Where do you go, when all is lost and won, and yours is the kingdom?

Home.

And where is home?

The stone walls of the Ghale family homestead, venerable with moss, cast long blue shadows in the cold morning light. So did the garish tent the two that wouldn't leave had set up in the front yard. Suddenly, the impossibility of evicting Yogi and Reggie was the least of Ajay's problems. He dawdled for a moment, gave an involuntary shudder at everything and nothing in particular, and headed for the tent.

Inside, a pile of brightly coloured blankets and embroidered curtains snored gently. Ajay nudged it with his boot, and immediately felt unbefittingly, un-despotically sheepish. The colourful mound continued to snore. Ajay reminded himself that he's king now, which didn't make much difference, stared at the pile some more, and nudged it again. The pile grumbled, shifted, and raised twin pashmina-wrapped, blinking heads to behold it's new ruler. The heads looked unimpressed.

"The King is dead! Long live the King!" Yogi, the head on the left, suddenly crowed.

"Not quite."

"Oh… So, you're not king? Or Pagan's not dead?"

"It's complicated…"

The two heads turned to look at each other, and burst out laughing.

"Status update!" Reggie, the dark head on the right, finally managed to exhale between merry burbles.

"Okay, man. So, he's alive. Did you hug your uncle before he left?"

"Wait a moment…What?"

"What? He's been packing his figurative suitcases for months, I knew he was up to something!"

"Not that. The…uncle part. You knew?"

"What do you think we do here, man? Sit around getting stoned all day? I mean, that too. But we don't do that in a vacuum neither, do we Yogi?"

"Neither literally nor figuratively, no."

"Right."

"Do you seriously think no one but you ever visited us to smoke the good shit? And anyway, what with your dad's journal being so inexplicably scattered all over the place, and the fact that the bored and inebriated will talk? And where, may I ask you, do the bored go to be inebriated in the greatest, wisest, most unassuming company around here?"

"And humble" Ajay smiled, despite himself "And humble, too."

"Oh yeah. Salt of the earth, us! So, what's the plan, chief?"

Ajay groaned inwardly "Good question."

"But perhaps one best left for later? Everyone will be onto you about it soon enough, your highly majestic excellence."

"And did you, in fact, hug your uncle?"

"Can't say I did. He took off while I was… Wait, how much do you know?"

"Your dad was a fruitcake, your mom shot him, but only after he killed your kid sister, Pagan is your uncle. No secret, really, but he had some issues, hanging around that mausoleum, never going in. Noore hated her job, Pagan and basically everyone, Paul had issues, Sabal and Amita had issues, you have issues, and the Goat, oh my god, the Goat has issues."

"He does. Frustrated artisan, that one. Kept petitioning Pagan to open the borders and establish some sort of legit tourist industry so he could sell his trinkets. Used to come here all the time and bitch and moan 'bout how no one appreciated traditional woodwork anymore. Tried to get a job as interior decorator to the palace, but his erstwhile highness found folk art somewhat tacky…"

"Got a complex, that guy."

Ajay stared unblinkingly at the twin-headed blanket burrito.

"Come to think on it, not that complex, really. His gripe makes as much sense as anyone else's around here, and his coping strategy was the same as everyone else's minus the picking a side part. Sounds just like this here merry trio of malevolent misfits, present company excluded, your majesty. I mean he's not killed a tenth the people the three of us here have on average."

"I haven't killed anyone." Reggie threw in.

"Nor have I."

Ajay continued to stare at the two who now stared flippantly back.

"You guys are serious?" he said at last. "You know the Goat? You've met him?"

"Sure we have. Everything we own made of wood or ivory is his handiwork. Looking impressed is payment enough these days. Brought us a new opium pipe yesterday, and he didn't take to the idea of our being put out of commission as the stewards of the old homestead, what with it containing the largest single collection of his work, curated by yours humbly and all, but I daresay the interest you've been taking in his masks might put you in his better stead, not to mention the possibility of your making him an offer your uncle neglected to extend."

