The Serpent's Shadow (36 page)

But something in her reacted to the outrage with potent fury.

Shock galvanized her and filled her with diamond-hard hate; they combined in a single moment of sheer outrage, and before she thought, she struck at him—but not with her fists, with her mind.

Earth-born power rose within her unbidden; lava-hot with rage, it welled up inside her and overflowed, all in an instant. She couldn't have controlled it if she'd wanted to, and she
didn't
want to. It rose up in a mountainous wave, paused, and avalanched down on Simon Parkening, smashing him with a crushing blow before she could take a smothered breath.

He choked, let her go; she staggered backward a pace, and he dropped like a stone, sprawling on the floor of the storage room as if a champion boxer had just laid him out.

Maya gasped, and stumbled back into the support of the shelves, one hand on the upright, the other at her bruised lips.

For one long moment she could hardly breathe for the panic that thought triggered. But then, when Parkening groaned and stirred a little, sense reasserted itself, and her outrage returned.

I defended myself, that's what I've done! And there's
nothing
wrong with that!
As anger broke through the shock and allowed her to think again, Parkening brought up both hands, slowly, to his head, and curled into a fetal position. From the look of him, he wasn't going to wake up very soon, and when he did—he'd be hurting. She put out her hand, slowly, to get a sense of what she'd done to him.

Something
—
like a concussion. Serves you right, you
—
you cad!
she thought at him, hot anger choking her and making her flush.
If I didn't know that your uncle would blame
me
for this, I'd turn you in to him, I would!

But Clayton-Smythe would take one look at her, and probably decide that
she
had tried to seduce his nephew, and not the other way around. No—this would have to do for punishment. She bent over and touched him on the shoulder—briefly—just long enough to determine exactly how much damage she'd done.

Not enough,
she thought with scorn, her insides twisted with the wish that she had been able to do more than merely strike him.
He'll just have the devil of a headache when he wakes up. It probably won't be any
worse
than the hangovers he has all the time.
Wonder at her own strength broke through the anger then; she'd had no idea she could
hurt
someone as well as heal them!
I wonder what he'll think I did? Probably that I hit him with the nearest bedpan.

Well, she had—it just wasn't what he'd
think
she'd hit him with.

Enough dithering. What do I look like?
She spent a moment putting her dress back in order, and patted her hair into place. Above all, she had to make certain no one would suspect that she and Parkening had so much as exchanged a greeting, much less what he had actually attempted. Her reputation was at stake here, and she dared allow nothing to mar it.
There Now
—
fix this situation
—

For the first time that day, she blessed the heat, blessed the fact that no one had actually seen her go into this room, and stepped over his body.

“Nurse!” she called shrilly, backing out of the door hastily, as if she had only just stepped in. “Nurse! Bring an orderly! There's a man on the floor of the linen room with heat stroke!”

The head ward nurse came running at her call, with an orderly following. She pursed her lips when she recognized Simon Parkening, but said nothing except, “Well! Master Parkening, is it? Now what business did he have here?”

Maya shrugged as if it was of no moment. “Is it Parkening, Nurse Haredy? I didn't recognize him. I don't know or care,” she replied, supervising the orderly who hauled the unconscious man up and draped a limp arm over his shoulder. “But if we don't get him off the charity ward and into a private bed with all the little comforts, his uncle will blame us.”

The head nurse frowned, then suddenly smiled. “Nurse Fortenbrase with all her airs can have the care of him, and I'll be washing my hands of him,” she told the orderly, who hauled a groaning Parkening off to a wheeled stretcher for transport to a better class of care.

“I wish I could trade him weight-for-weight for a block of ice,” Maya said sourly, startling a laugh out of the Nurse Haredy. “Well, let's get on with it. Just because a spoiled brat faints in our ward the work doesn't stop.”

“True enough, Doctor,” the nurse nodded, and the two of them went back to tending people who deserved better care than Simon Parkening, but unfortunately weren't likely to get it.

