As he waited in the ante-chamber, a glimmer of light caught his eye. Even the chandelier overhead paled by comparison to the jewels that adorned Dhritarashtra’s crown. Sitting atop an ornately chiselled granite slab, the rubies of the crown glistened with an unearthly charm. Ah, I remember this. After Dhritarashtra had been told by his Vedan priest that the sun in his horoscope was angry¸ the King had all the emeralds, topaz and diamonds that had decorated the Kaurava crown for centuries, cast away and replaced with rubies. Shakuni compared it to the crown of the Emperor of the South, whom he had seen at a tourney three summers past. That had been a simple band of iron, embossed all around with carvings of creepers, its only adornment. The Greeks were even more modest. The only redeeming quality of those godforsaken Mlecchás. Their Archon, Kalyavan, wore a wreath of olive leaves. It was only the Riverlands that revelled in ostentation. Fools. It’s not what is on the crown that makes a King but what is under it.

He walked to the balcony, his limping leg twitching uncomfortably under him. The ancient city of Hastina spread out below him, stretching to the horizon. A rose-coloured wall cut through the city to encircle the Crowns. If only the eyes could be stopped by the wall. For no matter how beautiful a maiden, she still shat the same ugly thing as a leper. Hastinapur was no different. In the shadow of the rose walls of the Crown, festered the squalid, stinking houses of the Crows – the Resht District. It was a giant boiling cauldron of maggots and disease, where the Reshts nurtured false hopes of a better life in their one-storeyed shacks.

Ever since the Prince had crowned that upstart Karna as Highmaster of Anga, there’d been reports of mass gatherings of the lowborns in the Crows; more than he would have liked. Just last week, two Reshts had dared to enter the nature ceremony in the Temple of Prakioni, in defiance of the law. It had been blasphemous of course, nevertheless, their treatment by the Namins and the Ksharjas had been…excessive. Shakuni could have tortured the Reshts to reveal their plans, their organization, and whether the rumours of the resurrection of the Red Blades was true. For Shakuni was not just the Queen’s only surviving brother but also the Master of Peace of the Union. A step down from the Prince of Gandhar certainly, but definitely a promotion from tortured prisoner of war. It’s all about the right perspective.

But no, why make my job easier? The culprits had been lynched and now the curfews were back. And Shakuni had a bunch of frightened Drachma merchants in the Crows on his hands, where ghettos of Reshts squatted around the modest factories of the nobles like mushrooms around lotuses. Pathetic.