Consciousness returned to Subhas in fits and starts – flashes of light followed by comforting darkness. By the time he had regained some awareness of himself and his surroundings, he had no idea how long it had been since he’d last been in his senses. Light and sound filtered through next, worsening his headache. Which made him realise that he had a headache in the first place. A concussion, he suspected.

With some effort, he peeled his eyes open, raising a hand to shield them against the sudden onslaught of electric light. The world was one huge, blurry splotch. The sounds came next – wood and metal shattering, concrete cracking. Had he not been a Hunter for a solid twenty years of his life, he might have wondered if he had been abandoned in the middle of an earthquake.

But whatever was happening now, he was pretty sure it wasn’t nature’s doing.

Rubbing a hand over his face – every movement a small agony – Subhas blinked, trying to force his eyes to focus.

The first thing he saw was Ruban, standing pressed against the jagged edges of a broken wall. Chin out, back straight, he stood like defiance personified, but Subhas thought he saw something like fear in the boy’s eyes.

Following that gaze, his eyes landed on Tauheen. She floated a few feet above Ruban, inches away from the wall herself. One hand held out in front, her fingers were enveloped by the distinctive luminescence of a half-formed energy-shell. She was preparing to attack.

Another Aeriel stood behind Tauheen, its hand held out in a way that reflected her own posture. Its sterling wings all but enveloped it, denying Subhas a clear view of its face. It too looked like it was about to attack, though he couldn’t be sure who the intended target was.

As Subhas watched, the shell coalesced and solidified around Tauheen’s fingers, the unearthly light intensifying. The other Aeriel was not as fast, or perhaps it had started late. Its shell wouldn’t be ready for a few seconds after Tauheen’s had detonated.

All of this Subhas knew with a single fleeting glance at the scene before him. It was like his mind had floated back to his days as an active field agent. A real Hunter. Or perhaps that’s what he had always been, really. Subhas had often felt that that was what he truly was – a foot-soldier playing at kingship.

He still remembered his last Hunt. It was the biggest he had ever been a part of, one of the most significant campaigns of the time. He had lost two of his team, but they had managed to fell their quarry. They had captured Reivaa.

They had wanted to kill her, he remembered. She had been accused of a terrorist attack on the Zainian border – a fire that had killed over a hundred people. They’d been right, he saw that now. They should have killed her, auctioned her feathers to compensate the families of the victims.

But he had been young, zealous. Had wanted to do things by the book, to do them right. There had been some confusion over the evidence, and he had stayed the execution to clear it up. Reivaa had escaped.

Two days later, Misri was dead.

He had known, even then, that it wasn’t an accident that killed her. But he had been delirious, half mad with grief and pain unlike anything he had ever felt before. He had wanted to die, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that to Hiya. She was barely a year old when she lost her mother. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her behind, an orphan.

And so he had put the gun away.

And then, she’d come to him. Tauheen.

She told him that Safaa had killed his wife. In retaliation for letting Reivaa escape. To get her hands on the formula Misri had been working on. He didn’t even remember anymore. He didn’t think he had remembered then.

He knew now what he had done. Finally, he saw his life with a clarity that had eluded him for so many years. He had been drowning, dying, and he had clutched, desperately, at the first lifeline that had been thrown at him. The first thing that had given him a sense of purpose; that had given his existence some semblance of meaning, after he lost the one thing he loved more than anything else on earth.

He had believed Tauheen not because she had been telling the truth, but because he had needed a purpose. A reason to live. A reason to justify his continued existence to himself, and to the ghost of Misri that haunted him every waking second. And revenge was as good a reason as any.

Something wet streaked down the sides of his face and he gasped. It hurt. He must have cracked a rib when he crashed against the wall. The pain was almost a relief, a distraction.

A distraction from the memory of all that he had lost.

Because it wasn’t just the love of his life that he had lost when Misri died. He had lost himself. The man he had been. The man she had loved.

He had lost his humanity, and he didn’t think there was anything left to find anymore.

What happened next wasn’t so much a decision as a reflex. Ruban was his nephew, his blood. His family. The son of the brother who had practically raised him. The brother he had betrayed, killed, because of his own weakness.

He should have loved Ruban like a son, protected and nurtured him. Instead he had orphaned him, taken everything from him. And then used him, remorselessly, for his own ends.

