The mansion burned gold tonight. Brass diyas lined every arch and windowsill, their flames steady in the windless air. Marigold garlands draped the sandstone columns in heavy, fragrant loops. The hawan kund at the courtyard's center had been lit twenty minutes ago, and the smoke from it, sandalwood and ghee and something older, something the pandit had brought in a small brass box and added without explanation, rose in slow, deliberate columns into the dark sky above.
It should have felt sacred. It felt, to anyone paying attention, like a theatre set for something that had nothing to do with prayer.
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