Soul of Fire (48 page)

Peter sat down, heavily, on the moss-carpeted cave floor. “It is no use,” he said, dispiritedly. “The ruby is broken beyond repair.” He knew as he said it that this wasn’t true. There was a way to heal the ruby. Her blood. Her sacrifice. It wasn’t a price he was willing to pay. Let the world be damned. Let the world continue existing in its present disharmony. Let the universes continue to fracture till none of them contained any magic at all. But let Sofie live.

Perhaps a better man—a real man, and therefore surely better—than him would at some future time find the courage he lacked to do the unspeakable.

She blinked at him in confusion. He realized, with a longing that almost wrung a groan from him, that he would give a king’s ransom to be able to kiss those eyelids fringed by long black lashes. He would gladly trade the rest of his days for the opportunity to cup her soft cheek in his hand. He would go naked and hungry and beg—like those poor creatures that beg on the streets of India—to just once follow the curve of her chin as it flowed into her soft neck, and to kiss the hollow of her throat where it met the lace of her collar.

“But . . . you said you were sent to find the jewel,” Sofie said, those lashes fluttering, her eyes showing a hint of tears. “You said you were sent by the oldest avatar of mankind to reclaim the ruby and take it back to her. How can you tell me it’s dead now?”

“Perhaps the avatar doesn’t know,” he said, looking away from her. “It is possible. It is . . . very old, you know, and . . . it is not in touch with the ruby. Hasn’t been for centuries now. Perhaps it’s like when a person’s limb is amputated. I used to hear . . . My father had a friend who was a war veteran. And he told us that he could still feel the leg that had been amputated. He said that the worst thing was when the weather was humid and his long-missing knee hurt him horribly, and there was nothing he could do. Perhaps . . .” he said, as his voice lost force. “Perhaps it is thus with the avatar as well.”

“No,” Sofie said. Her features were animated in a sort of rage. “No. It cannot be. I refuse to believe . . . I refuse to think that something that old, with that much power, could not or would not know what to do. You don’t know how to activate it? You never asked? You don’t know of any method that doesn’t involve . . . my death?” Her voice grew increasingly more agitated. “How like a man not to ask something like that! Any woman on being told to recover a magically raped ruby would have asked. They would have asked how to waken it. And if the answer was that they had to kill an innocent maiden, they would . . . any woman would resist it. Find another way. But you thought you knew it all. All gentlemen think they know it all.”

Like that, she turned her back on him and walked to the mouth of the cave. He jumped after her, to ensure she did not jump from the mouth of the cave. But she turned slightly, then rested her forehead on the stone. She stayed like that—and Peter, behind her, with hand stretched to her shoulder, didn’t know what to do. She was very angry at him. And some part of him thought she was right to be mad. He had made rather a muddle of it all.

And then her shoulders shook, and a sob escaped her, dry and desperate.

Her pain resounded through him, tearing at his heart and soul. Without thinking, he pulled her to him.

Her face was wet with tears as she raised a desperate gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean any of those horrible things. It’s just—”

“Shh,” he said. She was warm and real in his arms. He felt whole and started. He’d never thought of himself as broken before. It was as though when his father had sent him away from home and land, he’d fallen down a hole. Fallen into a world of irreality, where he had only himself to look after, and only he mattered. It wasn’t just that no man should live alone, he thought. It was that having no one that mattered but oneself, no life to preserve but one’s own, made a man less than a man—just a creature of the fields, seeking a safe burrow to while away its existence. “Shh,” he said, holding her close, feeling her heartbeat against his own. He’d forgotten he was naked. He’d forgotten everything. His lips, with a mind of their own, kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, tasting the salt of her tears like an exquisite liquor. She was so warm, her skin so soft, her breath intoxicating, and the little gasps she gave at his touch were a sound that he couldn’t help but crave once he heard it. He could write a poem about the curve of her ear and the delicate feel of her neck, where her hair tapered off into a few very soft, short locks. He looked at her face, and their gazes met, and then their lips. Her mouth opened to invite his tongue. She tasted, somehow, of apples and honey and the flavors of forgotten spring back in Summercourt.

St. Maur had gone insane, and he didn’t care. But color rose to her cheeks in a flood and her hands went to his shoulders and she pushed him ever so slightly away. “Milord,” she said, still against his lips. “Milord.”

With an effort, Peter controlled himself, pulled himself away. What a fool he was! How could he have let himself get so carried away? Good thing one of them had retained their sanity. “I’m heartily sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Oh, never mind that,” Sofie said. She had somehow got turned in their embrace, and she was facing the mouth of the cave, and pointing at the clear skies beyond.

On the far horizon, half a dozen flying rugs approached.

“Are those the tigers?” Sofie asked.

“They might be,” he said. “We can’t risk it.” He pushed the ruby into her pocket. And then he started to change into a dragon again.

