjun felt the vibration in his soles. He reached for her hand—an old reflex—but she kept both palms locked under her elbows.

“Say the figure,” he demanded. “How much of me do we sell today?”

Her eyes softened for one blink. “Only the part that still believes selling is different from giving.” She turned toward the door. “After the council I will inspect the granary ledgers. Walk behind me. Bow once. Then leave.”

She exited without waiting for assent. Arjun stayed in the hush noticing how the chamber smelled of new plaster instead of river mud. Between one heartbeat and the next the room filled with the echo of future arguments: Draupadi negotiating while he calculated the weight of his own silence. He flexed his fingers; the absent bowstring had left them too clean.

He left the council chamber by a side door, ignoring the steward who hovered with tablets of tribute figures. The corridor smelled of wet plaster and lamp oil; torches hissed where masons had dripped rainwater onto the brackets. Two turns brought him to the east wing, where the builders had finished first. Ulupi had chosen rooms overlooking the Yamuna, claiming the scent of the current reminded her of the Narmada where they had met. The guard outside her door stepped aside without comment; word traveled fast in half-built palaces.

Inside, the windows were shuttered against the noon glare. Brass bowls of river water sat on the floor, catching reflected ripples from the cracks between planks. Ulupi knelt before the largest bowl, hair unbound, fingertips stirring the surface in slow circles. She wore only a dark cloth wrapped once around her hips; the scar he had given her during their first duel curved pale across her shoulder blade. She did not look up.

“The fish are frightened,” she said. “They see a net that has not yet been cast.”

Arjun closed the door. “Balarama’s envoy?”

“Larger.” She lifted her hand; droplets slid down her wrist like small transparent beads. “The river tastes of iron three days upstream. Someone is sharpening spears.”

He sat on the low stool, forearms on his knees. In exile she had spoken the same way, calm announcements of omens that always proved accurate. He had learned to listen without asking how she knew. “Can you read whose?”

She shook her head. “Only that the water remembers.” Rising, she crossed to a clay jar, poured water over her fingers, then dried them on the cloth at her waist. The motion lifted her breasts; the nipples tightened in the cooler air. She saw him notice and smiled without triumph. “You carry tension like a drawn bow. Shall I loosen it?”

He almost said yes; the habit of her body was a remembered solace. Instead he stood. “I need to see Chitrangada before the envoy finishes his meal.”

Ulupi tilted her head. “She is breaking sticks in the lower courtyard. Go quickly; splinters fly.” She stepped close, pressed her mouth to the hollow beneath his ear, then stepped back. “Return tonight. The river may speak clearer after dark.”

He left, the print of her lips cooling against his skin.

The lower courtyard was open to the sky, paved with uneven stone the masons had not yet levelled. Chitrangada moved across it in lunges, wooden practice sword meeting bundled reeds with a sound like wet cloth tearing. Sweat darkened the back of her tunic; strands of hair clung to her neck. She had tied her skirts high, the cloth bunched between her thighs, and each stride flashed the scarred muscle of her calves. When she saw him she did not pause but drove the blade through the last bundle, scattering straw across the dust.

“Balarama sends grain demands,” she said, breathing hard. “Bhima wants to answer with arrows. Yudhishthira counts coins. What does the archer-prince want?”

He picked up a second wooden sword, tested the balance. “To finish the palace before we have to defend it.”

She snorted. “Stone won’t feed anyone.” She stepped into guard stance, weight forward. “Show me the wrist form you used against the Gandharas.”

They circled. Her first strike rang up his arm; he parried, countered, felt the familiar ache return to joints that paperwork had softened. She was faster than he remembered, hips pivoting low, blade flicking at his ribs. He caught her wrist, twisted; she reversed, brought her hilt against his throat, stopped a finger short.

“You hesitate,” she said, not moving the weapon. “In the forest you would be bleeding.”

“In the forest I had nothing to lose.”

She lowered the sword, eyes narrowing. “We are still in the forest, only the trees are marble.” She stepped back, unknotted her skirts so the cloth fell to her ankles. “Speak plainly.”

He told her the envoy’s demands: two seasons of river tolls, a pledge of mutual defense, the implicit requirement of Dwarkan backing. While he spoke she unbraided her hair, shaking it loose so sweat-dark strands clung to her collarbones. When he finished she was quiet long enough for a mason’s hammer to echo twice from the upper terraces.

“Marry the girl,” she said finally. “Krishna’s sister. Take her, bed her, send Balarama a wedding gift. Politics accomplished.”

“I vowed—”

“Vows are words. Hunger is louder.” She stepped close, the wooden sword still in her hand, and laid the flat of it against his chest. “I will not break because you share another blanket. But I will break if we starve while you mourn promises.” She lifted the blade, tapped his cheek lightly. “Bring her home. I will teach her the sword forms she’ll need to survive this nest.”

She turned away, already calling for a fresh bundle of reeds. He left her there, the sound of splintering stalks following him down the corridor.

Three women, three rooms, three versions of himself: the listener, the penitent, the strategist. He walked the unfinished halls tasting each identity like different metals on his tongue, none quite fitting the shape of the man who would face the envoy in the hour ahead.

The lamps were lit early; the hall smelled of clarified butter and fresh lime wash that had not yet dried. Servants moved between the pillars with pitchers of soma, their footfalls muffled by reed mats still shedding dust. Arjun took his place on the lowest couch—new cedar, the carving unfinished so that ridges bit into his bare thigh. Across the long table Bhima was already tearing a goose apart, grease shining on his knuckles. Nakula and Sahadeva spoke in low voices about horse prices; their words flicked back and forth like shuttlecocks. Yudhishthira waited until the last platter was set before he lifted his hand for silence.

“We are a province, not a kingdom,” he began, voice calm as counting beads. “Our granaries will last four months. After that we buy with credit. Our credit ends when the winter caravans decide we are worth the risk.” He did not look at Arjun. “Balarama tells every coastal port that Indraprastha is a castle built on sand. He reminds them that we were exiles twelve years and have no allies who will march.”

Bhima swallowed meat and spoke with his mouth full. “Then we march first. Take Dwaraka by surprise, put Krishna on the elder brother’s seat, let Balarama choke on his own gossip.”

“Krishna will not thank us for civil war in his city,” Sahadeva said. He turned a cup between his fingers, watching the wine climb the sides. “He prefers riddles to corpses.”