Subhas wasn’t naïve enough to think that there was any forgiveness to be had, any redemption. But for once, it wasn’t about him. It was about the duty he had neglected all these years. That he should have fulfilled years ago.

Gathering every last fragment of strength that was in him, he dragged himself to his feet and darted across the hall to Ruban, pushing him out of the way less than a second before Tauheen’s shell hit the already wreaked wall, blowing it out of existence.

***

The building shuddered under the force of the blast, the wall against which he had been standing reduced to ash and dust. Ruban staggered, trying to find his feet, trying to process what had just happened.

For a moment, he thought it was Ashwin who had pushed him out of the way. But that couldn’t be right. Ashwin would have been behind them, where he had left him when he approached Tauheen to reclaim his blade. And yet he knew with absolute certainty that whatever had shoved him out of the way of the blast had come from the side.

He frowned, disoriented, even as something soft collapsed heavily against his feet. The stench of scorched flesh filled his nostrils, making him dizzy.

He looked down, confused, and retched violently, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.

His uncle lay at his feet, whimpering, his back a mess of charred flesh and blood, bits of bone visible under the carnage.

Ruban dropped to his knees even as another soft moan escaped Subhas’s bloodless lips. His eyeballs had rolled back in his head and tears streaked his grimy face, although his eyes were dry now. He was gasping, and flinching with every gasp, as if it hurt him to breathe.

Gently, Ruban took his uncle’s face into his hands, placing his head on his own lap as carefully as he could. A blast sounded somewhere in the distance, but he didn’t care. Some rational part of him told him that he should, that Tauheen would take this opportunity to finish them both off. But rationality was beyond him at this point. Another part of him wondered if there was anything at all left to fight for. And if not, then why bother?

Subhas’s lips parted, moved, but no words came out, just a sort of formless gurgle, accompanied by some blood. Ruban felt hot tears singe his face, blurring his vision, but he barely had the strength to wipe them off. With the little energy he had left, he ran his fingers through his uncle’s thinning hair, trying to give comfort he knew he didn’t have the power to provide.

“It’s okay,” he said. He was saying it over and over again, the words tasting false on his tongue. Meaningless. Nonetheless, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here. Get you back home. You’ll be alright.” It was like a mantra, a chant almost religious for the fervent hope it inspired in his broken soul. If he said it enough times, maybe it would turn out to be true.

Once again, his uncle’s lips moved. Ruban brought his head down, his forehead almost touching the other man’s nose. A sob threatened to escape him, but he couldn’t let himself cry. Not now. If he bit any harder, he thought his teeth would cut clean through his lip. He wondered, discordantly, what Simani would say about that.

“I’m sorry,” Subhas said at last, the words barely a whisper brushing Ruban’s ear. Ruban shook his head, his eyes beseeching his uncle to understand what he couldn’t say. That it didn’t matter, not now. That he loved him. But his throat was locked up, a giant lump lodged somewhere over his vocal chords that made it impossible for him to speak. If he tried, Ruban thought that he might scream.

“I’m sorry,” Subhas said again, voice slightly stronger. His fingers gripped one of Ruban’s hands with surprising strength, and he pulled him closer. Ruban went willingly.

With a long, rattling breath that seemed to cost him all he had left, Subhas parted his lips one more time. Almost desperately, Ruban leaned closer, all but pressing his tear-streaked face into his uncle’s shoulder. “What is it? What can I do?” he asked, forcing the words out of his clogged throat.

Subhas choked, coughed, spitting blood into Ruban’s face, his hair. After a blood-soaked eternity, he murmured, still retching copper: “Take care of Hiya. Ruban, please, take care of my daughter.”

Ruban wanted to tell him that he would. Wanted to promise him that he would never let her out of his sight again. Wanted to say a million other inconsequential things that he hadn’t said because he’d thought they had time. Because he’d thought he had a lifetime.

But there was no point. Subhas was gone. His moans had quieted. His wracking gasps had stilled.

Trembling, Ruban ran a hand over his uncle’s blood and dirt stained face, sliding his eyes shut. As gently as he could, he lifted the body and lay it down on the floor amidst the dust and debris of the destroyed wall.

Then he stood and turned back to face the Aeriels.

***

Mother and son faced each other across the breadth of the entrance hall, crimson-tipped wings unfurled, fingers alight. A long, jagged tear ran down one of Ashwin’s sleeves and some of his bottommost feathers looked singed. But that was nothing compared to the sight that was Tauheen.

