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queens alike in the maharaja’s palace—but only by them. With a smile as sly as a mongoose toying with a cobra, she reached down and placed it in the dead tantric’s fist, as if he had snatched at his assailant in his last moment. There. That would fox his fellow tantrics, give them something to get worked up about. Anger could be useful. 
     
    Leaving the shack, she was caught unawares by the brightness. She raised her deformed right hand, snarling. The wretched purnima moon. Full and bloated as a pregnant witch, it glared down at her, omniscient and grim as a judge. In her clan, Chandramukhi, the moon deity, had been a revered and feared totem. All clan panchayat judgements had been passed on purnima nights like this one. Even though her loyalties had changed long since, it was difficult to shrug off the instinctive fear drummed in by those youthful rituals. She drew the cowl of the robe over her head and walked as quickly as her hunchbacked gait would permit. 
     
    Her moon-cast shadow danced before her all the way down the alley, mocking her silently. She spat on it before climbing into the carriage and kept the drapes drawn tight all the way back to the maharaja’s palace. 

 
     
     
     
    KAAND 1

ONE 
     
    ‘Kausalya!’ 
     
    The winding corridors of the First Queen’s Palace reverberated with the booming voice. The female guards at the entrance goggled at the large barrel-chested man striding towards them, then hurriedly lowered their spears and bowed to their king. Men were forbidden in the First Queen’s Palace, with only one exception. Maharaja Dasaratha, ruler of the kingdom of Kosala, was that solitary exception, yet it had been so long since he had last entered these chambers that some of the female attendants stirring sleepily or peeping through silk curtains and ornately filigreed panels took several startled moments to identify the loud-voiced visitor. Some scrambled to cover their modesty with whatever was at hand—satin cushions, a billowing drape, a silver flower vase—while others deliberately flaunted their nudity, seeking to attract the eyes of the maharaja by posturing coyly in doorways and on luxurious shaasan. They knew that apart from the three queens in their individual palaces, there were three hundred and fifty more wives in the king’s palace. Yet it never hurt to try. 
     
    But the maharaja’s eyes did not stray to those distracting feminine bodies or those alluring almond-shaped eyes. He strode through the First Queen’s Palace with an energetic gait that belied his considerable bulk and age. 
     
    ‘Kausalya,’ he called again. The calling was more by way of giving her advance warning of his approach. It had been a long time since he had come to these chambers and he covered up his anxiety and nervousness with bluster and authority. It was an effective disguise; to the startled serving girls, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to see the maharaja striding through the palace, calling his maharani. 
     
    He passed through the last of the forerooms and emerged into a small chaukat, a square without a roof. Glancing up at the sky as he stepped around the delicate sculptures and the marble fountain in the centre of the chaukat, he saw that dawn was just breaking, turning the sky several shades of purple. A soft dewy precipitation made the air cool and fragrant here, carrying the aroma of the first queen’s famous gulmohur gardens. He glanced nostalgically at the statue of Kama that towered above the fountain and the lotus pool, smiling wistfully at the sugarcane bow and flower-arrow held daintily in the marble god’s chubby hands. He remembered when Kausalya had first installed this fountain, showing it off with great pride—she had personally conceived the whole arrangement, as she had the interiors of most of her palace. He had watched wonder-struck, holding her in his arms at the base of this very fountain, beneath the midnight-blue sky of a Varsha night,