"No," she said after a thoughtful silence. "All right. A pyre of green wood with oiled rags to make for more smoke. You will get away in the smoke. What of me?"
"Come with me," he said as if the answer were obvious. "We will take a horse— just one— and go toward Chaul."
"There will be much confusion, and the Rajput may not let me… He may not permit me to be near your pyre," she said.
"You have said you can leap through flames, that you have done it for Timur-i," he reminded her. "Then show your skill. Jump through the smoke, as if to die on the fire, but vault over and beyond, let the pyre lengthen your spring."
"Leap onto the fire? then off, through the smoke?" she asked, musing on the possibilities. At last she looked up at him. "Yes, I suppose I could—"
"Then you will seem to immolate yourself in grief," he said, smiling his encouragement. "They will not wonder what has become of you, for they will assume they know."
"It could work," she agreed after another short silence. "It is very dangerous, but it could work."
"Then make your plans, Tulsi," he said, and removed the last bandage from his foot. "We will have to act in four days, whether or not we are ready."
She nodded and studied him for a short while. "I will take the bowl now," she told him a bit later, and, taking it out of the wagon to dump it, realized she was now committed to their plan.
For the next three days, Sanat Ji Mani was thought to be getting worse. He did not leave the wagon when anyone could see him, his swift, furtive excursions limited to the darkest part of the night when he feed on the blood of animals, then returned to the wagon as silently as he had left. The black skin on his face peeled off and left pale, tender skin exposed, which made him look far more fragile than he was. When he was visited by the Rajput— very briefly during the af
ternoon water-stop near a small village which had sent food out in welcome— he made it seem that he had grown weak, struggling to speak, but insisting he was improving.
"It is a bad thing," said Hasin Dahele to Tulsi, speaking carefully so that she could comprehend him.
"It is," she agreed.
"He is very sick." The Rajput shook his head. "This is a bad thing, that he is so sick," as if repetition made his point more emphatically, afraid to use more difficult words with Tulsi, certain she would not understand.
"He is," said Tulsi. "Sick."
"The foot is worse." The Rajput stared at the wagon as if to tear off the cover.
"His foot is sick," said Tulsi. "Very bad."
"You must watch him, and drive very carefully," said Hasin Dahele, pretending to hold the reins. "Make it easy for him."
"The new mule is good," said Tulsi, as if she did not entirely grasp his meaning.
"Not the mule: Sanat Ji Mani. Use him well," said Hasin Dahele. "Tell me how he is every morning and every night. I must know how Sanat Ji Mani is."
"I will tell," said Tulsi, her palms pressed together and her head bowed.
"Before he dies, he must make me his heir, the Lord of the World," Hasin Dahele muttered, convinced Tulsi did not know enough of his tongue to understand what he said. "Before he dies, I must be recognized."
"He will live," said Tulsi, slowly and stubbornly. "He must."
The Rajput patted her arm. "Of course," he said, raising his voice. "Take care of him. See that he does not die too soon."
"I will," said Tulsi, and watched the Rajput stroll away, his head pensively lowered.
"He is convinced you are dying," Tulsi told Sanat Ji Mani a bit later that day; the army was coming to the end of its day's march and the pace was slowing. From her place on the box, Tulsi asked, "Will it be tomorrow?"
"Yes. Mid-afternoon, I should think. Tell the Rajput not to stop until sunset, that I would not expect him to interrupt his campaign for me." He kept his voice low and sing-song, so that their escort would assume he had become delirious.
"I will," she said. "Sanat Ji Mani," she went on more tentatively, "there is one other thing. I do not know how to tell you, so I will say it directly: I have decided to stay as I am."
It took Sanat Ji Mani a while to respond. "If that is what you want, then it is my desire as well."
"You are not disappointed?" She sounded apprehensive.
"Yes, I am," he said. "But I would be far more disappointed if you let me love you a sixth time and came to my life unwillingly." He paused. "Will you still travel with me, away from here?"
"Of course," she replied, a thought too quickly.
Sanat Ji Mani lay still for a while, then said, "There will be a great deal of confusion tomorrow. Have you thought what we will do if we get separated at the pyre?"
She swallowed hard before answering. "You said we should take one horse," she pointed out. "That way we will not be separated."
"We should, but if it is not possible, then we need to agree where we will meet." Sanat Ji Mani kept his voice low and his tone kindly. "We may have to find each other later."
"Do you expect we will?" she asked crisply.
"I do not know what to expect, which is why we should be prepared for things to work out some way other than our plans," he said. "If we are separated, I will go to Chaul, to the warehouses on the harbor belonging to the foreigner Ragoczy. You will know them by the sign of the eclipse on the doors— a black disk with raised, open wings above it— and you will ask for me there. If I am not there, wait until the storms are finished, and then take one of Ragoczy's ships and go west, to the Mameluke Empire and seek out Rogerian in the city of Alexandria—"
Tulsi laughed. "Why would any of these people pay any heed to me? Would you, if I came to you saying that Sanat Ji Mani has said that I am to be given free passage to the Mameluke Empire? They would stone me from the door, and be right to do it." She turned
around and looked briefly at Sanat Ji Mani. "This much I will do: I will go to Chaul. If I do not find you there after the storms have gone, I will make my way to Kiev, to find my father's family. Do not fret. I should be able to do that. If I reach the Arabian Sea, I should be able to reach the Black Sea. It is only a matter of finding a caravan that has entertainers; or a troupe in need of a tumbler." She said this as if it were a simple thing.
Sanat Ji Mani heard this out with dismay. "You have never met your father's family."
"All the more reason to find them," she said.
"You will have to pass through Timur-i's Empire," Sanat Ji Mani reminded her. "Unless you go east, into China and come through the Russian Principalities and Dukedoms."
