The Dance of Time

spike?'

Toramana shook his head. 'Bit of a nuisance, that. It's garam, don't forget.'

Sanga made a face. 'Flies.'

'A horde of them. Even more than those old women. I think a clear jar will do fine.' The Ye-tai commander finally lowered the head. 'I promised him he'd be at the wedding. I made no guarantees he'd be able to flatter the bride.'

* * *

By sundown, Sanga was satisfied that all the mahaveda and mahamimamsa in the city had been tracked down and slaughtered. There might be a handful surviving in a corner here and there. Bharakuccha was a huge city, after all.

But, he doubted it-and knew for a certainty that even if there were, they wouldn't survive long anyway. The Mahaveda cult had never sunk roots into India's masses. Had never, for that matter, even tried to win any popular support. It was a sect that depended entirely on the favor of the powerful. That favor once withdrawn-here, with a vengeance-the cult was as helpless as a mouse in a pen full of raptors.

Most of the time, the Rajputs hadn't even needed to hunt down the priests and torturers. At least a third of the populace was still Maratha. The majority of the inhabitants might not have hated them as much, but they hated them nonetheless. The only face the cult had ever turned to the city's poor was that of the tithe-collector. And a harsh and unyielding one, at that. Most of the priests and mahamimamsa who went under the swords of the Rajputs were hauled to them by the city's mobs.

* * *

The telegraph and radio stations were secured almost immediately. Ajatasutra's assassins had seen to the first, with the telegraph operators whom Narses had already suborned.

The Ye-tai commander of the unit guarding the radio station had not been privy to Toramana's plans. But the Ye-tai general had selected the man carefully. He was both smart and ambitious. It hadn't taken him more than thirty seconds to realize which way the new wind was blowing-and that it was blowing with all the force of a monsoon. By the time Toramana and Damodara got to the radio station, the operators had all been arrested and were being kept in an empty chamber in the palace.

Damodara studied them. Huddled in a corner, squatting, the radio operators avoided his gaze. Several of them were trembling.

'Don't terrify them any further,' he instructed Toramana's lieutenant. 'And give them plenty of food and water. By tomorrow, I'll need at least one of them to be cooperative.'

'Yes, Lord.'

Damodara gave him an impassive look. It didn't take the lieutenant-smart man-more than half a second to remember the announcement.

'Yes, Emperor.'

'Splendid.'

* * *

The wedding went quite smoothly. More so than Sanga had feared, given the hastiness of the preparations.

Not that hasty, he finally understood. His sister took firm charge of it, driving right over the protests of the old women who'd expected a traditional Rajput wedding. Within an hour, it became obvious to Sanga that she and Toramana must have planned this, too.

He'd never think of promenades in a garden the same way, he realized ruefully.

The ceremony was a hybrid affair. Half-Rajput, half-Ye-tai, with both halves almost skeletal.

Good enough, however. More than good enough.

'Don't you think?' he asked the head in a glass jar.

* * *

Nanda Lal's opinion remained unspoken, but Sanga was quite sure he disapproved mightily. The Malwa dynasty had maintained its rule, among other things, by always keeping a sharp and clear boundary between the Rajputs and the Ye-tai. Able, thus, to pit one against the other, if need be.

True, under the pressure of the Roman offensive, the Malwa had begun to ease the division. The dynasty had agreed to this wedding also, after all. But Sanga knew they'd never intended to ease it very far.

Damodara was simply tossing the whole business aside. He'd base his rule-initially, at least-on the oldest and simplest method. The support of the army. And, for that, he wanted the two most powerful contingents within the army tied as closely together as possible. The marriage between Toramana and Indira would only be the first of many.

Sanga understood the logic. For all the many things that separated the Rajputs and the Ye-tai, they had certain things very much in common.

Two, in particular.

First, they were both warrior nations. So, whatever they disliked about the other-for the Rajputs, Ye-tai crudity; for the Ye-tai, Rajput haughtiness-there was much to admire also.

Second, they were both nations still closely based on clan ties and allegiances. The fact that the Rajputs draped a veil of Hindu mysticism over the matter and called their clan chieftains 'kings' was more illusion than truth. Sanga had known since he was a boy that if you scratched the shiny Rajput veneer, you'd find more than a trace of their central Asian nomadic origins.

Clan ties meant blood ties. Which were brought by marriages. Within three generations, Rajput and Ye-tai clans would be so intermingled as to make the old divisions impossible.

Not conflict, of course. Clan wars could be as savage as any. But they were not the stuff-could not be the stuff-that would tear northern India into pieces.

The Malwa methods had been determined by their goal of world conquest. For Damodara, having given up that grandiose ambition, everything else followed. He would build a new empire that would not go beyond northern India. But, within those limits-which were still immense, after all-he would forge something far more resilient, and more flexible, than anything the dynasty had done before.

More resilient and flexible, for that matter, than anything the Maurya or Gupta empires had accomplished either. Sanga was beginning to suspect that Damodara would someday have the cognomen 'the Great' attached to his name.

Not in his own lifetime, though. He was far too canny for that.

* * *

Before the wedding was halfway over, Sanga realized he was in an excellent mood. He even participated in the dancing.

'Good thing I stopped the duel,' Damodara told him afterward. 'That too-clever-by-half Maratha bandit probably would have insisted on a dancing contest as part of it.'

Sanga grimaced.

'Oh, yes. We'd have found your body strewn all over. Speaking of which-' He glanced around. 'What happened to Nanda Lal's head?'

'My brother-in-law felt that propriety had been satisfied enough by his presence at the wedding, and there was no need to keep him around for the festivities. I believe he gave it to some Ye-tai boys. That game they play. You know, the one where-'

'Oh, yes. Of all my many cousins, I think I disliked him the most except Venandakatra. Well. Hard to pick between Nanda Lal and Skandagupta, of course. Isn't that the game where they use dogs to retrieve the lost balls?'

'Yes, Emperor.'

'Splendid.'

Chapter 22

Bharakuccha