Chapter One

“Roar with delight while you still can, O illiterate demon, because when I will kill you, the gods themselves will roar with delight”

The defeat of the Demon Mahishasura by the Goddess Durga.

Early spring in Prajandar meant snow on the mountains; ice, sleet and cold gray fog filled the small northern valley district. Though the sun was up, in a technical sense, there was barely enough light to see one’s way through the corridors of the rambling manor house. The breakfast room’s lights were on, though the shutters had been flung wide, to no effect.

For Tamari, daughter of Kapoor, it was an unreal sort of day, filled with ghosts and portents to be seen in the waving sheets of ground-hugging mist.

“It is the fourth day,” she stated as she stalked in looking like a nine year old masquerading as a crane, and took her plate up from the buffet and served herself a solid breakfast. She set the plate down on her placemat, cheerfully embroidered with elephants, and their riders fleeing dagger faced tigers stalking them through the high grass. Had she thought of it, she would have considered the presence of only the majordomo of the house, Kumar Mehra, entirely proper to wait upon the youngest daughter of the Matronality of Kapoor. But Tamari, the “Little Flower,” of the Kapoors was not focused on her surroundings this cold dark morning.

“Thus and so, Little Flower. It has been four days since the bull buffalo was taken.”

She sniffed back the weak tears that kept getting in the way of her fury, looked at her plate and tore an idli into pieces, dipping it into the sambar and eating it without tasting the rich flavors. As she chewed automatically she again saw the bloody sprawled hulk of the prize buffalo. He had a very prestigious name… for he was destined to be one of their new line of breeding stock. But to Tamari, he was always and forever the calf she’d named “Fuzzy Nose.”

Four days earlier she had gone to check on Fuzzy Nose before the last cold tentacles of a dying winter season reached out, in a blinding white storm. A tiger with eighteen centimeter long serrated dagger teeth, had attacked, and killed him. One bite severed the spinal cord and ripped open the jugular vein. One eleven hundred kilo buffalo bull, worth hundreds of thousands of rupees, had been turned into cat food in seconds. Tamari had stared, unbelieving, at his eviscerated corpse in the middle of his paddock. The great Griffon Vultures had lifted wings from the gnawed bones and dangling entrails and wheeled in the air, disturbed from their last meal before the last gray storm rushing down the Himavat Mountains struck home.

She’d had to leave… to turn tail and run! Bitter ruminations made her close her eyes in pain. A gentle clank and clatter and the waft of sweet black tea brought her out of her self recrimination. She met Mehra’s dark, compassionate gaze and scowled. She already knew what his gentle words would be. And she would not listen to them!

“Little Flower, today is a good day to stay inside. It is a known fact ghosts come in the mists with weather like this. They have been waiting for the sleet and snow to end. Until the sun dispels the mists, all who wander are at risk.”

Tamari stuck her strong nose into the air and shook her head. It was better than crying. She needed her fury to fuel her anger. Without it, all she could do was sob. And she would not cry!

Mehra shook his head sadly. “Not now, Little Flower. Not now. Already the clock strikes nine, yet outside it is darker than dawn. Wait until the sun has crested the sky. There will be more light then. If you try to track the beast in this dusk, you will be a fool, and a fool is soon eaten.”

Tamari hesitated before nodding. “That much is wisdom, which the ghosts are not. It matters not, that it was a beast eating a beast. The tiger is hungry from the past winter, which has been colder and snowier than usual. So it is hungry, and the storm did not let it finish its meal. It will hunt again, and we have three other buffalo from the prize stock it could kill, not to mention the pregnant cows in the north pasture.”

Even though she’d acceded to his suggestion, she wasn’t happy about it. “There is going to be reckoning today, old man, I am no longer nine years old, no matter how small I look. I am going to college in a few years!” She felt grim knowing he was sure that she wouldn’t find the killer beast. But she was a Kapoor; and it was ill-advised to ignore her and where her duty took her soul. And she was stubborn with it, too.

