Irene had never fully realized, until the past few weeks, the true extent of the Hindu world. She had always thought of Hinduism, and its Buddhist offspring, as religions of India. But, like Christianity, those religions had spread their message over the centuries. And, more often than not, spread their entire culture along with it.
Representatives from Champa were there, and Funan, and Langkasuka, and Taruma, and many others. The faces of those envoys bore the racial stamp of southeast Asia and its great archipelagoes but, beneath the skin, they were children of India in all that mattered. Nations sired by Indian missionaries, suckled by Indian custom, nurtured by Indian commerce, and educated in Sanskrit or one of its derivatives.
Even China was there, in the form of a Buddhist monk sent by one of the great kingdoms of that distant land. He, unlike the others, had not come to bid for Shakuntala’s hand in marriage. He had come simply to observe. But men—not royal envoys, at least—do not travel across the sea in order to observe a stone. They come to study a comet.
Shakuntala’s rebellion had shaken Malwa. The world’s most powerful empire was still on its feet, and still roaring its fury. But it was locked in mortal combat with adversaries from the mysterious West—enemies who had proven far more formidable than the Hindu world had envisioned. And now, rising from the stony soil of the Great Country, Shakuntala’s rebellion was hammering the giant’s knees. If those knees ever broke—
The independent kingdoms of the Hindu world, finally, had shed their hesitation. They feared Malwa, still—were petrified by the monster, in fact—but Shakuntala had shown that the beast could be bloodied. Not beaten, perhaps. That remained to be seen. But even the vacillating, timid, fretful kingdoms of south India and southeast Asia had finally understood the truth.
Andhra had returned. Great Satavahana, the noblest dynasty in their world, was still alive. That empire, and that dynasty, had shielded south India and the Hindu lands beyond for centuries. Perhaps it could do so yet.
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.