‘Not the first time,’ Satyabhama said. ‘Remember last winter the wind carried one of their flaming stones into the Market Square and set afire the goldsmith’s shop? Molten gold floated in our gutters. Many of the homeless became Lords that day, leaving us at the mercy of the God of Market Forces.’

Krishna would not have been surprised if there was in reality such a God worshipped by the Mathurans. Mathura was a speck of a city, humble and unassertive. For its sigil, it had a Cow. It was not proud, like the Lion of the Magadhan Empire in the South, nor did it have illustrious allies like the Eagle of the Hastina Union in the North. It did not rule the sea like the Swan of Kalinga. Nor did it have vast fertile lands to graze their herds, like the Stag of Panchal. Yet the Cow was richer than them all. A City of Ironies, my Mathura.

‘Ah, it landed in the settlement you erected in the Western section last summer,’ Krishna said, tracing the projectile with his eye-glass. ‘I liked that idea. Do you think the Magadhans figured out it was a trick?’

‘That we place straw soldiers and empty huts by the lowest points of Third Sister to fool them into concentrating their attack there? Maybe. Does not seem to deter them though.’

‘Patience is our virtue. Persistence is theirs.’

Satyabhama turned away. ‘Well, my patience is at an end. I think I’ll retire to my chambers. I have to—’

Before she could finish, distant roars down by the Third Sister snatched back their attention. It seemed that someone more thoughtful amongst the Magadhans had decided to build ramps against the Third Sister, instead of climbing her with hooks.

It had, of course, been tried before. The Mathuran Republican Army had simply shrugged and sent barrels of oil rolling down the ramp in grisly greeting. The aftermath of the explosion of those ramps had taken the Mathurans months to mop up. Rinsing a city after a battle was a tiresome, thankless and ugly business. But the Mathurans had perfected it with practice.

For the three-walled City of Mathura had withstood many assaults in its short, crowded history as a Republic. Ramps, siege towers, munitions and hordes, fire and steel, the Magadhans had brought them all to the Three Sisters, but Mathura had never been sacked by the Empire. Not once.

And this was yet another irony of the legacy of the Republic. The Emperor who now wanted to bring the Sisters down was the very man who had built the walls two decades ago. The Three Sisters had been a gift from the Emperor to Kans, the husband of his twin daughters, and King of the erstwhile Mathura Kingdom. Krishna had been a cowherd then.

But times change.

Now Kans was dead; Mathura was a Republic; Krishna held its reins; and the Emperor had set out to destroy his own creation, seeking vengeance on the man who had destroyed his family.