Apparently, the prince had managed to hit his mother with one of his own fire-shells, which Ruban knew from experience were nothing to scoff at. Tauheen’s back was a study in devastation, little more than a mound of burned skin mingled with ruined cloth.

Ruban was gratified to see that facing the two of them at once without a moment’s respite had apparently taken its toll on the Aeriel Queen. And the stab-wound from the sifblade was obviously draining her, though far more slowly than it would any other Aeriel. The light forming around her fingers flickered and blinked, as if struggling for the solidity of a proper shell. Her magnificent wings, though still huge, seemed lacklustre, somehow diminished.

Ashwin released his shell and Tauheen dove left, out of the way of the oncoming projectile. She dodged a direct hit, but the fiery ball singed the tip of a wing, eliciting a cry of agony. Her own half-formed shell dissipated around her fingers, the wisps of gathered energy fading back into the air. Ruban didn’t think she had the stamina for another blast, not without a chance to recuperate first.

And Ashwin didn’t look like he had any intention of giving her that opportunity.

Ruban’s feet moved of their own accord. He didn’t have a plan. He had lost any semblance of clarity or logic a long time ago. All he knew was that Tauheen had to pay for what she had done. And if it was the last thing he did in his life, he was going to make her pay.

Even as Ruban moved closer, the queen’s eyes remained focused on her son, so she did not notice his approach. At least not until it was too late. Barely a foot away, he leapt, hand outstretched as he swung his blade into Tauheen’s left wing, cutting through hollow bone, muscle and tendon. Light spilt from the butchered appendage along with a hellish fountain of feathers and bits of flesh.

Piercing, hair-raising screams fell from Tauheen’s lips, her limbs flailing, wide eyes glassy with pain. Ruban ripped the blade out of the ruined wing, taking torn muscle and feathers along with the weapon even as one of his legs shot out to deliver a vicious kick to the back of Tauheen’s knees.

With an aborted yelp, the Aeriel sank to her knees, spasms rocking her body as light continued to spill weakly from her injured wing, casting flickering shadows on the carpet. Almost on instinct, one of her hands jerked outward as she fell – perhaps in a futile attempt to break the fall – and hit Ruban square in the stomach, sending the Hunter flying across the room with unexpected, supernatural force. As he hit the wall, toppling a chair in his path, he lost his grip on the blade and it clattered to the floor, out of his reach.

Ruban blinked, rubbing splinters of God-knows-what from his face, when another explosion sounded a few feet away, along with the sounds of cracking concrete. Ashwin was attacking his mother again. Ruban tried to get up, get back to his feet. Sharp, debilitating pain lanced through his torso. Ruban’s breath hitched. Gods, had he broken something? He couldn’t afford to be an invalid. Not now!

Another explosion rocked the house and suddenly – in a blast of wind and singed feathers – Tauheen was upon him. Hair wild, half-naked body smeared with dirt and bloodstains, she looked like a vision of death; her feral eyes and bared teeth a glimpse into chaos personified.

Time seemed to slow down in his vicinity as her long, claw-like fingers closed around his throat, squeezing the air out of his lungs with the slow relish of a predator savouring its prey. Ruban’s own fingers clawed at her arms, but to no avail. She held like a vice, giving not an inch even as his chest burned for air. His body convulsed, limbs thrashing like a fish out of water, gasping in the throes of death.

Spots appeared before Ruban’s eyes as his vision began to fade. He redoubled his clawing, one hand reaching for his blade even as his legs tried to kick the Aeriel off him. But a part of him already knew that it was futile. The blade was too far away and his opponent too strong. He was losing strength by the second. There was no way he was going to reach it in time, and no way to dislodge the Aeriel without the sifblade.

His vision blackened, his limbs turning to lead and falling away from Tauheen’s still clutching fingers. He convulsed one more time, his body trying desperately – if vainly – to draw breath.

For a second, the Aeriel’s otherworldly eyes gleamed, victorious. Then they widened – a strange light flooding Ruban’s fuzzy vision – as shock coloured her pale, gorgeous features. Moments later, her fingers slackened and she toppled from his body, a marionette with its strings snapped.

Air flooding back into his deprived lungs, Ruban spent a few moments in a dizzy state of bliss. Then his mind cleared, reality seeping back in bits and pieces. He sat up, rubbed a hand over his eyes. The room was in shambles, several of the walls and much of the furniture blown to smithereens, the once beautiful hall destroyed beyond repair.

