The Dance of Time

Smiling—tiredly—Ajatasutra shrugged. "Well, yes. I've come something like seven hundred miles in less than two weeks, since I left the emperor. Even as much time as I've spent in the saddle in my life, my legs feel like they're about to fall off. Best we not discuss at all the state of my buttocks."

Once the emperor reaches the Yamuna. Since I left the emperor.

Lady Damodara's almost shivered, at the casual and matter-of-fact manner of those statements. When she'd last seen her husband, he'd been simply the man she'd known and come to love since their wedding. They'd been but teenagers, at the time. He, sixteen; and she, a year younger.

Now, today...

"Oh, forgot." Ajatasutra started digging in his tunic. "Rana Sanga—the emperor also, once he saw—asked me to bring you gifts. Nothing fancy, of course, traveling as lightly as I was."

His hand emerged, holding two small onions. One, he gave to Lady Sanga; the other, to Lady Damodara.

Rana Sanga's wife burst into tears. Lady Damodara just smiled.

She even managed to keep the smile on her face a minute later. Ajatasutra had addressed her as "Your Majesty" from the moment he arrived, and had done so throughout the long report he'd given them. But she hadn't really thought much of it. That just seemed part of the project of disguise and deception she'd been involved with for over a year, now. Hearing him—so casually, so matter-of-factly!—refer to her as the Empress to Lady Sanga, was a different thing altogether.

* * *

After Ajatasutra left her part of the stable, to confer with the soldiers in their own corner, Lady Damodara gave vent to her confusion and uncertainty.

"I don't feel any different."

Her companion smiled. Rana Sanga's wife had become Lady Damodara's close friend, over the past months. The closest friend she'd ever had, in fact.

"Oh, but you are. Your semi-divine aura is quite noticeable now."

"Even when I shit?" Lady Damodara pointed to a chamber pot not more than five feet away. "Damn this stable, anyway."

Sanga's wife grimaced. "Well. Maybe you need to work on that part. On the other hand, why bother? Before too long, you'll either be dead or be crapping in the biggest palace in the world. With fifty chambermaids to carry out the results, and twenty spies and three executioners to make sure they keep their mouths shut about the contents."

Lady Damodara laughed.

* * *

A few minutes later, hearing the soft laughter coming from the knot of soldiers in the corner of the stable, she frowned.

"My son's not over there, is he?" But, looking around, she spotted him playing with two of the other small boys in a different part of the stable. So, her frown faded.

Lady Sanga's frown, on the other hand, had deepened into a full scowl.

"No. But my son is."

* * *

"Only fifteen-to-one odds," said Khandik with satisfaction, "now that Ajatasutra's here."

Young Tarun shook his head. "Thirteen-to-one. Well. A bit more."

The glare bestowed upon him by the Ye-tai mercenary was a half-and-half business. On the one hand, it was unseemly for a mere stable-boy—a wretched Bengali, to boot—to correct his superior and elder. On the other hand...

"Thirteen-to-one," he said, with still greater satisfaction.

His two mates weren't even half-glaring. In fact, they were almost smiling.

Under normal circumstances, of course, thirteen-to-one odds would have been horrible. But those Ye-tai mercenaries were all veterans. The kind of fighting they were considering would not be the clash of huge armies on a great battlefield, where individual prowess usually got lost in the sheer mass of the conflict. No, this would be the sort of small-scale action out of which legends were made, because legends mattered.

The Mongoose was already a legend. His huge Roman companion wasn't, but they had no difficulty imagining him as such. "Bending horseshoes," with Anastasius in the vicinity, was not a phrase to express the impossible.

As for Ajatasutra...

"Some people think you're the best assassin in India," said one of the Ye-tai.

"Not any Marathas," came the immediate rejoinder. Smiling, Ajatasutra added: "But I think even Marathas might allow me the honor of second-best."

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Framed

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Chapter 29

The Iron Triangle

"It's just impossible," said Anna wearily, leaning her head against her husband's shoulder. "That great mass of people out there isn't really a city. It's a huge refugee camp, with more people pouring into it every day. Just when I think I've got one problem solved, the solution collapses under the weight of more refugees."

Calopodius stroked her hair, listening to the cannonade outside the bunker. The firing seemed a lot heavier than usual, on the Malwa side. He wondered if they might be getting nervous. By now, their spies were sure to have reported that a large Persian army had been camped briefly just across the river from the Iron Triangle.