[date:-475|flashback,x]
“And then what did you do, Father-sir?”
“Luring them into a false sense of security by feigning defeat, I sent a group of prostitutes to distract Kulvalaka and the other Licchavis and break the chain of command, allowing my agents to seize the city before their confused eyes.”
“Brilliant, Father-sir!”
“That is NOT what you should be saying, Udayin. What should you be saying?”
Udayin considered the question for a half-second. “The prostitutes achieved what your catapults couldn’t. Thus, they are a threat to your supremacy.” The crown prince gulped. “What did you do to them, Father-sir?”
Ajātaśatru scrunched up his face as if confused by the question. “Why, I simply beheaded them, of course. It would be quite silly to employ a more torturous method – like cutting them into small shreds starting from the fingertips, or pouring molten metal down their throat, or chaining their limbs to those of elephants and having them slowly be torn apart, or placing them between spiked plates as they are pressed together by boulders dropped by cranes. Those are the methods to be employed against my enemies or against ordinary subjects for fun, not against those who have served me – I wouldn’t want my subjects afraid of serving me, after all.”
One could sense some nervousness in Udayin’s laugh, and this annoyed the Emperor to no end, but he decided against beating his son this time. This time, he would use Udayin’s favourite sex slave before his eyes – yes, that would be an appropriate punishment.
When the silence was finally broken, it was by Queen-Mother Chellana.
Ajātaśatru, upon being coronated, had shown mercy upon his own mother – while he had imprisoned his father and had been subjecting him to regular torture for the past seventeen years, the former queens had been shown much kindness: he generously employed his brothers’ mothers as prostitutes for the most distinguished commanders and champions in his armies, while his own mother, for her kind act of birthing him, was allowed to roam the palace freely and continued to enjoy her former chamber (of course, she had also been caned severely during the purge as a warning against making too many annoying moralizing chastisements against the king).
“There is a request I wish to make, son,” she said weakly. Ajātaśatru noticed that she had been crying – probably something to do with how he had just mercilessly massacred her old relations in Vaiśālī. Oh, but Ajātaśatru, you’re my son, you shouldn’t murder my cousins! You shouldn’t raze my city to the ground and go around suffocating its aristocrats by chaining them to the bottom of a pit and slowly pouring wet sand over them! Typical woman.
“Go on,” the king said with a sigh. He was quite kind that way.
“I have asked this of you, before, son … but I hope that you will grant me my boon this time … at least seeing your mother in this distraught state … ”
“This again? OH, I WANT TO SEE MY HUSBAND AGAIN, I’M LONELY, AND ALL MY SON TALKS ABOUT IS MURDERING PROSTITUTES AND MONKS. If you so desperately wish for a man’s company, Mother, then Varṣākāra is exhibiting his endowments quite publicly.”
Queen-Mother Chellana covered her face in horror.
Ajātaśatru ignored her.
“Son … if you ever felt that your father and I did not treat you well when you were young, that we did not respect your talents as we should have … then it is not your father you should blame … it is me.”
Ajātaśatru rolled his eyes. “The typical self-sacrifice. Ah, yes, it was my mother who preferred the sons of her husband’s other wives – if that is so, Mother, then I must say I have even less respect for you now than before—”
“I threw you into the garbage dump when you were born, son!” Queen-Mother Chellana was sobbing.
“When you were conceived, I had these horrid dreams – of consuming my husband’s heart – I never dreamed of doing any harm, of course, just … I went to a seer and asked him what these dreams meant, and he told me it meant my son would have the heart of a monster, cold, wicked and devoid of any compassion. That he would feel neither remorse nor disgust at even cannibalism, and that there was no method of nurture that would change this, it was predetermined … ”
Ajātaśatru’s expression was blank.
“I couldn’t bring myself to abort you. I just couldn’t … you were my son. To do such a thing would be a betrayal of your father’s love for me, and an insult to mine for him. And yet when you were born, when I saw the eyes of the monster you were prophesied to become, the monster I had brought into this world … I … I … ”
A weaker man would have accused: It is YOUR fault that I grew up to be a monster, Mother! What else would you expect from a child who was treated by his own mother as a freak of prophecy? The prophecy was self-fulfilling – the only reason it was made because the monk knew what sort of a depraved woman you were, and predicted the outcome of your upbringing.
But not Ajātaśatru. For it was irrelevant what factors had influenced him to become the way he was – for all it mattered, a butterfly could have flapped its wings and altered the course of history to cause him to be born, but he had no cause to honour that butterfly. Whatever he was, it was the product of his own decisions, and those decisions were the product of what his personality had been before. Further causation was irrelevant.
And he was proud of what he was.
“Your father heard of what I had done, and dived into the garbage dump himself to find his beloved child, for that is what you’ve always been to him, whether or not he showered you with the requisite affection. When he found you, you were wounded and sickly, having been picked and bitten by various filthy animals, covered with ashes … and you had a boil on your finger. Your father is, as you say, a barbarian – he did not know how to treat the boil, or to bring you to a medical practitioner. So he took your finger in his mouth and sucked the pus out of it himself, caring not even for his own life, caring only for the slightest chance that his son survives.”
The king’s eyes were red.
“That is the truth of your father, son. He cared for you like he cared for no other person in the world.”
“Is … is that so?” Ajātaśatru’s acting was so natural, that anyone who was not already familiar with his nature and behaviour would not have been able to even tell that it was a façade. “I never knew, mother. I … I will go and free him immediately.”
Queen-Mother Chellana’s eyes widened in horror, but Ajātaśatru was gone before she could protest.
