‘But…you are mine…’ Duryodhan snarled as he clambered up, wiping blood from his mouth. ‘I am going to marry you,’ he promised her. ‘I swear it by the blood of Kuru that flows in my veins. Even if it is a decade from now, one day you will be mine. You are my Mati.’

The hilt of her dagger caught Duryodhan above the eye with a hollow ping and knocked him half senseless. She frowned as she stepped forward. Planting her boot on his hand, she ground it under her heel. ‘No, I am the Black Swan.’ Light from the flames in the distance flickered across Mati’s dark face, yellow, orange and red, the colours of fire and vengeance. She touched two fingers to her forehead. ‘May the Waves Carry You.’

She turned to Saham Dev’s men. ‘Make sure he is alive when you toss him into the river.’

5 A long scarf like cloth.

6 Traditional piece of head jewelry worn at the parting of the hair.

Interlude

I

As they trudged up the mountain, beyond which the House of Saptarishi supposedly existed, they passed over and around trees that looked like moss-slung giants, maimed and misshapen, with tentacles for roots, under which little orchids blossomed. Parshuram walked ahead of Nala, climbing the slope against a backdrop of a misty sky, where the Kasmira peaks whittled out of ice, were briefly visible above the vapour. Mist enveloped her, flowing down the great flanks of the slopes to attack her like some mystical water creatures.

‘The tragedy at the swayamvar was lamentable,’ Parshuram droned on, still discussing gossip from faraway lands, as he had been doing ever since they had left the hermitage. ‘But for the Princess to have married all five brothers...’ he shook his head in deep dismay. ‘It hardly bodes well for the future Queen of the Union to be a harlot. But then again, their mother Kunti is no saint. If only you knew the things I did,’ Parshuram laughed. ‘I definitely see her hand in this.’

Nala was barely listening. She was still trying to desperately come to terms with the fact that Parshuram was employed by the Saptarishis! She thought the kingmakers had long fallen from their pedestals. Meru’s teachers knew nothing then. But could she really begrudge them their ignorance? She herself had spent almost a year with Acharya Parshuram, yet she realised she barely knew anything about him.

They reached the top of the slope they had been climbing, from where they could see the City of Lakes spread below them. But it was what was above them that suddenly changed Nala’s mood. Prakioni and Vayu had drawn a rainbow in a perfection of colours in the dreary sky. She adored rainbows. It was fireworks without smoke, order born out of the chaos of rain. Nala smiled.