“Riddles do not feed children,” Nakula answered. “Grain does.”

Arjun felt the stew congeal on his tongue—lentils, tamarind, dried leaves that tasted of dust. He drank, but the soma was thin, watered to stretch the stores. Around the table the faces were the same that had shared roots and berries in the forest, yet the silence between bites was new, heavy with sums none of them had learned to calculate.

Yudhishthira unfolded a parchment. Ink marks crossed it like black ants. “Here are the answers we have received.” He read: Kunti’s old allies in Panchala—regret, harvest insufficient; Chedi—will trade iron for hides, no military pact; Kasi—praises our patience, suggests we lower our banner until the gods decide. After each refusal he lifted his eyes, letting the sentence settle like grit. When he finished the parchment curled on itself, snapping shut with the sound of a dry leaf.

Bhima wiped his fingers on his beard. “Words. What of armies?”

“Armies follow flags that do not fall,” Yudhishthira replied. “Balarama says ours is already falling.”

Arjun felt the goose rise in his throat. He set the morsel down, half-chewed. “Krishna values his sister. If we asked—”

“Krishna values dharma more,” Sahadeva cut in. “He will not gift his kin to a house Balarama calls illegitimate.”

Nakula leaned forward. “Then we offer what Balarama cannot refuse—trade rights on the western river. Ten years toll-free.”

“Tolls we have not yet collected,” Yudhishthira said. “Promises spoken from an empty granary sound like wind.”

The conversation circled, tightening. Each proposal carried the echo of the last defeat. Arjun listened, counting heartbeats, aware that every plan skirted the single fact they avoided naming: without an unbreakable bond, Indraprastha would remain a client, its kings forever petitioners. Marriage was the only chain that rust could not weaken; marriage into the house that commanded the sea roads. The knowledge sat in his stomach like cold lead.

When the servants cleared the dishes, the scrape of bronze on wood was loud. Bhima cracked a bone for marrow and spoke to the empty trencher. “A man may keep his honor or keep his people. The forest taught us that.” He did not look up, but Arjun felt the words strike the same place where Chitrangada’s wooden sword had tapped his cheek.

Yudhishthira folded the parchment again, creasing it so hard the ink smudged. “Tonight we fast,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow we decide which hunger we will feed.” He rose first; the others followed, leaving Arjun alone with the lamp fluttering in the draft from the unshuttered window. The smell of lime and goose fat lingered, coating the air like a film. Somewhere in the city a dog barked, the sound thin against the vast dark that pressed on the unfinished walls. He sat until the wick drowned in its own oil, tasting nothing, hearing everything—the creak of new rafters, the slow grind of stone on stone, the future demanding its price in a currency he had sworn never to spend.

The lamp had burned low, its flame a wavering tongue that licked at the edges of the tapestry. Arjun sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on knees, fingers tracing the woven threads without seeing them. The wool was coarse under his skin, dyed with indigo and madder, the colors already fading though the hanging had been unpacked only days ago. A craftsman in Kampilya had spent a year on it: Arjun in the forest, bow drawn, a tiger leaping from tall grass. The tiger’s eye was a single knot of black silk. He pressed it until the fingertip went white.

He had been twenty-two. Draupadi twenty. They had quarrelled—he no longer remembered the pretext, only the sound of her breathing when she turned away. That night she had spoken of the other wives the Pandavas might one day need, her voice flat, as if reciting a ledger. He had caught her wrist, too hard, and felt the small bones shift. Words had come out of him—raw, unmeasured—ending with the vow: no more weddings, no more women brought into the circle that already felt too crowded. She had not answered, only looked at him until he let go. The bruise he left lasted four days. The promise lasted longer.

He lifted the lamp, brought the flame close enough to scorch the tiger’s ear. Smoke curled, carrying the smell of singed hair. He set the lamp down before the wool caught. His hand smelled of burning.

The chamber was spare: lime-washed walls, a chest still packed, the cot’s ropes creaking under his weight. Through the unshuttered slot of a window came the smell of wet earth from the excavations, and farther off the river, carrying silt and sewage and the faint sweetness of marigolds left to rot after yesterday’s welcoming rites. Somewhere a mason’s chisel rang once, then stopped; the night watch had called the hour. He counted the beats—five—and waited for the sixth that never came.

He had kept the vow easily at first. Exile simplified everything: days measured by walking, nights by the size of the fire. Women in the forests were spirits or grandmothers, not prospects. Later, Ulupi had risen from the river like a story, her thighs slick around his waist, her mouth tasting of algae and copper. He had told her about the promise afterward, voice hollow with guilt. She had laughed—low, surprised—and said river folk did not count vows made on soil. Still, he had repeated the words to himself the next morning, a charm against repetition. Then Chitrangada, then the long circling back to Draupadi’s tent, her eyes asking whether the tally had changed. He had shaken his head, unable to say aloud that it already had.

He unbuttoned his tunic, let it fall. The scar from a Naga arrow ran diagonally across ribs; another, older, from Khandava, cut the muscle of his shoulder. He traced them the way he had traced the tiger, naming each: fire, water, cousin, brother. The body kept its own vows, skin thickening where the blade had entered, memory knotting under the surface. He pressed two fingers to the pulse at the throat—steady, traitorous—and felt the same beat he had felt yesterday beneath Subhadra’s breast when she leaned to lift a fallen plant in the rain. The image arrived without permission: her nipple seen through wet cotton, dark, small, tightening as she straightened. He had looked away, then looked back; she had seen both gestures.

The lamp guttered. He rose, crossed to the window. Outside, torchlight moved along the new wall—guards changing watch. Their footsteps sounded young, certain. He rested his forearms on the stone, the chill biting. If he called down, they would snap to attention, proud to salute the prince who had brought them a kingdom. Instead he counted the seconds between their steps: four, four, four. The rhythm matched the pounding in his temples.

He thought of Draupadi earlier that evening—how she had stood beside him while servants replaced the burned lamp, her silence asking whether he intended to keep the promise now that geography had changed. He had opened his mouth, closed it. She had turned away first.

He returned to the cot, sat, palms on thighs. The tapestry hung opposite, tiger and hunter frozen mid-leap. He spoke aloud, voice barely above breath: “I will not.” The words tasted of iron, as if he had bitten his tongue. He waited for thunder, for the rafters to crack. Nothing came—only the distant chime of a mason’s level dropped on stone, and then the long, ordinary hush of night filling the room like water rising in a well.

