Warrior Princess; Her Quest to the throne

Bela shook her head at Shaurya's attitude but understood the necessity to show faith in his choices. After all, he was the one going on the mission, not her. She caressed the eagle's head which was seated majestically next to her. She had rarely used it in the recent times except for self-training purposes.     

But off lately, she had been keeping it around Shaurya to become familiar with his scent and voice. Shaurya had even managed to learn some of the key noises which the bird made as part of its communication. Probably, he himself hadn't known till now that he had the knack of being able to imitate the sounds of birds so quickly and accurately. During the past week, Shaurya had used these sounds to call out to the bird and give commands. The advantage of using this technique instead of a whistle or a shout was obviously the ease with which someone could summon and instruct the bird without anyone getting wiser about it.     

Right now, the bird stared unblinkingly at Bela with its intelligent eyes, as if reassuring her. Even though she was just a handler and not an active agent, she had been nervous about the upcoming task, as if it was her first rodeo. But surprisingly, the closer they got to the mission kickstart date, the more her fears started to abate. All the insecurities and worries of the recent past were slowly melting away. Apart from the occasional bursts, like a short while ago, she could feel the calm, confident demeanour of Charulata takeover her mind. And that was good because right now, Charulata was needed at the forefront instead of Belavati.     

Capital     

"Have you found whom you were looking for?" Rani Samyukta's question held hope and urgency.     

And that made it tougher for Prithvi to reply with a negative. The people whom he had been chasing since the capture of that businessman in the capital, seemed to have vanished in thin air. There had been no further lead ever since his visit to the Eastern zilla, as well. Either his cover had been blown there or the enemy had gone quiet due to some other reason. But in the past two weeks, there was zero activity getting registered from either of the ends. A more terrifying possibility was that a new method infiltration had been found by the enemy and it was occurring right under the nose of the zilla's protectors.     

"Do we have any clarity on the final game plan of these people?" she asked.     

With his head hanging in failure, Prithvi said, "No, we do not. But I have assumed the worst and am trying to work backwards from there. Also, our plan goes into motion tonight onwards and hopefully we shall start to see some inflow of information in the coming few days."     

Samyukta wanted to urge him to speedup the process but she had faith in his decision making and believed that he had had reasons for delaying the activation of the plan till now.     

"Let me know as soon as you hear something," she got up with an air of finality.     

As always, they were in Devyani's room in the brothel. As was the norm, Prithvi left first and then the Queen.     

Rani Samyukta was lost in her thought when she pressed the lever for the opening of the tunnel. An arrow whizzed past her, grazing her cheek. She jolted out of stupor and realized her folly. Though the tunnel was a secret and could only be accessed from the hidden brothel room and the queen's personal chamber, still, it had enough booby traps set inside, in case of a stranger entering it per chance. Every queen was trained rigorously on the sequences and patterns for walking, dodging and running in the tunnel. Even a single misstep could cause lethal harm to the person inside.     

Upon entering, the person was supposed to bend down at a 45 degrees angle. Just now the arrow would have hit her jugular vein causing a near assured death. Thankfully her body had been leaning forward, bringing her cheek in the line of the arrow instead of her neck!     

Eastern Zilla     

"Why can't we take her to another Vaidya? Don't tell me that he is the only one in this entire area who can examine her foot," Abhirath was grumbling to Vandit.     

The shorter guy was still miffed with Abhirath and Nirbhay for causing thumping defeat in the tasks during the past two days and didn't bother offering any consolation. He didn't grudge the tasks which they had lost fair and square but what about that camouflage one? Nirbhay had shamelessly found a couple of frogs from somewhere and before the task began, had slipped them in an unsuspecting Vandit's kurta pocket.     

The noise had alerted the enemy and given a clue to their hiding place. But the worse was that the surprise of finding the slimy creatures in his pocket had been enough for him to fall off from the branch where he had hidden.     

Hence, he wasn't in a very generous mood right now!     

"Why the long faces? Ah! You can't bear to see me escape the classes mid-day and go for a checkup, is it? Don't worry, the pain and discomfort of the past many hours at least deserve this much compensation, right?" Mriga came to them and said cheekily.     

It was lunchtime and the cafeteria was buzzing with noises.     

"What do you mean? Are you telling me that you are going alone to see that… to get your ankle examined? Who said that you could? What if you land into another pit again? As it is, your eyes don't work very well. Who will be responsible for the next mishap?" Abhirath's annoying rant grated Mriga's nerves.