‘King! Would he refuse me if I challenged him to a duel?’ Caani asked, flexing his muscles.

Nala was horrified. ‘Please, Brother. It doesn’t work like that here. And Yudhistir is not the future King. It’s Prince Duryodhan.’

‘Who is that now? Will he be there?’

‘Caani, please,’ Nala hissed, worried, wondering if it had been a good idea to bring his lovable but brutish siblings here. ‘The people here decide Kings on the basis of blood. They do not respect strength as we do. If you go to challenge him, he won’t even look at you; his guards will arrest you and you will rot in iron chains in their underground prisons.’

‘Er Fedur! He wouldn’t do that. It would shame him before his people,’ Caani said, confidence wavering.

‘Think about it, Caani. The Hastina has had one ruling bloodline for the last six hundred years. You think it is because of their wrestling abilities?’

Caani grunted and turned away without a word.

‘City people are twisted,’ Skruath said, shaking his head in dismay. ‘They wouldn’t last a day in the forest.’

And you wouldn’t last a day in the city. And the world is better for it.

II

There was a sad truth about family. When far from them, you longed for them; with them, you remembered the reasons you went away in the first place. Put simply, Nala thought his brothers impossible. Caani’s ambitious challenges aside, Skruath wanted to go hunt peacocks in Kingswood, Iweeth wanted to claim the innkeeper’s wife, and the rest of his brothers wanted to visit pillow houses without a single coin in their purses.

Let them get arrested on their own, Nala thought, slinking off to sulk. He skirted the crowded Trader Track and took a detour into the woods. He preferred the silent company of the forest. The trees in the North had a different kind of wood than what he was used to in the South. Untouched for thousands of years, this was the wood of stubborn dispassionate trees. Nala decided to sit against one of these old sentinels, in silent contemplation, away from his brothers, who refused to be awed by his knowledge of alchemy or history. He missed Varcin.

There came a faint sobbing. Nala ignored it at first but the sound grew persistent. Now this was a conundrum. A scream would have been clear, concise and commanding. You did not approach a scream; you ran away from it. But a sob was altogether different. You never knew if you would run into a rich old man in need of heroic assistance to cross a bridge. ‘Erm... hello?’ Nala called out.

‘Who’s there?’ The voice sounded like rocks breaking.

‘A passer-by.’ Nala chose his words carefully even as he followed the voice to its source.