Soul of Fire (45 page)

Sofie was surrounded by tigers. She’d heard the tigers
following her for the last hundred steps, at least. She’d stooped briefly to find a rock and held it in her hand. She knew it was insufficient protection. In her mind, she rehearsed the spells she’d learned at Lady Lodkin’s, including the Spell for Repelling Daring Interlopers and Putting Off Would-Be Assaulters. It was said of that spell, faithfully told to all the young girls in London, that once a woman armed with no more than a conventional amount of power had kept the Napoleonic troops at bay and kept herself unmolested until rescued.

When Sofie had heard that story, she had snorted derisively. But now she must, desperately, hope it was not a lie, after all. Because as the little road she’d been following crested a small rise, she found it barred by six—six!—well-grown, well-fed tigers.

Sofie looked up at the sky, still distressingly empty of wings, and thought to herself that this was the end. She turned around and started walking the other way. She could go back to the house where they’d lodged. Perhaps Lalita and the others intended to do to her the same thing the tigers intended, but it was highly unlikely that Lalita—even if she and the men were noblemen of some sort—intended on rending her limb from limb.

But padding along the plowed fields waiting only the end of the drought came more sleek, powerful tigers, the twins of those who barred her path the other way.

She could throw her rock, but there were more than a dozen of them now, and she had only one rock. The ground underneath was remarkably nonrocky. She supposed she could throw handfuls of dirt at them, which was as likely to do any good as throwing rocks, because Sofie had never had any kind of aim. Yet, despite her lack of aim, she wished she could have a powerstick, or even a considerable amount of power to throw at them. She didn’t. Oh, she had magic power. She was, after all, as the ruby attested to, descended in a direct line from Charlemagne. But her power was not extraordinary and, of course, she hadn’t learned any extraordinary spells with it.

She’d have to use the only self-defense spell they’d taught her. She muttered under her breath, then held up her hand, concentrating the power and then flinging it. A satisfying blast of light erupted—golden light, shimmering in a done all around her. It should hold intruders at bay.

But in the front row, one of the tigers twisted and writhed and stood on two legs, showing himself to be a young man. A familiar young man. The same young man whose torture had brought about her break with St. Maur.

He bowed to her, a smile on his handsome face. There were newly healed scars on his body, Sofie realized, and she thought of the legends about how fast a were healed.

“Miss Warington,” he said, smiling at her, showing teeth that were just a little too white, a little too long, a little too sharp. He stepped forward into the dome of golden light, making only the smallest of dismissive gestures. The light vanished, leaving Sofie unprotected.

“There are two choices here, Miss Warington,” the tiger-prince said, with his irritating, superior smile. “You can come with us quietly, in which case we will take you on that flying rug.” He pointed earnestly to a rug set by the side of the road. “Or alternately, we can drag you. In which case you’ll still go on the flying rug, but probably unconscious.”

It was at this point that Sofie threw the rock. She threw it without thinking, threw it with the certainty that it would be futile. But the prince was very close, and the rock flew true, hitting the side of his well-shaped head and causing a shower of blood to erupt. The tigers leapt.

And at that same moment, a claw descended and grabbed Sofie, lifting her up in the air. Half unbelieving, feeling as though she were dreaming or crazy, she looked up and saw St. Maur’s wings spread above her, the fire-flicker wings. And she wanted to cry. But instead she screamed, “Burn, them, burn them,” her voice bitter and commanding.

St. Maur made a sound that, for some reason, seemed to her very much like draconic laughter. And then he spun and rolled, with her still firmly held in his claw. And while she let a little scream be torn from her lips, he flamed—a great torrent of fire sweeping the road.

He didn’t get all of the tigers. Most of them had already fled. But the prince, caught mid-change, erupted like a great human torch.

And then they were flying away. What seemed like bare moments later, St. Maur put her down by a flowing river, and shifted. “You must stop,” he said, still coughing as he recovered from his shift, “letting yourself be surrounded by tigers. This could get old.”

She gave him a jaundiced look, from the top of his handsome head and down his bareody. How little modesty she had these days! Seeing St. Maur naked had become so normal that she didn’t even blush. Instead, she looked for cuts, for scars, for some mark of what he’d been doing since he left her. He didn’t even look tired. “Did you sleep?” she asked, sharply.

He gave a chuckle. “Yes, Nanny Warington, I slept,” he said, as he dove under a tree and made a pass that revealed his luggage. “And I ate. Was it worry about my healthy regimen that caused you to drug your companions and leave?”

“No,” Sofie said. “I left because I didn’t feel safe. They call Lalita Princess, you know, and I don’t believe they are joking, so I started thinking that perhaps she had been placed with me so she could gain my confidence and get the ruby. And I thought I didn’t have any guarantee that they, too, didn’t mean to sacrifice me to heal the ruby and get the power it brings. So I drugged them and left.”

“Because walking alone down the roads of India seemed safer?”

“I didn’t think I would be walking alone,” she confessed. “You see . . . I’m a conceited person. I thought you’d be watching over me.”

He wasn’t dressing, as she’d half expected. Instead, he’d got a cigarette out of his luggage, lit it and was smoking. She noted his hand trembled slightly, even as he made neat smoke rings in the still, warm air. “Some strange idea of guardian angels you have, Miss Warington. Your parson should have told you that while angels have wings, they rarely have scales.”

But his trembling hands gave away how shaken he was. Despite his detached, ironical words, he was in fact moved, and had been scared. And he had come for her. “But you came and rescued me anyway,” she said, perhaps a little smugly.

He looked at her. He didn’t exactly smile, but the corners of his eyes crinkled, just a little, and he took a puff on his cigarette. “I came for you. And I’d have done it sooner, if my body hadn’t wholly collapsed under the exertions of the last two days.” He appraised her coolly. “How much do you know of what I’ve been doing?”

