The princess could find no grief for Henija; not after what she had done. Her nurse, her most trusted companion aside from Nuwan, even more than her husband, had allowed the usurper to kill her first son yet in the womb. Before her father’s murder, the boy Jayatna would have grown to be the usurper’s rightful king. Before her Keranta was sentenced to death in all but name.

Now she feared that even the most pleasant memories of her childhood would become poisoned by the woman’s treachery. The nurse had clothed her, wiped the tears from her eyes after her mother’s flight from the capital, helped her through all the pomp and ritual that came with being a general’s first wife and daughter to a king. Even more, Bariti had permitted that they converse in the language of intimates, not of master and slave, which she and Henija had truly been. Now all that came up before her heart as a mockery of true friendship and fealty.

Nuwan would suspect her hand in the nurse’s death. No one died here in the holy confines of the palace except it be the will of men, for the gods spared the royal blood and those bonded to them. Furthermore, in revealing what little she had of her plan to rid them all of Daruntala and his lackeys, Bariti had bared with it her ambition. Her sister must know something of the ambition that drove her now, after all that had happened, and after word of what was to come. The only question that remained was whether her younger sister would cling to her blood or to the usurper in some vain attempt to protect herself. While Bariti could not even force herself to imagine Nuwan running to Daruntala for safety, the mere possibility weighed on her more heavily than the grief of poisoning old Henija ever could.

But in the meantime, she must play the role of the grieving and the shocked, who knew her nurse to have been in fine health and in favor with the gods. The sight of the old woman’s waxen body laid out without glory on a table earlier this morning juxtaposed in her mind with the regal display given to her father. Where feathers and scarlets had marked the one as being of the kingly line, heir to the Kingdom of Holy Victory, the other would go to the grave bereft of rank and nobility. While a known traitor would have never known a grave at all, but instead have been cast to the scavenging birds on the shore, such a place existed already in Bariti’s heart, and that was enough.

She stood in her room amidst the sea breeze, the servants having already taken away her gold and garments of mourning. It was cool against her skin, and brought to mind the sight of Keranta’s sails running against it in their northern voyage. The slight tang of salt it brought to her tongue far outweighed whatever tears she could shed for one who took her child away from her.

“Jayanta,” she whispered. Once flowers had grown over his shriveled body, perhaps then the pain could begin to take on loveliness as well. The thought caused a weight to settle into her chest, dark and violent. Her object returned to its place in her foremost thoughts: Daruntala must pay with his life.

“With her highness’ permission,” came a voice from the other side of the door: Achi. Bariti wondered what could bring her anchateng back so soon, but called to the girl regardless.

“Enter.” Achi did as she was ordered and averted her eyes at the sight of the princess standing before her. It was not her state of undress that caused the girl to do so, for she had dressed Bariti often enough, but the back-and-forth flitting of her eyes like a bird’s head spoke to shame. Or perhaps it was fear.

“Forgive me, highness,” Achi stuttered as she shuffled in deference to directly in front of the royal presence. “His highness the king requests the holy presence at the covering of dusk. Her servant is here to dress her.” Young and in need of training, Bariti thought. But she could show promise, being so well-versed in the speech of court and brave enough to come to her master with such news as this instead of passing it off on another. The princess noted it, but only time and opportunity would reveal Achi’s true utility in the days to come.

“What does the king require of me?” she asked, turning toward the open doors of her chamber and the still waters beyond.

“His highness the king will assemble all the court for a shadow play.” The strangeness of it shocked Bariti more than it should have. Of all the plans he could have put forward to trap or destroy her, why a shadow play? Perhaps he thought this to be a normal distraction from the grief felt by all after Henija’s death, or at least that such would be suspected of his motives, but Bariti knew him too well for that. There must be something more.

“Which one?” she asked. Achi took a shallow breath before continuing.

“The Tragedy of Kachil and Jempetra, highness.”

Bariti’s heart clenched in her chest. She wanted to scream. It was an old story, a true tragedy. It was also a threat of the darkest kind Daruntala could conjure, worse even than having Bariti smothered in her sleep or otherwise dispatched quietly. She knew precisely what the usurper intended, and she knew that this threat would hang over her as long as he lived. And if it ever passed from her, it would pass next to bright Nuwan and tender Hakil.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Only years of practice could hide her fear from Achi.

“Is there more?” she asked.

