Soul of Fire (37 page)

He dressed himself almost without looking—like St. Maur on the balcony—mumbled some apology to his astonished carrier and hastened down the central stairway. This early, no other inhabitants of the bungalow were awake, and only servants moved around, cleaning and cooking. They took one look at William and scurried out of his way as he moved toward the door.

Outside, it was markedly warmer than it had been when he’d stepped out on the balcony, but it was by no means as hot as it would get later in the day. He walked down the dusty road of the cantonment with some idea he would go to the Wheeler Club. He would sit at the white-cloth-draped tables and have breakfast. He would reassure himself that what he’d discovered within himself wasn’t visible, like a mark on his forehead.

His steps felt erratic and ambling, as though he were drunk or just recovering from a hangover, unable to see his way clearly. Very few people were about. A couple of officers exchanged greetings with him, and two sepoys stood at rigid attention. And then, from William’s side, there came an astonished, “Sahib!”

He turned. Gyan Bhishma stood there, frowning a little. William nodded and tried to focus on him, but was quite unable to make out the man’s expression. He blinked and shook his head. Bhishma was looking at him with an odd mixture of concern and protectiveness—something quite inappropriate from a sepoy, a subordinate. William flipped the lank hair off his forehead and looked at the man, daring him to explain himself.

But Bhishma only drew closer, and asked, in a concerned whisper, “Sahib? Have you been . . . using the crystal?”

Ah, so that was the concern. That the crazy Englishman had been practicing the soothsaying arts at which his people were notably inept, and that he had found only confusion. William started to shake his head, then decided that was as good a way as any to explain his present state, and shrugged.

The native looked interested, his eyes shining, “What did you see, Sahib? Did you see the dragon?”

William blinked. “The . . . dragon?” he managed, in a voice that was all breath. What did Bhishma know? What had he seen? “In the crystal, you mean?”

“No, in the sky.” He pointed. “There, over the encampment. A huge dragon, sparkling green.”

All too able to imagine St. Maur in dragon form, William swallowed hard and said, “No,” in a voice that was almost a moan. “A dragon?”

“Yes. I think,” Bhishma said, “it is an emissary of China, coming to contract with the tigers. They know the tigers are on the verge of acquiring the ruby, and as such, they make their diplomatic ties now. That way, they can go ahead and trade directly with us, man to man. Were to were.”

William drew a deep breath, trying to figure out the implications of that comment, and failing. Did Bhishma mean he had allied himself with the tigers? Bhishma’s next words were uttered in almost the tone of a child begging a classmate to join in a game. “I thought Sahib might have seen this in the crystal and had come to go with me?”

William rubbed his hand down the front of his face, wiping away what felt like cobwebs. “What do you mean? Go with you where?”

“To the city of the tigers, of course. Their kingdom is, you know, quite nearby. We could take horses.” Again there was that look, like the sepoy’s invitation meant more than mere words could convey.

“Don’t you have duties?” William asked. His own duties were scant and spotty. A few hours of paperwork a week, some pointless drilling with the native troops. Nothing much, because William was not, as such, a part of the garrison. Just a man on a futile quest. The jewel . . . among tigers and dragons . . . How was William to rescue it? Particularly when he couldn’t seem to think straight.

Bhishma shook his head, black hair swinging. “Not today. And I thought your having talked to Sahib General and Sahib General not understanding, if I could go and spy on them and have proper explanation of why they are a danger, it would make it easier for you to make Sahib General understand what the tigers can do to all of us.”

William wished he didn’t feel like he had a hangover—or worse, like he was viewing the entire world through a haze of distorted perspectives and a fog of confusion. He could tell the sepoy that he didn’t want to accompany him. He could, for that matter, order Bhishma not to go. He had suspicions about Bhishma—he had suspicions about everyone, possibly including himself. He could tell Bhishma to stay and mind his own business, and never mind William’s or Sahib General’s opinions and fears for things that mere sepoys couldn’t control. He could do all that.

But in his mind was his grandfather’s letter.
If only we had listened.
And before his eyes—as though floating in air, like a series of stilted woodcuts—were the remembered scenes he’d seen in the crystal . . . the broken bodies of the dead Englishmen and dead Indians together. Tigers and dragons and elephants had rampaged everywhere. Probably some of the dead were even weres. They reverted to human form in death, he’d always heard.

He struggled for the words to ask Bhishma how they could accomplish this, how he could be sure of not being detected, what his plan was for finding proof to show the general. But before he found them, there was a wild call from his right side, and he turned to look.

At any other time, the scene would have made him laugh. A completely naked blond boy of perhaps two or three was running full tilt across the dusty road, where exercises were normally held. Under the shadow of stunted trees, he ran, wild and free. In his wake came not the nanny that was to be expected, but a very young woman, also blond, her hair in trailing ringlets, her dress in disarray, screaming: “John, come back!”

Bhishma moved quickly, intercepting the child, grabbing him around the torso, under his arms, and offering him to his mother. The woman stopped in confusion, her cheeks coloring. “Oh, thank you. So kind of you. He is very naughty, you see. And our nanny is ill.”