At his feet lay Tauheen – unearthly light spilling from her back, both wings in tatters. But for the aforementioned appendages, he could almost have mistaken her for a human. A human corpse.

Her lifeless eyes stared unseeingly up at the ceiling – crystal orbs reflecting electric light. He glanced at her back. There was nothing left in it but charred flesh and twisted, exposed bones.

He frowned. Something wasn’t right. Mingled with the lumps of blackened tissue and splintered bone were tiny, jagged rocks, sticking out at odd angles.

Ruban reached a trembling hand forward, extricating one of the little rocks from the mess of flesh and gore, and held it up for inspection. He swore.

Lifting his eyes to the other side of the room, he saw Ashwin sprawled on the carpet, body as still and lifeless as his mother’s.

***

His mother was going to kill Ruban.

Shwaan supposed he finally understood why Safaa had been so obsessed with Tauheen all these years. Their mother was a formidable foe. In the six hundred years since he had last seen her, Shwaan had allowed himself to forget that.

He couldn’t ignore the fact any longer, though. Fighting Tauheen had drained him. He felt like a kitten that’d been attacked by a vulture, and by some miracle lived to tell the tale.

Simply moving felt like an impossible challenge. His muscles – bruised and battered from the confrontation – refused to budge. All he wanted was to curl up and go to sleep.

And yet his mother was strangling Ruban even as he watched.

A part of him – the part that was Tauheen’s son, he was sure – wondered why he couldn’t just leave the Hunter to his fate and retreat. Go back to Vaan, recuperate and then return with a large host from Safaa’s army to apprehend Tauheen.

It would be the sensible thing to do. He didn’t have much of a chance of defeating his mother on his own. All he would do by staying was to ensure that neither he nor Ruban left the villa alive. And then who would be left to stop his mother? He was certain Safaa would send more people to finish the task he had started. Perhaps Shehzaa or Wakeen; or maybe both.

But they wouldn’t have the information Shwaan had acquired over the months, and would have no one to help them. They would have to start the entire investigation from scratch. And who knows what his mother would have accomplished by then, now that she had almost perfected the reinforced sifblade formula.

And what was he risking by leaving, really? Ruban would die, yes. But then, he was human. He would die anyway, sooner or later. And what was fifty years more or less, in the grand scheme of things? The time would pass in the blink of an eye, for Shwaan at least. Where was the wisdom in risking the fate of generations stretching out over millennia, in order to give one man fifty more years to live?

There wasn’t any. It would be a stupid thing to do. A reckless thing. And yet, Shwaan knew with a certainty that surprised even him, that he was going to do it. Ruban had lost his father, his friend, his aunt and now, his uncle – and in a way, Shwaan was responsible for all of it. All of those deaths, almost every tragedy in the Hunter’s life, had been caused, directly or otherwise, by Tauheen. By his own mother.

He had not chosen to be her son, and yet her actions were his to answer for anyway. He owed Ruban his allegiance, if for no other reason than simply to make up – to begin to compensate – for what his mother had done to him and his family.

But quite apart from any feelings of guilt or gratitude towards the Hunter himself, what kept Shwaan from leaving was Hiya. After all, if there was one person who had suffered more from Tauheen’s actions than Ruban, it was Hiya. Both her parents had been murdered by his mother. And if he now allowed her to kill Ruban, Hiya would be well and truly orphaned, in every sense of the word.

It was that thought, more than any other, that sealed his fate. And perhaps that of the world with it.

Staggering up the stairs, he slid into an alcove behind the latticed wall that had sheltered them earlier that evening. Zeifaa, had it just been a couple of hours ago? He felt like he had been fighting for days.

Kneeling, he undid the knot on the abandoned bed sheet carrying the detritus of the destroyed safe. If they died here, it would all have been pointless. And if they lived? Well, he supposed it would still be pointless. It was little use, collecting evidence against dead men or Aeriels.

Rummaging through the contents, he finally found what he was looking for. Gripping the little metal case in his hands, he raced back down the stairs to the entrance hall.

Ruban’s struggles had slowed to nothing more than some listless flailing. From what Shwaan could see of his face behind the silhouette of his mother, the Hunter’s eyes had glazed over. He was fading, fast. Even if Shwaan had felt capable of prying his mother off the man without hurting him in the process – which he didn’t – there wasn’t enough time. Ruban would be dead long before he had come even close to overpowering Tauheen.