Tamari had sneaked into the armory of the house before dawn had crested the eastern hills. She’d placed her foragings near the side door that led to the stables, hidden at the bottom of the deep chest full of furs. She would not be joyriding on horseback or taking in the sights hiking the picturesque hills of Prajandar District, admiring the famous Deodar trees. No, she would be Hiking with a purpose, she thought grimly to herself, digging out her father's side-by-side 10.7mm Rao and Seti hunting rifle. Its weight dragged on her as the strap cut across both shoulders. The snow had mostly melted in the early morning and now big patches of frost burned grass were showing and water glinted and sparkled in the weak light as the runoff gathered speed. There is going to be reckoning today or by Shiva I will be dancing the dance of creation with that bloody bitch tomorrow. Tamari shrugged the gun into a better position.

She’d planned on riding out as part of a hunting posse, but when she reached the stables and ordered the groom to outfit her, her father's hunting forest ranger, Abhay, and his two young trackers, her plans fell apart. Abhay refused.

“Mistress, this is not a good time to go. Ghosts can be seen in the hills. I will keep myself and my men in front of a warm fire, with ghee and hot chaa warming our bellies. And knowing you, young mistress, as I do! You are wanting to hunt the cloud tiger with the dagger teeth, not go for a ride or hike in the beautiful hills. And you will hunt, regardless of what I say.”

Tamari opened her mouth to argue, but Abhay held up his hand. “No. Mistress, this I will not do. Your father knows of your love for your slaughtered buffalo. And he will protect the rest of the herd which is the value of many lakhs of rupees. That is well.

“But I will not outfit my men to go with an angry mistress; for one who hunts with anger and rage in her heart is not hunting with care and caution for her men. You could get them killed. Hunting this animal should be done at range with high caliber rifles. I will not make my men endanger themselves to sooth your rage.”

Tamari stomped off, hearing Abhay calling out, “Kunal! Kunal!”

She was furious and fuming with rage. It was not just from the loss of her pet. More importantly, as she felt it to be, it was being treated like a small doll by the people who should obey her. Rather than return to the house, Tamari went to the back paddock. Her mother's prized cavalry mounts were enjoying a run after several days of being cooped up. The Kapoor clan had ridden on, and kept the bloodlines going for two hundred years of a fine line of cavalry mounts. The estate bred the horses that were the pride of the Hegemony of Hashtur and they were only sold for long prices and to very specific people.

She spotted one of her favorites horses, standing near the back of the stable wall, placidly eating an oatcake. Kismat stood fourteen and half hands tall at the withers, had a narrow face, wide nostrils, big brown liquid eyes. His ears constantly swiveled on his head. Her mother, who named all the colts born on the estate, had almost called him “radar” for those active twitchy ears. Instead he had been Lucky after he stomped a snake to death just two weeks after he was born.

She held out her hand with a sugar cube. All Kapoors carried sugar cubes on them at all times. And the horses knew it. The sturdy horse trotted happily over to lip it up. Sneaking into the stables by the paddock door and snagging the saddle and gear was quick. Thirty minutes later she had Kismat saddled, bridled and all her gear and herself on and was off. Off hunting one of the most ferocious beasts in the entire Hegemony. She had the latest high tech wet weather clothing money could buy. None-the-less over her expensive gear she had donned one of the working jackets and hats the estate retainers used. From a distance she looked like a hairy blonde goat riding across the frozen pastures heading up into the hills. Her furry jacket would help to camouflage her appearance. Or so she thought.

She supposed Abhay had sent Kunal to follow her. She’d noticed a bit of a scurry in the fore-part of the barn when she grabbed the gear. He was one of Abhay’s best and brightest, a tall dark haired bush ranger tasked with keeping the estate safe from poachers, and predators. He wouldn’t stop her, but he would be back-up if she needed it. The hunt wasn’t going to be as she envisioned it, but it would still happen. Tamari set her jaw and legged Kismat to the paddock where Fuzzy Nose had lived. On the far side she found what she remembered; one of the fencing rails was on the ground. She was pretty sure the Dagger Face had clawed it out. Even though they could jump, they were inherently lazy and would always try an easier path.

