"It must be unnerving," Ajatasutra said chuckling.
"What must be unnerving?" asked Narses irritably. "And why do you keep thinking such pointless chatter will help you win?" The old eunuch moved his bishop, taking the assassin's knight. "Check. It distracts you more than it does me. That's partly why you lose, nine games out of ten. The other part is because I'm smarter than you."
Ajatasutra didn't even glance at the chess board. His thin smile was still directed at Narses. "It must be unnerving to have Rana Sanga watching you the way he does, whenever you're in sight. Reminds me of a tiger, trying to decide if you're prey."
Narses' lips tightened, slightly. "He doesn't know anything. He only suspects."
"Just as I said. Trying to decide whether you're prey."
That was enough to make Narses scowl, although he still didn't look up from the board. "Why? Until he's sure he knows the truth, he won't do anything. He'd be too afraid to. And once he does discover the truth, why would he . . ."
His voice trailed off. Even Narses couldn't help but wince a little.
Ajatasutra chuckled again. "I will say you love playing with danger, old man. I'd never gamble at the odds you do. Yes, there's the chance that the fiercest warrior of Rajputana—not to mention its greatest king—might forgive you once he finds out that his wife and children, whom he thought murdered by bandits, are alive and well. Then again—"
Ajatasutra cleared his throat. "He might be a bit peeved at the man who had them kidnapped in the first place and faked the murders."
Narses pointed to the chessboard. "Check, I said."
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."
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."
Casually—not a trace of weakness in that grip—the Mongoose leaned his own imitation sword against a wall of the cellar. Then, with the same lean right hand, reached up and parted his coarse black hair. The scar beneath was quite visible. "Got that for trying."
Rajiv was as disturbed as he was exhilarated by his new-found wisdom. "I should stop . . ."
Almost angrily, his mother snapped: "Yes! Stop trying to imitate your father!" She pointed to the Mongoose with the short knife she used to cut onions. "Learn from him."
She went back to cutting onions. "You're not big enough. Never will be. Not so tall, not so strong. Maybe as fast, maybe not." The onion seemed to fly apart in her hand. "So what?"
Again, the knife, pointing like a finger. "Neither is he. But the Mongoose is still a legend."
The man so named chuckled. Harshly, as he did most things. "My name is Valentinian, and I'm just a soldier of Rome. I leave legends to those who believe in them. What I know, boy, is this. Learn from me instead of resisting me, and you'll soon enough gain your own fame. You're very good, actually. Especially for one so young."
Valentinian took the wooden sword back in his hand. "And now, you've rested enough. Back at it. And remember, this time—small strokes. Stop trying to fight as if you were a king of Rajputana. Fight like a miser hoarding his coins. Fight like me."
It was difficult. But Rajiv thought he made some progress, by the end of the session. He was finally beginning to understand—really understand—what made the Mongoose so dangerous. No wasted effort, no flamboyance, nothing beyond the bare minimum needed. But that—done perfectly.
The session finally over, the second epiphany came.
Rajiv stared at his mother. She was almost the opposite of his father. Where Rana Sanga was tall and mighty, she was short and plump. Where the father was still black-haired and handsome—had been, at least, until the Mongoose scarred his face in their famous duel—the mother was gray-haired and plain.
But he saw her. For the first time, really. As always, the baskets were now full—those to her right, of the prepared onions; those to her left, of the discarded peelings.
"This is how you cut onions."
"My boy too," she said calmly. "Yes. This is how I cut onions. And men are easier to cut than onions. If you don't think like a fool."
"Listen to your mother," said the Mongoose.
Later, in the evening, in the chamber they all used as a central salon, Valentinian complained with the same words. "Listen to your mother, you little brat!"
Baji gaped up at him cheerfully, in the manner of infants the world over. He said something more-or-less like: "Goo." Whatever the word meant, it was clearly not an indication that the infant intended to obey his mother's instructions to stop pestering the Roman soldier. In fact, Baji was tugging even more insistently on his sleeve.
"What does he want, anyway?" Valentinian demanded.
"Goo," Baji explained.
Dhruva laughed. "You spoil him, Valentinian! That's why he won't pay attention to me." She rose from her stool and came over to pluck her infant son out of Valentinian's lap.
Baji started wailing instantly.
"Spoil him, I say."
Perched on his own stool in the chamber, and looking much like a rhinoceros on the small item of furniture, Anastasius started laughing. The sound came out of his huge chest like so many rumbles.
Valentinian glared at his fellow Roman cataphract. "What's so damn funny?"
"Do you really need to ask?"
Lady Damodara came into the room. After taking in the scene, she smiled.
Valentinian transferred his glare to her. "You realize we're almost certainly doomed? All of us." He pointed a stiff finger at Baji, who was still wailing. "If we're lucky, they'll cut the brat's throat first."
"Valentinian!" Dhruva exclaimed. "You'll scare him!"
"No such luck," the Roman cataphract muttered. "Might shut him up. But the brat doesn't understand a word I'm saying."