At last, at long last, Maya was finished; about eight o‘clock, with two hours yet to full dark. She had done all she could for people who would either get better or die on their own. She had secretly imparted a breath of healing strength to each of the ones that seemed to be faltering, and it had taken everything she had left to finish the rounds of the wards afterwards. She was so tired, in fact, that she didn't even have the strength to catch a 'bus; fortunately there was an empty cab right at the foot of the steps, and despite the expense, she fell into it, giving her address to the driver.

“Take your time; don't force your horse,” she told him through the hatch above, grateful that this was a hansom and not a motor cab. She didn't think she could bear the clattering and fumes of an engine so close to her right now.

The cabby's sweating, red face broke into a smile of gratitude. “Thenkee, Miss,” he told her. “It's cruel hard on a beast today.”

“It's cruel hard on a man,” she replied, “Let's not make it any worse for both of you than it already is.”

She wanted to lean back, but the horsehair upholstery was prickly and unbearable in this heat, so she put her bag at her feet and leaned forward instead. She watched the horse's swaying posterior in front of her as it ambled along at the same speed as the rest of the traffic, and had to fight to keep from falling into a dull, half-trance. The street was mostly in shadow, with hot, golden bars of sun streaked across the tops of the buildings or passing between them. The sky, an eye-watering blue overlaid with a golden haze of dust, promised nothing but more of the same for tomorrow.

This was death weather; heat and cold were equally punishing for the poor. Babies gasped in the heat and died; cholera and typhoid took off their elder siblings and their parents. If this heat kept on for much longer, there would be more bodies carried out of the hospital than there were patients coming in. The brassy-blue sky glared down on them with no pity and no help.

It has to break. Everyone says so. It has to break, it can't keep on like this.
She took her handkerchief from her bag and wiped her face; it came away filthy with dust and sweat.
I'm one of the fortunate, and I don't know how much longer I can bear this.
She could afford ice, she had servants to do all the hard work of cleaning and cooking and looking after her. The poor had no ice, not a breath of breeze, their food spoiled before they could eat it, and they had to eat it anyway and sickened and died of food poisoning along with all the other forms of death that stalked them. They had no cooler clothes, it was wear what they had or strip half-naked and bear the consequences. She knew very well how much better her life was than that of her poorest patients, but it was hard to reflect on one's blessings when one
felt
so miserable.

The heat meant that there were fewer of her “ladies” about to add to the family coffers with their fees. Most of them weren't even here in London, for a good many of them were holidaying within reach of their wealthy clients, who were also on holiday—at the sea, in the country, even across the sea at resorts in Italy, France, anyplace cooler than here.

The rest, the actresses, the dancers, the music-hall singers—they were making do, just as she was, with iced drinks, walks in the dusk, open windows. The only difference between Maya's circumstances and those of the actresses was that they did most of their work at night—but the theaters were stifling, the limelights and gaslights hot, and the one advantage they had was that they could work half-naked.

Sometimes rather more than half,
she thought wryly. She'd been called to theaters for girls who had collapsed in the heat during rehearsals at the beginning of this weather, but that hadn't happened in a couple of days. The dancers and actresses were good at following her advice, better than more respectable folk.

Traffic thinned as they neared her neighborhood, both because there were fewer people about this close to suppertime, and because there were fewer calls for wheeled vehicles around here. On the road itself, there was little but the occasional cart and hand-barrow, and along the pavement, there were mostly children playing now that the heat of the day was over.

There it was—her own front door at last; she heaved a sigh of relief and mopped her brow once again, then tucked her handkerchief back in her bag and prepared to get out as the cab stopped in front of her door.

Gupta had been out scouring the steps again; they looked as if you could eat off them. She couldn't imagine how he'd done it.

