Soul of Fire (9 page)

A long-fingered, mobile hand stretched forward and gestured for her. She got up and walked the length of the hall, to fall to her knees again, closer to the throne, her hair down her back, the silken bit of the sari she’d thrown over her head slipping to reveal her young and awed face, gazing up at her king.

He smiled kindly at her—a human and gentle expression. “What brings you here, Lalita?”

“I . . . came back from England. We were summoned four months ago and we just arrived,” she said, struggling with her words as though they were an unaccustomed foe. “Two weeks ago.”

“We know,” the king said, his voice vibrating with what, in a lesser being, would be amusement. “And what brings you here?”

“I was, as you know, sent to England with my mistress, Sofie Warington, whom we believed to be the only descendant in her generation of the family that inherited Charlemagne’s spent ruby.”

“Yes. Our memory is not that bad,” the king said, and now the amusement was quite obvious even in his regal voice.

“If you remember . . . the mission you gave my parents, and them to me, was to find if her family was indeed in possession of the ruby—which I found they were, though they don’t know what it is. Only that it’s very valuable and magically powerful. However, they don’t know
how
magically powerful. They only know enough to hold on to it tightly. But not why they do so.”

“All this we know,” the king said, now bewildered as well as amused.

“Yes, but . . . why would anyone need my mistress as well as the ruby?”

The king didn’t speak for a long time. She heard him take in breath, a suddenly loud sound in the silent hall. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Lalita shook her head. “I don’t understand, either,” she said. “And yet, it must be so, because my mistress has been kidnapped and because . . . because the tiger wanted her as well as—”

“Kidnapped?” the king asked, his voice booming oddly in surprise. “She was kidnapped? By whom?”

“By a dragon. That’s why I came. Before this, I’ve suspected . . . When we were in London, Sofie would dream, and she would walk in her sleep and I would find her far away. I thought she might be a shifter, only I found that what was making her walk at night was a compulsion, laid upon her. And I think the compulsion, though it’s hard to tell, was to seek out a certain group of people. From the magic, I would think the tigers. Then we came back home and I found . . .” In short, incisive sentences, she told of Sofie’s betrothal to the raj who was king of the Kingdom of the Tigers. She told how she’d warned Sofie of this—she hadn’t had time to come here for instruction, nor had she wished to exceed her orders or risk being followed here.

“But now you risked it?” the king said.

“Now I had no choice. My mistress ran to the balcony, you see, and the railing gave, and she fell . . . onto the back of a dragon. Once, the dragon looked as if he’d return, but then he flew away.” She bowed again. “I don’t know where Sofie is, and though I am, to her, only a servant, we’ve been friends—almost sisters—these years. I don’t know what the tiger wanted with her, and I can’t imagine what the dragon wants with her, but we must save her.”

“How do you know”—the king said, standing—“that he wants anything with her? Or that the tiger did? Even if he laid a compulsion, she clearly didn’t come to it. He asked for the ruby in the dowry, didn’t he? Depend upon it, it was the ruby he wanted, and nothing more. And doubtless the dragon means to hold her hostage for the ruby as well.”

Lalita shook her head slowly. “Sire, it can’t be. Because I heard her father tell the tiger he would give him the ruby if only he’d leave his daughter alone.”

The king rubbed his chin pensively. “That is . . . interesting,” he said. “And a dragon took her, you said?”

Lalita bowed her head by way of affirmative.

“Did he take the ruby also?” The king tilted forward on his throne, as though trying to read Lalita’s expression.

She shook her head, and the king licked his lips in quite an unconscious reaction. “And the house is in disarray, is it?”

“They were on the balcony when I left, trying to find where the dragon might have taken Miss Warington.”

“Would the ruby . . . be attainable now?”

Lalita hadn’t thought of the ruby. Her mind had been full of her mistress—of her being stolen by the dragon and of what might be befalling her now. She had not spared a thought for the ruby. It had always been with Mr. Warington, but under heavy protections. Though he didn’t know it was the mystical Soul of Fire, he knew it was powerful and magical. And there was an ancestral legend about horrible things that would befall the family should they lose the ruby. And since Lalita and Sofie’s return, Lalita noticed it was still protected. Enough that no one would be able to touch it. Lalita was sure Mr. Warington had started using dark magic to keep the ruby secure from the tiger—and in the process was keeping it secure from everyone else. But the tiger had somehow hooked the Englishman through the dark magic, somehow snagged his magical power in his own dark, roiling magic. And now he was forcing his hand.

“I think it would still be protected,” she said, and swallowed. “Unless I’m mistaken, the tiger will get the ruby.”

The king narrowed his eyes, as if deep in thought, and slowly puffed out his cheeks, then let them deflate again, suddenly. “Very well. I shall send sentinels to watch for the ruby. To see if it leaves the house with the tiger, and if so, where he takes it.”

“But . . . my mistress!” The words came out as a wail, which Lalita hadn’t meant them to. “My mistress was taken by the dragon. Something horrible could be happening to her.”

“That’s not very likely, is it? Even if the tiger thinks he needs both her and the ruby, surely nothing can be done with her only?”

