Soul of Fire (40 page)

“On board, now.” The taller of the two men, whom
Lalita called Maidan, came running through the trees, dressing himself as he ran. “To the rug!”

Running behind him, full tilt, was the other man, the one that Lalita called Hanuman. Sofie had noticed that the two males often fought each other, or at least wrestled each other, for . . . supremacy, for Lalita’s attention, for she didn’t quite know what. But this time they were of one accord.

And Lalita, without a word, dropped the teacup she’d been holding onto the chest she did not bother to pack and close. Instead, she dove into the shadow of a nearby, overhanging tree, and from it extracted the rolled-up rug, which she spread on the ground in a single, elegant motion.

Sofie, still thinking about St. Maur and what he’d said, remained, her cup of cold tea in hand. The two men took hold of her, one at each shoulder. “On the rug, now,” they said, as they half lifted her, half walked her to the rug and more or less forced her to sit. Sofie felt she should scream or protest, but it was all too much like a dream for her to muster the strength.

And then Maidan was grabbing Lalita’s hand and pulling her. “Come, Highness.” He pulled her onto the rug and held her, and got no more than a reproving look from Hanuman. Maidan, Sofie realized, had a powerstick—which, like the tea chest, seemed to have appeared during his excursion with Hanuman, with no explanation.

Hanuman was chanting the incantations that flew the rug. It lifted with a sudden tilt, much rougher than their previous liftoffs, and speeded ahead with such a brute surge that he felt it necessary to reach back and hold Sofie with his free hand. “Come, come, Princess,” he said loudly, addressing Lalita. “Come, hold on by yourself so that Maidan can use the powerstick.”

Why would he need to use the powerstick? Sofie thought. And as she thought it, she felt a ray of power singe over her head, and looked to the side to see that there were three people on a flying rug, catching up to them. They all had broad, flat faces, like the king of tigers, and while one of them steered the rug, the other two were kneeling, firing powersticks.

Hanuman made a sound that seemed to be something or other about a mother—though it was said in Indian—and shouted aloud, “Hold on,” as he dipped the rug and then tilted it almost completely sideways. Sofie held on. What else could she do? Her mind might be in a fog, with St. Maur’s words running through it, but she did not feel a great need to die by throwing herself from a height. Instead, she held on—tight—and behind her, Maidan knelt and seemed to shoot without needing to hold on. The way he kept his balance was almost preternatural.

“I guess it was inevitable,” he said, between clenched teeth as he fired, “that they would have found someone capable of steering a rug the European way. Or commandeered a stranger.”

Lalita said nothing, but Hanuman shouted, “I don’t know how long I can continue to evade them.”

“Don’t worry,” Maidan answered as he shot. A scream came from the other rug, and the man who’d been shooting at them from the left collapsed and fell from the rug.

“The rug controller,” Lalita screamed. “Shoot the rug controller.”

“What if he’s been conscripted?” Hanuman asked.

“What are you, a moral arbiter?” Maidan asked, and aimed the powerstick at the man who had been in the center, steering the rug.

Hanuman reached back without looking, and his arm seemed, strangely, to lengthen as he grabbed at Maidan. “Maidan!” he said. “I have responsibilities. You will not shoot the driver. He might be innocent. Take out the other shooter. I’m ordering you.”

At that point, the shooter shot again, and Hanuman dipped just in time, while Lalita asked, “Are those powersticks charged for weres?”

“Yes,” Maidan answered. And on those words, he let fly a ray from his powerstick, which and pierced the shooter’s heart. He fell off the rug, and the rug driver made a strangled sound and steered the rug down.

Maidan turned and sat down on the rug, taking a deep breath.

“I told you,” Hanuman said.

“As you wish, my liege,” Maidan said.

Sofie saw Lalita shoot Hanuman a sharp look, which Hanuman studiously ignored. And now that the primary danger had passed, Sofie was back to thinking of St. Maur and of what his visit had meant.

“Where are we going now?” Lalita asked, sharply.

“As far as we can get without stopping,” Hanuman said, quietly. “I was thinking Jaipur, or as close to it, and Meerut, as we can get.”

Jaipur,
Sofie thought. A big city, a long way off. She wondered if St. Maur had gone to Jaipur. She wondered where St. Maur had gone. He’d sounded . . . She didn’t quite know what to think of how he sounded. Tired? Despondent? He’d been flying too long. But he’d been concerned about her. Yes, that fact remained. He must have been very worried about her, to have flown for so long. She knew that ordinarily he never flew that far or that much. Not without rest.

She found herself wondering whether he’d eaten enough or if he was risking losing control of his mind and of his body when the beast needed to feed. She reproached herself for caring. He was the beast, she told herself, but it did not matter. It was as though her heart, quite divorced from her mind, insisted on caring, no matter what she said.

St. Maur was probably alone and hungry. She’d turned her back on him, as good as if she’d ordered him from her sight. She had done him a great unkindness. Oh, surely, he’d acted with no consideration for the tiger, but then . . . But then, he’d been trying to save her. That much was obvious by his return.

And this brought Sofie to another thought—he was worried about her and the ruby. And Sofie remembered how certain he was that she had the stone. He had seen it in his scrying object. But she
didn’t
have it. So someone in this party did. But who?

