Page 2 of The Prince Without Sorrow

Chapter One

Ashoka

‘K ILL IT, A SHOKA. ’

Hands tingling with nervous anticipation, Prince Ashoka Maurya drew his bow tight. His target, a deer with large, curved antlers, stood a few feet away. Their footsteps had been so quiet that it hadn’t yet noticed, munching away on a patch of grass with gusto.

To his right, his guard – and oldest friend – Rahil watched him expectantly.

‘No time to dawdle, Ashoka,’ he whispered, tone urgent. ‘Hurry, before it escapes.’

Before you lose your nerve , was what Rahil left unsaid.

Steeling himself, Ashoka aimed the arrow tip at the deer’s head. His body turned to lead, heartbeat running as fast as a fleeing animal as he gazed at the thick fur and spindly legs. Everything was perfect, from his stance to his lock on the deer. All he had to do was let the arrow fly.

He couldn’t do it, couldn’t force himself to let go. This was an innocent creature who had done nothing to harm him or Rahil, yet here he was about to take its life.

Let go , he told the part of himself that wouldn’t listen. Let go .

A soft chittering erupted around them as he continued his silent struggle: a beautiful, soothing lullaby that echoed from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The air around the deer began to shimmer as a figure appeared out of thin air. A round pink body atop a round head with grey sticklike arms and legs and pitch-black triangular eyes. As it opened its large circular mouth, that same melodic language he had heard floated into his ears. The creature looked like an apparition, a friendly ghost of sorts, but Ashoka knew all too well what this being was.

A nature spirit.

He rarely saw them unless he ventured out into the forests. They were notably absent in the stark, nature-less palace; the result of his father upending his grandmother’s gardens and replacing them with unassuming manmade ponds and white-stone pebbles where even weeds were unable to grow.

The spirit began to chatter to the hungry deer, whose head perked up before turning its attention back to the grass. This was a picture of innocence, and he had to destroy it. This wasn’t right .

‘Ashoka,’ Rahil repeated. ‘Don’t become distracted. Shoot.’

‘ No ,’ Ashoka said loudly, before realizing his mistake. The deer startled, its wide black eyes turning in their direction. Rahil swore.

‘Shoot it, now ,’ he ordered, just as the deer began to flee and the nature spirit disappeared.

Ashoka let his arrow fly, watching it brush past the deer’s ear before wedging itself firmly into the trunk of a tree. Within seconds, the creature had disappeared into the wilds of the forest, and he had failed his task, no match for a moving target.

He knew what his father would’ve said if he had been here, he’d heard it one hundred times before:

Weak. Pathetic. How can you not kill a simple animal, child? Your siblings would do it without hesitation.

Emperor Adil always sent him on hunts to prove himself, as if killing an animal demonstrated anything. If he could not come back with a successful hunt, he was a failure. If he came back with his kill, his father would be pleased. That kind of pride was the last thing Ashoka wanted.

Beside him, Rahil stood up.

‘I’ve taught you to fight, but I can’t seem to teach you to kill,’ he said, but his tone wasn’t admonishing. The afternoon rays filtering through the canopy lit his skin a glorious golden brown, the colour of precious sea glass brought in by Ridi traders from the west.

‘It’s an animal. It’s an innocent ,’ Ashoka said, setting down his bow.

Rahil appraised him for a moment. ‘Innocent?’

Sensing that Rahil was about to launch into an impassioned argument, Ashoka quickly uttered his defence. ‘It does not harm others,’ he said. Unlike his father, who destroyed without mercy, without care for anything else but his own ego.

‘But is it an innocent when it abandons a defective newborn? When it ventures out into farmland and destroys a farmer’s crops?’ Rahil began before letting out a beleaguered sigh. ‘You’re hanging onto a warped version of innocence, and you know it.’

Ashoka chose to ignore him, but it seemed that Rahil was intent on ruffling his feathers today. ‘You would make a terrible emperor,’ he added, after a prolonged silence.

Ashoka felt his lips tilt downwards. ‘Why do you say that?’

Rahil’s crow-black hair swished at his shoulders as he held out his hand for Ashoka to take. ‘You don’t have the willpower to kill when it’s needed,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘It was a deer,’ Ashoka said incredulously. ‘You think that’s what constitutes a great ruler?’

‘No, that’s what your father thinks,’ Rahil corrected, absentmindedly adjusting the dual broadswords strapped to his back as they made their way to the winged serpents that were tethered some distance away. Venturing into the forestland that lay to the north of the Maurya palace was arduous by foot, so Ashoka had convinced his friend to take the winged creatures instead. ‘Why do you think he sends you out here?’

