The Library of Fates(9)

At that very moment, my father’s gaze caught mine from across the table. He looked from me to Sikander, and I could tell from the frozen expression on his face that he had completely lost control of the situation.

“We were such . . . idealists back then, weren’t we?” Sikander went on, lifting his knife and turning it in his fingers before he drove it into the spiced quail sitting on his plate. “But much has changed since then. We’ve changed. We live in modern times . . . I wish I had your idealism, Chandradev, but I live in the real world. Not in a land of magical talking trees.”

We were all silent, stunned. I glanced at Arjun, who furrowed his brow at me. Sikander looked around the room at his advisors, then at my father’s.

He choked out his words in anger, emphasizing each one. “Fairy tales mean nothing to me. Stories have never saved anyone. Time moves forward, and you have to decide: Do you want it to move on without you? Think of the future of your kingdom. Think of Amrita’s future,” he said, and he pointed his hand at me, a gesture that made me shrink in my chair. “Right now, you have a choice. What happened to this Land of Trees of yours—that’s just the nature of the world. One can’t resist the world forever. And if you resist now, you won’t have the choice later.”





Four



SEVERAL SETS OF EYES turned to look at me as I burst through the door of the Map Chamber, holding back my tears. I hadn’t expected to see all of Papa’s advisors there with him: Shree, Bandaka, Ali. I glanced around the room. His entire council of advisors was meeting past midnight, the large wooden table before them covered with maps and scrolls of parchment filled with frenetic text. Papa’s security detail was there too, all of them still dressed in their khalats. They must have reconvened right after dinner.

An emergency meeting, I realized. I quickly wiped away my tears, embarassed. It was instinct by now. I remembered the words Mala had recited to me since I was little: Royalty does not make a scene. Royalty behaves with dignity, poise, decorum, grace, compassion. Royalty remembers responsibility, maintains their composure, knows they are constantly being watched. Royalty must be brave, strategic, loyal.

In bursting in on my father, or in betraying him by asking Sikander about my mother, I had displayed none of these characteristics. Yet I was simultaneously furious and confused. My father was the only one who could clarify everything for me, and he knew it.

Dinner had ended on a tense note, with Sikander curtly excusing himself to retire to the guest quarters and my father disappearing soon after. I sensed I would find him in here, where he was most at ease and entirely in control, but I wasn’t expecting him to be in the midst of an emergency congress.

“You’re all dismissed.” He turned to his advisors. “Turn in for the night. We’ll convene early tomorrow morning and start where we left off.”

Shree’s voice carried a hint of worry. “But, Your Majesty, we still haven’t come up with a solution—”

“And we will. Tomorrow.”

I watched guiltily as Papa’s advisors and security trailed out the door. And then there were just two of us, standing on either side of the Map Chamber. My father at the head of the heavy wooden table carved from a banyan tree that Arjun and I used to play under when we were children, and me by the door, waiting for him to explain.

We looked at each other across the dimly lit room, maps of Shalingar, of Lake Chanakya, of Persia, Macedon, the entire east, surrounding us. I had studied those maps so carefully, memorizing capitals, learning about topography, the economy, trade. I had painstakingly studied the customs and beliefs of all the lands south of the Jhelum River and many of the lands north of it too. I knew the history of every kingdom that surrounded us, including our own, but I didn’t know my own past. I didn’t know who I was. And I couldn’t help but conclude that it was my father’s fault.

But my father was quiet. He simply pressed his palms into the table before him and watched me silently, and I could tell he was trying to decide what to say.

“Sit down,” he said softly, and I came around the table as he pulled a chair out for me.

He poured a tumbler of water from an earthen carafe and placed it before me, squeezing my shoulder with his other hand. Then he sat down and looked out the window, taking a deep breath. My eyes followed his to the highest mountain in the distance. Mount Moutza. I remember Mala telling me its name. The Mountain of Miracles. It was on the way to the Janaka Caves, where the Sybillines supposedly lived.

Mala had told me a fable about the mountain when I was a child. It was the site where the Diviners, the first humans, met with and built an alliance with the vetalas, the cunning and beautiful ghouls that haunted people’s souls. No one had seen a vetala in hundreds of years, but it was believed that they once wandered the Earth as though it was theirs.

The Diviners, the vetalas, talking trees. Sikander was right—they were just stories, and stories couldn’t save people. Maybe those stories did more harm than good by giving us false hope. All they did was reinforce our faith that the world was once made up almost entirely of magic or miracles. But where was that magic now, when we needed it?

“That’s why you told me that story again and again and again,” I said to my father, seeing for the first time that he must have thought of her each time.

“It was . . . her favorite parable.”