“Her servant bears nothing more.” But the princess knew that even if she had, none of it could come to her with such force as this. She dismissed Achi and waited for the door to close before she allowed the tears to come in earnest. Yet again in these past days, the traitor had brought her to weeping, though not for herself. Only for dear Jayatna and her sisters could she be moved to such a display of emotion.

It only lasted a moment, not like the night her child had been taken from her so swiftly. When that moment was over, her thoughts turned from love to revenge, as they so often had. She would see this shadow play and endure Daruntala’s taunting until the time came to kill him. Before the shadows could become her reality.

She did not call for Achi to return and dress her. Instead, she clothed herself in a silken blouse and skirt of brilliant greens and blues trimmed in gold. Such would do in the hours between now and sundown, wherein she must continue to act the princess who could only think to mourn her beloved nurse’s untimely passing and wait in earnest on a night’s entertainment. Yet while she dined and danced and recited her poetry that afternoon, keeping up her delicate appearance of aloofness, she could only envision Daruntala’s blood pouring onto her hands around the blade of her father’s dagger.

Sunset came as it always did: suddenly at first, then with vivid streaks of dying light that caught the unwary off-guard. And as much as the princess wanted to be prepared, she knew that tonight would be quite a test of her mask. Achi led her to the train of courtiers and bureaucrats similarly summoned to Daruntala’s farce. Her gold tinkled with theirs in the relative silence that followed her entrance.

She met each bow with practiced poise, returning their every vapid courtesy with one of her own. But they would not know her heart, nor would they surmise the purpose of this show. Tonight was not their night. Nuwan could be seen on the other side of the room, surprisingly calm and in her green and yellow silks, with Hakil trailing not far behind. When Bariti tried to catch her middle sister’s eye, she only turned away. Perhaps the day would come when Nuwan would understand that Bariti had only done what she must.

They shuffled as one into the theater, with Bariti to the royal box, where a screen lit from behind showed only the blurred outlines of the puppeteer beyond assembling for the performance. Before them sat an array of musicians, with perhaps twenty varieties of gongs and bells, their massive drums nearest the shadow screen. It was truly a royal production. The chittering around her continued until a deep male voice from behind the screen called out to the audience in the old, exaggerated style of the shadow play.

“The tragedy of Kachil and Jempetra, that pair of old times fated by the gods to love. One the son of the first wife; the other, daughter of the second.” Silence followed with a dimming of the torches around them. Drums began first, tapping out a quick rhythm that soon gained bells and the nasal melodies of the chorus.

And so it went. Kachil and Jempetra, children of a long-dead king, grew up and loved and ruled and died before the princess’ eyes, which she refused to avert or close despite the protests of her heart. By the time the final notes had faded, the message was clear: either she would assent to the usurper’s plans, or else she would be made to do so and bear him an heir.

Other details of his plan came to her as well, with Henija’s inspection of the wives and potential mothers of children whose parentage could be doubted by others. By ensuring that none of them did or could bear Keranta a child, he made way for himself to establish his line through one of them. And with two sisters, Bariti would not be given a second chance to defy him. Somehow, her already vivid hatred of him managed to grow still.

In all this, Daruntala did not need to say anything himself, for the play had said it well enough. He had always been a clever child; it was wisdom he lacked. Combined with a faculty for cruelty, he made a deadly enemy, if a clumsy one as well. Violence could accomplish much, but to get one’s way in the world of court required tact that he would never possess. Bariti did possess it, and it would guide her in vengeance against the usurper and any who would uphold his theft.

But she knew that her vengeance had only just begun. Like Garjeta’s cursed sword of old, it would seek out its victims until all who stood in her way either knelt or perished. Let them beg for forgiveness or understanding like the fool in the tale, who plunged his unfinished blade into the back of its smith, and brought upon his line the wrath of the gods and the blade itself. By the time the weapon had quenched its thirst, his final heir had gladly laid himself down upon it and leapt overboard to rid the mortal world of his grandfather’s evil. Would Daruntala think on this in the moments before his own life rushed out of him? Bariti did not know him to have literary pretensions, and so it displeased her that such should escape him before death.

All that was certain in her mind was that Daruntala began this in blood, and so would she end it. When the courtiers and hangers-on had all faded back into starlight and bid their goodnights, Bariti turned her eyes to the half-moon dangling up above and wondered how Keranta beheld it tonight. Did he even still live? And if she never learned for sure, what would she do? Whatever came to pass, she knew that the only person she could trust to see her through the vicissitudes and intrigue of court was herself.

If her husband was dead after all, Bariti Latevisha Surankaje would not be the first Queen of Jewaktana.