Fortune's Stroke

All of them had come, and all of them were bidding for the dynastic marriage. And the bidding had been fierce. In the weeks leading up to the council, the canny peshwa Dadaji Holkar had matched one proposal against another, scraping quibble against reservation, until nothing was left but solid offers of alliance. At the council meeting itself, in the course of the hours, Dadaji had compressed those solid offers into so many bars of iron.

Irene repressed a grin. Dadaji Holkar, low-born son of polluted Majarashtra, had outwitted and outmaneuvered and outnegotiated the Hindu world's most prestigious brahmin diplomats. Had any of them been told, now, that Dadaji himself was nothing but a low-caste vaisya—a mere sudra, in truth, in any land of India outside the Great Country—they would have been shocked from the tops of their aristocratic heads to the soles of their pure brahmin feet. Distressed also, of course, at the thought of the pollution they had suffered from their many hours of intimate contact with the man. For the most part, however, they would have simply been stunned.

It is not possible! He is one of the most learned men in India! A scholar, as well a statesman!

She could picture them gobbling their disbelief. It is not possible! He is the peshwa of Andhra! How could great Satavahana—India's purest kshatriya—have been fooled by such a man? Not possible!

Irene's fight to restrain her humor became transformed into something much grimmer. Something cold, and calculating, and—in its own way—utterly ruthless. She, too, could be an executioner.

Studying the brahmin diplomats seated before the empress, Irene's eyes began to glint. I will show you what is possible. Fools!

It was time. The envoys had presented their offers. Dadaji had summarized the situation. It only remained for the empress to make her decision.

Irene could not have explained the little movements she made, of head and hands and eyes, which drew Shakuntala's attention. Neither could the young empress herself. But the two women had spent many hours in private and public discourse. Irene knew how to signal the empress, just as surely as the empress understood how to interpret those signals.

Shakuntala's head turned to Irene. The empress' eyes seemed as bright as ever, probably, to most observers. But Irene could sense the dull resignation in that imperial gaze.

"I would like to hear from the envoy of Rome," stated Shakuntala. As always in public council, the empress' voice was a thing to marvel at. Youthful, true, in its timbre. But a fresh-forged blade is still a sword.

A faint murmur arose from the diplomats.

Shakuntala's eyes snapped back to them. "Do I hear a protest?" she demanded. "Is there one among you who cares to speak?"

The murmurs fled. Shakuntala's eyes were like iron balls. The Black-Eyed Pearl of the Satavahanas, she was often called. But black, for all its beauty, can be a terrifying color.

Black iron smote clay. "You would protest?" she hissed. "You?" The statue moved, slightly. A goddess, with a little gesture of the hand, dismissing insects. "After Malwa conquered Andhra, and flayed my father's skin for Skandagupta's trophy, what did you do?"

The statue sneered. "You trembled, and quailed, and whimpered, and tried to hide in your palaces." The goddess spoke. "Rome—only Rome—did not cower from the beast."

Shakuntala's next words were spoken through tight teeth. "Doubt me not in this, you diplomats. If Malwa is slain, the lance which brings the monster down will be held in Roman hands. Not ours. Alone—not if all of us united—could we do the deed. Our task is to shield the Deccan, and do what we can to lame the beast."

The diplomats bowed their heads. Those brahmins, for all their learning, were insular and self-absorbed to a degree which Irene, accustomed to Roman cosmopolitanism, often found amazing. But even they, by now, knew the name of Belisarius. A bizarre name, an outlandish name, but a name of legend nonetheless. Even in south India—even in southeast Asia—they had heard of Anatha. And the Nehar Malka, where Belisarius drowned Malwa's minions.

Shakuntala kept her eyes on their bowed heads, not relenting for a full minute. Black iron is as heavy as it is hard.

During that long minute, while Indian diplomats—again—quailed and hid their heads, Irene sent a mental message to a man across the sea. He would not receive it, of course, but she knew he would have enjoyed the whimsy. That man had spent hours and hours with her, in Constantinople—days, rather—counseling Irene on her great task. Explaining, to a woman of the present, the future he wanted her to help create.