She looked towards the hills. The snow, the sleet and the rain had washed away the tracks, but she could see the Dagger Face running away as the men came with rifles, called by her screaming rage. She followed the tracks in her memory and set out. Behind her she heard the squeak of hoofs on snow and nodded to herself. Kunal had probably said, “I hear and obey Shikari,” to Abhay. He liked her, though he always seemed surprised when she was unwilling to quit or give up a goal.

Several hundred meters beyond Fuzzy Nose’s meadow, Tamari found the first sign of scat. She slipped down and counted her paces forward. Soon she found paw prints frozen in the hard ground. Up here, under the trees it was still cold and the melt had not taken hold.

Adding up her numbers, from where she noticed feces to the next set of hind leg paw prints, she did a quick hunter's arithmetic and Tamari Kapoor gave off a low whistle. Her dagger face was at least two meters long, and probably weighed in at three hundred to four hundred kilos. Big. Very, very big. Ten minutes later she dismounted, because the spoor from the dagger mouth had grown fainter as she traveled higher in the hills. It was also starting to snow and visibility was reduced as the clouds blocked what little light there had been.

Looking up, she found her large tiger's tracks leading into a grove of bamboo, heavily laced with rhododendron bushes, just barely showing leaf buds. Her Kismat became skittish and pulled the reins free from her belt backing away from the grove. She turned to grab them... maybe it was the spirit of Banka-Mundi Goddess of the hunt, or a heightened sense of survival made her turn back. There a shadow, a break in the bamboo ranks and a track, one blurry paw print. Kismat screamed. Tamari’s eyes were riveted on the bamboo thicket as she raised her father's hunting rifle. Nothing moved.

An eternity passed between each heartbeat. Cold wet snow slid and fell from the bare branches and green bamboo… and more pelted her, falling from the sky. She began to relax her hold on the rifle, straighten up her body, let her eyes wander over the grove. A pair of demonically crazed gold eyes shone through the fine bamboo leaves. The striped beast exploded through bamboo poles five centimeters in diameter, screaming like an unearthly demon. The sound riveted Tamari to the ground, behind her, Kismat screamed; the equine terror echoing and harmonizing with the predator’s challenge.

“Thus my death...” The thought crawled through her head. She could see individual whiskers on the tiger's cheeks, its mottled brindled colored fur; the muddy paws slapping the freezing wet ground; the dagger incisors gleaming in the tricky light. The creature seemed to grow, to flow forward as she stood there, her hands tightening on the rifle stock, her fingers automatically flicking off the safety, sliding over the trigger, her arms tightening, pulling up the barrel...

Booooooom!Booooooom! Tamari's finger spasmed on the double trigger of her father's rifle.

And the world sped up, the golden white blur of the tiger’s body, the splattering of blood on its chest, flying towards her with the final leap… One of the largest land predators in the world landed on her in a suffocating welter of hot blood, hot stinky musk and mud smell, and hot weight and clawing paws and jittering toothed mouth trying to scream past the blood that filled its gaping maw. The dagger face sprawled on top of Tamari and her last conscious thought was, “Shit, Mom is going to pissed.”

***

Forest ranger Kunal, had been keeping behind Tamari, and slightly uphill, though it slowed him down, there not being a second path in sight of Tamari’s. As they had penetrated deeper and deeper into the hills, he’d had to come closer. He hoped she wouldn’t hear Preeti’s hoof fall as he was forced back onto the path behind her.

Then Tamari reached the wall of bamboo, and paused. He’d been taking a solid look at the paw prints himself, and was getting a very bad feeling. His gun was loaded, safety off, and ready as he moved carefully forward. He could smell the tiger in the air, the light and the lack of small animal sounds warned him, even through the falling snow something bad was about to happen. Dagger Face cats operated from the ambush. They hid in bamboo thickets, or used trees to drop down upon their prey. They were also horribly territorial.

Young Tamari had foolishly followed the spoor, with a cold wet wind blowing at her back, which drove her scent forward, (and his as well). It was only a matter of time, even in the cold wet conditions they had before it smelled her coming. Kunal legged Preeti once his young mistress had halted by the bamboo grove, hoping to arrive in time to save the spoiled, beloved youngest of the Kapoors.

