Soul of Fire (28 page)

The roof of the hospitality house, onto which they swung in one smooth movement, was low for Benares, only two stories tall. Worse, around it crowded other low-roof structures, hovels and makeshift shelters for the pilgrims who wished to stay in Benares but lacked the money.

Though it was night, there were people on the streets—of course, this was Benares. Chants went up from nearby temples. From the river below came the glow of burning ghats and the faint smell of burning human flesh.

They took the roofs of the hovels at a trot, with Hanuman in the lead, swinging easily from roof to roof. And, at last, from them to the roof of the temple of Kali, where the statue of the goddess, with its garland of human skulls and its necklace of dead men’s hands, stood in the courtyard, her outstretched tongue seemingly reaching for the place of sacrifice, where a bifurcated post marked the area where the sacrificial animals were tied and offered.

In that sacrificial area there was a goat’s head and a concerned knot of priests of Kali. “It was a dragon,” someone said. “I wonder if the Lady sent him to take the goat?”

Lalita and Hanuman fled the temple of Kali, and up to the glistening cupola of an adjacent temple. In the street below, someone was gently leading a herd of sacred cows. A Brahman priest was consoling what appeared to be a bereaved family. Lalita and Hanuman jumped over the bridge and onto the roof of the Golden Temple, next to it. This impressive structure should allow them a good view of the city and surrounding areas.

And, indeed, it did, showing the city of Benares in its multidinous worship and prayer. But it didn’t show them a dragon. As for the monkeys in whose presence and observing eyes Hanuman had placed so much confidence, Lalita could only imagine that he’d dreamed them. She hadn’t seen them on rooftops before, and she didn’t see them now. The only place she could discern any group of them was around the temple of Durga. Which meant that unless the dragon had made it an express point of checking in with the monkeys of Durga, they would be quite out of luck.

But just then she heard, behind her, the half-vocalized call of a monkey—in fact, the call of her kind. She turned around sharply.

A male monkey stood behind them, one with the characteristically slim and agile build of the princely monkeys that belonged to Lalita’s own family. Her uncle had a dozen sons—princes all. But she hadn’t seen them since they were very young, when most of them were still unable to change shapes.

This one now bowed to her, consciously, acknowledging her superior rank, and in that one gesture making his obeyance to her.

Then he moved his fingers, fast, in the gesture-language they used when in this form. All were-creatures had ways of communicating with their kind. Tigers and elephants used mostly sounds, some of them modulated so that the human ear could not discern them. She didn’t know what dragons did, though the legends spoke of their using a peculiar type of hisses and clicks that mimicked human language, so that each dragon spoke the same tongue he spoke as a man.

Monkeys, however, with their mobile digits, had long since created an extensive and all-encompassing language of gestures. The new monkey used it now, his long brown fingers flashing in the dark at a speed that made it difficult even for Lalita to follow.

One flying—no, one dragon, carrying a human female . . . headed southeast out of the city. Tigers before. Tigers following.

Lalita groaned inwardly. Of course the tigers were following. That made it harder to find Sofie—at least, presuming she was trying to evade the tigers—and equally difficult to rescue her, should they reach her in time.

The monkey, however, had taken the lead and Hanuman was following him, temple to temple, golden spire to golden dome, flat roof to hovel thatch, then up again, south, southwest.

If only Hanuman had managed to detain them, somehow. If only Hanuman hadn’t been such a fool as to look around in the alleys after they’d disappeared, thereby delaying when he’d come to wake her. If only—

The if-onlys were obscuring all other thoughts, when Hanuman gave a sharp monkey-cry and pointed a long finger at the sky.

There, stark against the night, was a dragon—green and gold, its wings sparkling with captive fire. On the dragon’s back was a girl, and Lalita would be willing to bet it was Sofie, though she was too far away to see details of form and figure.

And caught in the dragon’s claws, screaming and roaring, was a young tiger. At a loss for what to think, Lalita stared, mouth open in shock.

The dragon dipped below, to the forest floor, and disappeared from view.

AMONG BEASTS; THE DRAGON’S FURY; BEAST AND MAN

Sofie was scared. She couldn’t have explained it to
anyone. She wasn’t scared of St. Maur. It was hard to be scared of a man who had saved your life twice over, and who was determined to protect you at all costs.

He’d said that as they reached a small clearing in the woods. He undressed, briskly, hiding their bags and his clothes under a nearby tree and locking it under various spells of secrecy and invisibility—or as close to it as spells could get, carrying the strong suggestion that anyone noticing them should immediately stop doing so and look away as soon as possible.

Then he turned around. He’d removed all stitch of clothing, including his eye patch. His deformity should have scared her or shocked her, but it did not. Instead, with his eyelid closed on that side, he presented the aspect of someone who’d been through a great battle and not escaped unscathed. The only explanation he’d given her for his wound was that it had been “a sacrifice and a worthy one.” She didn’t know what that meant.