He lay back, the rope bed creaking under him. Above, the ceiling beams were still raw, sap gleaming in the joins. He fixed his eyes on a single knot of pine, darker than the rest, and held it until the flame shrank to a blue parenthesis and died. In the dark the vow kept repeating, smaller each time, a pebble turning in the palm of memory. He closed his fist around it, felt the edges bite, and knew the skin would heal over the shape until only he could feel the stone beneath.

Morning brought no warmth. The council chamber smelled of fresh plaster and damp stone, the walls still weeping lime. Arjun took his seat on the lowest bench, the wood unfinished, splinters catching on the linen of his trousers. Across the curved table Nakula unrolled a second parchment, longer than the first. The seals were unbroken—waxy medallions of bulls, conches, mountain peaks—each one a kingdom that had once sent gifts to their wedding, now answering with polite evasion.

Yudhishthira broke the first seal. “From the king of Kekaya: ‘Your enterprise is noble, yet grain reserves are pledged to the western trade. May your banner flourish under prudent counsel.’” He laid the tablet aside, opened the next. “Dasarna: ‘We remember the Pandavas with affection. At present our forces guard our own frontiers. We pray your aspirations find shelter beneath a mightier shade.’”

Bhima’s knuckles whitened around the ivory handle of his eating knife; he had brought it from the hall, bread crumbs still lodged in the grooves. “Mightier shade,” he muttered. “They mean Balarama.”

Arjun listened to the recitation—twelve refusals, each couched in gentler phrases, each repeating the same refrain: no major patron, no pledge. The words felt like stones dropped into a well, hitting water he could not see. He watched Sahadeva note the refusals in a ledger, the reed pen scratching, ink bleeding into the porous palm-leaf. The sound was methodical, almost tender, as if cataloguing a massacre.

When Yudhishthira reached the last tablet he paused. The wax bore the disc of the Anarta country—Dwarka itself. He cracked it open, read without inflection: “Our elder statesman Balarama advises caution in these shifting times. We send affection to the sons of Kunti and await clearer skies.” He set the tablet face-down. No one spoke. Outside, a mason’s hammer rang once, the blow muffled by distance, like a heartbeat under layers of fat.

Nakula exhaled through his nose. “Clearer skies. They might as well write ‘when you bow to Duryodhana.’”

Arjun felt the vow rise in his throat, the pebble grown to a fist. He forced it down, tasted grit. “Krishna—”

“Krishna will not overrule his brother in public,” Sahadeva said. He laid the pen parallel to the parchment, a precise, bloodless gesture. “The poison spreads downward. If Dwarka hesitates, smaller courts dare not commit.”

Bhima shoved the knife point-first into the table. It quivered, handle catching the lamplight. “Then we cut the poison at the root. Balarama’s voice is loud because his ships carry the salt trade. Break that, and his words lose flavor.”

“With what fleet?” Yudhishthira asked, voice thin. “We have fishermen who have never seen the ocean.”

Arjun looked at the knife. A strip of cedar peeled away, curling like a ribbon. He thought of the river at home, how it carried away the ashes of Khandava, how the current never asked permission. “We don’t need ships,” he said. “We need leverage.”

Bhima turned on him, eyes bright. “Yes. Something Balarama values more than his grudge.” He did not speak the name; he did not have to. The image of Subhadra—dark hair, sea-colored eyes—hung in the air like incense too thick to disperse.

Yudhishthira’s fingers drummed the table, a soft, irregular patter. “We will not speak in haste,” he said, but his gaze slid to Arjun and stayed there, heavy, measuring. The silence that followed was not empty; it was filled with the scrape of chairs as the council ended, the rustle of parchment being rolled, the small, deliberate cough of a scribe who understood he had written the word ruin twelve times and meant it.

Bhima’s palm hit the cedar a second time, hard enough to jar the knife loose. The blade clattered to the floor like a verdict.

“Enough courtesies,” he said. “We beg, they smile, they send us scented refusals. Balarama has tied their tongues. He feeds Duryodhana’s horses, he drinks Duryodhana’s wine, and every cup is poisoned with our name.” His voice filled the low vault, bounced back rough, unfinished. “We need a fist inside the glove, not another letter.”

Arjun watched the tendons shift in Bhima’s neck, thick cords under skin burnished by summers in exile. He had seen that same flush the morning Bhima had split Jarasandha’s spine—an anger that looked like joy until the moment it turned lethal.

Yudhishthira lifted a hand, thin wrist catching lamplight. “Brother—”

“No.” Bhima stepped forward, boots grinding plaster dust. “Krishna will charm the snakes, but Balarama is the snake-charmer’s elder. He will not dance unless the flute pays him first. We must hand him something he cannot refuse.”

Nakula’s eyes flicked to Arjun, then away. Sahadeva closed the ledger; the reed snapped in his fingers.

Bhima leaned on the table, weight settling until the wood groaned. “Dwarka’s fleet is crewed by men who owe their wages to Balarama’s purse. His pride is a gate. We cannot pick the lock; we must break the hinge.” He straightened, shoulders blocking the lamp’s glow, throwing a slab of shadow across the tablets. “A lever, Arjun. Something personal, something bright enough to blind him to Duryodhana’s coin.”

The words landed between them like hot iron on anvil. Arjun felt the shape they wanted to take. A woman’s name. A face seen through rain. He kept his gaze on the splintered gouge the knife had left, the pale exposed grain.

Bhima followed the line of his sight, lowered his voice. “You know what he values. We all heard Krishna at the fire: ‘My sister reads treaties the way priests read stars.’ She steers his council when the wine is down. Take that rudder, and the fleet turns with us.”

“Take her?” Arjun’s throat clicked. “You speak of abduction in the same breath as policy.”

“I speak of marriage,” Bhima answered. “The oldest treaty ever written. Bed her, wed her, bring her home. One ceremony, and Balarama’s pride becomes our dowry.” He turned to Yudhishthira. “Grant me leave to speak plainly: if we wait for courtesy, Indraprastha will be a pasture for Kaurava horses before the walls are painted.”

Yudhishthira’s face looked carved, cheekbones sharp in the wavering flame. He opened his mouth, closed it, the gesture of a man testing the edge of a blade with his tongue. Finally he said, soft, “We are not brigands.”