A giant mottled nightmare exploded from its bamboo lair directly into Tamari’s face. He screamed at her to look out, as he shouldered the rifle trying desperately to get a shot of the monster without gunning down the youngest daughter. Just as it looked like her end, twin gouts of blood, bone and lung tissue erupted from between the tiger's shoulder blades.

Kunal flung himself off the mare and circled the steaming pile of dead meat. Mostly because he wasn’t sure it was actually dead. But the tiger did not move and he seized the back paws and heaved and dragged three hundred and fifty kilos of very dead predator bodily off the teenager’s face. To his relief, she was breathing, though pale and blood-stained. He’d been afraid he would have to carry back the youngest daughter of Kapoor to her mother, and explain to Abhay why he had allowed her to get herself killed.

Lord Rudra, mightiest of the mighty please oh please hear my plea. Do not let the little mistress die of your consecrated hunter. Please oh lord of the hunt, hear my prayers. One so small deserves to not be killed by her willingness to take an honorable foe... Kunal's prayer was interrupted when Tamari suddenly kicked, coughed and rolled her head sideways to throw up.

With a shouted “Ya Jai Kapoor!” Kunal returned to his hill pony. She shied at the smell of blood which hung heavy in the air. He grabbed a braided grass rope, fixed it to the saddle and tied a noose around the tiger's head and with his mount’s help dragged the carcass sideways off his young mistress. She screamed as the traction rolled her over, and then was silent.

Tamari's white goat fur jacket was liberally soaked in blood. Her face was ashy and cold to the touch and she was no longer breathing. Quickly Kunal opened her mouth, held her chin up, pinched her nose and began mouth to mouth resuscitation. Within a few moments, her pale milky cheeks began to flush and her eyes fluttered. Kunal sat back and watched her struggle awake.

“Am I alive?”

“Yes, Mistress, you are still among the living.”

“I feel like a mountain falling on top of me.”

“It did, little mistress, it did. By Banka-Mundi and her consort Rudra the bull roarer, they gifted you with life, in the face of something so incredibly foolish and yet terribly brave.”

“I don't remember what happened. I can remember he charged. I couldn't move from his path, and then, a sensation of falling and waking up just now.”

“I saw from a distance, little mistress. He charged and you fell backwards, and I think he misjudged your size. As you fell back you squeezed off both barrels. It was a perfect shot. You shot him through the heart and lungs. He died while still in the air, and his corpse landed on top of you.”

Tamari sat up in the snowy half light to Kunal’s relief and marveled at the monster cat lying just a few paces away in an ever widening slushy puddle of blood. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Ow, that hurts!”

“So I expect, little Mistress! Three hundred and fifty kilos if it was a gram fell on you at once, and then, when I dragged it off you, it rolled you over on the rocks.”

Kunal took the saddle off of Tamari's mount, and he gathered up the saddle blankets from his horse as well. He used Tamari's saddle as a backrest while he made a small pallet out of the blankets, to keep her warm while he used a satchel of buffalo manure Shikari hunters kept on hand to start a fire. Once it was going well, he brewed up a small pot of chaa, black as coal, for her to drink. He left her sipping at the thick cup and went to the dagger face.

“What are you doing now Kunal?”

Grinning with a beautiful smile which brightened his entire face, Kunal replied, “Would be a shame to not skin the hide of the largest dagger faced tiger in the history of the district.”

****

It was in the late afternoon, with the light almost gone, before the little procession of two horses and two humans came back to the manor house. Proud, if bedraggled with blood and mud-caked, Tamari Kapoor rode home with a humongous tiger skin tied behind her saddle. She felt vindicated in her actions, though apprehensive that Mother might not agree.

Even as she tried to come up with the proper way to address her mother over the day’s adventures, she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She whipped her head around, looking down the curving drive leading to the side entrance. A formal convoy of military vehicles was making its way up the hill. The slow pace the vehicles came at sent chills up her spine which had nothing to with the snow flurries or freezing temperature.

