They were surrounded by reporters. Shwaan sighed internally. The profession had its uses, as he had come to know rather intimately in the past few weeks. He had known that attracting the media’s attention to the happenings at SifCo would be a good way of stalling the plans for the theft, at least temporarily; but even he hadn’t expected it to work quite as quickly, and spectacularly as it had. Nevertheless, Shwaan felt that there should be a legally imposed limit on the number of reporters one was made to deal with during any given period of time. They were exhausting creatures.

“But that is so not fair Cas!” whined the one named Rajesh, whom Casia had introduced as the editor of something called the Life‘n’Style, though what that was supposed to be, Shwaan had little clue. The man was eyeing him rather like a cat noticing a bowl of fresh milk just slightly out of its reach.

“Back off Raj. He’s mine!” Casia growled, with a little more vehemence than Shwaan considered strictly necessary. Not that he was complaining. Her random bouts of territorial aggression came in rather handy at times like these.

He looked around, scanning the grounds for an escape route. Six hundred years ago, he could have pointed out half a dozen underground tunnels opening around the palace premises with a blindfold over his eyes. But things had changed – more than he had imagined possible, really – since the time he had called this compound home. He was suddenly overcome by a strange sense of loss, for a home he had never particularly liked in the first place.

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“Come, let me show you around the grounds some more,” said one of the younger members of the group surrounding them, smiling brightly at Shwaan, pulling him out of his reverie. “It really is quite an amazing place; the pride of our city!”

“Oh yes, it is a fantastic place,” agreed Shwaan with genuine fondness, his gaze still scanning his childhood playground for some vestiges of the past, something that hadn’t been swept away by time and humanity.

Suddenly, his gaze alighted on a patch of grassless land, the earth broken by cracked pieces of marble half buried in the dirt. He smiled. “There used to be a statue there,” he said unprompted. Images of Maya yelling at him to ‘get down from there’ – even as his little feet dangled between Zeifaa’s humongous shoulder blades – flashed before his eyes. “I used to climb onto it whenever I was bored. Really had the most marvellous view!”

Wary brown eyes watched him curiously from the spot where the statue had once stood.