The Dance of Time

For his part, Sanga grunted sourly. The look he gave Narses was more sour still. The Rajput king was still angry at the Roman traitor for the way he'd manipulated all of them. But after he'd learned from Narses that the eunuch had been instructed by Skandagupta and Great Lady Sati to murder his family outright, his sheer fury toward him had dissipated.

He didn't doubt the eunuch was telling the truth, either. Link was the ultimate source of that plot, and Sanga had met the monster. The plot Narses described was exactly the sort of thing it would have designed. It was cold-blooded beyond any sense of the term "cold" that either a reptile or a glacier would have understood.

Narses glared at the radio apparatus. "Maybe we could just use the telegraph—"

But he was already shaking his own head when Damodara interrupted him. "No point in that," the new emperor said. "Link will expect a radio transmission also. The fact that none took place last night will make it suspicious already. Perhaps there was a thunderstorm, of course, even if that's unlikely this time of year. Two nights in a row, impossible. It will immediately known something is wrong."

The eunuch took a deep, almost shuddering breath. "Damnation. It never occured to me that she might personally take the transmissions."

Damodara shrugged heavily. "There's a logic to it. I always wondered, a bit, why we were putting so much effort into these huge radio towers. The telegraph works well enough, for most purposes—and has fewer security problems. Now I know. Look where they are: Kausambi, the Punjab, and here. Nowhere else."

"Are we sure of that?" asked Sanga.

"Yes," growled Narses. "That much I am sure of. They're planning two more. One in Amaravati and one in Tamralipti. But they haven't even started building them yet."

"It makes perfect sense, Sanga," Damodara continued. "The basic function of these towers is to enable Link to control the empire. Well, not 'control' it so much as enable it to be sure if rebellion has begun."

Narses was still glaring at the apparatus. "I fooled that stinking bitch once. I bet I can..."

The words trailed off.

"Don't be stupid, old man," he muttered, to himself as much as to the other men in the room. "First, you don't know how to use the gadget. Even if you tried to learn—in a few hours?—you'd fumble something. The bitch would know right away someone other than one of her operators was at the other end. And even if you could do it, the last time you weren't trying to lie to her."

Sanga frowned at the door. "If we calmed down the operator..."

But, like Narses, he rebutted his own half-advanced plan. "Impossible. There'd be some sign of his agitation. Nothing we'd notice—or he himself, even—but the monster would."

He ran fingers through his thick, still-black hair. "Yes, that explains the radio towers. The telegraph is now too common, too widely spread. There's no way she could personally monitor even most of the transmissions, much less all of them. But with a few towers, located only in the empire's critical regions, she can. And there is no way—no way—to lie to her. To it, that is both greater and less than human."

He fell silent. Damodara rose from the chair he'd been sitting on and began pacing. He, also, was silent.

* * *

Eventually, Narses spoke.

"No help for it, then. We were planning to begin the march upcountry tomorrow, anyway. We'll just have to send telegraph messages saying there's a terrible—very unseasonal—storm, and the radio won't work for a while. She'll suspect something, of course. But with the problems she has in the Punjab anyway, she won't know."

He spread his hands. "I grant you, it won't buy us more than a few days. But it's the best we can do."

Damodara stopped his pacing. "No."

He strode over to the apparatus, moving almost eagerly. "Your man Ajatasutra had it right. Then—and now. We will do this like an assassin, not a torturer. Quick and deadly, in the sunlight, not lingering over it in a cellar."

Narses frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"

Sanga was frowning also. Suddenly, his brow cleared, and he barked a laugh. Again, hissing its way like a snake, the blade came out of the scabbard.

"Yes!" the Rajput king bellowed. He tilted the sword toward Damodara in a salute. "Emperor of Malwa! True and pure!"

Narses looked from one to the other. "Have you both gone mad?"

Damodara gave him an impassive look.

"Ah. Sorry. Your Majesty, have you gone mad?"

"I don't believe so," replied the new emperor cheerily. "And if I am, you have only yourself to blame. Aren't you the one who told me, after all, that there is another radio in India?"

After a second, Narses shot to his feet. "You're out of your fucking mind!"

The look Sanga gave him was not impassive in the least. Even Narses shrank a little.

"Ah. Sorry. Your Majesty, I submit to you that you need to consider the possibility that when the traitors substituted the false emperor in the crib of your grandfather, that they also poisoned him."