Soul of Fire (25 page)

“Homing in on me would have been a difficult enough feat. Homing in on you . . . Well, considering you’re nothing but an average magic user . . . it shouldn’t be possible at all.”

“And I haven’t been using magic,” she said, in some bewilderment, following his thought. “None at all. They would have had to track me based on my appearance and my description.”

“I suppose they could have.” He put his patch on and adjusted it, covering his empty left orbit. “But if so, why? Why are you so important to them? Why would they care?” He bit his lower lip, pensively, as though trying to think his way out of a difficult maze. “Miss Warington, I don’t think we can continue with this journey without knowing why the tigers are following you. Nor what they mean to do.” He shook his head, not so much at her as at some imaginary opposition. “You see, you cannot mean to rejoin your captain only to be killed or kidnapped under his nose. And from what I understand, Jaipur—the area around Meerut—is the main hold of the were-tigers and were-elephants. If it is indeed were-tigers pursuing you—”

“I’m sure it is,” Sofie said. “I mean, you saw how they were creeping up on me and enjoying my fear. Those are the actions of a human, not an animal. Only humans, being civilized, can take cruelty to such a refinement. I do have a house cat,” she thought, thinking back. “Or we did at the school. And Mrs. Thisbes was quite cruel to the poor mice she caught. But that is cat cruelty. What the tigers were doing, enjoying my fear as they approached, was human cruelty. Oh, I’m explaining it very badly!”

He shook his head, his brow knit. “Not so badly at all. I can follow your meaning quite well. You mean that to know you were suffering anxiety at their approach, it required that the tigers creeping their way toward you be aware of human modes of thinking and human emotions. Something only a were could achieve.” On the last word, something like a sad, fugitive smile pulled at his lips, but it was only a shadow, flashing and then gone.

“Yes,” she said, looking away, embarrassed. St. Maur was not a tiger. And yet she felt as though she were discussing his own kind with him. Perhaps, she thought, it was because he had more in common with other weres, no matter how different from his other form, than he did with other humans? And, in the wake of that, she upbraided her errant mind.
No, no. Horrible. Despicable. How can I say that of the man who has twice saved my life? How like a knight of old he was rushing to my rescue, even though in his other form.

He looked away from her, in turn, and spoke to the roofline of the opposing houses. “You see,” he said, “if they are were-tigers, you’re likely to be surrounded by them in the Jaipur area. It is said a lot of the sepoys—being of the warrior caste—are, in fact, weres. In the rebellion of 1857, they seemed to be mostly were-elephants, but I suppose were-tigers aren’t out of the question and . . . I wish you’d understand, no normal man could have rescued you as I did. You were surrounded by tigers. A man who did not have a were shape—or even a man who didn’t have a flying were shape—could have done no more than come in and die at your side. Something I’m quite sure you don’t wish on your captain.”

“No,” Sofie said. Then again, more firmly, “No.” Though Blacklock, in her mind, had become no more than a vague memory, the image of his smiling face, the boyish tumble of hair that forever obscured his forehead, only reminded her that she didn’t want to bring death on him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to bring anything on him. She wasn’t sure she even knew what he thought about or wanted. And she was no longer so sure that his comment about marrying her if he could have meant any more than social gallantry pronounced at a party.

“We must find out what the tigers want,” St. Maur said, his face set rigidly, like a bitter sculpture. “We must find out what they wish from you.” He shook his head, slowly. “And I see only one way to do it.”

“What?” Sofie asked.

“We must capture one of them. Preferably a young one of their number. And we must get him to talk to us.”

“But,” she protested, doubt assailing her, “it’s not very likely that he would talk, is it? Even a young and powerless one? I hear they have . . . I mean, all these people have a fanatical devotion to their native leaders. How much more so it must be for weres.”

“I wouldn’t know,” St. Maur said, stiffly, “never having met, face-to-face, another of my kind.” He shrugged. “As for getting one of them to talk, it can’t be that difficult. I have . . . some experience in the matter.”

The flash of whatever it was—memory? thought? bitterness?—in his eyes made him appear more naked than even the transformation, and Sofie looked away from him hastily.

“Oh, never mind,” St. Maur said. “I’ll do what needs to be done. The trouble of this is that I don’t dare leave you alone, or not for long. And that even though I have enough magic—as do you—to cast a hiding and locking spell over our luggage, I cannot do it for a living being such as yourself.” For a few moments he was quiet, deep in thought, then he said, “I know. I will get your luggage, and we will walk a while before I change. Hopefully whoever is hastening in our direction, having seen me change, will then be thoroughly lost. I will change shapes when I’m closer to the outskirts of town, so we can fly out relatively unnoticed. Then I’ll find one of the tigers and bring him back.”

He sighed deeply. “The downside of this is that you will have to be by—close by—while I interrogate the creature. But let’s hope he doesn’t make it too difficult, and therefore doesn’t make the spectacle too shocking for you. And at least you’ll be safe, should his compatriots track us down.”