No, this was the only plan that had any chance of working. The only course of action that might end with Ruban still breathing come dawn. And if he failed? Well, Shwaan supposed it wouldn’t matter. Not to him, anyway. It was oddly freeing, that realisation.

Opening the case, he took the contents into his hands.

Gloves had been in fashion the last time he was on earth. He wished the trend had lasted another six centuries; not that satin would have been much by way of protection against sif. But anything had to be better than this.

The pain was overwhelming. Debilitating. But it was far from the worst thing about sif. No, the problem with sif wasn’t that it hurt, though hurt it did. The problem was that it drained you. It was not the pain that killed you, it was the exhaustion.

His limbs were like lead. He was hundreds of leagues underwater, the liquid pressing down on him inexorably from all sides, crushing him, choking him. The pain he could have borne, but the exhaustion sapped him even of the will to escape it. The world darkened around him, light fading from his eyes, and all he wanted to do was to lie down and let the fatigue take him.

He lifted his eyes to where his mother was still trying to asphyxiate the Hunter. He could tell she was succeeding. Ruban wouldn’t last another full minute.

Not that Shwaan cared if he did.

Sif-induced apathy had its uses, apparently. When you were too exhausted to care about your own life, you didn’t much care about anybody else’s either. Fear of his mother, apprehension for the safety of his friend, even his concern for Hiya – all of it took a backseat to that single-minded, overwhelming desire for sleep that had overtaken him the moment the ores touched his skin. He could do anything because at that moment, he didn’t give a damn if he did any of it right.

Lifting his hands – the ores clutched within them like bits of smouldering coal – he gathered every little speck of energy that remained in his sif-drained body and created a shell that probably wouldn’t have killed a puppy, infusing it with the sif clutched within his benumbed fingers. Then he aimed it at his mother’s heaving back and let loose, allowing the force of the attack, the momentum of the shell to carry the rocks with it as it flew at Tauheen.

As he had expected, Tauheen didn’t move to avoid the shell. She didn’t even notice it coming. She was herself drained from the constant attacks, not even half as alert as she normally would have been. But more importantly, she was too engrossed in her task, too high on the pleasure of the kill to pay attention to her surroundings.

Not that the shell was worth paying attention to. By itself, it wouldn’t even have bruised the queen, much less kill her. It was weaker than the weakest shell he had formed as a tottering babe on his sister’s knee. But that was okay. Because its purpose wasn’t to kill or injure anyway. Its only purpose was transportation.

The shell detonated on contact with Tauheen’s skin. A weak blast, but sufficient, nonetheless, to bury the little rocks of enhanced sif into his mother’s already injured back.

For a moment, nothing happened. As if his mother had the power to stop time itself in order to stay the inevitable.

Then she screamed, glowing feathers scattering all around her like leaves falling off a dead tree. Shwaan wanted to scream too, but he didn’t have the energy. He had given everything he had into that last attack. He felt like he had drained his very life into it.

Tauheen’s fingers slackened around Ruban’s spasming throat. For a moment, she swayed on her knees like one of the drunk tourists they had passed on their way to the villa. Then she collapsed, dead.

Something in Shwaan had been keeping him upright. Most likely a repressed, lifelong urge to witness this glorious moment. As Tauheen collapsed, it was like somebody had cut his strings along with hers. An era had ended. And he had wiped the slate clean. Repaid the debt to the universe that he had inherited from his mother.

Whoever was going to write the new story didn’t need him for an epilogue to the last one. They could write their own bloody prologue.

With that comforting thought, Shwaan closed his eyes and slept.

***

“I thought you were dead,” said Ruban, trying – with dubious success – to force his voice into some semblance of nonchalance. To dislodge the knot that had formed at the base of his throat.

Ashwin blinked, rubbed at his eyes. Then he blinked again, looking up at the Hunter in confusion as, with some difficulty, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. His braid had come undone sometime during the past hour and a cascade of messy black hair now framed his dirt-smudged face, their ends brushing the floor around his butt. He looked like he had just woken up from an unusually long nap. Ruban didn’t think most humans had ever looked more human.

And then, of course, there were the wings.

“Mighty stupid thing you did back there,” Ruban continued, gathering his supplies. There was the can of kerosene he had scavenged from the kitchen as well as a half-empty matchbox and some rags he had found lying around in various rooms of the house, concluding his morbid treasure hunt. “It’s a miracle you didn’t end up as dead as your mother.”