They both knew why. In a few years, he was to be sent off to govern like his eldest brother, and his father needed a gauge of his mettle. In his father’s mind, performing a simple kill equated to having the aptitude to conduct a complex one.

Ashoka shot Rahil an exasperated look and rubbed at his close-cropped hair. ‘Are you trying to vex me?’

Rahil shrugged in response. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I was thinking about Sau’s summary of the last council meeting. Aarya and Arush had a lot of opinions about the southern expansion. You’ll be there with them in a few years, and you can’t be entertaining ideas that’ll have you laughed out of the council.’

Ashoka winced, thinking of his two brash older siblings. Alone, they were mildly threatening. Together, they were a recipe for destruction.

‘You know as well as I do that nothing good ever happens whenever Arush and Aarya put their heads together and think,’ Rahil continued.

Ashoka knew it well. When he was nine, Arush and Aarya had freed ten giant water bugs into his bedchambers while he slept. Deathly terrified upon waking, he had yelled for his mother over the large insects skittering around his room. His siblings had found the entire affair to be amusing, stifling their cackles as Empress Manali reprimanded them. Ashoka had hated water bugs ever since.

‘Nothing particularly good came out of that council meeting,’ Ashoka said reproachfully.

‘I was surprised he took Aarya’s suggestion into account,’ Rahil murmured.

‘Convincing father to burn Kolakola entirely was an insane proposition,’ Ashoka agreed, thinking of the small, unassuming southern township that had only ever been a blip on the map until his father had learned that the iron ore being exported from the nearby mines crumbled the moment they were extracted, and it had temporarily halted the retrieval process. That, and reports of mayakari living in the village had been brought to his attention. Unnatural deterioration of iron ore coupled with the existence of mayakari in Kolakola? It had not been a far-fetched assumption to correlate the two.

It didn’t stop Ashoka from viewing his father with contemptuousness. He did not understand why the man failed to register the merits of peacekeeping like he did. To Emperor Adil, more power meant expansion. His father was relentless in his desire to grow the borders of the Ran Empire to the natural resource-rich south. The northern half of the continent was all his, save for the snow-laden mountains that separated them from the blue-eyed people of the Frozen Lands. The icy tundra was a far cry from the warm, monsoon-prone seasons of the Ran Empire.

The south, however, was a different story.

Slowly but surely, Emperor Adil was advancing downwards, annexing kingdoms he dubbed the unconquered lands and slaughtering the largely peaceful mayakari population as he did. From each annexation came scores of iron ore for steel production, and ironwood to build weapons for the military. The south was also abundant with precious stones, ripe for trade, and used as gaudy decorations in the Maurya palace, but ironwood was his father’s focus. More weapons gave them a better chance in annexing the powerful sea kingdom of Kalinga, thus granting him control over the largest maritime trading hub in the known world.

‘You don’t think Emperor Adil would really do that, do you?’ Rahil asked.

Ashoka let out a laugh. ‘What, burn the township? I think you underestimate him.’

His father had departed for Kolakola yesterday. It was unusual for him to make personal trips, but the situation had piqued his interest. Mayakari so rarely fought back against his persecution, and if they did, resorted only to minor disturbances where little was harmed as humanly possible.

‘He listens to Aarya like she has somehow hung the stars,’ Ashoka continued. ‘I can only hope that one day he becomes receptive to my ideas, but I won’t hold my breath.’

His father saw his pacifist ideas as a deficit. And, perhaps most importantly, hated that he did not see the mayakari as the ominous threat he’d made them out to be.

Women of death and shadows, able to speak to nature spirits, curse the living, and raise the dead. From what Ashoka had read of the historical records kept in the palace library, the Ran Empire had not persecuted the witches during his grandmother’s reign, nor during the monarchs who preceded her. In fact, the mayakari were largely peaceful, tending to veer towards scholarly pursuits. They had a towering library built on the outskirts of the Golden City where they studied their own magic, trying to help balance societal advancement with the maintenance of wild lands and its spirits.

The distrust and hatred of the mayakari originated under his father’s rule.

He could trace it back to the Seven Day Flood that had impacted the Golden City over a decade ago, a year after his grandmother’s death. Rebuilding efforts had been slow. The young Emperor Adil was the one who made a proclamation asking the mayakari for help in using their abilities to force the nature spirits to regrow the rice crops devasted by flood waters. It was he who had berated the witches for denying his appeal and accused them of gatekeeping their knowledge. It was under his father’s vicious reports of dissenting mayakari that the library had been burned, known witches following the same fate.

