His Greatest Conquest

The salt wind hit Arjun’s face as he stepped from the royal barge onto the marble quay, and he tasted Dwarka before he saw it—brine, sandalwood, and something metallic that might have been power. Trumpets blared. Garlands of lotus and saffron were looped around his neck so quickly the petals bruised his collarbones. Every gesture had been rehearsed since childhood: the slight bow that conveyed humility without submission, the smile that promised pleasure without commitment. He had performed it from Anga to Panchala, and still the crowd pressed closer, women holding up their children so they could say they had seen the Pandava who never missed.

Inside the gate the courtyard opened like a shell, white stone veined with lapis, fountains throwing silver arcs into air already warm with morning. Courtiers formed two living walls, their eyes cataloguing the cut of his coat, the torque of gold at his throat, the easy way his hand rested on his sword hilt. Arjun noted who stepped forward first, who held back, who smiled with their teeth while their eyes stayed cold. Information was currency; he had come to spend it wisely.

Krishna waited on the lowest terrace, leaning against a pillar carved into the shape of a rearing horse. He wore no crown, only a single emerald that caught the sun and threw it back like a challenge. His welcome was soft, almost private, as if the thousand people watching were an illusion. “Cousin,” he said, and clasped Arjun’s forearm longer than protocol required. “Hastinapur is far.”

“Farther when the road is watched,” Arjun answered, matching the quiet tone. He felt the pressure of Krishna’s fingers, the callus of bowstring on royal skin, and knew the assessment had begun.

They walked together beneath silk canopies while poets sang couplets comparing the two princes to moon and sun. Arjun’s face ached from smiling. Each time he turned, another platter appeared—betel leaf, crystallised ginger, wine the colour of pomegranate seeds. He took nothing. Hunger was safer when it belonged only to him. Instead he listened: to the ambassador who mentioned trade routes, to the priest who asked after his father’s health, to the woman whose veil slipped just far enough to reveal a mouth shaped like a question. Their voices overlapped, a net of sound drawing him toward the inner palace where the real negotiations would unfold.

When the formal procession finally halted in a mirrored hall, Arjun’s ears rang with silence. He saw himself repeated in every direction—tall, straight, armour polished until it reflected his own blank expression. He looked, he realised, like a man ready to be loved or hated on command. The thought irritated him. He loosened the collar that had seemed elegant in Hastinapur and found it garish here.

Krishna dismissed the retainers with a flick of two fingers. “You’ll want to bathe,” he said. “Tonight there is music. Tomorrow, business.” The words were courteous, the cadence final, yet Arjun felt the hinge between them, the place where courtesy could become something else. He bowed, letting Krishna see the top of his head, the posture of a fighter who chose not to fight.

Alone in the guest chambers he let the garlands slide to the floor. Through latticed windows he glimpsed the city descending in stepped tiers toward the sea, white walls blazing like chalk in sun. Somewhere below, his brothers’ futures were being weighed against grain shipments and marriage contracts. He had one task: keep Krishna’s favour without selling the little freedom they still possessed. The arithmetic was simple; the execution would not be.

He unbuckled his sword and set it on a table of carved rosewood. The steel caught a shaft of light and threw it across the ceiling like a crack in plaster. Arjun stared at the line until it blurred, thinking of nothing, preparing for everything.

The gardens lay beyond a moon-gate of black basalt, the threshold cool under his palm. Inside, the noise of the palace fell away like a cloak slipped from his shoulders. Gravel paths wound between beds of turmeric and holy basil, the air thick with bees and the green scent of crushed leaves. He walked without destination, letting the hush settle inside his ribs.

Ahead, a figure knelt beside a trellis of jasmine. A coarse cotton sari had ridden up to reveal calves the colour of wet sand, the skin stippled with earth. Dark hair was twisted into a knot that spilled a few strands across her nape, damp from the heat. She worked with the steady patience of someone who owned nothing but time, pinching off yellowed blossoms and dropping them into a clay bowl. The motion lifted her breasts against the thin cloth each time she reached; he registered it automatically, the way a bowman notes wind.

Arjun slowed. Servants, he had found, were easier company than nobles; they asked for nothing except the small thrill of being noticed. He shaped his mouth into the half-smile that had coaxed palace girls onto moonlit terraces from Indraprastha to Matsya.

“Your flowers are dying of shame,” he said. “They know they’ll never match the hand that plucks them.”