“Nor are we beggars,” Bhima shot back. “We are Kshatriyas. The world expects us to act, not to petition.” He swung toward Arjun. “You hold the bow no one else can bend. Bend it now.”

Arjun felt the vow move inside him, jagged, turning. He pictured Draupadi’s wrist under his fingers the night he had sworn, the small bones fragile as bird-wing. He smelled again the singed wool of the tapestry. “I made a promise,” he said, voice low. “Before witnesses. Before her.”

“Promises crack under the weight of kingdoms,” Bhima replied. “Better a cracked promise than a broken people.” He placed both palms on the table, spread his fingers wide, a gesture that claimed ground. “I do not ask you to betray love. I ask you to enlarge it. One more wife, one more hearth. The house stands wider, not weaker.”

Sahadeva lifted the broken reed, rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “Planetary ingress,” he murmured. “Mars enters the seventh house—union forged by sword, not garland. The chart demands a sacrifice wearing a woman’s face.” He did not look at Arjun; he did not need to.

Nakula cleared his throat. “If Balarama refuses even after… after such a match? We will have stolen his jewel and gained his enmity.”

“Then we hold the jewel,” Bhima said. “And the fleet follows the jewel, because her brother loves her more than he hates us.” He straightened, turned to Yudhishthira. “Order it, or forbid it, but decide before the plaster dries on these walls. Tomorrow another courier rides east with another refusal. Time is the one ally not sworn to us.”

Silence settled, thick as the dust motes drifting in the lamp-glow. Arjun felt them settle on his skin, weightless until they accumulated into a shroud. He looked at his eldest brother, saw the moment the scale tipped: Yudhishthira’s eyes closing, the faint nod more exhaustion than assent.

“Speak no further tonight,” Yudhishthira said. “Arjun, Bhima—remain. The rest, leave us.”

Chairs scraped. Sahadeva paused at Arjun’s shoulder, a breath that might have been apology, then followed Nakula out. The door thudded, latch falling like a stone into a well.

Bhima exhaled, the sound of a man who had run a race and now faced the longer road home. He righted the fallen knife, set it parallel to the rejected tablets. “I do not relish asking this,” he said, quieter. “I ask because no other path feeds our people.”

Arjun stared at the line of seals, bright wax dulled by fingerprints. Somewhere in the corridor a guard coughed, the ordinary sound of a world that would wake tomorrow and need grain, need walls, need protection. He felt the vow lodged under his sternum, a splinter working deeper with every heartbeat.

Yudhishthira spoke first, voice almost a whisper. “What Dwarka values most… sits in this room.” He did not look at Arjun; he looked at the lamp, as if the flame might offer an alternative that refused to form. “Consider it, brother. Consider what you are willing to carry.”

The wick hissed, throwing smoke against the plaster. Arjun watched it curl, dissipate, leave no mark.

He found her in the weaving room, though no shuttle moved. The half-finished cloth on the frame showed a lion that might have been Yudhishthira’s standard, but the threads hung slack, colors muted in the single lamp. Draupadi stood with her back to the door, fingers curled around the upper beam as if she meant to snap it.

“Close it,” she said without turning. The latch clicked behind him, louder than the hammer in the council hall. He smelled saffron on her hair, sharp, almost medicinal.

“I won’t ask what they decided,” she said. “Your face is parchment enough.”

Arjun rested his palms on the opposite side of the frame, wood cold under his sweat. “Nothing is decided.”

“Nothing?” She laughed, a short sound that ended in teeth. “Bhima’s voice carried through two stone walls. He wants you to gift-wrap yourself and deliver it to Balarama’s door.”

“Not gift-wrap. Marry.” The word tasted of iron. “One ceremony. One more name in the family scroll.”

Her head snapped toward him. “One more name. As if I were a bead you thread and rethread.” She let go of the beam, stepped closer. “Tell me, husband—when you swore to me under the Khandava trees that no other woman would share your blanket, was that a family scroll too? Easily lengthened?”

The vow. He felt it lodged under his ribs, a blade he had swallowed years ago and forgotten to count. “I was angry. You were angry. The fire listened.”

“And I believed you.” Her voice dropped, intimate, terrible. “Because I needed to believe that one corner of your life was mine alone.”

He reached for her wrist; she permitted the touch, bones delicate as quills. “This is not desire, Draupadi. It is a levy. We pay or we starve.”

She pulled free. “Do not dress it in policy. Balarama’s pride is not fed by my hunger, only by your absence from his niece’s bed.” She walked to the window, pushed the shutter. Night air rolled in, carrying dust from the unfinished western wing. “You think a marriage bends him? It fastens you. A rope of silk is still a rope.”

Arjun stared at the cloth lion, its eye a single unworked knot. “What would you have me do? Let the granaries empty? Let our nephews learn the taste of grass?”

“I would have you refuse.” She turned, firelight catching the gold at her throat. “Let Yudhishthira send emissaries until their tongues fray. Let Bhima roar until his lungs bleed. Let the world see Pandavas who do not trade their hearts for barley.”

Her pride flared between them, bright, familiar, the same pride that had once refused Karna at the svayamvara, that had burned her hair rather than let it be touched by unclean hands. He loved it and feared it in equal measure, because it was his own, mirrored.

“If I refuse,” he said quietly, “we stand alone. No ships, no salt, no allies when Duryodhana marches.”

“Then we stand alone with our word intact.” She crossed the room, stopped a breath away. “You speak of nephews—what will they inherit if their uncle’s promise is negotiable? A kingdom bought with a broken vow is a house built on cracked stone.”

He lifted his hand to her cheek; this time she did not flinch. Skin warm, slightly damp from the night air. “And if I keep the vow and lose everything, what remains?”

“Honor,” she whispered. “And me.”

The word hung, small, absolute. He felt the full weight of the choice settle: one woman’s certainty against the hollow bellies of a city still unborn. His throat closed.

She saw the struggle, and her expression softened—not surrender, but recognition. “Go,” she said. “Walk the parapet. Count the bricks we have laid. When you return, tell me which you would rather defend—those walls, or the space inside my chest that bears your name.”

She stepped back, leaving his hand empty. The loom stood between them again, lion eye unblinking. He turned, latch lifting under his fingers without sound. In the corridor the guard looked through him, as if he had already become the ghost of a man who might either keep or break a promise, both versions equally damned.

