“Not entirely,” Ektha admitted, reading my thoughts. “I wanted to make sure you were giving yourself time to grieve too.”
“I’m fine.” It was a reflex by now.
“Clearly.” Her voice became very quiet. “I haven’t seen you cry like this in years.”
“Because crying is a waste of water.” I tried to give her a little smile and shrug it off, but the corners of my mouth remained stubbornly downturned.
“Abbakka.” Ektha cradled my face in her hand. “You don’t need to bury everything. I am here to help. I may not fight with a sword or a bow, but I will stand by your side and battle in my own way. You just need to talk to me so we can fight together.”
I rose and started pacing the periphery of the stepwell. “What is there to do about it? You said it yourself: Our uncle has made up his mind, and he has commanded me to marry Raja Lakshmappa.”
“And you don’t want to marry him.” It was a statement, but Ektha’s eyebrows asked a question.
I dipped my foot into the water and splashed it with a kick as I made my way back. “The man has no sense! It doesn’t matter how pretty his face is if there’s not a brain behind it!”
Ektha looked at me in wide-eyed surprise. “You’ve met him?”
“Um... yes,” I said, blinking. I would have laughed at Ektha’s bewildered expression if it hadn’t been so hard to figure out what I wanted to say. Why was it always so difficult to speak of the wretched man? “His horse was scared of the storm and ran wild in a field I was checking yesterday.”
“You found his horse in a field? How did you know it was his?”
“Well, he was riding it at the time.” I paced faster, as if it would force my mind to do the same. “Rather poorly. Completely destroyed the field before we were done. But today he said that he paid for the damage, so I guess I can’t be angry about that.”
“Today?” Ektha stood. Her voice had reached a shockingly high pitch now, and it echoed through the stepwell. “You saw himtoday?”
I stopped and gestured with my hands until I could find the words. “I came down here this morning to play my tambura, and he found me here. He said he’d paid for the fields, and he was sweet and funny and far too charming for his own good, but that doesn’t mean I want to marry him.”
Ektha looked from me to the tambura, which lay on the ground. She bit her lip. “Do you remember when we started to play the tambura?”
“Yes, I’m sure I don’t want to?—wait, what?” I stopped as I realized what Ektha had actually asked me. “When we learned to play? We were just kids. Uncle Trimulya insisted we had to learn since Mother used to play.”
My sister nodded and picked up the instrument. She rested the base on her leg, just as we’d been taught, so its long neck came up straight and pointed to the sky. But she didn’t embrace it. Ektha and the tambura were settled side by side, like new acquaintances, instead of coming together to find the peace and comfort of an old friendship. Ever so cautiously, Ektha strummed some of the exercises we’d learned as children.
The strings hummed as Ektha spoke. “From the moment our uncle said we had to learn, you hated the idea. You stomped and refused to even touch the instrument during our first lesson.” She laughed. “You even turned away from the instructor as he played. You sat there cross-legged and facing the corner, while I was completely transfixed. I tried so hard to learn it all?—I had dreams of going down in history as a rani who could charm even the toughest of Ullal’s enemies with my singing and playing. Don’t laugh.”
I did my best to suppress my smile.
Ektha met my eyes before she continued. “But when I went to practice later, it was all wrong. You heard me struggling, and you came and showed me. You played better than I could, and that was when you’d had your back turned the whole time. I promised not to tell anyone how good you were, but eventually, you started to face the instructors when they taught. Once you gave the tambura a chance, you found an instrument that you loved. That you still love.”
She handed the large stringed instrument to me, and I took it from her as I said, “You play better than you think.”
“You lie about as well as I play.” Ektha chuckled good-naturedly, then became solemn. “But maybe you should consider getting to know Raja Lakshmappa. You’ve said many things about him, but the worst thing you’ve had to say is that he’s a poor horseman. I know our uncle has commanded you to marry him, but don’t hold that againsthim. Give him a chance. If you don’t want to marry him, I’ll find a way for you to get out of this engagement.”
“But how?” I wrinkled my nose. “How could you possibly?—”
“I am the next rani of Ullal,” Ektha said. She pulled herself up tall, and the winds picked up, brushing her hair off her face and lifting the long pallu of the sari hanging off her shoulder. “If you don’t want to get married, I will make sure it doesn’t happen.”
She grinned at my blushing face. “And if, by chance, you do love him, I will make sure it does.”
Words escaped me. How was it possible to lose the entirety of one’s vocabulary at the mere mention of a single person? One day I would learn how to speak quickly about that man, and Spirits help them all when that day came. For now, though, I stood in front of my sister and scrambled to find some words to fill the silence and wipe the smirk off her face. But before I could respond, a chorus of horns rang out, cracking the silence of the skies with a hammer of sound.
Chapter 11
More and more horns joined the call. Together they screamed into the heavens, shaking the air and sending a tingle down my spine. It raced to my toes and left them feeling as though they were pricked by thousands of tiny needles.
“What’s happening?” Ektha furrowed her brow as she looked up toward the skies above the stepwell. “Did the raja of Banghervari arrive already?”
There was no time to stand still. Wordlessly, I used the tambura to push Ektha toward the stepwell’s wall so she was flat against it. “It’s an attack,” I whispered.
