Soul of Fire (13 page)

St. Maur might be a dragon, but in human form he was a man and a gentleman. He simply did not have the resources to imagine what a true villain would feel and think. He had no way at all.

She shook her head at him, but he spoke calmly, in a stage whisper. “There is no way to avoid it. I’ll try to make it quick, but I have to shift in the air. Or shift and leap at the same time, from the balcony. Then I will circle and come back to get you.” He removed his cuff links and put them, carefully, inside his bag. “Bring the bags with you, though the dragon . . . I will take them, once we are airborne. It’s what I usually do when I travel. If you just leave them on the edge of the balcony as you climb on his—my—back, I will be sure to grab the bags.” He removed his shirt to reveal his smooth, muscular torso, covered in golden skin and glowing, faintly, with the magic glow that she imagined prefaced his changing. “The dragon will be very hungry,” he said. And she thought he seemed to have the oddest relationship with his other shape, talking about it as though it was something quite other, something quite separate from his human self. “And I must stop just outside town and let it feed—as soon as we can be sure of finding some wildlife. But I will try to make it brief and I will stay aloft as much as possible, till we’re far away from the city.”

In her mind, slowly, she was processing that he meant to shift here, on the balcony. That he was actually trying to do something to save her.

He was now completely naked, and she tried not to look at him. Yet, even with the approaching roars of the tigers, even with the panic welling up in her, Sofie could not help looking him over and thinking that he was magnificent. Smooth and golden, like a statue carved in gold—he didn’t look like someone any woman could ignore, unless she were dead. Thoughts came to her mind, unbidden, of running her hand along his shoulders, of feeling the smooth strength of his muscular arms. She wondered what it would feel like. She’d never touched a man before. She’d never seen a man naked before, save a crazy beggar in London who was wont to remove all his clothes and walk around proclaiming that his body didn’t belong to him.

“Miss Warington,” he said, recalling her to herself. “No point being frozen in fear. Please take my bag as well. I must go.” Turning, he walked with the broad stride of an athlete to the balcony. Before he got there, she heard him cough—once, twice. Then his body twisted.

She heard roars in the house, roars up the stairs. She stooped and grabbed the bags and hurried to the balcony, where St. Maur leapt into space even as he was shifting shapes.

He leapt from the balcony railing—and for a second, she thought that they’d both imagined it, that he wasn’t going to change shapes, couldn’t change shapes. That he was, in fact, just a man like other men. That he would dash his brains on that neat cobbled path they’d passed while entering the house.

It was easier to believe that she’d imagined his transformation before than to see what was taking place before her very eyes—that smooth, golden body twisting and writhing midair; a sound like a strangled scream escaping his lips; a tail, wings, paws, scales extruding themselves from that mass that seemed much too small to contain them. And then the wings spreading . . .

The beast took to the air with a grace that denoted this was its natural environment, the wings spread between her and the sky, and the dragon described a broad circle over the gardens, before coming back to her.

Sofie resumed breathing, not aware she’d stopped for a moment. And then she realized that the loud roar behind her was closer, just a tiger’s leap away. She looked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of a tawny, sleek hide, and the vague impression of lifted hind quarters and lowered front, as the creature prepared to jump.

There was a sound from the other side of the balcony that might have been a sneeze or a dragon-sized exclamation of alarm. Forcing herself not to panic, she turned forward, to see the dragon just by the balcony. Dropping the bags, she jumped onto the broad, green back.

The dragon grabbed both bags at the same time she saw the tiger leap. But it had arrived too late and could only roar in frustration as the dragon took wing.

Sofie, holding on to a sort of ruffled skin around the neck, wondered if she was hurting it. Beneath her, the Ganges flowed sluggishly, and the expanse of the park looked dun-gray in the night, showing the colors of the drought before the monsoon.

She clasped the warm, scaley body with her legs. There was no way of riding a dragon sidesaddle with any safety, so her skirts were hiked to mid-thighs, which made her feel indecent, until she realized it couldn’t be nearly as strange as riding this beast who was only so recently an English gentleman. The Earl St. Maur. She wondered how much of the gentleman remained in the beast’s form, and what he thought of having her ride him. It seemed almost too debauched for words.

“It would be much better, really,” she said, speaking to distract herself from the strangeness of the situation, “if one could use a saddle.”

It seemed to her as though the dragon convulsed beneath her, but she was not at all sure what the spasm meant.

Below, the teeming metropolis of Calcutta dwindled to the size of a toy village. And she took it all in with wide-open eyes. It was really a much better view than from a carpetship, where there were always other people in the way, and partitions of glass designed to keep the wind out.

It was cold, here on dragon-back, and her hair flapped in the wind. But it wasn’t too cold, since Calcutta sweltered in the premonsoon heat, and not even the breeze of their motion could cool her fully. She saw her parents’ house—or thought she did—as they soared out of town. She wondered what her parents were doing, what they thought of her disappearance and whether she would ever be able to return to a calm and conventional life.