"There you go again with this uncle thing. You're saying my father, Mohan, and Pagan were brothers? And not my mom and Pagan I hope."

"Oh, nah. Not your mom's brother, he's from Honkers originally, as you know by now. She's, well, was as Kyrati as, uhh… honey badgers?"

"And nice things" Yogi cut in "Nice-er things, at any rate. Like… Uh. As Kyrati as top buds and Himalayan honey and uh... Fancy embroideries?"

Yogi settled for nodding sagely.

"So, not literally your uncle, man. It's just easier on the ol' gob than could-have-been-your-stepdad-if-it-weren't-for-your-actual-dad-ruining-everything-by-killing-your-kid-sister-and-your-mom-leaving-the-country-but-still-kinda-almost-a-relative-seeing-as-you're-his-heir-and-all. Bit of a mouthful, that." Reggie blew the tasselled fringe of the pashmina out of his eyes thoughtfully and made to get up.

"Ah, so the plot thins…"

Reggie froze half way to standing, leaving the blankets to quietly slide down his legs. Yogi, his eyebrows straining incredulously towards his receding hairline, eventually managed "Did you just make a joke?"

"Something like that."

"Well, there's a first time for everything. A time for every something and the other thing and all that. Ecclesiastes."

Reggie rolled his eyes, kicked the blankets away from his feet, and made for the great outdoors.

"And you're not keeping the house. And I'm not hiring the Goat to do…whatever he does. When he's not murdering people."

"Your sulking highness, Ah-jay Gah-lay, is missing a prime opportunity here. And I don't know that you can afford that right now, what with people to get on side and body counts to lower and Amita and Sabal both being suspiciously dead lately."

"What's your idea, then?"

"Well…" Reggie, one relieved sigh later, stuck his head back in through the tent flap. "We've not been idle."

"Oh no, not us. We've been thinkin'."

"An we've come to the conclusion that you've got a bit of hiring to do. Us, as your trusty and trustworthy…"

"Trustworthy?"

"Well, what? We haven't killed you so far, right?"

"So, as I was saying…"

"As we was saying."

"Right. As we was saying. You hire us as your trusty advisors, because so far you've made a bit of a hash of things. And you're not going to have any subjects left if this unrest and killing each other business keeps going on among them. You're pretty much a Malthusian scourge all in your own right, son of Mohan or no."

"And you hire the Goat."

"Why?"

"Well, they say a statue says a bunch of stuff. A picture's worth a thousand words and all that."

"That's just over a page in 12 point font, and irrelevant. Your point?"

"Well, it's 3D, see? So a cubic page of text is, like, what's that? One line is how may words long?"

"No, you count the lines instead, as if, like, the words were the columns and the lines were rows, but the columns vary more than the rows because…"

"It's just a thousand thousand, so a million words and no more relevant."

"The point is, no one's going to take kindly to Amita and Sabal being dead by your hand. Doesn't matter that you've saved a whole bunch of arses from being enslaved or executed for heresy or married off at age six. They had stalwart followers who would have been more than happy to kill each other if told, and they won't be too impressed with you and the 'So, I shot Sabal because Amita told me to, then I shot Amita because it transpires she's nuts too' schtick."

"So what you do is you tell a better story. Better than, 'Hi, I'm the great and fabled Ah-jay Gah-lay and I just shot both faction leaders because we disagreed on the nitty-gritty of policy' because otherwise, you might just end up great and fabled and joining those two in the choir invisible."

"Now, what did we learn from your dad?"

"Just for clarity, Mohan, right? You haven't come up with another misleading shorthand for Pagan?"

"Mohan, yeah. Was a bit of a cockup when it comes down to it, right? What's his saving grace?"

"He's… dead?"

"That a boy! Dead as a doorknob. Dead as Darpan, for that matter. And…"

"Everybody loves a martyr!"

"Shut up, Donald, I was going to say that anyhow. Have the fucking decency not to interject."

