The Golden Leopard (37 page)

“What was the noise, then?”

“When the bodies were all at the bottom of the gorge, several boulders were sent off the cliff. They started an avalanche, and now everything is buried under a small mountain of rubble. No investigation, no questions asked. As if it had never happened.”

“Unless you testified to what you had seen.”

“To what purpose? Had Malik Rao’s zealots carried the day, there would be no one to give evidence of
our
deaths.” He paused, his breathing unsteady. “Besides, I won’t be here. This is my chance to escape, probably the only one I’ll get, and I’m taking it.”

She let that sink in. It was not unexpected, but she’d thought he would go without telling her. He could be miles away by now. Why had he come back here? “I don’t suppose,” she ventured, “that you would consider giving Shivaji the leopard? Then you needn’t flee to wherever you are going. Unless, of course, you wish to go there.”

“No. I haven’t even a solid notion where it will be. Look, I haven’t wanted to tell you this. Or perhaps I have already done so. I’ve long since lost track of what you know and don’t know.”

There was a rustle of clothing as he shifted position. “A year ago, short a few days, I was sentenced to death. The ruling, I am assured, is immutable. While the nizam ostensibly granted me a period of time in which to find the leopard, turns out it was all a political charade. I was supposed to be secretly disposed of when convenient, and under no circumstances permitted to survive beyond the anniversary of my condemnation. Those were Shivaji’s orders. Leopard or no leopard, Jessica, he will kill me by Sunday week.”

She wished she could see his face. Except for a patch of ghostly light at the entrance, the grotto was sable black. The disembodied conversation shuddered against the curved wall, producing not so much an echo as resonances in a different pitch. She imagined the spirits of the dead men calling out from under the cairn of stones erected by the avalanche.
Come join us.
She wondered if Duran heard them as well. She thought of all these things because she could not bring herself to speak.

“I’m going to take you back to him,” he said into the taut silence. “We should go soon, before he moves to some other place. He won’t harm you.”

“Nor you,” she said. “I don’t believe he’d arbitrarily execute you, not if you put the leopard in his hands. Perhaps not under any circumstances. Why should he? Who would know, all the way in that little kingdom in the middle of nowhere, what became of you?”

A ragged breath. “It is, for Shivaji, a matter of honor. His family has served the rulers of Alanabad for . . . I don’t know. Several hundred years. They take oaths. They follow orders without question. The divine imperative for them is adherence to duty, whatever the cost. That’s as much as I understand, anyway. And that Shivaji will never veer from a course he believes to be predestined.”

“Or he wants you to believe so. I know his capabilities. I have seen him kill. But I do not believe he has the soul of a murderer. He has tended me, and a number of the servants, when we were ill. He makes prayer boats.”

“Yes. I’ve seen those on the rivers in India. He’s an unusual man, to be sure. His philosophy, character, and profession remain an utter mystery to me. But at the end of the day, Shivaji is what he was bred to be. He is the fabled Sakar ki Churi, the Knife of Sugar. It is smooth and sweet, but still a knife.”

There was a conviction in his voice that persuaded her more than his words. And she had deciphered one of those resonances. His fear of Shivaji was genuine. She might not believe in the Knife of Sugar, but Duran most assuredly did. In the shadows of the grotto, death had come to call. “Will you take the leopard with you?” she said.

His relief at her acquiescence, although unspoken, made its presence felt. “I’ll try for it,” he admitted after a hesitation. “It took my former life from me. It’s taking the one I have now, here, with you. Why shouldn’t it pay for whatever life I find somewhere else?”

She hardly dared. But this would be her only opportunity. “Must that life, somewhere else, exclude me? I would go with you, Duran, if you’ll have me.”

Silence. A murmur then, perhaps
Dear God.

“It isn’t possible,” he said at length. “I don’t know where I’m going, or if I’ll get anywhere at all. You should never have got caught up in this. I will answer for that, one way or another. But it stops now. From here on out you have to stay clear of me and what I do.”

“Because you say so? Or because you want rid of me?”

“Because there is no choice for either of us. Because I have made a covenant with Shivaji. So long as you are not involved with any attempt I make to escape, he will do you no injury. Jessica, we can debate this until we are found here, still jabbering, or I can lead you to safety and take my chances from there.”

She heard him stand, and the scrape of his boots on the stony ground as he went to the entrance and stood there, silhouetted against the starlight. “Or if you wish it, we can walk together into Shivaji’s grip and let him make the decision for us. I know only this, princess. It’s from a poem by a man named Rumi, and it seems to be engraved on every one of my bones. ‘Around the lip of this cup we share—My life is not mine.’”

She would have wept then, for the first time since she could remember, except that it would have made everything more difficult for him. And she had resolved—had she not?—to give him whatever he asked. How easy to make such a vow before she understood it meant she would never see him again. And how hard to keep it, since the vow was made only to herself.

Coming to her feet, she unclenched her hands and wedged a brisk tone into her voice. “Well, if you are going to deposit me on the assassin’s doorstep, we’d best be off. Just keep in mind, Duran, that I am not altogether helpless. You needn’t take me too close or linger to see if I have been properly received.”

