"Do you want to interrogate the prisoner?" Utam inquired. "Let us go and speak with Sanjay."
    "I was trying not to kill them, so I only caught the one," Hari explained.
    "That's more restraint than you normally show," Hasin noted.
    Lord Rudra spat. "Better that these traitors should die."
    "Should we not first speak to the traitor, find out what led them to the treachery, so that we may prevent it from happening again?" Ashram asked gently.
    "That is what my father has ordered. Then my miserable brother will face me in battle."
    Hasin was fading back into a shadow when Utam noticed him doing so.
    "Oh no! You are in the hermit's custody, and if we find you away from him, we will deal with you as you deserve."
    "That would by the way be under their definition of deserve, not yours," Hari added.
    "Thank you for clarifying that," Hasin sighed, resigning himself.
    "I guarantee you that if you are badly wounded I will use my sandalwood paste on you," Ashram promised.
    "Thank you ever so much." He had encountered that stuff before; it had the peculiar property that if applied to a wounded person, would heal them—if they were not too close to death, in which case they would simply die, but in a blessed state that all but guaranteed improvement in one's incarnation.
    They headed for the dungeon. Lord Maraham took the opportunity to press his case when the rajah joined them.
    "See? It is too dangerous for the princess to remain in the palace. We must remove her to Bharhut immediately!"
    This caught Ashram's attention. "Move her to...?"
    "Bharhut. There is an ancient abandoned city near here. It is eminently defensible. They'd never find her."
    "Defensible how? It's a large ruin," Hari noted.
    "Exactly. It would be impossible to move any number of men, whereas we could protect her with a very small number. This would buy time for the maharajah's forces to arrive. That's what they're after. Mard does not wish to ravage Amirdata, or really to defeat our forces. What he wants is the princess."
    "So your plan is that if the princess is hidden to the point where it would become impossible for Mard to—"
    "For just a few weeks, at which point the maharajah's forces would be here. I know that Lord Utam believes this will mean that our nation is submitted to the maharajah, and maybe this is the only way things can be. Times are changing. But I think he has underestimated the distance between here and Srivasti. It will just not be possible for the maharajah to exert any effective form of control at that distance. We will be his allies and his pillar in this region."
    He had a point. The supply line would be long and would cross several other states, which might create difficulty. It was hard to tell how much influence the maharajah could exert. And if he was truly determined to expand his sphere of influence, he would eventually look toward Amirdata anyway.
    Ashram took a moment to glare at Hasin on general principles, who said, "What? I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't even thinking anything." Not quite true, he was wondering what if anything he was going to be able to get out of this.
    In the dungeon, they had Sanjay waiting.
    "Who are you?" he wanted to know.
    "I am Ashram, the hermit."
    "And the Monkey Paladin?" Sanjay looked at Hari, astonished.
    "I had thought you had already met the Monkey Paladin."
    "Ah, yes. It was an honor to be beat about the head and shoulders by you. May the blessings of Indra be ever upon your mace, even when it's on me." Hasin decided that he liked this fellow. "When did you arrive? Why are you fighting for the rajah?"
    "We just arrived this morning," Ashram told him. "We happened to be here."
    "Because people climbing ropes on the outside of towers are rarely involved in social activities," Hari explained with his usual dryness.
    "I admit, it was an untoward way of doing it," Sanjay replied. "But it was the only choice we had. Lord Utam wants blood. Even though he is a kinsman of mine, I want no part of him and his evil plans. They all want war, except the rajah, but the rajah won't do what he should do."
    "And what should the rajah do, if you are so wise as to know what course of action the rajah should take?" Ashram asked.
    "Marry the princess, who is also a distant kinsman of mine, to our lord the Rajah Mard, and then we will fight together against the evil forces of the maharajah. They have no chance. The maharajastan is too far from here."
    "I admit your plan has as much merit as any other plan we have heard tonight. Up to but not including the climbing up ropes in the middle of the night in order to kidnap the princess."
    "We were trying to—peacefully," he added, "we would not harm anyone."
    "You drew swords!"
    "You attacked us first."
    "I did no such thing."
    "I wasn't waving my sword at you, he attacked me first." He pointed at Hari. "I was just defending myself."
    "That's only fair," he nodded.
    "Did they not wave a sword at you?" he asked Hasin.
    "Well, yes."
    "He stepped back and they let him go. It was really one of the most social fights I've been in in quite some time," Hari noted.
    "We do not want bloodshed; this is not our purpose." Sanjay insisted.
    "I will concede that," Ashram decided.
    "I'm just glad Prince Dingiri got away. They are probably out combing the jungle for him right now, and all they will find is cobra and tigers. But now after tonight, time is running out. Your Majesty," he addressed Akshe, "I have a message for you. Dingiri told me to tell you that if our raid tonight failed, the countdown to war has begun. Mard is amassing his troops, and in five days they will attack. Then there will be bloodshed and we will take Kalinda, and try to prepare ourselves to face the maharajah. But wouldn't it be better if all of us stood together to face the enemy?" he pleaded.
