Soul of Fire (46 page)

“And use that ruby to find the other ruby. And then, you see, you can go. Because even if they find me, they won’t find the ruby on me.”

“Ah, I can go. And you?”

“I will find some mission and learn to make myself useful.”

“In the salvation of souls?” he asked. She felt as though he was mocking her, but she saw nothing funny at all in her decision.

“If need be,” she said, stoically.

ELEPHANTS ON PARADE GROUNDS; MAYHEM AND LOSS

He knew in his heart what the sound was, before his
mind understood it. There were screams and the sound of ripping wood and falling masonry, and before William fully had time to think or make a decision, he was running, his feet carrying him toward the place of the disturbance.

He had been walking to the general’s house slowly, trying to think of a way to tell him that the Gold Coats should concentrate less on weres in the ranks and more on the tigers outside the garrison. And he could imagine the general’s counterargument—that one must be sure of those at one’s back before facing the enemy. And William had not yet come up with a good response for that when he heard the sound.

Suddenly he was running to the disturbance, at the same time that others were, and his first thought was that elephants were not supposed to do this. Not elephants. He’d seen elephants in India. A lot of elephants. The army didn’t use them, but Indian peasants did. The patient creatures were beasts of burden and transport, agricultural machinery and building aids. What they were not was war machines. Not until this moment.

He ran into the middle of the crowd, his brain beating a steady
Let it not be Bhishma who’s changed shapes!
And then, suddenly, the crowd stopped, and started pushing backwards. William alone withstood the movement, and the crowd went around him, screaming. And what they were running from was . . . magnificent.

Two young male elephants were rampaging, with swaying trunks throwing people out of their way, stomping them to a bloody pulp on the parade ground. William thought of Polybius quoting Scipio, and the words escaped his lips unbidden: “The day shall be when holy Troy shall fall. And Priam, lord of spears, and Priam’s folk.”

And suddenly he realized that an elephant was right in front of him, raising its foot, and William rolled aside, and the elephant’s foot came down where he used to be, and William ran. He turned just in time to see the Royal Were-Hunters shoot at the elephants, with multiple discharges of their weapons.

They weren’t causing destruction on purpose,
he thought, frantically.
They were scared.
Followed by an even more frantic,
Let neither of them be Bhishma!

He pressed forward in the crowd, just in time to see the elephants topple. Their fall shook the ground. Their bodies writhed and twisted, and their shapes changed into two sepoys he remembered seeing, though he couldn’t think of their names. They both looked very young and very scared, and he stared at them, feeling immense relief that neither of them was Bhishma. He bit his lower lip to keep himself from screaming out. He wasn’t sure what he would scream out. He wasn’t sure what he should do or what they should do. Because on one hand, the sepoys hadn’t gone mad on purpose. And on the other hand . . . On the other hand, they had killed people.

The Gold Coats were moving the two young sepoys, lifting them and binding them. William thought they would take them over to trial or court-martial. But, beside him, he heard an English officer say, “They’re going to build the pyres. To burn them.”

“They are?” William asked, unable to stop himself. “Burning them?”

The man looked at him, as though William had taken leave of his senses. “Of course. It’s either that or behead them.”

“But . . . They didn’t trample anyone on purpose. They seemed loyal before. I never heard ill of them. I’ve . . . I’ve read that change is involuntary. And perhaps they were just scared?”

The other man continued to stare at William, with complete shock. “But . . . my dear fellow, don’t you see? It’s not what they did or didn’t do. They are dangerous weres, and they can’t be trusted. I know we can’t kill every were in India, not with the way their culture protects them, but these are in the service of Her Majesty, and as such are on English soil. Them, we can burn.”

STRANGE EVENTS AND STRANGE REASONS; WHERE LALITA ASKS FOR HANUMAN’S HELP

Lalita insisted they clean the house before they left.
She felt strange doing it, and could imagine from Hanuman’s strange look and Maidan’s sudden rolling of eyes that this was not, in fact, what they would have done, if given a choice. But she had spent too much time in England. Or perhaps too much time among nonweres. She knew that it wasn’t a natural thing to her kind, who had always taken what they could when they could from the edges of non-were society.