She felt the blood drain from her cheeks, just recently flushed from the ride, the happiness and the chill air. Her breath caught in her chest as an intense feeling of impending doom seized her throat. With an effort, Tamari brought out a shout and spurred Kismat forward. The sensitive horse reacted to his rider’s anxiety and they dashed madly down the hill in a shower of mud, and mushy snow. Tamari sprang from the saddle, dropping the reins and ran to her father's side. He stood on the wide veranda, neither recognizing her nor acknowledging her presence as the convoy came to a halt on the sweep.

Three officers slowly got out of the lead sedans and a younger officer got out of a small cargo carrier. Their movements were stiff and formal. Their obvious reluctance to fulfill their duty dragged at their features and limbs. Each had orange silk mourning ribbons wound through their military turbans. The sun at that moment shone weakly through the clouds as it came to the horizon. The sky was more liquid than air and the pale beams of light caught the gold buttons on their uniforms; their military branch pins and their gold chased daggers of rank. Liquid ripples of light winked incongruously in the failing light. Tamari’s mother came to stand beside her father and she watched as their faces tightened, paled and their cheeks sank. They seemed to age decades in mere seconds as they stood in the portico, their features taking on the cast of sculpted beeswax.

She knew, bone deep what the convoy meant and suddenly her revenge laden excursion to the hills struck her as folly. Had she died at the claws and teeth of the tiger, had it killed and eaten her, had Kunal not been there to pull the heavy weight off her unconscious body... I can only imagine the horrors they would have suffered if I, too, had died this day. Embarrassment and nausea fought a battle inside her, roiling her stomach.

Her mother's icy composure crumbled as the bereavement team came up the steps, carrying with honor and dignity a small rectangular shape covered in orange silk. Tamari knew what that small box contained. She knew what the vehicles meant. And so did her mother, the Matron of Kapoor. Salty diamonds fell from the corners of her eyes.

The aged Colonel Nakshaband who led the Bereavement Team walked stiffly with age, dignity, and not a small amount of remorse. She was a retired infantry officer from the local defense militia and a long-time friend to the Kapoor family. She bowed her head formally to Tamari's parents as they stood on the veranda leading into the hall.

Paravati Kapoor, grief etching her face, moved as if in a daze, gestured woodenly to the entrance of the hall and said formally, “Please accept the hospitality of my hall, and my clan. Your wants are our wants, your safety ours. Welcome.”

Tamari followed them, pausing long enough to see a young captain of the reserves direct a male enlisted driver to carry another box, this one larger, also wrapped up in orange silk. Their movements were stiff and formal, as if each impulse of muscle and sinew was being scrutinized upon some unseen parade ground.

In the odd manner that thoughts come to one under great stress, Tamari thought, “My mother is going to be furious with me.” She could see the muddy tracks she’d left in the hall. Her quickly shed riding boots stood in a puddle of water and mud soaking into a two hundred year old silk knotted rug. Barefoot she followed her parents into the main hall.

Only when they had gathered before the great fireplace which was roaring with rich resinous aromas of cedar filling the cavernous space did Colonel Nakshaband speak. With tears glistening in her eyes she said, “We regret to inform you, Captain Priya Kapoor was killed by enemy action on the night of twelve-thirteen Bhadra of Seventy-seven.”

Her father asked, “How did she die?” His voice was thin, emotionless, his face blank, his eyes terrible with the pain.

The colonel replied. “Her command, a team of Hegemony Special Operation advisers and local militia of the Ygurn region, were overwhelmed by an incursion across the border in the middle of a driving storm. Because of the weather, air support was not available. Artillery support was expected from the 2nd and 3rd batteries of the 125th Goondah Artillery. However they themselves were heavily engaged and temporarily overrun just prior to the attack on Captain Kapoor's compound.

“Battlefield forensic analysis reveal she and her command were estimated to have killed close to two hundred enemy soldiers, before their final defensive position was silenced by suicide bombers. Please accept our condolences, and that of the grateful matrons of the Hegemony of Hashturah. She served with great distinction and was awarded the Star of Prasuti for defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. ”

The colonel bowed deeply to Tamari's mother and father. Straightening she reached behind her and was handed the small square box wrapped in silk. “Per her instructions and military protocols, I return your daughter's ashes, so she may be interred with her ancestors.”