He walked until the torches ended, until plaster gave way to raw stone. The night wind carried the smell of wet earth, of fragile beginnings. He pressed his forehead to the cool block and felt the vow move inside him, cutting deeper with every breath.

The practice yard lay empty, moonlight silvering the packed earth where tomorrow’s guards would drill. Arjun set his bare feet on the cold line carved for archers, stringing the Gandiva in one motion. The bow’s limbs sighed, familiar, forgiving. He nocked a reed arrow, drew to his ear, let the breath leave him slow—then released. The shaft vanished into dark, thudding somewhere beyond the torches. He did not look to see where it fell; the sound was enough, a small punctuation against the night.

Another arrow. Another. The rhythm returned, muscle memory older than the vow that now gnawed at his ribs. Draw, anchor, loose. The tension in his shoulders replaced the tension in his chest, for moments at least. Sweat gathered between his shoulder-blades, tracing the same path the rain had taken the night he swore to Draupadi beside the Khandava coals. He drew again, harder, as if the string could cut the memory from his flesh.

“Your back-arm elbow drops a finger’s width on the fourth shot,” Sahadeva said from the shadows.

Arjun did not start; he had sensed the youngest Pandava’s scent—neem oil and parchment. “I thought you slept with star-charts under your pillow.”

“I do. They keep slipping free.” Sahadeva stepped into the torch-ring, carrying nothing, hands open. “The sky is restless tonight. I came to listen.”

Arjun loosed another arrow. It sang, then struck wood far off. “Listen to what?”

“To you. The bow is a planetary instrument; every release is an orbit completed.” Sahadeva tilted his head, eyes reflecting moon. “Mars crosses the seventh house at dawn. Venus retrogrades in the second. Conjunction of Rahu and Moon on the ascendant.”

“Speak plainly.”

“I am.” Sahadeva’s voice stayed soft, almost apologetic. “The chart says: union purchased by bloodless sword. A marriage that is also an exile. The sacrificer becomes the sacrifice.”

Arjun’s fingers tightened on the grip. “Whose blood?”

“None. That is the novelty.” Sahadeva moved closer, bare feet silent. “But the man who rides out will not be the same who returns. Something must be left on the road—something you have guarded longer than these walls.”

Arjun set another arrow, then lowered the bow. “The vow.”

Sahadeva did not confirm, did not deny. “Planets demand collateral. They care little for human names—wife, promise, pride. They only ask: what will you surrender so the world may turn?”

The wind lifted, carrying dust from the unfinished western wing. Arjun tasted limestone on his tongue. “And if I refuse the transaction?”

“Then the chart folds inward. Same planets, different shadow. Famine instead of wedding feast. A kingdom postponed until the next life.” Sahadeva’s eyes were gentle, relentless. “Either way, the arrow is already loosed; we merely watch its arc.”

Arjun raised the Gandiva again, but the draw felt heavier, as if the string had been braided with invisible thread from Draupadi’s loom. He pictured the lion’s unworked eye, the knot that waited for fingers to finish what had been begun. His forearm trembled.

Sahadeva reached out, touched the bow-limb, stilling it. “I brought no chart to show you. Charts confuse; they give too many corridors. I brought only the moment when Mars kisses the horizon. Feel it.”

Arjun closed his eyes. Beneath the sweat and dust he detected something else: the metallic scent of anticipation, the same tang that had preceded every battlefield of his life. It lived now in his own pulse.

“When?” he asked.

“Before the next full moon. After that, the door closes for twelve years.” Sahadeva withdrew his hand. “I will leave you to practice. Count your shots; the number will matter.”

He turned, robe whispering, and was gone between the pillars. Arjun listened until even the footfall memory vanished. Then he raised the bow, drew, held at full anchor until his shoulder burned. The string quivered against his cheek like a vein.

He did not loose. Instead he eased the tension, unstrung the Gandiva, and set it on the rack. The arrows he left scattered, a crooked constellation across the earth. Seven. The number felt final, though he could not say why.

The chill Sahadeva had carried in stayed behind, settled in the marrow of his thighs as he walked back through the corridors. Each torch he passed threw two shadows: one that kept the vow, one that broke it. Both waited at the stair’s head, patient as planets, ready to follow him whichever life he chose.

The summons came at the hour when lamps were snuffed and palace corridors exhaled their last warmth. A single guard waited outside Arjun’s chamber, torch lowered. “The eldest requires your presence. Bhima is already with him.”

Arjun followed, barefoot on stone still holding the day’s heat. Each step echoed like a drumbeat in a funeral he had not agreed to attend. The guard stopped before the small council room used for war councils, pushed the door, and withdrew.

Inside, one oil-lamp painted the walls ochre. Yudhishthira sat on the lowest step of the raised platform, elbows on knees, head bent as if studying the grain of the wood. Bhima paced the width of the room, each turn ending in a soft growl. The air smelled of sandalwood burned too long and the sourness of unwashed bodies kept awake by worry.

“Close the door,” Yudhishthira said without looking up. His voice carried the rasp of a man who had been speaking since dawn. Arjun obeyed. The latch clicked like a bone set back into place.

Bhima stopped pacing. “Tell him,” he barked.

Yudhishthira lifted his face. In the weak flame the hollows beneath his eyes looked carved; the braid that usually sat thick across his shoulder had thinned, wiry strands escaping. “I have read the ledgers,” he began, each word measured as if weighed on a scale. “We have grain for forty-two days. Salt for twenty. Iron ore enough to re-tip half our arrows. After that—” He opened his palms, showing empty skin. “Emissaries from Anarta, Kashi, even distant Chedi, send courteous refusals. They cite one reason: Balarama’s public doubt. The poison has reached every well.”

Arjun leaned against the wall, arms folded so the tremor in his wrists would not show. “Krishna—”

“Krishna,” Yudhishthira cut in, “will not act against his elder brother unless given a cause that even Balarama must accept. A treaty signed in wax will not suffice. We need blood-tie.”

Bhima slammed his fist into the opposite palm. “I told you. Gifts, poems, promises—worthless. The Yadavas value family above land. Give them family.”

Arjun felt the arrows still scattered on the practice ground, seven shafts pointing nowhere. “There are other cousins, other nieces. Nakula could wed—”

“Nakula is fourth-born,” Bhima snapped. “Their pride demands first-rank blood. They want you.”