He glared at Lady Damodara again. "Doomed," he repeated.
She shrugged. "There's a good chance, yes. But it's still a better chance than my husband would have had—and me and the children—if we'd done nothing. Either you Romans would have killed him because he wasn't a good enough general, or the Emperor of Malwa would have killed him because he was. This way there's at least a chance. A pretty good one, I think."
Valentinian wasn't mollified. "Narses and his damned schemes. If I survive this, remind me to cut his throat." As piously as he could, he added: "He's under a death sentence in Rome, you know. The rotten traitor. Just be doing my duty."
Anastasius had never quite stopped rumbling little laughs. Now, the rumbles picked up their pace. "Should have thought of that sooner!"
There was no answer to that, of course. So Valentinian went back to glaring at the infant.
"And besides," Lady Damodara said, still smiling, "this way we have some entertainment. Dhruva, let your child go."
As pleasantly as the words were said, Lady Damodara was one of the great noblewomen of the Malwa empire. More closely related to the emperor, in fact, than her husband. So, whatever her misgivings, Dhruva obeyed.
Set back on the floor, Baji immediately began crawling toward Valentinian.
"Goo!" he said happily.
Still later, in the chamber they shared as a bedroom, Anastasius started rumbling again.
Not laughs, though. Worse. Philosophical musings.
"You know, Valentinian, if you'd stop being annoyed by these minor problems—"
"I kind of like the brat, actually," Valentinian admitted. He was lying on his bed, his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
"It'd be better to say you dote on the little creature." Anastasius chuckled. "But that's not even a minor problem. I was talking about the other things. You know—the danger of being discovered—hiding out the way we are here in their own capital city—swarmed by hordes of Ye-tai barbarians and other Malwa soldiers, flayed and impaled and God knows what else by mahamimamsa torturers. Those problems."
Valentinian lifted his head. "You call those minor problems?"
"Philosophically speaking, yes."
"I don't want to hear—"
"Oh, stop whining." Anastasius sat up on his bed across the chamber and spread his huge hands. "If you refuse to consider the ontology of the situation, at least consider the practical aspect."
"What in God's name are you talking about?"
"It's obvious. One of two things happens. We fall prey to a minor problem, in which case we're flayed and impaled and gutted and God knows what else—but, for sure, we're dead. Follow me so far?"
Valentinian lowered his head, grunting. "An idiot can follow you so far. What's the point?"
"Or we don't fall prey to a minor problem. In which case, we survive the war. And then what? That's the real problem—the major problem—because that's the one that takes real thinking and years to solve."
Valentinian grunted again. "We retire on a pension, what else? If the general's still alive, he'll give us a good bonus, too. Enough for each of us to set up on a farm somewhere in . . ."
"In Thrace?" Anastasius rumbled another laugh. "Not even you, Valentinian! Much less me, half-Greek like I am and given to higher thoughts. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life raising pigs?"
Silence came from the other bed.
"What's so fascinating about that ceiling, anyway?" One of the huge hands waved about the chamber. "Look at the rest of it. We're in the servant quarters—the old servant quarters, in the rear of the palace—and it's still fancier than the house of the richest peasant in Thrace."
"So?"
"So why settle for a hut when we can retire to something like this?"
Anastasius watched Valentinian carefully, now. Saw how the eyes never left the ceiling, and the whipcord chest rose and fell with each breath.
"All right," Valentinian said finally. "All right. I've thought about it. But . . ."
"Why not? Who better than us? You know how these Hindus will look at it. The ones from a suitable class, anyway. The girls were rescued from a brothel. Nobody knows who the toddler's father is. Hopelessly polluted, both of them. The kid, too."
Valentinian scowled, at the last sentence.
More cheerfully still, seeing that scowl, Anastasius continued. "But we're just Thracian soldiers. What do we care about that crap? And—more to the point—who better for a father-in-law than the peshwa of Andhra?"
Valentinian's scowl only seemed to deepen. "What makes you think he'd be willing? The way they look at things, we're about as polluted as the girls."
"Exactly! That's what I meant, when I said you had to consider the ontological aspects of the matter. More to the point, consider this: who's going to insult the girls—or the kid—with him for a father and us for the husbands?"
Anastasius waited, serenely. It didn't take more than a minute or so before Valentinian's scowl faded away and, in its place, came the smile that had terrified so many men over the years. That lean, utterly murderous, weasel grin.
"Not too many. And they'll be dead. Right quick."
"You see?"
As easily and quickly as he could when he wanted to, Valentinian was sitting up straight. "All right. We'll do it."
Anastasius cocked his head a little. "Any problems with the philosophy of the matter?"
"What the hell does that—"
"The kid's a bastard and the girl's a former whore with a face scarred by a pimp. If any of that's a problem for you, I'll take her and you can have the other sister, Lata."
Valentinian hissed. "You stay the hell away from Dhruva."
"Guess not," said Anastasius placidly. "We have a deal. See how easy it is, when you apply philosophical reasoning?"