Soul of Fire (26 page)

“Yes, Sahib?”

“I always thought it was important that each man be allowed to use his head,” William said. And was surprised by seeing the other man startle and then smile—a fugitive smile, quickly hidden. “What is humorous about what I said?”

The man looked surprised, perhaps at his expressions being observed, then shook his head, vigorously. “No, Sahib, you misunderstand. I was smiling at something foolish. Something that I thought . . .”

“What did you think?” William Blacklock asked, trying to appear forbidding, threatening. Of one thing he was sure, through all his reading and his military career: you could let them hate you, you could let them worship you, you should never allow them to laugh at you.

Bhishma shook his head. “Only that most of our officers would not care that much for what an Indian sepoy might think.”

Ah. Not laughing at him, then, merely at his own surprise in finding an Englishman who cared. William thought back on his grandfather’s letters.
We should have seen this coming, but none of us talked to them, or not as fellow human beings. The truth, I am afraid, my dear Harriet, is that even those who commanded sepoys for a lifetime, and were the quickest to defend their virtues, their courage and their selflessness, thought of them as undisciplined children, not as grown men.

Well, he might be making a mistake of his own—so often people did when correcting mistakes of the past—but he would not repeat the errors of his grandfather’s time. “You are a human being,” he snapped, “and you seem intelligent enough. Why shouldn’t I allow you to use your head?”

“No reason I can think of, Sahib,” the sepoy said, his face solemn. “But . . . I came to ask you, you see, if you’d spoken to . . . to General Sahib.”

“I did,” William said, and tried to find words to explain that he, himself, had not been treated as an adult man. “I’m afraid his response was much the same as if I’d been a sepoy.”

It took Bhishma only one moment to understand. His mouth set. “Oh.”

“Indeed. He told me I shouldn’t listen to rumors encouraged by a tropical climate and fervid imaginations.”

“I see,” Bhishma said. “I was afraid he might. I must admit, since I can offer no proof and there is nothing I can do or say that would convince you, that it sounds childish and overheated, but . . .”

“But it’s true?” William asked.

“To the best of my understanding, yes, Sahib. In fact, there are . . . well, some people in camp who can understand the codes of weres and the messages sent about by weres, and they say that the tiger kingdom is agitated about something. That the tiger king is looking for a mystical jewel. That with it he intends to . . .” He hesitated, then said, all in a rush, like a horse taking aim at a barrier and suddenly clearing it, “To expel all the English from India.”

And why are you telling me this?
William thought, looking at the man. And in the same thought he reproached himself for thinking that way. There were loyal sepoys. In fact, rebellions and mutinies notwithstanding, he would say the majority of the sepoys were loyal to England, loyal to the English queen, loyal to the officers who commanded them.

They might think their officers tiresome and stupid. William had spent enough time in the regulars in England to know that most enlisted men thought their officers tiresome and stupid—or worse. That made the Indians no different.

Then why did he view this man with suspicion, as he told of his compatriots’ intention to depose the current regime and overthrow English rule over India? He couldn’t say, except he did view him that way. It seemed like a violation of natural order, somehow. Bhishma, unless William mistook himself, was quite a different breed from the water carrier or the sweeper who tended to daily needs. He was a warrior and caste-proud. That much was evident in his way of standing and in his look, in his proud military bearing.

So, why would he come to William with rumors and stories? For just a moment, William wondered if this was not a trap. Had Gyan Bhishma come to him with a mad tale to distract him from the real danger?

That surely dovetailed with the man’s next words. He said, “I shouldn’t have asked you what you saw in the crystal, Sahib, but . . . did you see anything worrisome?”

“Nothing,” William snapped, half impatient at the questioning, half frustrated at himself. In his mind was the panorama of the encampment, such as he had seen it—the bodies strewn everywhere, ripped by the fangs of were-tigers, stomped under the gigantic feet of were-elephants. A beautiful young woman holding a little boy, still trying to shield his little, dead body, even in death. A mad vision, nothing else. “Nothing of any consequence. I saw a girl I used to know back in England.”

“A. . . girl?” Bhishma said, stumbling over the word, as though it was not at all what he’d expected.

“A pretty girl. Met her at a few balls and went dancing with her a few times and . . . went riding in the park and . . .
someone
wished us to marry,” William said. His mind, quite divorced from his mouth, was working feverishly on the puzzle of what he had seen. He shouldn’t be considering it. Foreseeing was so unlikely an art, and so ill understood, so poorly controlled even by those who had the greatest supposed control over it.

Louis XVI’s court clairvoyant had not warned him of the coming rebellion. Queen Victoria’s own and much-feted royal soothsayer, the Earl of Sandwich, hadn’t warned her of the Zulu rebellions—nor, for that matter, of the Indian mutiny of 1857. And yet these were people trained in the best centers of magical learning, men who had taken their specialty in the University of Avignon, where the great Nostradamus, himself, had studied. Who was William Blacklock to think he could compare his own puerile skills to their great learning? Who was he to think his forecasts were right, or even rightly interpreted? He wasn’t a fool. Though foretelling wasn’t formally taught in England, he’d read compendiums and books on the subject. And he knew that often what one saw was no more than a symbol for what might happen. So what could hundreds of dead bodies strewn about this space mean? What could it be a symbol for? The death of his position? The death of all his dreams? The death of his quiet life in England? Perhaps that was it. Then thought of his father’s and mother’s faces, receiving the news, whatever it was, and going all wooden and still.

He wondered what that letter had said. And then he realized that would tie in with his seeing Sofie Warington in his vision, too. Sofie Warington was the reason he was in India. If he’d agreed to marry her . . .

But that thought brought his mind back to what Bhishma had said, and he looked at the sepoy, who was standing still and dismayed, and gazed sternly at him.