She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and heaved it out of the cab. The horse ambled off immediately. There was not much prospect for a fare around here, and the cabby was anxious to get back to a spot with better prospects. It was almost too much effort to pull open her door, and she thanked God that there were no patients waiting for her in the dark, shadowed hallway as she stepped inside.

She left her bag just inside the door of her office, gathered up her skirts in both hands, and climbed the stairs, one slow, panting step at a time. But when she got to her room, she saw that her people had already anticipated her wishes; there was one of her saris laid out on the bed waiting for her, an everyday sari of cool blue silk with a darker blue border woven into the ends, and the short-sleeved top to match.

With a cry of joy, she flung off her English clothes, unwilling to bear the clinging weight a moment more.

Wrapping the intricate folds was a matter of habit; in less time than it took to put on one of her European gowns and all its accouterments, she was comfortable at last, barefoot, with her hair down and tied back in a single tail, the silk swishing softly around her bare legs and creating its own little breeze as she moved.

And when she came downstairs, there was another surprise.

Hanging in the ceiling of the conservatory was a
punkah-
fan
,
a huge slab of muslin stretched on a hinged frame so that it looked very like a door, meant to be swung back and forth by a rope attached to its bottom edge. In this case, the frame of the fan was tied to the decorative ironwork supporting the glass ceiling, and the rope ran to a pulley on the wall, and was attached to a wicker rocking chair. She could rock
and
fan herself with very little effort.

And Gupta was waiting with—at last!—a glorious pitcher of iced lemonade and a bowl of fresh fruit and cheese, and a broad smile on his face.

“You—are—a magician!” she exclaimed, embracing him as he put down the pitcher and plate on a little table beside the chair.

“Not I,” he protested, a broad smile on his brown face. “How difficult is it to make a
punkah-
fan for one who has had such all his life? A little cloth, a bit of wood—nothing! I only wish I had known that this cold country could become so very warm three or four weeks ago, so that all would have been in place for you before this.”

“Gupta, thank you; your protests don't fool me a bit. I have
no
idea how you got that thing up there.” She waved at the fan overhead.

“You may thank little Charan for that. He managed to take the first ropes over the iron. After that, it was nothing, we merely hauled the
punkah
up and tied it in place. When it is cooler, if you like, we can bring it down again.”

Charan tugged at her sari, chattering; she bent and he leaped into her arms to put his arms around her neck. Now she saw how the ropes that held the fan up were tied off to stanchions, one at either side of the conservatory. “You clever man!” she told the langur, who put his cheek against hers, and chuckled.

“The ice man has come, and I have obtained an extra block,” Gupta told her. “Since it will melt so fast in this heat. And it seemed to me that it would be better to have cold, fresh things to eat than some pie from a strange baker with I know-not-what in it.”

“Wise choice, and thank you.” She settled into her rocking chair and looked up with delight as the fan moved, creating a stirring in the air. “Oh, Gupta, thank you so much!”

Gupta bowed, smiling, and left her alone to enjoy the first
cold
drink of the day.

As the chair moved, so did the fan, creating a delicious breeze. After the first glass of lemonade, her appetite returned and she was able to enjoy Gupta's selections.

Very clever of him not to have any meats,
she thought. It wouldn't be wise to trust to
anything
like meat or fish to stay unspoiled in this weather, even stored in an ice box.

When the meal was gone, she remained where she was, rocking slowly to keep the air moving, as dusk descended and darkness filled the conservatory.

But as her discomfort eased and she was able to relax, emotions that she had purposely bottled up came flooding up unexpectedly, and she began to shiver with suppressed rage that had been pent up for too long.

I am going to burn that dress,
she thought, her head throbbing in time with her pulse, and her face flooding with heat.
Or give it away.
She scrubbed at her lips with a napkin, as the memory of Parkening's mouth on hers made her feel nauseous. She shook with the desire to strike him all over again.
Oh, that
beast,
I would like to break his hands so he can never touch me again! I want to black both his eyes! I want—oh, I want
—
if only I could clip his manhood for him!