The woman paused, fingers still curled around a stem. Then she turned.

The face was oval, unpainted, eyebrows thick and straight above eyes the colour of river silt. No downcast gaze, no flutter of lashes. She looked at him as if he were simply another object in the garden—neither target nor prize. Recognition arrived a beat later: Subhadra, younger sister of the man who could decide whether his brothers ate or starved next year. The bowl rested on her thigh, stained with juice and pollen; her thumb kept working at a petal, slow, deliberate.

“They die because their season is over,” she said. “Not everything revolves around admiration.”

The words struck him like a slap delivered in the same tone others used for weather. He became aware of his own stance—weight on one hip, arms loose, the posture that usually drew laughter or shy mimicry. It felt suddenly theatrical.

“I beg your pardon, princess. I mistook you for—”

“A gardener.” She finished the sentence without emphasis. “There is no shame in tending life.”

Heat crawled up his neck. He searched for the easy retort that always arrived, found nothing. The silence between them filled with insect wings.

She wiped her hand on the edge of her sari, leaving a green smear. “In Hastinapur, do jasmine bloom past the first rains?”

The question was practical, almost academic, as if his answer mattered more than his name. He recalled the courtyard outside his mother’s rooms, the way the vines clung to stone until winter stripped them.

“They bloom longer,” he said. “The walls hold heat.”

She nodded once, filing the information away. A droplet of sweat slid from her hairline to the corner of her mouth; she ignored it. He felt the absurd urge to brush it off, to learn whether her skin tasted of salt or sap.

From somewhere above came the soft scrape of sandals on stone. He glanced up. Krishna stood on a balcony half-hidden by a frangipani, one hand resting on the parapet, face unreadable against the sky. Their eyes met for the length of a heartbeat. Then the king turned and vanished between silk hangings, leaving only the imprint of observation.

Arjun stepped back, the gravel sharp under his soles. “I should not disturb your work.”

“You haven’t,” Subhadra answered. She returned to the vine, snapping off another spent flower. The sound was clean, final.

He bowed—too formal, he knew, but the gesture had become a retreat. When he straightened, she was already absorbed again, her back a smooth curve that gave nothing away. He walked the path’s bend until the trellis hid her, yet the image remained: the calm eyes, the earth under her fingernails, the way she had spoken of seasons as if they were facts rather than metaphors. For the first time in years, he had no idea what came next.

He lingered, the path turning back on itself like a snake reconsidering its own skin. The gravel shifted under his sandals, a small sound, yet loud enough that she lifted her head again. Her eyes found his without surprise, as if she had expected the echo of his footsteps.

“The gardens are well kept,” he said, the sentence arriving too late, too flat. He tried to soften it with the smile that usually arrived ahead of him, the one that promised nothing and suggested everything. “Your touch, perhaps.”

Subhadra looked at the vine in her hand, the brown edge of a petal, then at him. “I only remove what is finished. The plant does the rest.”

Again, the refusal to step into the frame he offered. He felt the old lines drain of meaning, like dye bleeding out of cloth. A breeze moved between them, carrying the scent of bruised jasmine, almost sour.

He cleared his throat. “In Hastinapur we grow a white variety that opens at dusk. The petals are thicker—” He stopped, hearing himself describe a flower as though it were territory to be claimed.

“Do they lose their perfume quickly?” she asked. The question was quiet, practical, the way a child might ask whether rain hurts the sky.

He had to think. “By morning they smell only of dust.”

She nodded, filing the fact away. “Then they are honest. They give everything at once.”

The words settled on his skin like warm oil. He had never thought of flowers as honest or dishonest; they were simply there, like torches or wine cups, background to the real negotiations of flesh and alliance. Now he saw the spent blossoms in her bowl, their edges curled inward, and felt something close to shame.

She wiped her palms down the front of her sari, leaving faint green stripes across the cotton. “Do you garden in Hastinapur?”

“I travel too often.” The answer sounded like an admission. He tried to recover. “But I know the names of things—ashoka, champak, the red hibiscus my mother wears in her hair.”

“Knowing names is not the same as knowing how they grow.” She stood, the bowl cradled against her hip. The motion brought her almost level with him; the top of her head reached his shoulder, no more. “Soil, water, the hour to prune—those are quieter knowledge.”

