When a kingdom is a ledger of favors and betrayals, every decision reads like an inventory of lives. The palace corridors had become arteries of motion: messengers slipping, generals conferring in shadowed alcoves, servants hurrying like bees that had lost a hive. Outside the high gates Ghazi standards rustled; inside, the ledger lay like a wound on the dais. The choice before Rathore was no longer merely political — it had become ethical arithmetic: names for lives, ink for flesh.