“Sahib must not be naughty,” Bhishma told the child, in a deep, amused voice. “Sahib must obey his mother, always, always.”

As the woman retreated, cooing to her child, William turned to Bhishma, realizing with a shock that those were two of the bodies he’d seen in the crystal—the woman fallen half over her son, trying to protect him, both of them shot through with the same power-stick discharge. And tigers. Tigers everywhere.

“No,” he said, speaking to himself. “No. It must not happen. It must never happen.”

“What must not happen, Sahib?” Bhishma said, his face concerned again.

“The massacres must not repeat themselves. There must be no rebellion.”

Bhishma’s mouth twisted, and for a moment it looked like he was about to say something. But he didn’t. Instead, he nodded gravely. “There must be no massacres,” he said, assenting. “Massacres will not make Indians look any more civilized. Brutal rebellion will never give us our own land back. Sahib will help me, then? You . . . You’ll go with me to the realm of tigers, and see what they’re planning? Perhaps if we can convince Sahib General—”

“Yes,” William said, surprising himself. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”

THE PRINCESS’S MIND AND THE MAIDEN’S HEART; RIVALS ALLY

“I do not wish to discuss it,” Sofie said, putting down
her teacup. She had no idea where her companions had found teacups, or tea—or any of the other things they’d acquired seemingly overnight. Only that the two men had left for a few moments and come back carrying an elaborate chest that contained tea and a tea service. They’d also obtained full clothes, instead of the odd outfit they’d seemed to be sharing earlier.

All this, had Sofie been feeling as she normally did, would have excited her curiosity. But it did not. Once, when she was very little, she’d had the measles. She remembered very little about it—partly because she’d been all of three years old, and partly, she thought, because she’d had such a high fever. She remembered her mother covering every possible magelight in the house in red flannel. She remembered being given red pajamas to wear, and also that all the toys she’d played with had been burned after she got better. And she remembered sores all over her stomach that itched horribly.

The rest had been cloaked in a sort of confused juxtaposing of images—her mother’s face, tea with milk, someone’s voice singing an Indian song that she remembered understanding then, but no longer would now.

Now entire days were like that—a mishmash of images. She took the cup of tea from Lalita’s hand because Lalita insisted on giving it to her. She sipped from it indifferently.

“What is wrong, miss?” Lalita asked.

Sofie said she did not wish to discuss it. But she might as well say that she didn’t wish to think. The last few days, in her experience, had been like the measles. And anything that had touched them should be burned. The memory of riding dragon-back; the impression of loneliness and vulnerability from St. Maur; the feel of the neck ruffle between her fingers. And then, suddenly, the way the dragon had become a beast—fully as cruel and as villainous as anything she’d read about in the novels.

It wasn’t that Sofie didn’t realize the tigers were trying to hurt her. She still shivered at the thought that they meant to sacrifice her, in some beastly manner, to restore the potency of the ruby her family had held on to for centuries. And they’d thought it powerful for the family only. A bauble that was tied to them by blood and tradition. There were legends saying that if the ruby left the family, the family would be cursed. But it was worthless for the rest of the world. Worthless to make magic with. Unless it was purified with her blood.

She understood that. But for St. Maur to torture a defenseless being!

Sofie shuddered at the memory of St. Maur shifting back to human form, of his handsome features smeared in human blood, and realized with a start that Lalita had left her alone and that the two men were somewhere at the edge of the little clearing, near the flying rug, talking to each other in whispers.

In a way it was like waking from sleep, because she couldn’t imagine what had happened in the meantime, nor could she remember Lalita walking away from her. She frowned at her cup of tea, in which the milk had taken on a curdled appearance. The cup felt quite cold to the touch.

She’d been thinking of St. Maur, and she could not even explain why. If St. Maur had mattered to her in any way, rather than being a chance-met acquaintance, she could explain why his sudden change had affected her so. Or if, perhaps, she had entertained any romantic thoughts at all about him. Which—despite how sorry she felt for his lost-little-boy moments—she did not entertain.

It was, she thought to herself, that his sudden transformation mirrored the transformation of her parents, the transformation of everyone she knew. He had changed so suddenly. Just as her parents, on her return to India, seemed to be quite different people. According to the tiger, her father had been dipping into dark magics to keep the ruby safe. It begged the question, why? After all, they’d known the ruby was terribly flawed, and there was no reason to imagine it would ever have any value. Strangely, this made her think of her father as he had been before she’d left to go to England—an amiable man, fond of tradition in an almost hide-bound way. Chances were that he’d decided to keep the ruby simply because it had been in his family for generations. Having kept it all this time, he would hold on to it with the force of tradition.

And to hold on to it, he’d sold his soul. Just like St. Maur ignored his very human soul to uncover the tigers’ plot. She didn’t know how else the dragon should have obtained it, but she was sure there were ways that didn’t require his tainting himself with such dishonor. And then he’d left her . . . with people he did not know. With two people whom she, herself, did not know. How could he be sure he could trust Lalita’s cousins? And if he wasn’t, how dare he leave her alone? All his pretense to care for her and to feel responsible for her well-being had been just that—a pretense.