“The dragon could be holding her hostage,” Lalita protested. “Or . . . or hurting her.”

“Oh.” The king looked at Lalita a long time. “And this would distress you? Even though she’s an Englishwoman whose parents came here attempting to make a fortune off of our land and our people?”

“Sofie didn’t try to make a fortune off of anything,” Lalita said. “And besides, her great-grandmother was Indian.” Personally, Lalita couldn’t understand why it mattered what Sofie was. Oh, she wanted freedom for her people and for them to have the right to govern themselves. It galled and distressed her that Englishmen thought her people too infantile, too savage to govern themselves. She wanted the Imperial authority out of India—the East India Company, too. But until this moment it had never occurred to her that her own king wanted everyone of English blood out. There were decent people and there were people who weren’t decent. Sofie Warington was silly and often strange, but she was a good person. She might not show it in public, but in private she treated Lalita as one of her friends. No, better. Because Sofie had never felt at home with the girls in London. She’d never felt at home at all. Both girls had longed for India.

“And she’s your friend, milady?” the king asked.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Well, then. Because she is your friend, we will find her.” He paused. “Besides, it would be good to find out what the dragons want with her. Perhaps the Chinese . . .” He looked toward the shadows to his right, where amid the soaring columns courtiers pressed together, and he waggled a long, agile finger.

From the shadows slid a man, dressed in loose white pants that seemed to shimmer with a pearlescent sheen. His tunic, too, was white, but embroidered in shimmering gold patterns. He wore a turban that hid most of his hair, save for a few straight, black tufts sticking in disarray from the edge. A pearl of considerable size secured his turban, and gold earrings dangled from his ears. He glanced at Lalita furtively, giving her a glimpse of heavily lidded, sultry black eyes. Then he turned to the king and bowed deeply.

“Hanuman, you will go with the princess, my niece,” the king said. “And you will find her friend for her. And if you can find the ruby, too, and keep both from the tiger, I shall give you whatever your heart desires.” The courtier thus called was named after the monkey god Hanuman, and Lalita couldn’t remember anyone of power or influence—nor any of the main families of their were kingdom—who would give their child such a name. She stared at him, trying to discern his caste and his standing, but saw nothing save his finery and his cinnamon-colored skin. And she remembered nothing but those sultry eyes of his.

He bowed to the king and said, “How am I to do it, Your Majesty?”

“I trust your resourcefulness, my friend,” the king said with a chuckle.

Lalita didn’t, and would have said something, but at that moment the king twisted and writhed. His royal clothes were suddenly empty, sitting on the abandoned throne, and a monkey scampered amid the columns to the ceiling, whence it called in sharp cries to its court.

Following suit, all lords and the few ladies who could change shapes let go of their clothes, and their human form with them. Lalita stared at Hanuman. From Hanuman’s look at her, the smile on his mobile face, he might be thinking it would be great fun to shift now and chase Lalita along the rafters of the long-hidden palace.

Lalita shook her head severely at him. “My mistress is lost,” she said, “and we must find her before the horrible creature hurts her.”

A SLIP OF NOTHING

The dragon fluttered within him at her words, but
Peter Farewell stopped it, reflexively. When threatened with being exposed, the very worst thing one could possibly do was shift into dragon form.

Besides, he was tired. The transformation into dragon always seemed to exhaust him—drawing more strength from his body than a full day’s work or a night’s wakefulness. And he hadn’t been feeding the dragon. What he ate, and the quantities he consumed in his human form, barely fed the one transformation. If he changed into the beast now, he’d be ravening.

No. That he could not do. As a human he calmed the beast, held on to it with an iron hand, thinking soothing thoughts. He was so busy with those it took him a few breaths to realize how angry he was.

This slip of a girl had said she’d bring the Gold Coats down on him. They’d come eagerly, too, stationed nearby as they were—and perhaps her family had already called them. Peter Farewell chewed on his lip to prevent words emerging that he would not be able to control. She was young and beautiful and angry . . . and he would hurt her if he stayed here.

He turned neatly on his heels and started walking away before he realized what hurt him most was her ingratitude. He had saved her from a plunge to her death. He’d risked his life—the discovery of his other form would surely lead to his public execution—to rescue her.

And yet she was willing to deliver him to death.

He felt tears prickle at the back of his eye and chuckled bitterly to himself. This was what came from trusting people. Any people. When his own father had disowned him for being what he couldn’t help being, he should have learned not to trust humans. But perhaps because at least half of him was human, he couldn’t seem to break himself of care for the creatures. And then there was Kitwana and Emily and Nigel . . . He thought of the people who’d shared his African adventure and the risks they’d all taken together.

They were good people. But none of them quite considered him one of them. Nor should they. There was the beast that lurked within him, dogging his every thought, his every movement, influencing his actions more than he liked to admit. And perhaps the girl was right, too, in showing him no gratitude. After all, how much of his saving her was true heroism, and how much was the dragon’s impatience, making him change forms under the impact of emotion? He was a beast and he must remember he was a beast, and thus not fit for the company of men.