She ran a curious eye over the two males and Lalita. She’d known Lalita for over half of their lives. And yet, now she felt she didn’t know her at all. There had been that flash of surprise, that lurch of fear in Lalita’s eyes when St. Maur had mentioned the ruby. What did it mean? What did Lalita think in that moment, when surprise and terror had dueled for supremacy in her eyes? Clearly it had to do with the ruby, and it probably meant that one of the three of them had the stone, and that Lalita knew it.

While forest and villages passed beneath her, Sofie frowned, reviewing the days she had spent with these people. They’d hadn’t been deferential to her, as Indians usually were. More . . . kindly, as Lalita had been when telling St. Maur she’d look after Sofie.

And for the first time, it occurred to Sofie to wonder who Lalita was and where she’d come from. She’d only ever known Lalita by the single name. No father’s name, no place of origin. A buried memory from the time when Sofie was seven came back. Her mother saying she had payed some insignificant amount to Lalita’s family. “And glad to get rid of her, they were. In India, daughters are never very important to the father.”

But Lalita had called on male cousins when in need, and it did not seem as though her family had either forsaken her or forgotten her. More like they answered her every command.

She looked at the girl sitting there, demure and composed in her sari. The two men called her princess or highness. And they disappeared and came back with whatever seemed to be the necessity of the moment. She narrowed her eyes. “Lalita? Why do they call you princess?”

“What?” The girl looked surprised. “Why . . . it’s . . .” She blushed. “It’s a family joke.”

Hanuman looked at her, a quick, sly look, and smiled a little, but said nothing. And yet, Sofie was sure that this was a lie—as she was sure that Hanuman knew it was a lie. And what was the most common reason for someone to call someone else a title? Why, that the person had a title, of course. So, it was quite possible that Lalita was a princess of some sort. Rajs, princesses, kings and queens were thick on the ground in India. There were hundreds of them, thronging every corner, many with little more than their pride to support them. It seemed to Sofie that Lalita might very well be the daughter of a prince or a king, and Sofie’s parents hadn’t realized it.

But if that was so, then why would have Lalita’s family have agreed to send her with Sofie to England? Only a few days ago, Sofie would have said that there was no reason at all, or if there was, it was poverty. But now she was not so sure. St. Maur had talked of his own mission, looking for the ruby in India. He’d talked of others seeking it. He’d mentioned how much power could ride on that ruby. Power to control the human race itself.

In Sofie’s mind, a picture was forming. What if Lalita was the daughter of an impoverished prince and had been sent to England with Sofie so as to win Sofie’s confidence, and to make sure Sofie would trust her at the crucial moment?

It was possible, she realized, that Lalita or one of her cousins had found the ruby. And having found it, they were now taking her somewhere to sacrifice her, just as the tigers meant to do. This was probably why they talked of going to Jaipur and not to Meerut proper. In Sofie’s mind, Jaipur was associated with weres. Were-elephants, mostly. She remembered reading of what they’d done during the mutiny—the fierce, proud, terrible warriors of Jaipur who’d turned on their English masters. She felt a shiver run through her as she looked from Lalita to the two men and wondered if they were were-elephants. Oh, no one would think that elephants would be dangerous creatures. They were the beast of burden of all of Asia, silently bearing the weight of all the responsibilities the natives wished on them, but that was not the only face of the elephant. When Sofie was very little, an elephant in musth had run through the street in front of her house, attacking and destroying everything in its path, until two British soldiers armed with powersticks had managed to shoot it through the brain and end its rampage.

She remembered overturned carts, flipped-up stalls, people trampled and one small child—who must have been Sofie’s age or less—lifted up by the creature’s trunk and smashed repeatedly against a wall. She remembered the blood.

In her mind, that’s what the elephant sepoys of Jaipur must have looked like in the midst of the mutiny. And she wondered what she’d done by agreeing to accompany Lalita and her relatives. She wondered if she’d fallen into a trap.

At the same time, she was aware that she might be insane—that all these terrors might be no more than illusions, like horrible faces that sprang out of a dream. And yet . . . who could blame her for being afraid? Her own parents had tried to sell her to the tigers. Then St. Maur had admitted he was looking for the ruby himself. And then . . . Lalita and these men she said were her cousins were acting in peculiar ways and were, almost certainly, hiding the ruby that everyone wanted.

And she couldn’t swear that they, too, weren’t weres. In fact, she remembered the concerned question about whether the powersticks were loaded for weres, which made no sense at all if the three of them were human. And if they were weres, then they were probably intending to sacrifice her.

Out of her racing thoughts, a single certainty emerged: she was not safe here. And when casting about in her mind for a place and a person she would be safe with, she came again and always to St. Maur. He had been cruel, yes, and he was a were. But he’d come back to warn Lalita. And it wasn’t possible that he had the same fate in mind for Sofie as the tigers. If it were so, instead of refusing to see her, he would have kidnapped her and taken her to a place where she could be sacrificed for his own purposes.

No, more than that, had that been his plan, he’d have found out earlier that she was the ruby’s heiress, and he’d have been planning to get hold of her whether or not he could get his hands on Soul of Fire.

So, St. Maur was the one person she knew for a fact she would be safe with. And she had sent him away, forever.

DUPLICITOUS INTENTIONS; THE INNER MAN