"Well, you were taking your time about getting to it! And it's Yogi, you cunt." Yogi turned away sulkily, thought better of it, and seized on the opportunity to continue where Reggie left off:

"So the dead don't exactly go around telling their own stories, right? Well, minus the inexplicable scattering-their-papers-all-over-the-shop folk seem apt to do around here."

"You want me to lie about how they died?"

"Well, not lie exactly. Not lie-lie. Just change the some details, some whereabouts. Or better yet, just keep doing that taciturn thing you're doing and let people come to their own conclusions. And to help them come to the least unhelpful conclusions, you hire the Goat."

"Get him to carve you a nice, big, official-looking statue. Soothe the poor man's ego a bit, and placate the Banashur-hugging Sabalists with some traditional art while you're at it. Show how Kyrati you are, that you're with it, and that they were with you to the last breath. Just, y'know. Had the misfortune to die on the way to storming that mountain stronghold. Look heartbroken a bit while you're at it."

"And you suppose he might stop with the murdering business?"

"God, yes. What did we tell you? The guy just wants to carve wood and make a rupee or a thousand from it."

Ajay, being Ajay, sat looking pensive for a while. Reggie fetched a chopping bowl and started macerating the contents with scissors like his life depended on it. Yogi twiddled his thumbs quietly, whistling what sounded suspiciously like the Telugu version of "Thriller".

" All right. Done. But the pair of you look hardly advisory. More delinquent really, which you are. How am I going to take you anywhere?"

"Oh, you can trust us not to spike the punch. Heh. Hehhh. But this does bring us to the problem of tailoring. Bit of diplomacy to be done there, but I don't even want to think about the fashionista war Pagan's left you in the middle of without a spliff in my hand. Stressful shit, man, save that one for later."

"I think we've got bigger fish to fry, guys."

"Trust us, you don't want to fuck with Mumu Chiffon. Or that other lady."

"We have a blood-sports arena operating in the middle of the country, in some kind of fucked-up memorial of Noore Najjar, who wanted less fucking bloodshed, not more! No functional hospitals and thousands of maimed! Pagan's drug cartel buddies wondering where their next shipment went! Amitanists, Sabalists, and Loyalists to reconcile, new factions to nip in the bud and another fucking war to prevent! And you're telling me I have to worry about a divergence of sartorial taste?"

"Whoa, settle down there, buddy!" Reggie waved his hands, still holding bowl and scissors, in a vaguely conciliatory manner "You brought it up, anyway. Trust us, you'll have to deal with it, eventually. As for Noore and the hospitals? Well, what are you still doing here? Her reports, which uncle Min was so affronted by, are still around. See what you can do about getting them publicized more widely. And call up the red cross, for Pete's sakes, you're king now. "Hello guys, my country just came out of a century of civil war, we need a wee bit o' help. Yes, the old king is gone. No, we won't shoot down your helicopters this time. Promise!" Hop on that gyrocopter and bugger off north – you have a whole palace to lay claim to, phone calls to make, hobnobbing to do. And one mad tailor to comfort, as you'll see soon enough – if Sarnai hasn't burned the whole place down, torn out all her hair, or topped herself in a rage yet."

"Sarnai?"

"You'll see soon enough."

"Right. So, advisors. We're going to be trying to assemble a parliament, right?"

"That a boy. Constitution to pen, youtube videos to shoot, red cross to suck up to. You'll be busy. No breakfast spliff for you."

Ajay sighed and got to his feet. Made for the tent flap. Stopped, turned around.

"Oh. And guys. Remember that conversation you were having about whether "embowel" is a word, when I first met you?"

"Yeah?" Reggie looked up from licking a rolling paper which looked suspiciously like a yellowed fragment of map.

"Well, does feeding someone haggis count?" Ajay tried a smile "I mean, that's putting bowel into an intact torso, right? 'Cause Haggis is made of bowel…"

Two pairs of eyes blinked in cringing confusion.

"Stick to the taciturn thing" Yogi offered after a long moment "funny isn't your strong suit."

Outside, the sky had brightened. A new day had well and truly started.