Ashwin grinned, then swayed momentarily on his ass, looking ready to keel over at the brush of a feather. “So, she really is dead, huh? Unbelievable, isn’t it? For a moment there, I almost doubted if she was capable of it. Dying, I mean.”

“I was rather sure she wasn’t. But then, I suppose a back-full of enhanced sif is enough to try anybody’s stamina. Even hers. Which brings us back to the fact that that was an incredibly stupid thing to do, what you did there.”

Ashwin shrugged. “Oh, I’d say I have some tough competition on that front.”

Ruban frowned. “You could be dead. Hell, for a few minutes I thought you actually were.”

“There are worse things in the universe than death, you know.”

“I have a feeling your sister would see things differently.”

“Oh, so that’s what had you worried, is it? You wound me, my friend.”

“Not half so much as she’d have wounded me when I told her I got you killed,” Ruban grunted, spreading an old, tattered rug over Tauheen’s corpse. “That is not a conversation I want to have. Ever.”

Ashwin scowled. “My demise in the process of offing my own mother – while infinitely awkward – would in no way have been your fault. But never mind that for now,” he cocked his head to the side. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Preparing a funeral pyre,” Ruban informed him tersely, setting the matchbox and the can of kerosene on the floor next to the rug.

Ashwin’s eyes widened. “A what?”

“A funeral pyre. If anything on earth can bring itself back to life after you’ve killed it, it’d be your mother. I’m just making sure that doesn’t happen.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Ashwin laughed. “You’re not serious.”

Ruban shrugged. “I’m a superstitious man. Besides, I’d rather not start an international incident over her feathers. I’m sure every government has some claim to them. And all of them would overestimate their own while downplaying everyone else’s. I’d say the world has bigger things to worry about right now than who gets the shiniest plume.” He snorted, “Like the fact that all of Tauheen’s followers are now adrift, leaderless. With both Reivaa and your mother dead, they’d either scatter and go into hiding, which would make them that much harder to apprehend; or, worse still, find themselves a new boss. The last thing we need to add to this tinderbox of a situation is a bunch of politicians squabbling on primetime TV about which country’s freedom fighters had fought the most bravely six hundred years ago.”

Ashwin nodded, grave. “Humans are odd creatures.”

That got him a smirk. “Says the guy who just tried a kamikaze attack on his own mother.”

“Point taken. Want some help?” Ashwin had pushed himself to his feet, teetering momentarily on unsteady legs before bracing himself against a sofa.

“Want to do the honours?” Ruban asked, holding out the matchbox to the Aeriel. Tauheen’s rug-wrapped body lay temptingly in the middle of the decimated entrance hall, doused in kerosene.

Ashwin looked at the proffered item for a second, then shook his head, smiling wryly. “Nah. Your claim clearly outweighs mine in this particular matter.”

***

The flames were yet to die down completely. The feathers, when they caught fire, had been a sight to behold – throwing multicoloured sparks of gold, silver and scarlet in all directions. The most exquisite fireworks Ruban had ever seen could not so much as begin to compare.

The distinctive sound of police sirens filled the air as Ashwin threw the windows open to let the smoke out – the ones which hadn’t been shattered during the fight, anyway.

At Ruban’s questioning glance, the Aeriel shrugged. “I texted Simani when we found the stolen ores in the safe. Guess she sent backup.”

The Hunter snorted. “You’re getting a hang of this, aren’t you? Won’t be long before you’re a full-fledged Hunter.”

“Zeifaa preserve me from such a fate,” Ashwin shuddered, even as his wings dissolved like smoke behind him. “What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth.” Ruban sighed, shook his head. Reaching behind a scorched couch, he dragged the bedsheet into which they had stashed the contents of the safe out into the room. Rifling through the documents, he finally found what he was looking for: the letter from his father to his uncle, dated a week before the former’s death. Mouth set in a grim line, he slipped it into his pocket. “Well, most of it anyway.”

***

Simani and the others arrived a couple of hours after the police, accompanied by the local Hunters, had reached the villa, which had now been put under lockdown by the authorities. It was almost dawn by the time his partner burst through the door, looking as if she hadn’t slept in a few decades. Apparently, after receiving Ashwin’s text, she had commandeered the private jet of some hapless businessman for ‘service to the nation’ and flown out to Ibanborah at supersonic speeds that still hadn’t been enough to quell her fretting – not until she actually saw Ruban alive and kicking with her own eyes.