SAVING THE JEWEL; THE DRAGONS AND THE TIGERS; DECISIONS

Lalita heard the roars of the tigers and stood, shaking
herself. So Hanuman got the jewel, which would probably make him insufferable, at least judging by the impression of incredible self-satisfaction he managed to give without so much as batting an eye.

“You would be dead,” she said, tartly, “if I hadn’t saved you.”

He got up in a single jump and bowed to her, a smooth movement. “Indeed, Princess. But you did save me, did you not?”

There was no answer to that. “We must hide that jewel. If we don’t, we’ll have them all on us.”

He bowed again, and she could feel him doing something with his magic. That she couldn’t tell what it was disturbed her. Not only did she have more magic than practically anyone she’d ever met, her magical knowledge had been grounded in early teaching and childhood training, and she could instinctively sense spells and read the magic works of those around her. Not for her the kind of half-baked spells and pretty-pretty mage-workings that had been taught to Sofie at Lady Lodkin’s. She knew real magic, and she could read it as easily as she could read human expressions. Or better. But she couldn’t tell what Hanuman had just done, and she would rather be flogged in the public square than admit her ignorance.

“The jewel is hidden, Princess,” he said, smoothly. “Now, what are your orders?”

She was irked by finding that not only couldn’t she feel the ruby—which should have been distorting her magical perceptions and feelings—she couldn’t see it either, and she shook her head in frustration. Then she listened to the roars and said, “Are they looking for us or the dragon?”

“Both, I imagine,” Hanuman said, “though I can’t understand their roars. If I were them, I would look for both. You heard them talking in the house. They want both the ruby and your friend.”

“But why? Why Sofie?”

Hanuman shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. If I were the dragon, I would be well out of town by now. But I’ve said the spell to activate my witch-sniffing, and if it is not deceiving me, he’s not. The air is thick with the smell of dragons.”

“You are a trained witch-sniffer? And you know the smell of dragons?” she asked, raising eyebrows at him and wondering what could have passed through her noble uncle’s mind to saddle her with such a strange and trying companion as Hanuman. And who was Hanuman, exactly, to be both so trusted and so exasperating?

He shrugged at her and grimaced. “I know from China.”

So he had traveled? He spoke the local language without flaw, so surely that meant . . . But her head was spinning. “And you can smell dragons? More than one?”

He nodded. “Most strongly I smelled one of them in the square back there, when we swept over the roof near the monument to the Black Hole disaster. But then there was another one—I think following close behind—that joined him. And they came through here, and went that way.” He frowned. “Probably in human form.”

‘The dragon who took Sofie had help?”

Hanuman shrugged. “This, I can’t say. You know how things are in China. Their own and ancient Imperial line—the dragon line—has been deposed by the English, and another installed in its place. One that is neither magic nor dragons. What would you do if you were a deposed emperor and there was a jewel that could give you what this ruby can?”

“Take it,” Lalita said.

Hanuman nodded. “Indeed.”

“But that means that they must be planning to do something with Sofie.” She didn’t ask him if he could smell Sofie. One human smelled much like the other, and even a sniffer would have problems isolating Sofie’s inconsequential amount of power. “We must follow. We must see if we can rescue her.”

“Perhaps,” Hanuman said, looking down at himself, then back up at her, unholy glee in his eyes. “It might not be a bad idea to dress oneself, though. I know the very poor go around naked, but, Princess, neither you nor I look like the very poor.”

She hated to admit he was right, but of course he was. Slick and well fed, neither of them could pretend to be destitute beggars. “We’ll go back to my uncle’s palace, then, and get clothes.”

Hanuman shook his head at her, and she tried to explain. “After shifting shapes in front of the Waringtons, I can’t go back to their house,” she said. “Oh, I know they didn’t recognize me before I changed, but they will have had time to look at the clothes. And they will—or at least they might very well—remember them. And you know what Englishmen do to weres. . . .”

He shook his head again. “I didn’t mean that. But we don’t have time to go to the palace. Do you hear the tigers? They’re closing in. Both on us and on your friend. If they find her, with the dragons or not . . .” He shrugged. “I would guess there are thirty tigers or so in the city right now, and two dragons. And while dragons can fly, you saw what the tiger can do with his magic. Even if one of the dragons is the hidden emperor himself, this far from his land and his clan, he can’t command as much power as the tiger king.”

“No,” Lalita said, conceding. “But then . . . why shouldn’t we go as monkeys?”

“They’re looking for monkeys,” Hanuman said. “And though they surely can smell us in human form, the smell will be less strong, and there are . . . things we can do.”

“But where can we find clothes?”

“Hold this, kindly, Princess.” He shoved the ruby into her hand. She still couldn’t see it, but she could feel it, hard and faceted, in her hand. And the next moment, he was a monkey again, flitting and climbing the nearby buildings.

It seemed to Lalita that the man was indefatigable. How did he manage that much energy when he had just changed shapes moments before—and had been hit with a magical blow by the king of tigers? You’d think he would be tired. She was tired just looking at him.