“And I know just the thing that you can bring to the table, so to speak.”
“Enlighten me, Sikander,” my father said, narrowing his eyes.
“Chamak.”
Across the dining hall, there was silence. Bandaka put down his spoon. Shree raised her eyes. Arjun and I glanced at each other. For a moment, all that could be heard was the startled chirp of insects.
My father leaned back in his chair, his face drawn, his jaw tensed. “That’s a complicated request, Sikander.”
“It’s not a request, Chandradev,” Sikander responded crisply. Again, silence. This time Sikander shattered it with a sharp laugh that startled me. “That’s why I’m here. To say hello to an old friend, to discuss our trade relationship. And, of course, to meet your beautiful daughter,” he said, turning to smile at me with his golden teeth.
I shrank in my chair, forcing a small smile in his direction, but his gaze was so intense that I had to break it. I imagined what it would be like to be married to him. The image of him kissing me with that mouth filled with gold teeth startled me and made me want to retch.
“You don’t know this about my kingdom, Sikander, but I don’t have any control over chamak. It’s not a regulated substance. It’s a drug—”
“A drug that isn’t available anywhere else in the world!”
“A drug that’s mined and guarded by an ancient tribe that lives in an undisclosed location and communicates with the rest of society only on their own terms, through their own intermediaries—”
“But they communicate with you, Chandradev,” Sikander said quietly.
“Through messengers whom they select and deploy, but never directly.”
“Then bring the Sybillines here. Make introductions. I’ll talk to them.”
Bandaka shook his head, interjecting, “They would never agree. They don’t leave the caves. And, with all due respect, Your Majesty, one can’t just think about a boost to our own economy and irresponsibly send caravans full of chamak to other lands. We have to consider the consequences.”
“What consequences? You already trade small amounts of it with neighboring kingdoms,” Sikander said.
Shree stepped in, authority in her voice. “With neighboring kingdoms, yes. And small amounts—that’s the key. But we have to limit its trade. Chamak can be good or bad, but ultimately, the Sybillines are the custodians of it—they’ve studied its uses for thousands of years, and we have to acknowledge its power. If it were to get in the wrong hands—” She hesitated and looked away.
“One could easily go to the mountains, mine the stuff with or without the Sybillines,” Sikander said with exasperation in his voice.
“It’s not that simple,” Bandaka responded. “Chamak responds to the Sybillines—it’s a living substance. It loses its power if it’s mined by someone else.”
Sikander placed his palm on the table before him. “Then we force the Sybillines to mine it for us.”
My father interjected. “They would likely rather give their lives than live as slaves. They live within a compound of caves that’s impossible to find. People have tried to find them and died trying. And they are a fiercely ethical people. Sikander, you don’t understand—the Sybillines communicate only with those they want to communicate with—”
But Sikander dismissed my father. “Anything is possible if there’s a will. There must be a few we can persuade.”
“No one has even seen a Sybilline in centuries, Sikander!”
Sikander sighed, exasperation registering on his face. He looked at my father like he was reasoning with a belligerent child, one who didn’t know what was good for him. “You knew me all those years ago. Did you ever think I’d become emperor of the greatest kingdom there ever was? Did you ever think I’d become Sikander the Great?”
My father was silent.
“I learned quite a bit from you back then, Chandradev. Maybe now it’s your turn to learn something from me. You’re a maharaja of a kingdom. And you’re being pushed around by a gang of chamak farmers and Earth-lovers who live in caves?”
“Chamak is a temperamental substance, Sikander.” My father raised his voice. “It has the wiles of an infant. It can be tended to only by the Sybillines, or it’s just a powder.”
“Silver dust,” Shree added.
“You’ll be a part of our trade route, part of the modern world! Imports pouring into your kingdom, visitors coming in from across the world. Why fight this, Chandradev?”
“No one in Shalingar suffers from poverty. Everyone is taken care of here.” And then my father added the part that we all instantly knew he shouldn’t have. “Not like in your kingdom,” he said.
I glanced at Arjun, who looked back at me, startled. I knew right then that my father needed saving in that moment, and instinct kicked in, the urge to protect him. But I can’t say my own curiosity didn’t play a part in what happened next.
“Your Majesty, I’d love to learn more about your time at the Military Academy,” I said. I was looking down, but the moment the words were out of my mouth, I knew I needed to go on. I looked up, my eyes meeting my father’s. “What were you like? What was my father like? And my mother . . .”
Sikander didn’t look at me. His eyes were on my father, who sat at the head of the table, glaring back at him.
“Your mother was a magnet, a star, the sun to all our moons,” Sikander said, skipping to the information he seemed to understand I most wanted to know. “Beautiful, courageous, brilliant, compelling. Good at so many things that sometimes I wondered if she could possibly even be human.” Sikander’s face softened for a moment before he continued, his next words directed solely at my father. “Brother. We have history. Do you remember that time we snuck off campus together and went into town, drank bottles and bottles of wine into the night, just the three of us?”
But my father said nothing. He simply pursed his lips together.
“She told us that story, that parable . . .”
My head whipped back in Sikander’s direction. The Parable of the Land of Trees.
“She was quite a storyteller.” I could tell he was drunk from the way he slurred his words. I didn’t care.
“What was she like?” I whispered, my eyes fixed on him. Everyone at the table hushed, hanging on Sikander’s every word.
He leaned back in his seat and looked at me, his eyes tracing my shoulders, my bare arms. I looked away, uncomfortable, slightly afraid.
“Quite like you, actually. Brilliant, witty, very protective of those she loved. She had a fighting spirit, coming from that family she was born into . . .”