"What does that matter if I cross Timur-i's land? Timur-i is still in Samarkand, they say, when they do not claim he is a beggar on the roads, or here. What would they care about a single female tumbler?" She kept the mules moving with a slap of the reins. "The team is tired, and so am I. I am glad this is going to end."
"Are you," he asked, the anticipation of loss sweeping over him.
She heard the sadness in his voice and added, "I do not mean you, Sanat Ji Mani. You have taken me away from a hard life—"
"And given you a harder one," he finished for her.
"No," she said. "I would never have known what it is to be able to make my own way in the world. I would have gone on believing that I could not manage without a troupe around me and a master to decide for me. I would have assumed that I could not fend for myself, or help another on my own." She saw that the wagons ahead of them were pulling off the road at the base of a bluff. "I think we are stopping for the night." She was busy with the wagon for a short time, finding a place for it, with room enough for a grazing-line for the mules. "You have given me… myself," she said, and prepared to begin their evening routine.
Sanat Ji Mani was silent while she got down from the driving-box, then he said, very quietly, "Thank you, Tulsi Kil."
"Tomorrow shortly after mid-day, I will send word to Hasin Dahele that he must attend you at once." She seemed not to have heard him
thank her. "Then you may deal with him as you wish. I will ask that your funeral pyre be made tomorrow night, before the heat turns you rotten."
"A wise precaution, since I will not putrefy." He could feel her draw away from him, and it saddened him as nothing else she had done had.
"I think so," she told him before she took out the brushes to groom the mules.
The next day, she followed her plan to the last detail; she ordered one of their escort to fetch the Rajput, saying it was urgent. She had reddened her eyes by rubbing them and maintained a stoic calm that served to convince Garanai Kheb that something was very wrong; he rode off at a gallop and returned a bit later with Hasin Dahele, who brought his horse up beside the wagon.
"Is something wrong? Has he—?" He could not bring himself to ask the question.
"He is worse," said Tulsi, her voice so flat that the Rajput was afraid he had come too late.
"Can he speak?" He mimed a moving mouth with his hand.
"He talks," she said, and pursed her lips. "Very sick."
The Rajput made up his mind. "Take your wagon to the side of the road," he ordered, pointing, and added to the Kheb cousins, "Get this thing out of the way of the others. In shade." He pointed to a cluster of trees nearby where the undergrowth was thinner than in other places near the dusty, rutted road.
The escorts obeyed, taking the heads of the mules and tugging them out of the column of wagons and guiding them toward the trees; the wagon bounced and swayed, and with each movement, the cousins winced. As they drew up in the shade of the tree, Hasin Dahele dismounted and climbed into the rear of the wagon.
Sanat Ji Mani had made an effort to create a scene that would be fixed in the Rajput's memory; he had used charcoal mixed with berry-juice to darken the hollows of his eyes and to lend a subtle emphasis to the lines in his face. He had put a thin film of oil on his forehead and rolled a saddle-pad around his right leg to make it appear swollen under the blanket, and he had taken an old fowl-leg and put it under his cot to provide the unmistakable odor of decaying meat. His breath
wheezed in his chest and he seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes.
Hasin Dahele crouched at the side of his cot. "This is a terrible thing, Great Lord," he exclaimed as he stared down at Sanat Ji Mani's supine figure.
"It is what comes to all men," said Sanat Ji Mani in a thread of tone.
The sounds of the army moving was all around them, the shouts of men and the neighing of horses, the blare of elephants, the braying of donkeys and mules, but all of them were as nothing to the two men in the wagon.
"But you—" Hasin Dahele shook his head. "The Gods sent you to me. How can they take you away again, before I have truly begun my conquests?"
"They are gods," said Sanat Ji Mani. He plucked at the blanket covering him with quick, febrile movements. "Do as my companion tells you when I am dead."
"Very well," said Hasin Dahele impatiently.
"Obey her," he insisted, grabbing for the grimy silk of Hasin Dahele's pyjama-tunic. "Swear by your gods!"
"If you will make me your heir, I will do all that she asks. Otherwise I will leave you beside the road for vultures." He glared down at Sanat Ji Mani. "Well?"
Sanat Ji Mani sighed. "If anyone is the heir of Timur-i, you are," he whispered. "You have made yourself worthy of that legacy."
The irony of Sanat Ji Mani's words was lost on the Rajput, who threw back his head and exclaimed. "I am!
I am the heir of Timur-i!"
"Swear," Sanat Ji Mani demanded on what appeared to be the last of his strength.
"I swear. She will direct the disposal of your body." His concession was graceless, hastily given as if to show his lack of concern now that he had what he wanted.
"Then your gods reward you," murmured Sanat Ji Mani.
From her place on the driving box, Tulsi listened, astonishment tinged with repugnance at this display. She looked at the two escorts, who remained immobile, their faces set and their expressions stern. "Not good," she said in the language of Beragar.
The Rajput was getting out the back of the wagon, not caring about how he did it. As he reached the ground, he called to the escorts, "Get back in the line, at the rear. Stay with this wagon until he dies, then come and tell me." He remounted his dark-bay. "Oh, and do with the body whatever she wants, so long as it does not lose too much time. We have much to do!" His features set in a hard grin, he set his horse for the front of the lines, leaving Tulsi's wagon beside the road, under the trees.
* * *
Text of a letter from Zal Iniattir in Asirgarh to Rustam Iniattir in Fustat, carried aboard the Iniattir ship,
Evening Star.
* * *
To the most fortunate, most esteemed, most capable merchant, Rustam Iniattir, the respectful greetings of Zal Iniattir from our House's center in Asirgarh, with apologies for the delay in sending you word of all that has transpired of late.
