The Dance of Time

Smiling, Ajatasutra moved up a pawn to block the bishop. "Granted, you had them hidden in a safe place afterward. Even in a comfortable place. Granted, also, that the Malwa had ordered you to have them actually murdered, so looking at it from one angle you saved their lives. But, then again, that brings up the next problem. What will Lord Damodara—Malwa's best general and a blood relative of the Emperor—"

"Distant relative," Narses growled.

"Not distant at all," the assassin pointed out mildly, "if your scheme works. And stop trying to change the subject. What will Damodara think when he discovers you corralled his wife into the kidnapping? And thereby put his children in mortal danger?"

Narses took the pawn with the bishop. "Mate in four moves. I didn't corral the woman into providing Sanga's family with a hideaway. That was Lady Damodara's idea in the first place."

"So? When all the rocks are turned over and your machinations exposed to the light of day, the fact remains that Damodara and Rana Sanga will discover that you manipulated and cajoled their wives into the riskiest conspiracy imaginable—and, unfortunately for you, both men dote on those wives."

Casually, Ajatasutra reached out and toppled his king. "I concede. So when the wives bat their eyelashes at their husbands and look demure—like only Indian women can do!—and insist that they were pawns in your hands, which way you do you think the lightning will strike?"

Finally, Narses looked up. His eyes were half-slits; which, as wrinkled as his face was anyway, made the eunuch look more like a reptile than usual. "And why are you so amused? I remind you that—every step of the way—it was you who did the actual work."

"True. Another game?" The assassin began setting up the pieces again. "But I'm in prime physical condition, and I made sure I've got the fastest horse in Bharakuccha. You aren't, and you didn't. That mule you favor probably couldn't outrun an ox, much less Rajput cavalry."

"I like mules." The board now set up—Narses playing the white pieces, this time—the eunuch advanced his queen's pawn. "And I've got no intention of running anyway, no matter how the lightning strikes."

The assassin cocked his head. "No? Why not?"

Narses looked aside, staring at a blank wall in the chambers he shared with Ajatasutra. All the walls in the palace suite were blank, except for those in the assassin's bedroom. The old eunuch liked it that way. He claimed that useless decorations impeded careful thought.

"Hard to explain. Call it my debt to Theodora, if you will."

Ajatasutra's eyebrows lifted. Although his gaze never left the wall, Narses sensed his puzzlement. "I betrayed her, you know, for the sake of gaining an empire."

"Yes, I was there. And?"

"And so now that I'm doing it again—"

"You're not betraying her."

Narses waved his hand impatiently. "I'm not betraying my current employers, either. But I'm still gambling everything on the same game. The greatest game there is. The game of thrones."

The assassin waited. Sooner or later, the explanation would come. For all the eunuch's acerbic ways, Ajatasutra had become something of a son to him.

It took perhaps three minutes, during which time Narses' eyes never left the blank wall.

"You can't cheat forever," he said finally. "I'll win or I'll lose, but I won't run again. I owe that much to Theodora."

Ajatasutra looked at the same wall. There still wasn't anything there.

"I've been with you too long. That actually almost makes sense."

Narses smiled. "Don't forget to keep feeding your horse."

Kausambi, the Malwa capital

At the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers

Less than a week after his thirteenth birthday, Rajiv knew the worst despair and the two greatest epiphanies of his short life. One coming right after the other.

Gasping for breath, he lowered himself onto a stool in one of the cellars beneath Lady Damodara's palace. He could barely keep the wooden sword in his hand, his grip was so weak.

"I'll never match my father," he whispered, despairingly.

"Don't be an idiot," came the harsh voice of his trainer, the man he called the Mongoose. "Of course, you won't. A man as powerful as Rana Sanga doesn't come to a nation or tribe more than once a century."

"Listen to him, Rajiv," said his mother. She had watched this training session, as she had watched all of them, from her stool in a corner. With, as always, the stool surrounded by baskets into which she placed the prepared onions. Cutting onions relaxed the woman, for reasons no one else had ever been able to determine.

The epiphany came, then.

"You couldn't match him, either."

The narrow, weasel face of the Mongoose twisted with humor. "Of course I couldn't! Never thought to try—except, like a damn fool, at the very end."