Silence pooled, thick as melted bronze. Yudhishthira rose, joints creaking. He moved to the window slit where dawn’s first pallor bled into the sky. “Consider what Dwarka guards most dearly,” he said, back turned. “Not horses, not ports. A single daughter left to marry. A princess whose brother commands armies, whose brother’s brother commands fate.”

The name hovered unspoken, a third presence breathing with them. Arjun felt it press against his teeth, his chest, the place where Draupadi’s vow still cut.

Yudhishthira continued, voice lowered. “I do not ask you to break your word lightly. I ask you to weigh it against the empty bellies of children who do not yet know what a promise is.” He turned. Tears had dried on his cheeks, leaving shiny tracks. “If you refuse, I will still love you. If you refuse, we will find another way—perhaps. But the moment is now. The planets move, grain dwindles, and Balarama prepares to welcome Shishupala’s envoys. After that, the door closes.”

Bhima stepped closer, shadow swallowing Arjun. “I would give my right arm if it fed our people. You are asked only to give a night’s bedding.”

Arjun’s head jerked up. “Is that what you call it? A night?”

Bhima’s eyes softened, but his jaw stayed hard. “I call it survival.”

Yudhishthira lifted a scroll from the table, wax seal unbroken. “This came at sunset. Krishna’s cipher. He writes that his sister visits the temple of the sea each dawn, alone. No guard accompanies her past the final torches.” He held the parchment out. “Read it, or burn it. The choice is yours. But know that whatever you decide, the cost will be carved into all our skins.”

Arjun stared at the scroll. The lamp sputtered, throwing sparks across the red wax stamped with Krishna’s discus. He saw in it the unworked eye of Draupadi’s lion, the knot waiting for fingers to finish what had been begun. His throat filled with dust.

He turned without touching the scroll, pushed the door, and walked into the corridor. Behind him neither brother called him back; they understood the summons had done its work. The seed, once planted, would sprout in the dark, fed by every footstep that carried him away.

He counted them anyway—thirty-seven paces to the turn, forty-three to the stair—numbers falling like beads from a broken strand, each one a small surrender he could not take back.

The war-room smelled of ink and lamp-oil; maps curled at the edges where the night’s damp crept in. Nakula leaned over the western chart, tracing supply routes with a reed pen that left thin blood-red lines. “If Dwarka withholds grain we still have the coastal road,” he murmured, half to himself. “But caravans need safe rest. Shurasena’s ports are loyal to Balarama, so the only unguarded haven is—” He paused, tapping the parchment. “Subhadra’s personal estates near Prabhasa. They say she manages them herself. Clever woman, they say. Beautiful, too—Krishna’s little sister.”

The reed snapped between his fingers. The tiny crack sounded like a bone.

Silence spread, thick as wet ash. Arjun felt it settle on his skin, cold and itching. He saw the moment each brother understood: Yudhishthira’s eyelids lowering in resignation, Bhima’s chest expanding with sudden oxygen, Sahadeva’s quiet exhalation that fogged the lamp-glass. Five heartbeats. Six.

Arjun’s chair scraped. “We are not discussing women as bargaining chips.”

Nakula straightened, startled. “I only meant—”

“Enough.” The word tasted of iron filings. Arjun heard his own pulse, a war-drum in miniature. A glance at the door. A broken vow. “We will find another way.”

Bhima’s chair creaked as he shifted weight forward. “There is no other way that arrives before famine.” His voice stayed low, almost gentle, which made it worse. “You know that.”

Arjun felt heat climb his throat, a slow inevitable tide. “I made a promise.”

“Promises are words,” Bhima answered. “Hunger is a blade.”

He could not look at Yudhishthira; he could feel the silent plea like a hand on the back of his neck. Instead he stared at the map where Nakula’s red ink still glistened. A tiny dot labeled Prabhasa. A woman’s life reduced to a grain store.

He left without speaking again, the door thudding shut behind him like a coffin lid.

Later, in the courtyard outside Chitrangada’s quarters, moonlight lay across the flagstones in rigid bars. She was practicing thrust-and-parry, bare feet whispering over stone, blade catching moon in silver splinters. Sweat darkened the neck of her tunic. She saw him, lowered the sword, breathing through parted lips.

“Say it,” she said.

He told her in four sentences. When he finished she wiped her forearm across her brow, leaving a streak of wet. “Vows are private,” she said. “Kingdoms are public. One yields or both break.”

“I cannot lose her trust.”

“You won’t lose mine.” She stepped closer, steel still in her hand. “I would rather share you alive than mourn you starved.”

The simplicity of it winded him. He reached for her free hand, squeezed hard enough to feel the calluses of years spent gripping hilts. She squeezed back, warrior’s comfort, then returned to her forms, sword singing through night air, each cut decisive.

He watched until the ache in his chest migrated to his ribs, then walked on.

In his chamber the lamp had burned to a blue waver. He lay on the bed without undressing, palms open at his sides, feeling the house breathe around him: distant clatter of washing vessels, the soft animal shift of sleeping servants. Somewhere Draupadi walked her own corridors, lion tapestry under her arm perhaps, needle waiting.

He closed his eyes. Sleep came fragmented. In the final fragment he saw a woman standing ankle-deep in surf, hair unbound, eyes the colour of deep water holding a question he could not yet answer. She extended her hand. He took it; salt rushed between their fingers like hourglass sand.

He woke before dawn, name on his tongue, pulse racing as if he had already run miles. The room was empty, the bed cold beside him. Yet the impression of another body lingered, an invisible warmth that made the sheets feel suddenly too small for one person.

He sat up, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until constellations burst behind the lids. When he lowered them the darkness remained, threaded now with a single syllable he had never spoken aloud.

Subhadra.

Arjun’s voice cracked across the room like a whip. “Subhadra is not a grain sack to be requisitioned.” He shoved the chair aside; it toppled, clattering against the stone. “I swore to Draupadi—before witnesses, before fire—no other wife. Break that and I break her, break us, break whatever honor we still claim.”

His brothers watched, motionless. The lamp between them hissed, throwing long shadows that wavered like spears.

Bhima exhaled through his nose. “Honor does not feed children.”

“Then we find another way.” Arjun’s hands had curled into fists; nails bit crescents into his palms. “Send me to Kashi with a chest of gold, send Nakula to negotiate bride-price for Hidimba’s niece, send Sahadeva to count the stars until they spell a path—anything but this.”

