Eklavvya shook his head as if Shishupal were a pervert. ‘Hunger for answers, Shishupal. Hello, Anayasa,’ he said by way of greeting.

‘About time you showed up. You know you could just pay me and I could finish the war with one swipe of my knife. Krishna’s head will be yours.’

‘Why, thank you for your kind offer, overestimation of your abilities though it may be but our Emperor seems to harbour some notions of honour.’

‘Childish nonsense.’

‘Couldn’t agree more.’

Shishupal grabbed Eklavvya’s elbow and whispered in his ear, ‘Who is she? Why does she know who we are?’

‘Our tour guide. Of a sort,’ he added. ‘Eklavvya got her reference from a friend. She will point us to the goat trail that will help us get to our destination swiftly; where we will find our man Gajraj.’

‘Where? Who? What are you talking about?’

‘Shishupal was right. We will not find anything here. So, we’re taking a trip into the lion’s den, or rather to the cowshed…’

‘Where?’ snarled Shishupal, losing patience.

‘Why…to Mathura, of course.’

I

‘Make way!’ a Mathuran guard shouted as he rode before the litter. ‘Make way for the Princess of Hastinapur!’

She peered out of the palanquin at the column of mounted guards trotting beside her in a cloud of red dust. The Mathuran sigil of the cow stood out clearly on their blue cloaks, worn over embroidered tunics of linen. One of them glanced sharply at her, requesting her to stay shielded behind the curtains of the palanquin. Groaning in mild frustration, Draupadi fell back against the cushions.

Mathura was a strange city, Draupadi reflected. It was not as populous as she had thought it would be, for all the rumours of bustling trade she had heard. Even so, Mathura’s physicality, personality and psyche were singularly unique in the Riverlands. Despite its tiny size, one felt safe inside it. To say the city was walled was an understatement. Concentric rings of city walls called the Three Sisters, encircled Mathura, dividing it into three main districts. In her education of the place by Yudhistir, who liked to talk of cities and governance, she had come to learn more about Mathura than she knew of Kampilya. The First District that lay inside the First Sister or Iron Curfew, had the Mathuran Keep, the Senate House, and houses of Senators and their staff. The Second District lay between the Iron Curfew and the Second Sister, and had places of commerce, the houses of the nobility, wealthy merchants, and landowners, as well as gambling houses and the like. The Third District lay next to the City Wall or the Third Sister, where the poor lived.