Tamari stood at the door. Down the corridor she could see the old family retainers who were servants in name only, and extended family in fact, began wailing at the loss of her eldest sister. At her back stood Kunal and beside him Kumar Mehra stood silently as tears watered his cheeks.

Paravati Kapoor who had always been a paragon of virtue, and the stern disciplinarian needed to be a senior matron of a major clan, with a familial history of proud military service four hundred years old, crumbled like a sandy river bank eroding before a springtime flood. Rajish gently took his daughter's ashes and mumbled a quiet word of thanks. The enlisted soldier placed the larger box on the knotted silk rug in front of the great fireplace, saluted, made an about face and marched out of the hall.

“It was also her wish that her personal effects be returned. We gathered her uniforms and her personally supplied equipment from what was left of her quarters, with the exception of her dagger. We found that buried in the throat of one of her attackers. Long may it serve this noble house.” Reaching into her inside breast pocket, Col. Nakshaband, pulled a double edged Kindjal watered steel blade with a black buffalo horn hilt. Bowing once more she extended it hilt forward towards Paravati Kapoor, mistress of the Kapoor clan, and whispered reverently, “This dagger knows nothing but honor. Thank you for your service. May it continue to guard your family.”

Tamari would only vaguely remember the officers bowing, saluting her parents before, mercifully, they were alone with their grief. The three gathered into a small mutual hug of misery.

Tamari could remember nothing of this time, except the extreme gripping pain which had her heart in an iron bound vise, slowly and inexorably closing tighter and tighter.

*****

It was hours later, once the shock of the afternoon had fled, that Tamari went upstairs to change into a white Sari of mourning. Her mother had directed the Sari be run up the year before. Matrons and their children were expected to attend clan funerals as they arose.

“I have never liked the color of white. I think I shall never wear it again. To think the first time I have to wear this is when my sister's ashes come home. I will never wear white again,” Tamari thought to herself. The gut hollow emptiness she felt was aggravated by the outward symbol of mourning.

Dressed, Tamari came down the cedar paneled staircase with its warm golden glow she loved so much. Pausing on the last landing she looked over the hall itself, with its ancient silk banners of family triumphs and defeated foes, hanging limply from the crossbeams. She had a sense of dislocation as an image of her medieval ancestors standing at attention, with their male bodyguards and soldiers standing in mute silence, mourning the passing of her sister formed in her head. It was a double vision which when it passed, caused her whole body to shudder. I will not let this house, our family and our clan be defenseless. I will become its defender at all costs.

Tamari could hear, faintly, her mother crying as her father said the rituals for the dead. His prayers echoed from up the descending stairwell which led to the vaults underneath the hall.

Tamari was worn out. She went to the sideboard next to the fireplace in the great hall and poured herself a brandy. Turning around she had a start, as she realized the dark and somber Major Mullur Tamil stood silently in the shadows. She dressed in a formal saffron yellow tunic, blue trousers, black polished boots with her gold spurs, and her rank of Major (retired.) worked in the silvered chain mail shoulder tabs of the Kapoor household cavalry. They shone dully in the light from the fireplace. Her face could have been polished bronze. Her uniform was impeccable with both right and left arm bearing the orange mourning ribbons. One would never know from her stance or her gait that she was missing her left leg; she’d been wounded in the service of Tamari's grandmother at the battle of Ronda pass.

“To the honored dead,” said the sword mistress to clan Kapoor, holding up her own snifter of brandy.

“To those who guard us in the next life,” Tamari replied. They both downed the brandy.

“Major... It seems today was not a good day to go riding.” Tamari bowed her head slightly and spoke simply, with sadness, to the woman she had known all of her life. Who had taught her the secrets of the blade.

“Ah little flower, such are the vicissitudes of a warrior's life. Your sister knew her duty. Verily she was a lion. But she suffered from never having known a true defeat before. She never had to fight back from a serious defeat. Life and fighting came easy to her, unlike her little sister. Because of this she felt her actions could not have dire consequences for herself or others. Essentially, she felt could not be beaten. It was her greatest strength and her weakest flaw. People who believe in their ultimate victory are easy to follow.” She heaved a sigh and put her glass down on the sideboard.