It was a point of pride for his father, the destruction of the library. He always wore the same boastful expression when he recalled that event.

If Rahil noticed Ashoka’s bitter tone, he didn’t comment on it. ‘Then learn the middle path,’ he said.

‘If this “middle path” of yours involves acknowledging my father’s cruel methods, then I won’t do it,’ Ashoka scoffed. ‘I could never endorse killing like him.’

Rahil only stared at him, nonplussed.

‘I won’t kill,’ Ashoka added, gritting his teeth. ‘I would never kill.’

Rahil eyed him curiously. ‘I’m inclined to believe you,’ he said. ‘You can’t even kill a deer, for spirits’ sake.’

‘It didn’t deserve to die!’

‘Ashoka, I swear you would catch a fish and then apologize for cooking it.’

‘I would. So what?’

Rahil snorted. ‘You’re insufferable,’ he said, turning to lock eyes with Ashoka. His eyes were soft and fearless, the colour of smoky quartz. They were set against lashes that his sister Aarya used to painstakingly wish for in her adolescence. Rahil’s handsomeness had always been the inviting kind; warm and magnetic.

Ashoka’s heart jumped uncontrollably. ‘And yet you have not left me,’ he said.

‘Then I must be mad,’ Rahil replied. The ghost of a smile graced his lips as they trudged through patches of overgrown grass. ‘Imagine if you were the emperor.’

Wishing for his rapid heartbeat to slow, Ashoka shrugged with an air of pure nonchalance as he listened to the soft cooing of myna birds above. ‘And you call me idealistic,’ he said after a while. The gleaming opalescent head of his winged serpent, Sahry, came into view. ‘Once my siblings decide to have children of their own, the title will still evade me even into my next life.’

Arush. Aarya. Ashoka. That was the order of the Maurya children. Arush would claim the throne, and Ashoka would slink behind them as an infrequent council attendee, wasting his life away in a palace of luxuries.

It was not a life he would find fulfilling. No, he’d long since decided that he needed to be in the thick of things. By being part of the council, he would at least be able to temper the flood of murderous jubilation from his father and siblings. But at twenty-two, he was considered too young. Ironic, since Aarya was not yet twenty-five either but had still been allowed to join. Clearly his age was just an excuse. What a privilege to be father’s favourite.

No matter. Once he was of age, his father would not be able to argue against royal decrees.

Rahil opened his mouth to respond before he tensed. He held out a hand, forcing Ashoka to stop in his tracks and turned slowly towards a rustling sound coming from the undergrowth just beyond them. Ashoka watched curiously as four spindly legs and a dark brown nose emerged, sniffing the grass curiously.

Another deer.

Ashoka heard Rahil shuffle next to him, heard the soft twang of his bowstring, and realized too late what he was about to do.

Rahil didn’t even blink. His bow was in his hands within seconds, the arrow flying from its hold with dangerous precision. Ashoka looked away and heard a dull thunk followed by a pained whimper. An agonizing silence followed as they waited for the deer to take its final breath. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Weak , his father’s voice, ever the thorn in his mind, echoed in his head.

‘You won’t even look at it,’ he heard Rahil’s soft voice next to him.

‘I won’t,’ Ashoka whispered. He couldn’t bear to.

There was a pregnant pause before Rahil remarked, ‘You have to learn to be cruel before you can learn to be great.’ It was something Emperor Adil repeated often, and it only ever made Ashoka see red. ‘Just tell your father that you killed the deer. Make him think positively of you, for once.’

His comment forced Ashoka to open his eyes. Rahil was gazing at him with an expression of utmost sympathy.

Ashoka scowled. ‘I would much rather disappoint him,’ he said. ‘Come, we need to burn it.’

‘That is a waste of meat,’ Rahil gestured to the deer. He appeared flummoxed by the idea. ‘We should—’

‘Not have killed it? Yes, you are correct,’ Ashoka finished for him. When Rahil shot him an exasperated glare, the fire in his chest dimmed. He had only been trying to help.

‘I’m sorry, but it did not deserve to die for me to prove my father wrong,’ he said. Unlike Rahil, he had no qualms about burning it, as he forsook meat like the mayakari were known to do. ‘So please, help me. An innocent requires a cremation it didn’t deserve.’