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The Fools Who Split the River cover

Book corner / Ten Kings · Book 2

The Fools Who Split the River

The fools, in their folly, split the Parushni.

That line, from the Rig Veda's hymn of the ten kings, is about her.

Dhara is nineteen, a digger of water channels, granddaughter of a famous poet who has just gambled away his clan's last herd. When ten kings gather on the Parushni to crush the Bharatas and their king, Sudas, she offers them a weapon no song has a word for. She will split the river, hold its water behind the walls of a city nobody remembers building, and let it go on Sudas when he tries to cross.

Three thousand diggers. One season. A river that remembers its old bed.

But in this world nothing is true until it has been sung, and the winners will make the song.

The Fools Who Split the River is the second of the Ten Kings novels: the same war as The Shallow Ford, seen from the far bank. It is a story about who gets remembered, and by whose song.

SeriesTen Kings, book 2
Published4 October 2026
FormatKindle edition
LanguageEnglish
ASINB0HLXWKNCP

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