Shyam, for his part, was grateful for anything that interrupted the tedium. He had spent the past seven days on the night shift at the Kandar vehicle checkpoint, and it felt like a hardship post. Naturally, their stone-faced superior had been at pains to emphasize how important, how crucial, how vital in every way, the assignment was. The Kandar checkpoint was just up the road from the Stone Palace, where the government was holding some sort of hush-hush gathering. So security was tight, and this was the only real road that connected the palace to the rebel-held region just to the north. The guerrillas of the Kagama Liberation Front knew about the checkpoints, however, and kept away. As did most everyone else: between the rebels and the anti-rebel campaigns, more than half the villagers to the north had fled the province. And the farmers who stayed in Kenna had little money, which meant that the guards could not expect much by way of “tips.” Nothing ever happened, and his wallet stayed thin. Was it something he had done in a previous life?

The truck came into view; two shirtless young men were in the cab. The roof was down. One of the boys was now standing up, pouring a sudsy can of beer over his chest and cheering. The truck—probably loaded with some poor farmer’s kurakkan, or root crops—was rounding the bend at upward of eighty miles per hour, as fast as the groaning engine would go. American rock music, from one of the island’s powerful AM stations, blared.

The yelps and howls of merriment echoed through the night. They sounded like a pack of drunken hyenas, Shyam thought miserably. Penniless joyriders: they were young, wasted, didn’t give a damn about anything. In the morning they would, though. The last time this happened, several days earlier, the truck’s owner got a visit later that morning from the youths’ shamefaced parents. The truck was returned, along with many, many bushels of kurakkan to make amends for whatever damage had been done. As for the kids, well, they couldn’t sit without wincing, not even on a cushioned car seat.

Now Shyam stepped into the road with his rifle. The truck kept barreling forward, and he stepped back. No use being stupid about it. Those kids were blind drunk. A beer can was lobbed into the air, hitting the ground with a thunk. From the sound, it was a full one.

The truck veered around the first knife rest, and then the second knife rest, and kept going.

“Let Shiva tear them limb from limb,” Arjun said. He scrubbed at his bushy black hair with his stubby fingertips. “No need to radio the backstop. You can hear these kids for miles.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Shyam said. They were not traffic cops, and the rules did not permit them to open fire on just any vehicle that failed to stop.