3.3 Fake rebelliousness

[date:-326|magadha,x]

(After thirty-nine days of her staring longingly at the Southern Horizon, well past midnight, came the sound of hooves from the South – and as the horse came into view, its rider, in distinctly Indian garb. Her motions became scattered as the visitor approached, her breaths became ragged and her mind raced with too many matters to address.)

Ghṛtācī had never met him, nor had she viewed his face – indeed, she did she even know his name, and yet thoughts of him had haunted her mind for eight whole years.

Beware your friends, princess.

Beware your friends and family.

(She scrambled towards the palace door in a manner that most certainly did not befit a princess, removing the latches herself, expecting that he would be expecting her to do so. Why, she had nearly called for dazzling decorations to the palace and town in wait of him, only to realize that it was forbidden by his demand for secrecy, and so performed the beautifications only on herself.)

Even for the outrage that she had expressed upon receiving that message – indignantly admonishing the messenger from the Anonymous Postal Service of the Northern Highway, for surely the honour of a man who would send a message could not suffice for them – dismissed such talk as an attempt to turn her against her own family and towards treason …

(“Greetings, Ārya,” she said to him.)

(The unmistakable accent of a Takṣaśilā boy, a sharpness in the Indian language that was matched only by their steel … )

(“Greetings, Princess.”)

Even so.

Every incident that had unfurled since, she had only viewed through his eyes – spoken in such cynical words as he would in her place – thinking, at each step: “What would HE say? What would HE do?” – even as she told herself that the things he said were terrible, and she should not emulate him, there was his perpetual voice in her head, telling her at each piece of news she heard: I warned you thus—

When the Bāhlīkas had seized back for themselves, the country she had known as her home since she was born, forcing her family to seek refuge with her sister – I WARNED YOU THUS.

(—she could barely glean his image in the chamber’s dim lighting, and she was glad he could not glean her expressions. She did not wish it be let known to him, how weak she was, how much lesser confidence she possessed in herself than he apparently had in her—)

When her sister had treated her family with complete hospitability, denying her any cause to demand a kingdom for herself, guaranteeing, in fact, that even if she was somehow to reconquer her lost country back from the Bāhlīkas, she would rule, at best, as a vassal of her sister – I WARNED YOU THUS.

When her entire family, excluding herself and her sister, had been massacred by the Greeks, who had seized both Bāhlīka, her old home, and Kamboja, her sister’s realm – I WARNED YOU THUS.

(“I do not know who you are, Ārya, nor what you want. And whatever it may be that you want, you have found me in my darkest time, and I do not know what you think I have to offer you.” And then, thinking that he may appreciate an acceptance of personal responsibility, she added: “I do not know what you may be expecting of me, but in truth, I have done nothing despite your warnings, your advice … ”)

Even though there had been no further communication from him, she lived as though under his constant judgement, and yet – his message had been a call to action, and she had not acted, in eight whole years – making, at each opportunity, self-righteous excuses for her laziness and incompetence, not quite resigned in her mind to a fate of insignificance, but in an indefinite state of procrastination.

(He seemed neither troubled, not unconcerned, by her words. It was not that he did not find them relevant, or that he did not expect anything from her – but rather that whatever her faults had been, however deteriorated the situation may appear, he could just handle it, like a traveller who unbothered by a war on the Northern Highway as if he possessed the knowledge of a hundred other roads, and even a capacity to pave his own – like whatever news she could have delivered him, he could make good use of the situation.)

So she had expected, without ever forming that thought in her mind explicitly, that she had disappointed him.

So when after eight whole years, she had heard from him again – still identifying himself only as an Ārya of Gandhāra – it was as if all the dullness and tragedy of the past years had been washed away with his one message – like there was hope in the world again – like he had granted her one last chance, in her darkest of times.

(“On the board of chess,” he said gently, “One piece does not despair because his advance was halted by meeting another – for he knows, that elsewhere on the board, the other pieces of his colour are making advances, and his time will soon come.”)

I shall meet with you soon, princess.

I request complete secrecy.

For this reason, I cannot even reveal the exact time to you.

You are to wait for me in your palace.

The same Gandhāra.

(“I must observe, O Ārya, that you compared me to the piece of least value in that game. Is that truly what you see me as?”)

She did not know who he was.

She did not know why, or how, she expected him to miraculously solve all of her problems.