“That’s my girl,” he said, and she heard the relief in his tone. “Come along, then. If we don’t get there before Shivaji has moved on, there will be the devil to pay.”

More than an hour later,
as Duran led her up a steep, grassy incline, the smell of smoke and something oddly sweet enveloped them.

Duran halted. Took her hand. “I know that odor. It comes from a funeral pyre. They are burning their dead.”

“But I thought—”

“The stones were for the enemy,” he said. “It was a respectful burial. And they could hardly incinerate so many without drawing attention. If you don’t wish to see the fires, wait here for a time. They will soon burn out. Then proceed to the end of the promontory. From there you can get Shivaji’s attention.”

“I don’t mind the ritual,” she told him. “But I shall wait long enough to give you a head start. Do go off, Duran, before I embarrass us both with needless sentimentality. I shall miss you. I shall try not to think of you, and after a time, I expect I shall succeed. Good-bye, then. I am glad to have known you.”

For a long time she felt him there, still behind her, as if uncertain what to do. But the sensation of his presence gradually faded, and when she brought herself to look around, he was gone.

She gave thought to how much time to wait and decided very little was required. This was to be yet another masquerade, like the one she’d played out with Gerald, like the many she’d played with Duran in their sexual games. When she appeared in front of Shivaji, dramatically exhausted and lost, he would not expect the fugitive Duran to be lurking nearby. But neither did she wish to intrude on the funeral taking place below.

Dropping to her belly, she slithered her way to the narrow point of the overlook and saw a circle of men seated cross-legged around two pallets suspended over blazing fires. The pallets, and the figures laid out on them, were all but consumed by the flames. She could detect only the outlines, nearly transparent now, of what they had been.

Lowering her head, she slipped back a little, rolled over, and gazed up at the stars. All those men, the ones in the flames and the ones under the stones, come so far to reclaim a chunk of gold. They had died for a symbol, and for the political ambitions of their leaders. She had regained her lost love, and lost him again. There was no prayer boat in the world large enough to contain all her questions, or all her tears, if ever she permitted herself to weep.

Some time later, sounds from below stirred her from her reverie. She returned to her viewpoint and saw that the ceremony was done and the traces of it all but vanished. It was time. Rising, she stood directly on the edge of the promontory and waited for someone to notice her.

It didn’t take long. A finger pointed in her direction. Everyone looked up at her. And after a few minutes, Shivaji came for her. He was alone, on horseback, riding slowly up the grassy slope she had ascended with Duran.

She watched him dismount, approach her, and bow, and remembered how he had killed three men in the time it would take to close a window. “Were your losses great?” she said.

“Two dead,” he replied without expression, as if describing the weather. “Three wounded, but they are able to carry on their duties. Where is Duran?”

“I don’t know. He said he was going, he didn’t say where, and he left.”

“How long ago? In which direction.”

“He departed soon after we escaped the coach.” Which was, so far as it went, perfectly true. “I don’t know precisely where we were at the time, but he turned right.”

A silence. “Did he ask you to lie on his account, or to mislead me?”

“He asked me not to make a fuss. I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let me. It wasn’t a lengthy discussion. He was in something of a hurry.” She lifted her chin. “He did mention that if he stayed, you would kill him.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Is it true?”

He seemed not to want to answer that. But she couldn’t really tell. It was dark, and even in daylight, little could be read from his face.

“I was sent for him,” he said.

“Like Yamaraj for the prince. I remember the story. The prince dies, the princess cries a waterfall of tears, and the Lord of Death toddles along to his next victim. Are you quite proud of yourself?”

“I must do the work given me to do,
memsahib.
Duran’s fate was declared by another. I am not the wielder of death. Only the instrument. Can a sword choose where to strike?”

“A sword,” she said, “does not have a mind to think with. A will to make its own decision. A conscience to guide its action. Two legs to walk the hell away.”

He made no reply to that. Nor did he speak again until he had brought her to the carriage, she on the horse and Shivaji leading it as if he were the servant he had for so long pretended to be.

After he had helped her down, his strong hands firm on her waist, he regarded her thoughtfully. “I would like you to continue the journey,” he said.

The declaration was so outrageous that she could scarcely believe he’d made it. Continue on as if nothing had happened? As if there were any purpose to it? “Why should I?” she said, not troubling to conceal her anger. “Even if I found the leopard and gave it you, Duran would still be marked for death. Can you deny that?”

“His life is not contingent on the leopard, no. But consider. If I am escorting you, I cannot be searching for him.”

The breath rushed out of her. He had a point. For a little time, at least, she could keep this relentless monster off Duran’s trail. It was a mercy that he wanted the leopard even more than he wanted Duran at the point of his knife. And she had no other place to go, really, nor anywhere she cared to be. Gerald could wait another few days. He would have to, because she was in no state of mind to deal with him now.

“Very well,” she said with patent reluctance. “I shall inquire for your statue, until I decide not to. Or am I your prisoner?”

“You may depart at any time,
memsahib.
”

At the least, she reflected, entering the carriage, she would have the satisfaction of pretending to seek the leopard when it had already been found. Shivaji would never have it, that was certain. Duran had got away. And the Lord of Death would be returning to his petty little country in disgrace.