    Akshe looked torn. "Yes...."
    "No!" Utam interrupted. "We will not give in to these traitors. He will amass his army in five days? We must attack now!"
    "But first we must hide the princess," Maraham insisted.
    "No, there's no time."
    "We can do both. But I don't think your course of action is very good. We should hide the princess and go into a defensive position. We can hold them at the river."
    "Perhaps...."
    Ashram turned to the swami. "May we get a look at the temple?"
    "Of course. Come this way." He gave Hasin an uncertain and somewhat distasteful look.
    The Monkey Paladin remained to listen to the resumed squabble of war, although he suspected he knew how it was going to play out. Akshe certainly didn't look thrilled by any of the choices before him. It was by then late at night, when the others reached the gate of the temple.
    "So, you are a sudra?" the swami asked.
    "Yes. That is this lowly one's state," Hasin admitted. "I could stay here," he offered brightly.
    "No," Ashram replied shortly.
    The swami picked up a pot of ghee, commenced chanting and amid a series of ritual motions handed the thief a string of flowers. "Put this on. Don't touch me."
    "Thank you. Wouldn't dream of it."
    The swami sprinkled ghee in his path as the two walked into the temple, to ameliorate his defiling presence. It was very impressive, dedicated to Krishna of course and decorated with many friezes from the Mahabarata.
    "It is a pity the Monkey Paladin could not accompany us, because as the armor of one of the Pandawas it is very holy. We would be very honored to have it here."
    "He will hopefully be able to come by and see it later."
    "In this chamber over here is where we normally keep the Bolt. But, horror of horrors, it has mysteriously vanished in the night. The guards heard a flapping sound, and it was gone."
    The chamber was not very large, a stepped dome with a barred opening at the top.
    "How big was the bolt?" Ashram asked. Almost a foot long, it turned out; larger than your average bolt, but then it was from no average chariot.
    "It was always guarded twenty-four hours a day," the swami said. "There were always lamps of ghee all around it, purifying the air. And we usually had someone chanting here, although at that point we didn't."
    Ashram looked at Hasin, then at the ceiling. "Could you...?"
    He gave a one-sided shrug. It was possible, but would not have been easy, and he would have had to get rid of the bars somehow. There were ways to do that, but putting them back again afterward would have been quite a good trick.
    "I'm going to take a look at the roof," he said.
    "Take this pot of ghee," Chandrasa ordered him. "Sprinkle it ahead of you."
    "Of course."
    "You will return here," Ashram said; it wasn't a question.
    "Of course," he repeated, wounded, and went outside and then up. Climbing was harder than it would have been if it hadn't been for the need to sprinkle ghee the whole way.
    Inside, Ashram looked around, trying to imagine how it had been done. The burning ghee would have kept all but a very powerful rakshasa or spirit from entering, and one of those should not have been able to touch the bolt at all without being destroyed. Some sort of trained animal, strong enough to carry off the bolt? He turned himself into a bird and flew up to the barred opening. A bird or large bat with human intelligence could do it easily, he determined. Whether a natural bird could do so seemed much less likely.
    "Very disturbing," the swami said, watching this.
    "Did you find anything?" Ashram asked Hasin, turning back to human form and giving him quite a start.
    "Not yet." It was quite dark, but there was no sign that the bars had been removed and replaced. The mechanics seemed unlikely if not impossible, therefore.... "Do you think we can trust the guard?"
    "Perhaps we should speak to them."
    "You should speak to them; heaven knows I shouldn't open my mouth."
    "You are beginning to learn. Climb back down, I will meet you there."
    The temple guards were specially selected brahmins. They bowed to Ashram, though, since he was a hermit; he bowed back.
    "On the night of the thieving of the bolt," one guard started. "We have a routine. We go into the chamber to make sure that there is no one in there, we go out of the chamber to make sure there is no one approaching. We do this slowly. It takes a few minutes for the complete cycle. While we were outside we heard flapping, as if an enormous bird had settled on the roof. And yet it was not a constant flapping, like a bird makes when it is moving, but just one fwup."
    "One very loud flap? As if something had settled on the roof.... You saw no claw marks?" he asked Hasin, who shook his head.
    "It was difficult to tell if it was on the roof, or in the chamber. We immediately rushed back inside, and when we came there it was gone. Nothing had been touched, no marks of any kind."
    "Someone could have walked straight through the roof," Hasin mused. Who or what could possess such abilities? Someone of evil intent might well have been destroyed merely touching it; he had been running a risk in planning to steal it, even with precautions. Something both evil and powerful enough to withstand the touch of Krishna's artifact was... well, probably better off avoided.
    "I wish to discuss with you another matter," the swami said. "The murders we have been having recently are very disturbing."
    "That was going to be my next question. I can assure you it was not a tiger," Ashram added.
    "It is of the cremation ground," Chandrasa whispered. Nothing good ever came of that. "We have found evidence of the rites. We changed the guards there, but obviously they're being enchanted. I do not think this is within the scope of my abilities to do anything about."     

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