Painful tears rolled down Misery’s cheeks, but she managed to salute Balram all the same.

‘Storm, attend to me,’ Captain Rain announced, patting Misery’s back. ‘You shouldn’t have laughed.’

‘Me? Not at all. I would never laugh at the misery of another.’

‘Ten rounds.’

‘Fuck!’ Storm grunted and stepped out to accompany Misery on her rounds. She turned to glance at Krishna. ‘The trip was…entertaining, Lord Krishna. My thanks.’

But Krishna wasn’t listening. He was staring at the faint spirals of smoke rising above Satyabhama’s head. She is smoking. This can’t be good.

II

Krishna negotiated the stairs of the Third Sister – a height only Daevas were fit to climb. The food in his stomach made zealous enquiries about emerging in a torrent and his throat seemed rather inclined to grant the request. He paused, looking around warily. He saw the burnt bodies impaled on sharpened stakes at different places along the Third Sister, their elbows drawn up tight in front of their faces, as if to fight off the fire that had consumed them. Vachan-breakers. Their bodies would serve as a deterrent to all his people, to even think about spilling the secret of Dvarka. But it did not help his stomach.

The sky was bluer than the Mathuran sigil, fitting neatly over the overcrowded city behind which the Mother Yami sluggishly flowed. Mathura fell away behind him in a vast arc as he finally reached Satyabhama, resting as if she were in a garden, her untied hair shining brown in the sun, pipe in hand. A kohl-streaked tear, dark as death, traced a path against her fair cheek. The wrinkled toxic stick in her hand had an overpowering stench.

Many bards had attempted to describe Satyabhama, but they had all failed. Perhaps it was the sheer contradictions of her personality – the stern unforgiving ruthless warrior and the Mother Patron of a hundred orphaned girls; a beautiful damsel with lips patted with crushed rose petals till they were scarlet as blood, and a scarred woman with not a shred of care for her callused palms.