A FOOL’S ERRAND; ACROSS CULTURES AND TIME

William stopped. He’d come on a fool’s errand. If he
were caught, he could very easily be dishonored, turned out of the army, perhaps killed. He had heard of Gold Coats killing those that tried to free or assist imprisoned weres.

And William didn’t want to do it. All his life, he’d trusted the histories and those who knew better. He’d heard how dangerous weres were. He’d
seen
how dangerous weres were. Those rampaging sepoy-elephants had killed . . . fifteen people. But as William had lain on his bed, what haunted him was the fact that the sepoys hadn’t tried to follow him when he’d rolled away. The elephants hadn’t set out to kill him.

He didn’t know what it was like to be a were, but he had seen the native sepoys being interrogated by the Gold Coats. He’d seen their expressions as they stood under the guns, trying to answer questions that he was sure felt very strange to them.

William couldn’t know—couldn’t even guess—at the processes that would cause someone to change shape into an animal. But he’d seen the shock and despair in those young men’s eyes when they had shifted back to human. And so they would be killed. Killed for the sin of being what they had been born.

And William knew only too well how much the inner man could not be denied by the outer one. And while he could understand—even accept—that the sepoys could be dangerous, he very much doubted they would have changed were it not for the unusual pressure that had been brought to bear. What had been done to them was the equivalent of tormenting a dog into attacking, then shooting him because he had attacked.

William had turned in his bed, tangling himself in his sheets, unable to sleep. He couldn’t help feeling they were committing a great injustice in killing these young men. And it was the sort of injustice that could lead to more death.

There was a new tension in the camp; William had felt it. There were looks from the sepoys and looks from all the Indian servants. There was a feeling of anger, of resentment. A feeling of . . . of something impending, like the feeling in the air before a thunderstorm.

Well, William was not going to allow it. And so he had armed himself with the necessary spells, and he’d come through the sleeping camp. There weren’t many people on guard at the barracks where the young men were confined. Only two Gold Coats, their resplendent livery shining by the light of the moon as they talked together. William had approached them from the side of the camp, wearing a dark cloak, which hid his clothes. Knit with the shadow of the building, he was all but invisible.

He wondered if the guards would spot his trick, then shook his head. No. They were expecting—if anything—a native attack. Perhaps a native magical attack. But they wouldn’t expect British magics, much less British schoolboy magics, of the type used to play pranks on masters and prefects throughout the breadth of the isles.

William closed his eyes and thought a prayer. Let him succeed in this. Let him free these men. He knew that he was damned, but he couldn’t allow injustice to go forward.

Removing a vial from within his sleeve, he hoped he hadn’t lost his knack of preparing this spell—the same spell he’d used as a young man when he wanted to leave the dorm after lights out, or when he simply didn’t want to be in a class and wanted his masters to think he was still there.

He pointed the vial at the corner of the barracks opposite the men, and uncorked it. He felt the force he’d imprisoned there earlier escape, and he gave it shape with his mind. In the corner appeared three swarthy, intimidating-looking natives—the sort of natives that every Gold Coat newly arrived in the region would fear.

“Hey,” one of the guards shouted, as he saw them. “Hey.”

The natives—really just an air elemental given shape by his wishes and thoughts—continued attempting to force their way through a boarded-up window. One of the guards fired, but the natives seemed not to notice.

“They’re protected by some spell,” one of the guards said. His comrade nodded. And just as William had expected, they rushed toward the elemental, leaving the barracks door unguarded.

William threw a spell of unlocking at it and then ran, full tilt, to the door.

As he reached it, he became aware of someone else coming in with him, at the same time, shoulder to shoulder.

Bhishma!
he thought, as he closed the door and looked toward the native, who smiled at him and put his finger to his lips. Turning, he did something to the door—closing it, William could tell, in a way that no one would be able to perceive it had ever been unlocked. It would look and feel locked, and no trace of the spell would be found.

William, meanwhile, turned toward the young men, who were just wakening in their cages. They looked at William in fear, but he put his finger to his lips, commanding them to silence, then used the unlocking spell on the cages. Both cages were locked tight with British magic, so no one on the inside could open them, and especially no Indian magic could touch them. They were, however, vulnerable to being opened from the outside. By an Englishman.

Leaving the cages unlocked, William turned toward the windows, which were barred on the outside and also spelled to prevent their being opened by magic. As he expected, though, they were not secured from the inside—and again, they didn’t bar against English magic. After all, why should an Englishman let the sepoys go free?

William smiled without mirth. He exerted his magical force on the windows, forcing the one that was on the other side of the building from where the guards were out, then down, smoothly and without noise. There was only one very small space between the building and the wall. Bhishma was already helping the young men out through the window, and William went after them, out into the warm night air.

He threw a spell of confusion over the whole thing, though it wouldn’t last long once the Gold Coats started probing it. It was a schoolboy’s spell, designed to hide the origin and intent of the magical work done. It would never resist expert forensics.