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all… Perhaps you can worship a puppet that makes the right noises, but I would rather die than have a traitor command me in the name of my order, my kin! We will rise again, Devala, and not under some self-serving cowherd.’
    The sheer improbability of Sanjaya’s assertions gave his claim more credence than any reasoned argument could. Devala set aside his reservations and directed his attention to the future. ‘Are there more of us? Enough of us to rise again? Where are they hidden? Jatavedas be praised! What I would give to set my eyes on true Firewrights, to live in their midst. But there will be time for that later. Has the uprising been planned already?’
    ‘Well, there’s the two of us…for now.’
    Devala’s joy ebbed as swiftly as it had risen. ‘Two of us?’ he repeated, incredulous. ‘Say that a little louder, Sanjaya, and all it will get you is a cell next to mine, or the gallows. Two of us! Yabha!’
    Sanjaya clucked his tongue in mild reprimand. He began to say something but stopped, reflecting quietly on his words. At length, he confessed, ‘Despite the fact that I hate Govinda Shauri with all my heart, there is one thing – just one thing – that I have learnt from him. Rather, I had occasion to learn because of him. Men are like cows, Devala. It doesn’t take a hundred men to herd as many cows. It takes just one. And so it shall be with us. The empire binds these fool kings together. Break this empire, and a man will no longer trust his own brother, a father will no longer trust his son. When that happens, they will turn to us. They will hate us and fear us and turn to us because they will hate and fear each other more. All they will believe in is us; they will feel safe only in the power that we can give them. And just one name, one whisper of the word “Firewright”, will be enough to bring every one of them to his knees! Our name, Devala, our name! We will rule these men, these kings of Aryavarta by the power of our knowledge. We are enough.’
    Devala squinted, unconvinced. ‘And Dwaipayana, the Vyasa?’ he asked. ‘What makes you think he won’t stop you – or the two of us, mighty force that we’ve now become?’
    Sanjaya looked out of the slit in the door, taking in the scenery they passed by as if it were an everyday affair for him to ride in a prisoner’s carriage with a condemned man. He turned back to Devala with the same casual air and said, ‘Because I know the Vyasa’s deepest secret, the one fact that can destroy him and the entire Firstborn order with him. For the moment, it serves our purposes better to keep this in confidence, but there will come a time when I will set this wild beast off its leash and leave it to wreak its bloody havoc. The Firstborn shall pay a thousand times over for what they have done to our kind.’
    Devala considered the words briefly, before breaking into a delighted grin. He opened his mouth and curled his tongue back, letting the other man see the thin, reed-like blade hidden underneath. The device had been trained on Sanjaya all the while. Devala made a show of spitting it out, letting it wedge, harmless, in the wooden floor of their carriage. ‘I wonder, Sanjaya,’ he coldly rasped, ‘which one of us is the more dangerous man.’
    Sanjaya could not have been less perturbed or more cheerful as he said, ‘I look forward to finding out.’
    5
    DHARMA, EMPEROR OF ARYAVARTA, RECEIVED WHAT OUGHT TO have been the delightful news of Devala Asita’s capture with muted joy and the hint of a grimace. If the messenger who had brought him the missive was the least surprised by it, he did not show it as he withdrew. Dharma was left alone with an overwhelming sense of the one thing that bothered him beyond measure – irony. Indeed, his life was filled with it.
    Many years ago, his unexpected, but not unwelcome, marriage to Panchali, daughter of King Dhrupad of Southern Panchala had brought him and his brothers out of their anonymity and into the