Nakula lifted the broken reed, rolling the splintered ends between finger and thumb. “Kashi’s council laughed at our envoy last moon. Their letter arrived soaked in perfume—mockery scented with jasmine.” His voice was soft, apologetic. “We are bleeding, brother.”

Arjun spun toward the map. Red ink stared back: supply lines cut, ports closed, grain stores shrinking like ice under summer sun. For an instant he let himself picture the woman Nakula had spoken of—dark hair, sea-colored eyes, mind sharp enough to manage estates. The image flared, bright and traitorous. He crushed it. “Picture Draupadi’s face when she hears this plan,” he said, each word ground out. “Picture her stitching the lion while we barter for a replacement.”

Yudhishthira’s shoulders sagged. “She would endure it, as she has endured exile, mockery, public humiliation. She would do so because the alternative is starvation and siege.”

“Endure is not the same as forgive.” Arjun’s throat burned. “We promised her a kingdom, not a harem.”

Bhima stepped closer, bulk eclipsing the lamplight. “We promised our people safety. One vow must bow or both snap.” His eyes—usually hot—were steady, almost tender. “You think I like asking this? I would fight Balarama single-handed if I believed it would feed a single child. It won’t. A marriage will.”

Arjun felt the room tilt. He pressed his palms to the table, wood grain biting skin. Beneath the anger a darker current stirred: curiosity, quick and illicit. What kind of woman could silence a council with her intellect? What laughter lived in that throat? He hated the questions, hated his brothers for handing them to him, hated himself for the answering throb beneath his ribs. “You ask me to become the kind of man who steals women under cover of diplomacy.”

“We ask you to become the kind of king who swallows pride so his people may swallow bread,” Yudhishthira answered. “The insult to Draupadi is real. So is the insult of letting our subjects die while pride stays intact.”

Arjun stared at the scroll Krishna had sent, still unopened. Wax glinted like a fresh wound. He imagined breaking the seal, imagined the ink inside sketching temple paths, dawn light, a lone woman walking toward an uncertain future he could decide with a single decision. His stomach lurched. “I won’t do it.” The sentence tore loose, raw. “Find another path, or walk this one without me.”

He strode to the door, flung it wide. Night air rushed in, cool against his burning face. Behind him no one spoke; the silence felt like a tomb closing. He did not wait for permission, did not look back. Footsteps echoed down the corridor—his own, rapid, fleeing—yet each strike of heel on stone carried a second set, phantom steps already moving toward a coast he had never seen, toward eyes the color of deep water, toward a name he would now carry like a splinter beneath skin.

Bhima’s voice followed him into the corridor, low and inexorable. “Stop running.”

Arjun kept walking. The torch-flames shivered in their brackets as he passed; his shadow lurched across the walls like a second man trying to break free.

Bhima caught him at the stairhead. One massive hand closed around Arjun’s upper arm, not cruel, simply immovable. “Listen.”

“I’ve heard enough.”

“No. You heard your own guilt. Now hear the math.” Bhima turned him, pressed his shoulders to the stone. “A treaty can be revoked when a better offer arrives. A grain loan dries up the moment Balarama whispers. But a marriage—” He snapped his fingers. “Blood is memory. Memory outlives famine, outlives war, outlives every promise scratched on palm-leaf. One child born of Pandu and Yadu lines and every future council remembers whose grandson sits between them.”

Arjun’s spine scraped the wall. “You want me to breed a hostage.”

“I want you to father a bridge.” Bhima’s eyes were blood-flecked, earnest. “We are five brothers with no heirs old enough to lift a spear. If we die tomorrow Duryodhana dances on our roofs. One wedding night buys us time, buys us allies, buys us the right to finish these walls before someone else tears them down.”

He spoke as if the words were weights he had already lifted, as if the argument were a shield he could strap to Arjun’s unwilling arm. “You think Draupadi will thank you when the granaries stand empty? When mothers trade daughters for a fist of millet? She would tear that vow from her own skin if it fed a single child.”

Arjun shut his eyes. In the dark he saw her again—Draupadi bent over the lion tapestry, needle flashing, the small ridge of concentration between her brows. He felt the tremor in her wrist the night she had asked for the promise. Not for herself, but for the idea that something in their lives could still be simple.

Bhima saw the flicker and pressed. “You carry the Gandiva but refuse to draw it where it matters. This is the battlefield, little brother. The weapon is your body, the arrow is her womb. Fire the shot or admit you would rather be righteous than alive.”

The brutality of the image struck like a slap. Arjun’s breath caught; he tasted iron. “Speak of her like that again and I will forget we share a mother.”

“Speak of her like what?” Bhima stepped closer, voice softening to a growl. “Like a woman who understands duty? Like a queen who has already given up her name, her privacy, her very body to five husbands for the sake of a crown? She will survive this too. The question is whether the rest of us survive with her.”

He released Arjun’s shoulders, but the weight remained. “I am not asking you to fall in love. I am asking you to climb the pyre of your own pride and let the kingdom warm its hands at the flame. Do that, and every child who eats next winter will eat because you said yes.”

Bhima turned away then, descending the stairs two at a time, leaving Arjun alone with the echo of numbers that refused to add up to any answer but one. Somewhere below, a door shut; the sound reverberated through the stone like the first clod of earth falling on a coffin.

Arjun stayed pressed to the wall until the torches burned lower, until the draft carried the smell of lamp-oil and distant rain. His pulse slowed to a dull, deliberate drum. He pictured the girl whose face he had never seen, pictured the woman he had sworn never to seek. Two shadows overlapped on the inside of his eyelids, indistinguishable.

When he finally pushed away from the wall his legs felt heavier, as though the dynasty itself had settled on his bones. He walked not back to his chamber but to the narrow balcony that overlooked the half-built city. Beyond the scaffolding the Yamuna glinted under moonlight, a black ribbon carrying the reflection of a thousand torches. Each flame was a mouth opening and closing, repeating a single sentence he could no longer pretend he had not heard.

Sacred duty. Sacred duty. Sacred duty.

He rested his forearms on the cold stone rail, fingers dangling into night air. Somewhere in the distance a jackal cried, sharp and jubilant, celebrating a kill. Arjun listened until the sound died and the silence afterward felt like consent.