She did not even know if this was all just a cruel prank to have her wait another eight years – or forever.

(“Is it not more important, O Princess, that we are pieces of the same colour, you and I?”)

(Were they, really?)

But he spoke with conviction – or at least his voice in her head did – and his presence – which she had never actually been in – carried with it a confidence: and she knew, just so naturally knew, that as long as she was on his side, all would be well.

… she had waited, for thirty-nine days now, every day, from dawn to dusk …

… staring off at the Southern horizon, even after the Sun had set …

… trying to catch a glimpse of every visitor, as a young child eagerly waited to greet its parents from the hunt …

… doing nothing else, in fact: putting all her hopes on the ridiculous possibility that this stranger who had only sent her cryptic messages would come as a messiah …

(“In truth, Ārya,” she said softly, “It would honour me even to be merely a piece on your board. Even if this is really your ambition, your war, and you are only tricking me, you would honour me by merely taking me as your queen once you have succeeded in your war.” WHAT had possessed her to say that – nothing could be more unbecoming of nobility than to say that, nothing more devoid of self-respect … she had the mad urge to murder him on the spot only so no one ever found out about this, her future and prophecy and all be damned, but then again he seemed too mysterious, too important, to tell people about such things, or to even care, perhaps he hadn’t even noticed—)

Wondering for so long till just now: who would he be?

In initial years from receiving his message, she had tried to imagine who he might be. She thought he might have been another prince of Takṣaśilā, a rival of Prince Sanjaya – and as Sanjaya had taken her sister’s alliance, he similarly sought to take hers — it was common practice among Takṣaśilā boys to take girls of Matsyaka nobility as their brides, even referring to her people as the “land of women” …

(But then suddenly she could perceive a much clearer impression of his face, as he had grabbed her wrist — perhaps to jolt her out of her thoughts, or out of passion — no, not for her, no, but for something.)

But her imagination of him had soon transcended simple archetypes like “prince” or “strategist” or “sorcerer” – he had began to represent, for her, something far greater: a symbol of all that could be in her life, and her saviour from what dark depths she could descend into if left to her own terms – regardless of whatever form he chose to present himself to her as.

(“Now is not the time to think about ends, Princess,” he told her. “A good soldier does not, in the moment of battle, fantasize about the spoils of war – his thoughts are on the battle alone, with all its blood and gore and effort.”)

It was silly. It was ridiculous.

(Telling her not to fantasize about the future had the opposite effect on her thoughts. But somehow, in some attempt to divert attention from the topic, she managed to say: “I do not even know your name.”)

She did not even trust him. And yet even the thought of being manipulated by him gave some meaning to her life, and was better than a life of insignificance.

(“You may call me Kautilya,” he stated. “And while there is much that I will ask you to do, in future, what I want you to do, for now, is to act as an enemy to Śaśigupta and Alexander.”)

Pabbata was trapped.

There was nothing he could say in protest to the Professor – Cāṇakya had done exactly as he had promised: he had sent Pabbata to campaign in Magadha, and Candragupta to campaign on the Western end of the Northern Highway. But while Pabbata had accepted this as a means to eliminate Candragupta’s competition by sending him far away, it now appeared to him that somehow, the real war was in the North-West, and that he was the one who had been sent away to Magadha.

What made matters worse – the tasks that Cāṇakya had assigned Pabbata were obviously preliminary actions – sabotaging some forts, seizing revenues from some captured tracts, planting and testing some agents, raiding some treasuries, causing some chaos in the country – to a future real war. He supposed that if he were to question Cāṇakya on this matter, he would be lectured on the importance of planning and strategy.

Plausible deniability, the Professor had said. That was the trick to the art of double-crossing.

Pabbata could not help but realize that his own trust in Cāṇakya’s loyalties grew the closer he was to him, and waned the further – Cāṇakya himself would have probably deemed this to be an irrationality of the prince, but Pabbata could not quite figure out which one of those proclivities it was that was contrary to reason.

Such was Cāṇakya’s trap, that it had made Pabbata completely reliant on him – by openly declaring war against his father, Pabbata had made an enemy out of the most powerful empire in the world, protection from which simply required a mind like Cāṇakya’s; and to abandon Cāṇakya here would only cause him to perish like a man attempting to cross the sea without a boat.

Sighing, Pabbata continued his very possibly fruitless task of planting explosives in the fort.