He became aware of his own hands, empty, hanging at his sides like borrowed tools. Usually by now a woman would be laughing, touching her earring, asking if he remembered her from a spring festival. Subhadra simply waited, the silence between them open, patient.

He heard himself speak again, the voice smaller. “Would you teach me?”

Her brows lifted slightly, the first break in composure. “A prince asks a gardener to teach him weeds and watering?”

“I asked the princess,” he said, and meant it. The title felt strange in his mouth, heavier than gold.

She studied him, the streak of earth on her cheek a darker line against skin. Then she turned back to the trellis, fingers finding a yellowed leaf. “Perhaps. If you come without your garlands next time. They crush the stems.”

The dismissal was gentle, absolute. He bowed again, lower, the silk of his coat brushing the path. When he straightened, she was kneeling once more, the curve of her spine a quiet wall between them. He walked away, the gravel louder now, as if the ground itself were announcing his retreat. Behind him he heard the small snap of another blossom falling, the sound clean, final, already fading into the hush of leaves.

He felt the weight of Krishna’s gaze like a palm pressed between his shoulder blades. The balcony was high enough that the king’s features blurred, but the angle of his shoulders—forward, intent—was unmistakable. Arjun had stood on enough ramparts to know when a man was calculating range.

Subhadra was still kneeling, her thumb rubbing a smear of sap from the bowl’s rim. She had not looked up; perhaps she had not heard the faint scrape of leather against stone. He wanted to warn her, to say your brother is watching, but the words felt childish, as though they had been caught stealing fruit.

Instead he stepped back, gravel skittering. “I thank you for the lesson, princess.”

She lifted her face then, eyes tracking the sudden formality. A pulse beat visibly at the base of her throat, quick, curious. “You will remember what I said?”

“I will remember,” he answered, though he was no longer sure whether she meant jasmine or the slower knowledge of how things grow. He bowed, the angle exact, the way his tutors had drilled into him at thirteen: spine straight, gaze lowered, hands steady. The silk of his coat sleeve brushed the earth; he smelled crushed basil and his own sweat.

When he straightened, Krishna was gone. Only the frangipani swayed, petals loosening, drifting down like pale coins. The absence felt heavier than the presence.

Subhadra watched him, bowl balanced against her hip. “You leave quickly.”

“Courtiers gossip,” he said. The excuse sounded thin even to him. “Your brother’s patience is finite.”

“My brother’s patience is his own concern.” She rose, knees imprinted with the pattern of gravel. “But go, if you must.”

He hesitated, tasting the moment the way a man tongues a cracked tooth. The path curved behind a hedge of oleander; five steps and she would be invisible again, returned to the quiet commerce of shoots and soil. He discovered he did not want to be dismissed so easily.

“Tomorrow,” he said, the word arriving unplanned. “At dawn. I’ll come without garlands.”

A flicker—amusement, maybe—crossed her mouth. “Weeds have thorns. Bring patience instead.”

He bowed a second time, less steady, and retreated. The oleander leaves scraped his forearm, releasing a bitter milk that stung. Behind him he heard the soft clink of her bowl settling on stone, the small exhalation of someone returning to work.

The garden paths looped like a game designed by a bored god; he took two wrong turns before the basalt moon-gate appeared. Beyond it, palace noise rushed back—bronze gongs announcing the evening offering, a woman’s laugh fracturing against carved marble. He felt the walls tilt, reasserting their scale. Somewhere in that crush waited his brothers’ expectations, Krishna’s unspoken ledger, the future balanced on dowry chests and grain tariffs.

Yet the image that rode him was smaller: earth under her thumbnail, the way she had snapped a stem without looking, certain of the place where life ended and decay began. He realized he was still holding his sword-belt; he had carried it through the entire conversation like a farmer clutching a plough in a ballroom.

A servant bowed, offering a cup of tamarind water cooled in silver. Arjun drank, the sourness flooding his mouth, and understood that the city had already begun its measurement of him. Every corridor would carry echoes of this afternoon: the prince who knelt beside jasmine, who asked questions instead of giving compliments, who left with pollen on his cuffs. Krishna would have reports—how long he stayed, how low he bowed, whether the princess smiled.

He handed back the cup. The servant’s eyes flicked to the green streak on his sleeve, then away. Arjun felt the first thread of a new skin forming, tight, unfamiliar, shaped less by conquest than by curiosity. Tomorrow he would return, not to conquer but to be taught, and the knowledge unsettled him more than any battlefield ever had.