She didn’t know whether to be pleased or shocked that Hanuman did not complain about cleaning up. He’d been behaving altogether oddly, as had Maidan. She’d never fully understood what Maidan meant to do or why he’d been sent. And she didn’t understand his concession to Hanuman. And, worst of all, she couldn’t be sure that Sofie and St. Maur hadn’t been right in their suspicions of the monkeys’ intentions. Had Maidan and Hanuman been sent by her uncle with the intent of capturing Sofie and sacrificing her to the ruby?

And at the bottom of it all was discomfiture that Sofie—Sofie, who had been as close to her as a sister, despite everything—hadn’t come to her and told her of her doubts, had instead chosen to drug her along with the two men.

Her head was slow and aching, and she felt queasy and confused as if hungover, as she dressed herself for the day and wondered what they should do next. It finally occurred to her, as she drank yet another cup of tea, that where they went and what they did today depended, most of all, on what Hanuman and Maidan intended, and whether they wanted to sacrifice Sofie or not. Not that Lalita had any intention of allowing them to kill her friend. She wasn’t even angry at Sofie—more put off and hurt.

But she needed to know what Hanuman and Maidan intended. Without that, she couldn’t make a decision. She went in search of Hanuman, whom she found making Sofie’s bed, with an intent expression on his face—and an utter lack of ability. He’d pull the sheet on one side and attempt to stuff the edges under, only to have to go to the other side and redo the part that had come loose. She didn’t know whether it was because he, too, was suffering a hangover from the narcotic, or whether he was truly that inept, but the combination of his clumsiness and the long-suffering look on his face as he trudged around the bed again to put it in order made her cover her mouth with her hand—which was insufficient to stifle the giggle that rang forth like the pealing of a bell.

He noticed her for the first time, and looked up, blushing. “Princess,” he said.

She grinned at him, disarmed by both his courtesy and his ineptitude. Stepping into the room, she lifted a corner of the mattress, showed him how to fold the edge and then let the corner rest again, before going to the other side of the bed and repeating her actions. He looked as though he’d just been enlightened. “Ah. So there is a science to this!”

“Yes,” she said, and observed while he did the remaining two corners aptly enough. “Why are you changing the bed?”

“Your friend slept in it,” he said, and waved toward the pile of sheets in a corner of the room. “You said we were to make the house look untouched. I thought that one look at the bed and they’d realize it wasn’t, so . . .”

“Won’t they notice the pile of used sheets?”

He flashed her a wide grin. “I’ll put it in the laundry when I’m done. Princess, trust me, no one in an English household will notice if there is an extra set of used sheets in the laundry. And none of the servants will judge it worthy of informing their masters.”

A sudden enlightenment dawned on Lalita. “You were a servant once, in an English household.”

He laughed, a sudden cackle. “My mother was,” he said. “My father was an Englishman.”

She looked at him, puzzled, taking in the straight, glossy black hair, the black eyes, the bronze skin. She’d taken him for an Indian of her caste, meaning that they were naturally lighter than most of the lower castes in India. But now she could see in the rise of his nose, the shape of his chin, something English, perhaps.

He was looking at her, his expression unreadable. She wondered if there was anger in it, or perhaps sadness. But no; there seemed to be only expectancy. He was waiting for her to do something, say something.

She said the first thing that came to her wandering mind. “You’re a sport.”

He bowed slightly, his features still tense. “I’m a throwback, at any rate. My mother was not a shifter. If her ancestors were, she did not know it.” An impish smile broke through the gravity. “Then again, you know what men in our tribe are. Not exactly the most . . .”

“Careful in their love affairs?” Lalita asked, with a smile. “No.” And then, because he still seemed to be waiting for her to say something. “How did you end up at court?”

“At twelve, my mother took me to a monkey of her acquaintance, and he took me to King Buhdev, who, for reasons of his own, took a shine to me. He said I was smart and accomplished and just what the monkey-people needed.” He frowned slightly and said, in the tone of a school-child trying to repeat complete lessons, “I should say that, at the time, his reasons were a mystery, but not so later on. He taught me to use monkey magic, and the extent of my powers and abilities. And when I was fifteen, he sent me out on the first of my missions.”

“Missions?”