Akhand Bharatiya Empire
When Jaishankar was holding negotiations with different diplomats of Europe, the director of Bharatiya External Pragya, Roshan, was not idle either.
Throughout the first two days since His Majesty concluded his briefing, Roshan had not taken any drastic actions. He had not made any moves; instead, he had been continuously collecting all the information available about various diplomats, their relationships, their behaviours, and other important details from both the internal Pragya and external Pragya.
Now that the information had been collected, it was his time to act.
Chitra Theater, 6th Street, Bengaluru
Oscar Anderson sat in the VIP seating area in the theatre. His face was filled with excitement and anticipation as he was dying to see the new drama adapted from the novel written by the Empress, *Bahubali: The Rise of Shiva.*
Seated next to Oscar Anderson was his wife, who had travelled to the Bharatiya Empire to stay with him due to him being permanently stationed in the Bharatiya Empire for the next few years. His wife's expression was filled with curiosity as she had only arrived at the Bharatiya Empire a few months ago, and she was not yet fully accustomed to the Bharatiya Empire.
With a loud melodic horn, the drama officially began. The curtains were opened, and a beautiful depiction of a ginormous waterfall was shown on the stage. Soon, an old woman carrying an infant limped across the stage with an arrow pierced into her back.
Oscar Anderson and his wife were immediately pulled into the world of Mahishmati. Suddenly, a hand grabbed onto his forearm, startling him and immediately bringing him back to reality. Feeling the softness of the hand that had grabbed him, he found it a little familiar, and more importantly, it was the hand of a woman. Normally, he wouldn't think anything of it since his wife was sitting right next to him, but he clearly remembered that he had made his wife sit to his right, so how was it possible for a woman to hold his left hand?
Oscar, perplexed, looked towards his left, trying to figure out who the person was. But once he saw the face of the woman sitting to his left, a chill ran down his spine. He broke out in a cold sweat, and his hands and knees couldn't move. After spending many sleepless nights with that face, even in the dark, Oscar could immediately recognize who the woman was. It was his mistress, whom he had developed secretly without his wife's knowledge.
Oscar wanted to immediately send the woman away, but his throat was dry, and words wouldn't come out of his mouth. Fortunately, before he could say anything, the woman was taken away by someone, and a middle-aged man sat down next to him.
Oscar Anderson did not know what was happening, but he wasn't in the mood to think about all that. Waves of relief rushed over him, like the opening of floodgates he had been holding for ten hours.
His wife, who may have noticed the unusual behaviour of her husband, turned around to see what was happening, but all she saw was her husband with a smile on his face and a middle-aged man sitting next to him, also smiling. Looking forward at the drama and then back at the faces of her husband and the strange man, she was immediately weirded out. She looked towards the stage where the old woman held the infant on top of her head as she prayed to God and gave up her life for the baby.
Then she looked at her husband and the man, whom she could only conclude was his assistant, acting weirdly. 'What's so funny about this scene? Is my husband stimulated by something?' She began to question the possibility of her husband being a lunatic. Fortunately, her attention did not remain on Oscar for long as she finally turned her attention to the little actor who was trying to climb a mountain.
"What do you want?" Oscar Anderson asked silently in the ear of the stranger. He had already figured it out—the woman who was his mistress was part of a trap set by someone to take advantage of him. Traditionally, although nobles couldn't marry more than one wife, it was popularly acceptable among noble circles for nobles to have more than one mistress, and this was common even among women. Unfortunately, Oscar Anderson was the only inheritor of the Earl's title. So, when he married into the Duke's family, in the balance of power, it was actually his wife who took the lead. He could not offend her by taking a mistress for himself, especially since his wife was actually a devout believer in Christ. She did not indulge or lose herself in lust and naturally expected the same from her husband.
For the longest time, in fact, since his marriage, Oscar Anderson had never tried to get himself a mistress. But once he came to the Bharatiya Empire, the loneliness of being in a foreign country where no one understood him, as well as feeling complacent due to the long distance, finally made him lose himself, and he had a relationship with a beautiful Romani woman who had just emigrated to the Bharatiya Empire.
The stranger sitting next to Oscar Anderson did not answer the question. Instead, he took out a small paper slip, only the size of a cheat sheet written by students to copy in exams, and quickly forced it into Oscar Anderson's hand before leaving the theatre.
Oscar Anderson looked dumbly at the paper, confused by the sudden departure of the mystery man, but his emotions were heightened too much for him to care about all of that. He waited for the drama to end in order to open the paper and read it.
"So this is the Bharatiya Empire's doing, huh," he muttered. He was feeling a little complicated and betrayed. He had a very good opinion about the Bharatiya Empire, but it looked like when it came to interests, the Bharatiya Empire would turn its face like all other nations immediately. Getting treated like a king seemed to have made him less cautious and reduced the wariness he should have maintained towards a foreign nation.
"Stay neutral in the war" was the only phrase mentioned in the paper. So he sadly nodded his head in acceptance. In fact, if the demand had been too extreme, like asking for the Swedish empire to ally with the Bharatiya Empire in the war, concluding a deal about the interests of Sweden at a lower price or anything of the sort, he would have immediately denied it, even if it meant losing his job as a diplomat, offending a ducal family, and losing all his dignity, possessions, and respect in society, but since the only requirement was for Sweden to remain neutral, which, to be honest, was Oscar Anderson's first choice unless the Dutch promised something worth offending the Bharatiya Empire for, he felt no pressure in accepting the conditions.
In a beverage house located on the main business street of Thiruvananthapuram,
Jan Kowalski was enjoying his cup of spicy mango Lassi, which he had taken a liking to. He was alone, looking at the busy commercial streets where people were extremely loud with their negotiations, feeling very calm in the chaos. However, his calmness was interrupted when a waiter suddenly approached him and handed him a block of bread.
Jan immediately frowned. "I did not order this. Have you made a mistake?" Normally, such things never happened to him, so he was confused.
The waiter, a tall Bharatiya boy with an intriguing smile, shook his head. "This bread is indeed served to you, sir. It is a courtesy of the house. Please do enjoy." Saying that, the waiter directly left.
Jan Kowalski was dumbfounded, not knowing what to do next. But it was not for long, as he shrugged, thinking it was just a mistake, and continued to gaze at the crowd as he finished drinking his beverage.
When he was about to leave, he remembered that a block of bread was placed right on his table. Although he did not want to eat the bread, he still felt a little pity letting it go to waste. So, he took out a slice of the bread and put it into his mouth. "Very good," he praised. But when he went for a second slice, he was horrified to discover that there was a small compartment within the bread, and the compartment was actually filled with a gold ornament.
Jan Kowalski quickly hid the necklace in his garments. By rough estimations alone, he concluded that the gold weighed at least 100 grams.
'Gulp!' Its value was nearly 4500 Varaha, a wealth equivalent to half his yearly salary. Not to mention, the same 4500 Varaha could buy a lot more in the Bharatiya Empire than in Europe, making it even more valuable. He suddenly became very excited, as he was recently running low on money, but being a diplomat, he knew that this situation was not normal.