And, perhaps, the slave admitted, the small joy of a delicious revenge. But revenge would not weigh too heavily on their destiny, the slave thought. No, the cataphracts had shed much karma from their souls.

The slave was glad of it. He had never cared much for the cataphracts, it was true. Crude and boastful, they were. Coarse and unrefined, compared to the kshatriya the slave had once been. But no kshatriya could ever claim more than the dead cataphracts outside the walls of the Hagia Sophia. Arjuna himself would adopt their souls and call them kinfolk.

Again, he thought about the dagger and knew that his own karma would be the better for its use. But, again, he thrust the thought aside.

No, he would wait awhile.

It was not that he feared the sin of suicide. His faith did not share the bizarre Christian notion that acts carried moral consequences separate from their purpose. No, it was that he, too, could not bear to leave this turn of eternity's wheel without a small, delicious revenge.

The asura's vermin would need time to find the chamber where the old slave sat. Time, while the Ye-tai dogs and their Rajput fleas slunk fearfully through the great cavern of the cathedral, dreading another strike of the Mongoose.

The old slave would give them the time. He would add considerable karma to his soul, he knew, but he could not resist.

He would taunt the tormentors.

So had Shakuntala taunted them, so long ago, before opening her veins. And now, at the end of his life, the old slave found great joy in the fact that he could finally remember the girl without pain.

How he had loved that treasure of the world, that jewel of creation! From the first day her father had brought her to him, and handed her into his safe-keeping.