In her mind, she’d conjured up a lot of stories about his fighting many battles and being wounded in a noble charge against the enemy. The enemy in these daydreams was always indefinable, but she could see St. Maur clearly—being very noble and self-contained and self-sacrificing. She could see him losing his eye and telling his men to charge on, to not flag.

All of this would have made much sense had it actually fit in with the story of himself he’d told her. Of course, it didn’t. And yet, that didn’t deter her. She realized perfectly well that in the story he’d told her there were holes—places left dark. She supposed he thought they were too rough and ready for her maiden ears. And, as such, she was sure he would tell her the whole story, someday.

She realized she was certain of this as she watched him turn around. And at the same time, she realized she’d been a fool to think that friendship or any sort of intimacy between them could subsist or grow. Or, indeed, that anything about him was human and soft and the same kind and order of being as she was.

Naked, his face bare, standing in that clearing, St. Maur made one think more of a blade, naked and ready, shining in the sun, than of a man with human frailties. Sofie shivered, and couldn’t say why. There was a set to his jaw, all angles and sharp decision. His cheekbones looked more starkly planed, his shoulders thrown back, showing all his muscles in sharp relief. His body looked perfect—the even skin, the muscles of his torso, his perfectly shaped legs. He was almost hairless. The whole contributed, Sofie thought, to make him look more like a statue on display at a museum than the man who had rescued her. The man who, she realized, she’d been building up as some sort of knight-errant in her mind.

“Where . . . What do you mean to do?” she asked him, somewhat frightened at the implacable gaze of his single eye and at the straight line of his folded lips. What had brought on this change of expression and demeanor, and why did he look, of a sudden, so pitiless, so devoid of mercy or humor?

“I’ll do what must be done,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, the exclamation wrung from her by emotions she couldn’t quite put into words. “And what is that?”

He shook his head and looked at her, and his mouth set in a firmer line yet. His fingers seemed to stretch forward, and with it, to grow into something resembling the dragon’s claws. She knew it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. When he shifted shapes, he shifted them in pain and with effort, not inconsequentially and in response to a mood. But his gesture made her think of dragon claws, and his expression, too, had something of the voracity of the beast.

She stepped backwards, confused, and just as the expression had appeared on his features, it changed and shifted, and something like a soft tenderness crept over him. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but this can’t go on. I cannot allow you to go your way, cannot leave you at Meerut, without knowing why these tigers are following you, or what they wish of you.”

“But . . . surely you know what they wish of me. Their leader wants to marry me.”

He shook his head and crossed his arms on his chest, and managed, suddenly, to appear formal, an older gentleman introduced to her at a London party. “Don’t be more of a fool than you can help, Miss Warington.”

This was uttered in such a tone of pity and protective gentleness that it took her a moment to realize he’d insulted her.

“No matter how lovely you are, you are not so foolish as to think they would set this determined pursuit, that they would try to catch you by any means, simply because their leader wishes to put a wedding ring on your perfect little finger. You know better than that.” He frowned and looked over her shoulder, and for a moment seemed to be quite abstracted—quite . . . immersed in another reality. “No, they want you for some purpose of import, a purpose for which no other woman will do. No other Englishwoman, even.” He brought his gaze to bear on her again. “You see, when I first rescued you, I thought that perhaps they just wanted an Englishwoman of a certain class—not the English riffraff they easily can get hold of—to kill publically and incite a greater revolt against British rule in India. I studied how revolutions are started, you see, and this seemed to me a plausible ploy. He’d take you to his distant kingdom, and there kill you publically, and when his followers saw that no chastisement followed the transgression, they would have the heart to take on the English—all of them.”

“Oh,” she said, because she could picture the scene he was describing. She could imagine it all too well—being butchered before a crowd of natives, serving as an incitement to rebellion. In fact, it seemed all too likely to her.

“But I don’t think that’s what he meant to do,” St. Maur said, curtly. “Because if it were, there would be no point at all in pursuing you halfway across India, particularly not after the raj saw you snatched up by a dragon, who could be presumed to put up a fight should you be taken from him. No. They would have moved to other, easier pickings. In as desperate circumstances as your parents might be understood to be, they are not alone, you know? There is more than one family ruined by India and ready to sell their daughters in matrimony to a titled native for a reasonable consideration—or as well to be bribed or coerced by other means. You, no matter how beautiful and accomplished you are, you are not worth the game. Not if all they wish to do is kill you.”

“So . . .” A strange hope took hold in her—a hope that the tigers didn’t mean to kill her. Moments ago, this wouldn’t have been her assumption, but now . . . “You mean that they want me for some other purpose? Than just killing me?”

“I have to assume so,” St. Maur said. “And such being the case, they’re not likely to give up simply because you’re in Meerut and married to a young English soldier. They will continue pursuing you. And I can’t allow that.”

“Why not?” she asked, caught between anger at him—he’d as good as said no one would risk much to marry her—and confusion that he seemed to feel some form of responsibility for her well-being.