The local authorities were just wrapping up their search of the house when the team from Ragah arrived. Not that they had found much, apart from what he and Ashwin had already discovered. Trying to explain the half-melted safe in the storeroom had given Ruban something of a headache, but he had finally managed it with some half-assed story about sensitive documents the Aeriels had tried to steal from his uncle.

His uncle. Ruban sighed, feeling his headache return with a vengeance.

They had taken the body to the nearest Hunter Quarters for a basic forensic run-through before it was to be flown to Ragah. Not that there was much doubt in anybody’s mind about how he had died. Anyone with eyes could see he had been killed by an energy blast. Killed in action. He would be put to rest with full state honours.

“What happened?” Simani had asked, putting an arm around Ruban as they carried Subhas’s body out of the house.

Her eyes had been so full of compassion and sadness that Ruban had almost blurted out the whole truth right then and there, had almost sobbed his confession into his partner’s comforting shoulder. The only thing that had held him back was Hiya. There was not much he could do for her. But this was something he could give her. She deserved an untainted memory of her father, of her childhood. And he wouldn’t take that away from her just to unburden his own conscience.

Bracing himself, forcing his voice to be steady, he told her the story he would tell a million other people a million more times over the course of the next few months – from reporters to biographers to the Director of the IAW himself. By the end of it, he half believed it himself.

“We had planned to lure Tauheen to the villa, Uncle Subhas and I.” He was surprised by how little his voice quivered as he said it. And any hesitance he had could easily be attributed to the lingering shock of the battle, the sorrow of his loss. “It’s away from the main town, so we had hoped we could deal with her here without endangering any civilians. He suspected there was a mole within the IAW, so we decided to do this on our own, without involving any outsiders who might compromise the mission and allow her to flee justice once again.”

He continued the story, the words falling from his lips almost of their own accord, once he had begun. Even as his mind wandered, he kept talking, almost in a trance. This was exactly how it had happened – in another world, in another life.

Their plan had worked. Tauheen had fallen for the trap, entered the house where they lay waiting for her. They had attacked her. But she was powerful, far stronger than even they had expected her to be. She had fought back, had almost killed them both. Working together, they had barely managed to contain her. Then, just as they thought they had won, she had attacked Ruban. He had been sure he was going to die. But at the last moment, Uncle Subhas had pushed him out of the way, sacrificing his own life for his nephew’s. Well, that part – at least – was the absolute truth, Ruban thought, swallowing a bitterness he could not explain.

Subhas Kinoh had died a hero, in the service of his country, his family. Enraged and grief-stricken, Ruban had killed Tauheen, he could barely remember how. Everything after his uncle’s death was something of a blur.

A spark from one of Tauheen’s energy shells had set fire to a rug, which in turn had incinerated half the furniture and Tauheen’s body with it.

It wasn’t a perfect story. But then, he didn’t need a perfect story. He had neutralised one of the greatest terrorist threats of all time, had brought the true extent of her atrocities to light. He was a hero, his legend surpassed only by that of his uncle. Death always seemed to enhance one’s deeds in life, good or bad. Nobody would think to doubt them. And if someone did, they would keep it to themselves. No one wanted to be seen as casting aspersions on the motives of national heroes. Being the media darling of the moment had to have some advantages after all, he thought sardonically.

And by the time the adulation was over, this would be an old story. And nobody cared what anybody else thought about an old story.

“It’s time to go, Ruban,” Simani murmured, touching him gently on the shoulder and snapping him out of his reverie. The house was empty, and he could hear the sounds of revving engines just outside the door. Ashwin stood at the threshold, leaning against the doorframe as he waited for them to join the others.

Ruban nodded, silently pushing himself off the step he had been sitting on. It was time to go home. Time to face the music. Time to face Hiya. He closed his eyes, wondering what he would say to her. What could you say to someone to make the destruction of their life seem bearable? Ruban certainly didn’t know. Nobody had said very much to him. He hadn’t given them the chance.

“Come on, let’s go,” Ashwin called, waving them out the door. “I have to report to my own superiors, you know.”

Despite himself, Ruban felt a smirk lift the corners of his mouth. His superiors, indeed. If only they could know.

Flanked by his partner and his friend, Ruban walked out into the sunrise and towards the waiting police jeeps.

***