“Is that what you were asking, then?” Bhishma asked. “About some girl you left back in England?” And then, as though realizing the unutterable trespass of both rank and familiarity that his words represented, he drew himself up to almost full attention and said, “Begging your pardon, Sahib. I was just surprised. I heard you cry out, and I thought . . .”

“Never mind my private life,” William snapped. He’d allowed the man too much familiarity already. It was always so with him, even back in England. He had a way of becoming friends with servants and subalterns, of seeing them as people and not just as the functions they fulfilled in household or army. And inevitably, he was repaid with daring and abuse from his subordinates. He had to learn to guard himself better.

His father had said that William’s characteristic came from caring too much for everyone, and that it would be an admirable trait in a parson. He’d said it with a kind of hopeful tilting of the head, again, at their last meeting, just before William had shipped out to India. And though William had long ago decided that the Church was not his destiny, nor would it ever be his profession, he now wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for both his father and himself if he had decided it was. If he hadn’t been so obstinate about Her Majesty’s service. After all, if he’d gone into the Church, he wouldn’t have come to India. He would hardly have volunteered to come as a missionary.

He shook his head at his own foolishness, dragging himself back from morbid thoughts about his past choices. “You said something about a jewel?” he asked Bhishma.

A curt nod answered him, even as the soft brown eyes looked somewhat bewildered, as though he was trying to work through a puzzle of his own. Had he, then, been setting a trap for William? And was he starting to think it would backfire.

“There is a jewel, the were-tigers’ codes say, that would have the power to lead them to . . . something with greater power; I’m not sure I understand their communications exactly. They are different, you see, from—” He stopped abruptly. “That is, the people who tell me about them say that their codes are different from others. The roars in the night, the sequence of them . . . They are a slightly different code from those that my friend understands. But my friend says that they speak of some jewel that will lead them to something else—perhaps another jewel—which will give them more power than anyone else has had in all the world. They say it will bind all the magic to them and that the British will be left without power to run their magic trains and their magic carpets—without the magic to enchant powersticks, even.”

Soul of Fire. Soul of Fire would lead them to Heart of Light. And Heart of Light would give them power to do all that. Of course. All that and more, perhaps.

Only, Blacklock couldn’t imagine how the Indian would have come to knowledge of that, unless he was himself in on the conspiracy to steal the jewels.

He turned an analytical gaze on his subordinate. “Tell me, how do you know this? You say the tigers have codes?”

“All weres have codes,” the man said, looking a little taken aback. “That is, at least all the weres in India. I’m not sure if English weres do, but then, of course, they don’t have kingdoms, nor belong to groups, nor do they organize themselves or know what other weres are thinking. Or even,” he seemed very struck by this, “if there are other weres about. If I understand it right, from the English newspapers, the only time a were is sure that there is another were in his region is when that other one is caught and publicly executed.”

“Never mind the English weres,” Blacklock snapped. “Tell me, rather, about who heard these were tiger codes. How can those codes be interpreted by a normal person? How would you learn to?”

Bhishma looked off balance, confused. Blacklock wondered if it was because he’d pushed him to the edge of his lies.
If he was telling me something, feeding me a line . . . If he thought I would fall all over myself to do whatever it was he thought more likely . . . yes, my interrogating him about how he came by his information would confuse him. Perhaps General Paitel was right all along. Perhaps these were rumors and an attempt to get me off balance. Or to make me go haring off and get myself and everyone else into some strange state, waiting for a rebellion, when the danger is from quite another quarter.

Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine another quarter from which the danger could be greater than from a rebellion of sepoy weres who outnumbered their superiors and were far stronger than them, even without special were powers.

But Bhishma had started to answer, haltingly. “There are . . . friends of mine who are weres. And some of the were code is instinctive, though the instinctive part doesn’t have a very specialized vocabulary and doesn’t, of course, allow one to talk about modern life and the things that happen now. But all were codes have been modified somewhat, for the present time and for the species using them. And the tigers are in this region, see, and all the weres in this region understand their code, though perhaps not with the same fluency as if they were, themselves, subjects of the king of tigers.”

It took Blacklock a moment to think through these words. Indeed, he felt as though the words were a labyrinth, through which he must make his way without a light, and with only a thread to mark the way he’d come. Things jumped at him, though, statements, out of the confusing argument that Bhishma had made. “There are weres in the ranks?” he asked, alarmed. “These friends of yours, are they sepoys?”

It seemed to him strange, almost shocking, that Bhishma should have friends who were were animals, that he thought nothing of it, that he didn’t consider the association strange, nor feel guilty for it.

“Yes, Sahib,” Bhishma said, looking puzzled in his turn, as though it was a very strange question to ask him. “Always some number of sepoys are were-elephants, and sometimes were-tigers.”

“Were-tigers! Are they, then, subjects of the king of tigers?”

“We’re all someone’s subjects,” Bhishma said, and he shrugged. “I mean, in India, you’re always the subject of more than one person, the member of more than one group. It can’t be helped.” And then, as though belatedly realizing how his words could be taken, “They are loyal, these friends of mine. Loyal and true to their oath.”

Yes, but loyal to whom?
Blacklock thought.
And to which of their oaths?
Aloud he said only, as he regarded Bhishma with what he hoped was a forbiddingly stern gaze, “And why would you—or any Indian—wish to warn us of plans to overthrow the English rule? Why would you not wish this?”

Bhishma looked startled. “Because I swore my oath to the Queen, the Empress of India.”

“But she is not of your breed, nor of your kind. She has not, in fact, ever set foot in India.”

“There are many breeds and many kinds in India,” Bhishma said “Men of all colors, all beliefs, many modes of living. Before the English, we were ruled by other foreigners, and I think we’ll be ruled by foreigners again in the future.”