The Dance of Time

It was possible there'd simply been a quarrel amongst the slaves. But where would a slave have gotten the blade to cut a throat so neatly? The only tools they had were picks and shovels.

So it was probably treachery-and on the part of the Ye-tai. Some of them, at least.

Rajiv had to find out. He hadn't really followed the progress of the tu

If the tu

This could be bad. Very bad.

Rajiv moved into the next cellar, slowly and carefully.

It seemed to Mirabai that it took her forever to get out of the cellars. Looking back on it later, she realized it had really taken very little time at all. The lamp had been bright enough to enable her to walk quickly, if not run-and her brother's instructions had worked perfectly.

The most surprising thing about it all was that she got more scared when it was over. She'd never in her life seen that look on her mother's face. Her mother never seemed to worry about anything.

"Get Kandhik," Valentinian hissed to Anastasius. "Break all his bones if you have to."

Anastasius didn't have to break any of Ye-tai mercenary leader's bones. As huge and powerful as he was, a simple twisting of the arm did the trick.

Kandhik massaged his arm. "I don't know anything," he insisted. The Ye-tai was scowling ferociously, but he wasn't scowling directly at Anastasius-and he was doing everything in his power not to look at Valentinian at all.

The Mongoose was a frightening man under any circumstances. Under these circumstances, with that weasel smile on his face and a sword in his hand, he was terrifying. Kandhik was neither cowardly nor timid, but he knew perfectly well that either of the Roman cataphracts could kill him without working up a sweat.

Anastasius might need to take a deep breath. Valentinian wouldn't.

"Don't know anything, " he insisted.

Sanga's wife and Lata came into the chamber. So did Lady Damodara.

"Three of the Ye-tai are missing," the girl said. "The other two are asleep in their chamber."

Although Ye-tai were sometimes called "White Huns," they were definitely Asiatic in their ancestry. Their only similarity to Europeans was that their features were somewhat bonier than those of most steppe-dwellers. Their complexion was certainly not pale-but, at that moment, Kandhik's face was almost ashen.

"Don't know anything," he repeated, this time pleading the words.

"He's telling the truth," Valentinian said abruptly. He touched the tip of the sword to Kandhik's throat. "Stay here and watch over the women. Do everything right and nothing wrong, and you'll live to see the end of this day. If my mood doesn't get worse."

With that, he turned and left the room. Anastasius lumbered after him.

Dhruva came in with the baby. She and her sister stared at each other, their eyes wide with fright.

Not as wide as Mirabai's, however. "What should we do, Mother?"

Sanga's wife looked around, rubbing her hands up and down her hips. The familiar gesture calmed Mirabai, a bit.

"May as well go to the kitchen and wait," she said. "I've got some onions to cut. Some leeks, too."

"I agree," said Lady Damodara.

After several minutes of listening from the darkness of the adjoining cellar, Rajiv understood exactly what was happening. The three Ye-tai in the next cellar were, in fact, pla

And, now, it was done. But one of the Ye-tai was having second thoughts.

"-never dealt with anvaya-prapta sachivya. I have! And I'm telling you that unless we have a guarantee of some-"

"Shut up!" snarled one of the others. "I'm sick of hearing you brag about the times you hobnobbed with the Malwa. What 'guarantees'?"

The quarrel went back over familiar ground. Rajiv himself was inclined to agree with the doubter. He'd no more trust the Malwa royal clan than he would a scorpion. But he paid little attention to the rest of it.

Whether or not the doubting Ye-tai was worried about the reaction of the anvaya-prapta sachivya, it was clear enough he was weakening. He didn't really have any choice, after all, now that the deed was effectively done. Soon enough, he'd give up his objections and the three Ye-tai would be gone.

Then… within a day, Lady Damodara's palace would be swarmed by Emperor Skandagupta's troops. And the secret escape tu

It was up to Rajiv, then. One thirteen-year-old boy, unarmed, against three Ye-tai mercenaries. Who were…

He peeked around the corner again.

Definitely armed. Each of them with a sword.

But Rajiv didn't give their weapons more than a glance. He'd already peeked around that corner before, twice, and studied them well enough. This time he was examining the body of the second Bihari miner, whom the mercenaries had cast into a corner of the cellar after cutting his throat also.

Not the body, actually. Rajiv was studying the miner's tools, which the Ye-tai had tossed on top of his corpse.

A pick and a shovel. A short-handled spade, really. Both of the tools were rather small, not so much because most of the Biharis were small but simply because there wasn't much room in the tu

That was good, Rajiv decided. Small tools-at least for someone his size-would make better weapons than large ones would have.

Until he met the Mongoose, Rajiv would never have considered the possibility that tools might make weapons. He'd been raised a Rajput prince, after all. But the Mongoose had hammered that out of him, like many other things. He'd even insisted on teaching Rajiv to fight with big kitchen ladles.

Rajiv's mother had been mightily amused. Rajiv himself had been mortified-until, by the fourth time the Mongoose knocked him down, he'd stopped sneering at ladles.

He decided he'd start with the pick. It was a clumsier thing than the spade, and he'd probably lose it in the first encounter anyway.

There was no point in dawdling. Rajiv gave a last quick glance at the three oil lamps perched on a ledge. No way to knock them off, he decided. Not spaced out the way there were.

Besides, he didn't think fighting in the dark would be to his advantage anyway. That would be a clumsy business, and if there was one thing the Mongoose had driven home to him, it was that "clumsy" and "too damn much sweat" always went together.

"Fight like a miser," he whispered to himself. Then, came out of his crouch and sprang into the cellar.

He said nothing; issued no war cry; gave no speech. The Mongoose had slapped that out of him also. Just went for the pick, with destruction in his heart.