“Yes,” she said distantly, and stayed in place while he went to get their luggage. After he came back out, and while they were walking down the darkened street, she said, “But how are you to find one of the tigers after you take me out of town? You are not, yourself, a witch-sniffer.”

He shook his head. “No. That gift is even more rare among Europeans than the ability to shift. From what I understood of my comparative magic theory, it’s damned rare even among other populations. Our teacher always said that most witch-sniffers were shams and that their depredations, in fact, caused untold harm in Africa and India and other such regions. You know, someone would be killed by magic and the supposed witch-sniffer would put on a great show of using his gift and finding out who did it, when in fact they were just accusing their personal enemies, knowing they would be implicitly believed. A lot of people, I understand, are put to death for murder on no better testimony than a witch-sniffer’s erratic word.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how true this is. All such reports, you understand, will be biased one way or another, but I have heard that our army’s own witch-sniffers ran tests of the witch-sniffers in west Africa and found not one of them even mildly capable.”

Sofie nodded. “But then—”

“Miss Warington, they’re tracking us. Mostly in tiger form, I think—at least in this region—because it saves them time, by keeping people from interfering with their quest. No one questions a were. No one pauses to ask a tiger where he’s going. They’re tracking us, relentlessly, ruthlessly. I don’t understand by what means, but they won’t give up just because I confuse them at little. At least, that’s the best I can hope for—confusing them. They will be somewhere near where I take you. Tracking you.”

Sofie shivered. She couldn’t help it.

“Yes, see?” St. Maur said, as though answering a question she had not asked. “That is what I mean. We cannot go on like this. Nor can I leave you in some garrison post with a new husband who doesn’t know how to counter this menace. I would feel responsible.”

“I don’t know why you should,” she said. “You owe me nothing.”

He flashed her a smile. “I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard it said that if a Chinese man saves your life, he will consider himself henceforth responsible for you.”

“That seems like a great deal of nonsense,” Sofie said, hearing her own voice echo back far more assured and full of certainty than she felt.

“Does it?” he asked. His lips twitched into a lopsided smile. “Perhaps it is. And perhaps not. After all . . .”

“After all?”

“After all, if I hadn’t saved you from your fall from the balcony, you would now be beyond all cares.”

“I would be dead.”

“Yes. At least it would have been a quick and painless death, though. I’m not sure what the tigers intend would fit the same description.”

She wanted to speak, but the way he spoke of a quick and painless death put a chill in her chest, and made her mouth unable to form words.

“No, Miss Warington,” St. Maur said, as though she had spoken, “I do have an obligation to you. An obligation to see you safe where you wish to be, and to set you up, safe, in a position such that will allow your life to go on with at least no more pain than you would have suffered from that fall. And that means . . .” His voice lowered until it was no more than a desolate whisper. “I will have to do what I would very much prefer not to do.”

SAHIB AND SEPOY; SUPERIORS AND SUBORDINATES; LEGENDS AND RUMORS

“It . . . The crystal showed me . . .” William could not
command his words. He ran his hand backwards through his hair, but his unruly lock only fell down over his forehead again. “I can’t speak of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Gyan Bhishma said, standing in the almost military pose he seemed to think meant at-ease, and looking across at William, who was conscious of a blush burning in his cheeks as he put the stone away. “I should not have asked; I should not have come in. Except that I heard you . . . I thought you were . . .”

William shook his head. “You did right. I might have needed you.” In fact, he was fairly sure, from all his knowledge of both protocol and military discipline, that Bhishma had not done right at all. Almost any other officer would be punishing him for his trespass, coming into a European’s room without warning. But then, William thought, in an emergency sepoys had to be able to think for themselves. The loyal ones had to have as much or more freedom of action as the rebellious ones. And that wouldn’t happen if one held to strict military protocol.

He looked at the man’s face—the gravely disposed features, the concerned brown eyes—and thought he’d meant well. And though a great part of colonial administration was convincing the natives that the colonials were demi-gods, set apart, protected by their own strangeness and strange ways, perhaps it wasn’t all for the best. Oh, sure, in peacetime it made an officer who wasn’t overly capable—and who, in England, would never have gone very far in the army—capable of instilling holy terror in the hearts of several rational, well-trained natives. But in wartime . . . He thought back on his grandfather’s letters. In the 1857 rebellion, it might well have been responsible for most of the massacres. The Indians had felt forced to execute captive Englishmen—even helpless ones. Even women and children. Because had they left them alive, it would be viewed by the other Indians as proof of the Englishmen’s invulnerability and it would eventually have killed the rebellion and brought the English to power without the slightest effort.

“Sahib?” Bhishma asked, his voice sounding hesitant.

“No, no, you did right,” William said, answering more his internal thoughts, than the man looking at him with the concerned expression of one consulting an oracle. “It is, of course, a breach of military discipline, and all that. But the ultimate need is that you protect Her Majesty’s interests in this region, and therefore protect the officers placed here. And I think you were trying to do that. And though discipline and proper procedure is essential, I’ve always thought . . .” He floundered.