Chapter 10: A Child Who Knows Too Much
Whispers travel faster than orders.
Abhinav learned this in the way doors paused before opening, in the way servants' eyes lingered a breath too long before dropping. He learned it in the soft recalibration of the palace's silence—how it thickened when he entered a corridor, how conversations resumed only after he had passed.
The lie had not stayed contained.
It had changed its shape.
In the kitchens, a scullery maid murmured that the prince spoke with gods. In the armory, a guard swore he had seen Abhinav predict a visitor's arrival moments before the bell rang. In the women's quarters, the word touched circulated—carefully, reverently, afraid.
Abhinav heard none of this directly.
That was how rumors worked.
He heard them in fragments, reflected back through behavior. Extra lamps lit in his path. Averted gazes. Unnecessary bows.
Power, he realized, did not always announce itself.
Sometimes it seeped.
He adjusted.
He slowed his steps. Asked simpler questions. Allowed himself to be wrong in public. Once, deliberately, he miscounted a stack of ledgers and laughed when corrected. The laughter that followed sounded relieved.
Still, the whispers grew.
One afternoon, as he crossed an inner courtyard shaded by neem trees, a small figure darted into his path.
A boy. Barefoot. Thin. No more than ten.
He froze, eyes wide, then dropped to his knees. "My prince," he blurted, voice cracking. "Is it true?"
Abhinav felt the attention sharpen around them. Servants halted. Guards shifted.
"Is what true?" Abhinav asked gently.
"That you can see what will happen," the boy said. "That you know when people will die."
The courtyard went very still.
Abhinav knelt so they were level. "What is your name?"
"Ravi," the boy whispered.
"Ravi," Abhinav said, "do you know why people tell stories like that?"
Ravi shook his head.
"Because the world is uncertain," Abhinav said. "And stories make uncertainty feel smaller."
Ravi frowned. "So… you don't know?"
Abhinav met his gaze steadily. "I know that people choose every day. And choices are hard to predict."
Ravi hesitated, then nodded, as if this made sense in a way miracles did not.
A hand seized the boy's shoulder.
A steward bowed deeply. "Forgive us, Prince. The child overstepped."
Abhinav rose. "He asked a question."
Questions, again.
That evening, Abhinav was summoned—not by elders this time, but by the head of the palace household. A careful man. Loyal. Afraid.
"There is talk," the man said quietly. "Some believe you are… marked."
"And some fear it," Abhinav replied.
"Yes."
Abhinav nodded. "Then we must give them something safer to believe."
The man looked at him, startled. "Safer?"
"A diligent prince," Abhinav said. "A curious one. Nothing more."
He spent the next days making himself ordinary.
He attended lessons visibly. He asked Somadeva questions already answered in scripture. He listened more than he spoke. When servants bowed too deeply, he corrected them.
It worked.
Mostly.
Yet late one night, Abhinav found a small offering placed outside his door—flowers, arranged carefully. No name. No prayer.
He stared at it for a long time before removing it and placing it at the foot of a temple pillar.
This is how myths are born, he thought. From fear, and hope, and a child who asked the wrong question.
As he returned to his chamber, Abhinav understood something new.
He was no longer just being watched.
He was being imagined.
And imagination, once awakened, was far harder to control than truth.