“I say this without offering an insult to her or her memory. She inspired those who took her salt. And she drove herself harder than anyone could drive her. The flaw was that she would become fixated on her goals to the exclusion of all other considerations. And I say this with all humility, she could be baited into premature action. But I will also give her, her due, she was a lodestone who drew others to her like iron filings. Like others of her kind she died in a blaze of glory. Thus she did not fade away into a half life of memories and forgotten glory.”

She frowned down at the firelight. When she looked sideways at Tamari her dark eyes were more human, her normally stern face softer. “Today you faced a similar challenge, and you did not take our advice, or back down. You came close to sharing your sister’s fate. Tomorrow I will learn by what miracle you survived to come back to your home alive, looking like you too, had been to wars.

“However, that all aside, you killed the largest dagger faced tiger this district has ever seen. When it's appropriate, my fierce young tiger, I shall have your skin presented properly.”

Tamari nodded, her eyes watering with tears. She marshaled her disorganized, grieving thoughts. This was the first truly adult conversation she had had with her teacher. Even as she that thought crossed her mind came a realization; she understood she was the new heir, no longer the “spare.” That was the real message her sword mistress had for her. She sighed. It both straightened her spine and made her feel anxious for all that would come.

“I go now to give my regards to your parents and say a prayer for your sister's soul.” Major Tamil bowed low before her and left the dark room.

Tamari could not face her parents or the ritual prayers for the dead. She was numb from the day's events; her energy sapped down to nothing. The brandy probably compounded the fatigue brought on by two emotional shocks. She fell asleep on the settee before the fire.

*****

When she woke, she knew hours had passed. The fire had died down to dark red embers. Her favorite blanket slid into her lap as she sat up. Tamari smiled knowing Kumar had placed it around her.

But what had awoken her? She listened to the quiet house, concentrating on identifying it’s every creak and pop. There! She heard a rustling, and then a rhythmic thumping.

She was tired, her eyes blurry. The sound was in this room, this very room! What would make that sound? It didn't make sense. She looked around. Her sister’s box of effects lay towards the north wall, in the shadows. By the steady glow of the coals on the hearth it seemed to move. She shook her head, frowning, wishing she could see better in the dim light. The box rustled and thumped, like something was alive inside it. Worms crawled up and down her spine as she watched the cloth wrapped box bulge and flex. Boxes didn’t move on their own. It continued to swell and heave until the light canvas ripped open in a dozen places. Hundreds of metallic bronze scaled snakes seemed to burst from it. Self preservation gripped Tamari Kapoor and she vaulted over the back of the couch and ran screaming towards the vaults under the main hall, yelling her parent’s names.

Rajish Kapoor met her on the stairs to the crypts, a drawn tulwar sword in his hands and red grief in his stricken eyes.

“Father! Come, come! Bolt the door! Bolt the door!”

The metallic scales of the snakes clacked and scraped on the flagstone flooring behind her and she finally was awake enough to know what they were. She ran past her father and grabbed his shirt and dragged him into the crypts just as the first sickly, bilious green eyed snake drones appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Tamari! What is wrong with you? Why are you screaming?” he asked frantically as Tamari reached for the oak retaining bar to secure the door.

“Assassin Nagas, Father! Snake Drones!”

Rajish questioned no further. Father and daughter got the heavy oak beam into its brackets. Hammer blows rocked the door in its frame just as they did. The household warning klaxon began hooting in the rooms above their heads.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The blows felt like a giant hammering on the door with a maul.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A sharp acidic smelling smoke began pouring around the edges of the door and under the bottom of the door frame. Acid! The demon spawned creatures were etching the wooden frame with acid!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The hammer blows fell harder than before. The door frame began to splinter around the edges. Tamari ran over to the wall where her great, great, grandmother's battle axe rested beneath the niche where her ashes resided, and pulled it free and turned back towards the door.

A hole had burned through in the door frame and one of the mechanical snakes began edging through it. She could see its deadly green glowing eyes.

Yelling at her Father, “look out!” She buried her grandmother's axe in its head. The head blew up and threw Tamari backwards sending wooden splinters spinning through the vaults. It also made the hole a great deal bigger.