He found her in the practice yard behind the women’s wing, moonlight silvering the edge of her blade. Chitrangada moved through the forms with mechanical precision, bare feet scuffing dust, each strike landing a hair short of the wooden post. The sound—wood kissed by steel—measured the seconds he stood watching. When she spun, sword high, she saw him. The blade stopped mid-arc, quivering.

“Come to spar?” she asked, breathing hard.

“I come unarmed.” He lifted empty hands.

She studied him, then drove the point into the earth so it stood upright, vibrating. “Then speak.”

Arjun told her, voice flat, what the council wanted. He left nothing out: the granaries, Balarama’s sneer, Bhima’s arithmetic, the vow he had sworn to Draupadi beside the dying fire twelve years ago. While he spoke she unwrapped the cloth from her knuckles, flexing fingers swollen from impact. When he finished she was quiet long enough for crickets to restart their song.

At last she said, “You want me to rage, to give you the excuse of my hurt.”

“I want honesty.”

“Honesty?” She pulled the sword free, wiped the dirt on her thigh. “A kingdom is a living thing. It eats grain, shits corpses, and grows new walls only when fed. Your vow is a splinter in its gut. Remove it or the body dies.”

The words struck cleaner than any edge. He felt the wound open somewhere behind his ribs. “So I should break her trust because arithmetic demands it.”

“Trust is not glass. It bends, it scars, it mends.” She stepped closer, scent of sweat and iron rising between them. “You think I never amended a promise? I swore to my father I would rule alone, keep Manipur a fortress of women. Then I met you and the border became a bridge instead of a blade. I changed. Draupadi can change. We are not weak because we adapt.”

He looked at her hands—calloused, nicked, capable of snapping a neck or cradling a sparrow. “You feel no anger?”

“I feel the weight of every child who will starve if Balarama withholds salt, if Shishupala closes the western pass. That weight outweighs my pride.” She reached up, brushed a fleck of dust from his cheek. “My love is not a porcelain cup you shatter by using it. It is this—” she tapped the flat of the sword against her collarbone, steel ringing on bone—“iron that holds even when bent.”

He wanted the relief of her fury, wanted doors to slam, tears, accusations. Instead she offered him calm strategy, and it felt like drowning on dry ground. “If I do this I become the man who trades vows for grain.”

“You become the king who feeds his people.” She sheathed the blade, the sound final. “Sleep, decide, ride to Dwarka or don’t. Either way I will be here when you return, and I will still love you. That is the only part that does not change.”

She turned toward the archway, paused. “One more honesty: the girl—Subhadra—will not be a burden on my heart. I have shared you before. I can do it again. What I cannot share is defeat because you feared your own reflection in her eyes.”

Then she was gone, footsteps fading, leaving him alone with the upright post and the sword’s dark imprint in the dirt. He stared at the hollow the blade had made, watching grains collapse inward, filling the absence little by little. A small, slow burial.

Night wind carried the smell of river mud and distant cook-fires. Somewhere a baby cried, thin as a reed. He counted the beats between wails, counted the torches along the rampart, counted everything except the widening space inside his chest where choice used to sit. A glance at the stars. A broken vow. The arithmetic of survival. He pressed his palm to the wooden post, feeling the vibrations of a thousand strikes still living in the grain, and understood the wood would never be the same—only stronger where scar tissue grew.

He slept on the bare floor of his chamber, blanket rejected, the stone cool against his flank. The lamp had burned out; only ember-glow from the brazier remained, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. In the dream he stood on a beach that was not any beach he knew. The sand was black, the surf the color of molten steel. A woman walked out of the water. Her hair clung to her shoulders in ropes of salt and moonlight, and her eyes—those eyes—were the deep sea itself, green turning to black where the horizon vanished. She did not speak. She looked at him the way a bow looks at an arrow: deliberate, measuring, already knowing the flight. He felt the dream-body respond, blood rushing to the surface of the skin as if called. When she lifted her hand the tide followed, licking his ankles, his calves, wrapping warm around his thighs. The water was not cold; it was body-warm, intimate, pushing under the hem of his dhoti with the patience of a lover who had waited lifetimes. He tried to step back but the sand gave way, sucking him deeper. Her palm pressed flat against his sternum. The heartbeat there staggered. A glance. A broken vow. The surf rose to his waist, to the base of his spine, and every place it touched went nerve-bright, lit like oil-soaked flax. He understood suddenly that the water was her mouth, her hands, the slick inner skin of her—he woke before the wave reached his chest, gasping, the name already shaped inside his mouth: Su— He swallowed it whole, a fishhook caught in the throat. Sweat cooled on his ribs; the linen clung to the hollow of his back. The room was dark, ordinary, smelling of wick-smoke and his own heated skin. Yet the tide still pulsed between his legs, insistent, traitorous. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until constellations burst behind the lids. The dream had left an after-image: the exact shade of her irises, darker than Krishna’s, lighter than death. He had never seen Subhadra, not even a painted likeness, but the mind had painted her anyway, mixing ocean, lamp-flame, and the guilty curiosity he carried like a concealed wound. His body, still half caught in the dream, throbbed with a wanting so specific it felt like memory. He turned his face into the crook of his arm, inhaling the salt trace of his own sweat, and the phantom taste of seawater lingered on his tongue. Somewhere in the palace a night bird called once, a thin needle of sound. He thought of Draupadi asleep across the courtyard, the steady rise and fall of her breath that always reminded him of small waves. The vow had been given in that rhythm, spoken against her shoulder while the fire crackled and the exile lay ahead of them like a road washed away. I will not bring another woman into your house. He had meant it; he still meant it. Yet the dream clung, sticky as brine, and beneath the quilt of guilt another sensation stirred: the illicit, vertiginous tilt of possibility. He sat up, spine bare against the wall, and let the night air punish the skin until the sweat dried and the flesh shrank back to ordinary size. Between his legs the ache subsided, but slowly, reluctantly, as if it too listened for the next roll of unseen surf. He counted his breaths the way he counted arrows in a quiver: one too few meant death. At twenty-seven the room steadied. Still, when he closed his eyes the tide hissed, retreating, returning, whispering the name he would not say aloud. He understood then that betrayal did not require an act; it only required the mind to keep the image polished, ready. The sea-eyed woman was already inside the walls, walking the corridors he had sworn to keep clear. He pressed his forehead to his drawn-up knees and waited for dawn, a sentry who had already seen the enemy torch and still pretended the city slept safe.