The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3)

Chapter 88 Vijay

VIJAY

There were many stories about Empress Malini.

People did not tell stories about Vijay, but that was because he was a boy of fifteen. He was crown prince, but he was a green boy , as his sage would scoff, smiling with affection in her eyes. But I’ve trained green boys before, Prince Vijay. Never fear.

On his fifteenth birthday he sought out the empress in her gardens. He told her about his training, not with the measured grandeur he’d been advised to, but straightforwardly. Swords were fine. He didn’t want to discuss swords. He liked ships, he said. He had studied the mechanisms required in shipwright work. He would like to travel the seas and see what lay in the world beyond. What, he asked, did the empress think of that?

“Did your mother not tell you to fear me?” The empress sounded amused.

In truth, his mother told him that spies watched her constantly, and watched him also. It had frightened him when he was a boy, but now he was a man, or near enough to being one.

Besides, he had also been told other stories. By Dwarali’s sultana, an older woman with a proud bearing and a graceful mien, and her husband the sultan, who was gruff and humorous and traveled everywhere by horse because of an injury he’d gained in the war. Their stories had been of the empress’s grand adventures and heroism, but he’d heard smaller, more revealing stories from the empress’s advisors. Some of those advisors were utterly unapproachable, but Lady Deepa always had a ready smile and a tale of the empress’s kindness. When he had been younger, she’d always let him drink sherbet or eat sugarcane sweets in her office when he wanted to hide from saber practice. His sage Lata had disapproved and scolded Deepa constantly for it.

“I am not a child anymore,” he said now to the empress. His days of sugarcane and sherbet were long gone.

“You are still a boy,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. Her eyes were dark and cold. He had wished, often, that he had inherited the imperial look, but everyone said he was his mother’s boy, and his Saketan blood shone through strong: brown eyes and a short stature. If he had anything from the imperial line, it was his curling hair and that alone. “You won’t have the privilege of being a young boy for long.”

“I won’t?”

“No,” said the empress. “But you have wise and able advisors. Trust them and all will be well.”

The empress was not… not young , exactly. She looked young, of course, but everyone said that was because she was a living mother of flame, and her light made her appear eternal. But she wasn’t old, either. It was strange for her to speak so, as if she would die.

The jasmine flowers fluttered in the breeze around them. The empress’s eyes crinkled into a smile.

“You do not have the heart to rule,” she said kindly.

“I do,” he protested.

She shook her head.

“Let me offer you advice I know you will not take, Vijay: When I am dead and gone, learn to lie. You will need many masks to survive.”