Immediately another snake took its place and began spraying acid from its mouth. Her father hit it with his sword. Highly concentrated sulfuric acid etched his blade and the steel began to smoke.

Tamari's mother calmly walked up to her daughter and firmly pushed her aside, pulling out the pistol that never left her side, not since she’d been a young Hegemony officer herself. She coolly fired a 7mm round at the next snake head. The force of the shot slammed the snake’s head back to the other side of the door. It exploded outside and the already damaged door rocked and flexed in its frame. Two planks shattered and the naga snake drones were clearly visible by the light of their eyes.

Tamari's mother screamed the family battle cry, “Face Kapoor! Face Death!” Over and over she shouted. Each word punctuated a 7mm round exploding into a drone head or body. Rajish frantically tries to block the snakes wriggling through new holes in the door and frame.

One of the drones slipped around the door jamb and bit her father on his left forearm. He fell to his knees. Tamari gasped in outrage as she watched his forearm rapidly turn black from the poison the naga drone had injected into him. Despite her father's best intentions an agonizing scream of pain erupted from his lips.

Before anyone could stop her, Tamari grabbed up her father's sword and hacked off his left arm just below the elbow. She grabbed him and heaved him back, away from the door, dropping the sword. A dozen paces back into the vaults she stopped and ripped the bottom hem of her sari into strips making a tourniquet for her father's stump.

She saw her mother Paravati look over at them and give them both the merest nod, as she reloaded her pistol and continued shooting the snakes which writhed and oozed through the shattered door.

“Ya Jai Kapoor! Ya Jai Kapoor!” Tamari could hear old Kumar shouting as he began firing. It sounded like his favorite large bore automatic shotgun. The noise of large caliber shotgun pellets hitting the door sounded like hail striking a tin roof in the springtime.

Moments later more voices sounded. A fusillade of fire came screaming down on the nagas. Paravati Kapoor stood back and to one side, by her daughter and husband, still watching.

****

A shaken but incredibly angry seventeen year old Tamari Kapoor, held her first 'court' as the stand in for the Matron of Kapoor. Her mother had left her in the family tilt rotor, on an emergency medical evacuation flight of her father. Tamari stood in the middle of a circle of bodyguards in her mother's solarium listening to the aged Colonel Nakshaband who had delivered her sisters ashes the previous evening and was terribly grieved to be reporting a second tragedy in as many days.

“Mistress, the male driver from the bereavement and loss contact team was found in his barracks, dead of an apparent suicide pill. The military coroners examined the body and found an Atlantean hieroglyphic tattoo on his chest, which identified his blood group and known allergies.”

Shuffling her papers, the old Colonel Nakshaband looked upon the new heir, “And Military Intelligence has asked that we not identify him publicly as a member of the Hades Commando. I still have contacts in the Red Fort, and they tell me from the information they pulled this morning from his body and from his stomach contents, he was definitely a commando. We also found the young woman who was supposed to be the driver, strangled in her bed. However as far as we know, Hades Commandos are the only ones in the Atlantean special ops corps who volunteer for one way missions, and use blood typing on their chests,”

Tamari's duty as heir was to receive the colonel and gather intelligence for her mother. “Why would they attack us in our home?” Tamari asked in concern, looking back and forth between Kumar, now wearing his field uniform with body armor and weapons and the retired Colonel Nakshaband.

“Obviously your sister, Priya, made enemies in the Satrapy of Sind. And those enemies decided killing her wasn't good enough. They wanted to remove the head from the body. Those snake drones are not cheap nor are they easy to manufacture. ”

“I will build a Samadh of Atlantean skulls which will fill this hall.” Tamari said, in a cold, calm matter-of-fact tone of voice. Blood will flow before I am done!

Kumar's face changed to a sad mien “Remember the story of the wasps who bit the man and the woman. The man killed the wasp. The woman tracked the wasp who bit her to its nest and destroyed the entire hive. So please plan accordingly,” Kumar said with a soft voice.

“Fill. The. Hall. With. Their. Skulls.” Tamari gritted out the words between clenched teeth.

Colonel Nakshaband looked torn between shock and approval.