“I heard you talking to Lalita,” he said.

“I thought you might have, you sly baggage,” he said. And the way he pronounced
baggage
was quite the highest compliment she’d ever been paid. Sofie smiled at him, ignoring the supposed insult of the word.

“And what did you think? Of what you heard?” He looked suddenly anxious. “Were you very heartbroken over Blacklock?”

She shook her head. “No. It . . . I’ve been thinking I was a great fool. You have to understand, all of them said they loved me. All of them said . . .” She shook her head again. “He just seemed the most credible of them, the most sincere. And I was a fool. I should have realized no man would marry me like that, out of hand, with no dowry, no connections, nothing to my name.”

“Many men would,” St. Maur said, firmly. And then, in a lower voice, as though addressing his remark to some distant divinity who wouldn’t listen anyway, “And many more long to.” He took a puff of his cigarette. “But William Blacklock is not one of them. Or else, he would marry you because he thinks it’s his duty, and I don’t think you—”

“No, I . . . Would you think me very foolish if I told you only the deepest of love could ever entice me into the married state?” Sofie asked. “I’ve never told anyone but . . . I’ve long been so resolved.”

“Who am I to judge? I don’t expect I will ever be married. People like me shouldn’t be, you know. Not fair to some poor woman who’d find herself incinerated on our wedding bed.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’d do that,” she said. She remembered the dragon leaning over her—the great dragon head, the slightly spicy smell that was noticeable about St. Maur even in human form, and far more noticeable in dragon form. Like the smell some snakes give off, she thought. She thought of the look in the dragon’s eye—the gentle, almost protective look. The same look she saw, now and then, in St. Maur’s eye.

“Perhaps not,” St. Maur said. “But then, neither should people like me have children and pass on the curse. Even if . . . even if it doesn’t follow to my children, it could be worse. It could appear later on, on some quite unsuspecting descendant. As it did with me.”

Sofie felt a sudden impulse to ask him how he thought his ancestors had coped with it. Doubtless, not all weres were killed. Most weren’t even discovered. And doubtless, they reproduced, else how would new weres keep being born? But she suspected it was a losing battle. St. Maur had made up his mind. He would have no children of his blood. A form of suicide, she thought. And perhaps a reflection of how much rage he’d turned on himself.

“I’m surprised you let me burn the prince, you know?” St. Maur said, in a teasing tone. “I thought he was a great favorite of yours.”

“Oh, don’t be horrible,” she said. “It was only seeing him tortured . . .” She thought of the fast-healing scars. “Will he come back again? Will he come back again, now, as he did from the torture?”

St. Maur shook his head. “No. That’s one of the ways to kill us. The best, of course, is to remove our heads. But the favored means of eliminating weres—back before blades were trustworthy enough to do the deed in a timely manner, and back before powersticks were developed to sap our strength long enough to allow the execution to take place—was to tie us as strongly as possible, in such a way that we would remain bound in both forms, and then pile a great deal of wood all around us, and set fire to it. If we are burned past a certain point, we cannot heal.”

Sofie shivered. “You speak of it so calmly.”

“It happened to people long ago, in Europe. Mostly in the time before Charlemagne. You can see it, still, you know, in history books—charming woodcuts of weres being burned.”

When he got like this, it was as though he’d retreated behind a barrier of ice. Or perhaps it was an odd sort of wishful thinking, a reflection of that terrible rage at himself that she’d glimpsed. As though he hated himself for being a were.

“What are we doing now?” she asked. “You are not dressing?”

“As you see,” he said. “I am not dressing. My original idea was to change and take you back to Lalita and her friends, though they might be a little upset with you—”

“No. I can’t trust them. They are . . . royalty. I’m not sure how, but they are royalty.”

“Were royalty,” St. Maur said. “Monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” she asked, shocked, her eyebrows rising. And in the next moment, she grinned. “How appropriate.”

“Yes, I thought so, too. And, Miss Warington, I don’t think they have any intention of sacrificing you.”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t feel safe with them. I decided, before I ran away, that you were the only person I feel truly safe with.”

She saw the softening in his eye, before surprise replaced it. “You did? Why?”

“Because you had the opportunity to do what you would with me, when we were on the road alone, but you did not.”

“I didn’t know you had the ruby with you.”

“I didn’t have the ruby with me. Hanuman did. But you didn’t even look for the ruby. That was not your priority.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her, contemplatively. “Let’s grant, then,” he said, “that I am your great white knight,
sans peur et sans reproche.
Let us grant that my intentions are pure and all my thoughts are bent on good deeds. What do you think I can do for you?”

“For me?” she said, puzzled. “Nothing. I decided that the best thing we could do with the ruby . . .” She thought about it. “Well, you said that the ruby is not really mine. You said it belongs in the most ancient temple in mankind.”

“That is one way to look at it,” St. Maur said. “Though forgive me if I say I expected some possessiveness on your part toward a jewel that’s been in your family for so long.”

“No,” she said. “The only thing the ruby was good for was my dowry. And I don’t think I’ll marry.”

“I don’t think you’ll be able to avoid marrying.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her cheeks heating.

“Helen of Troy could not live a quiet life,” he said, throwing his cigarette butt down and stepping on it. “And I don’t think you can be an old maid.”

“What great foolishness,” she said, derisively. “Mind you, they didn’t teach us the true classics in school. Lalita found some other copies of our books, in the library, and she said that the ones they taught us from had all the naughty parts pulled out. But all the same, I expect that Helen of Troy was really not so very pretty. She was just no better than she should be.”

He laughed. “Very refreshing, Miss Warington. Then I will grant you that you don’t intend to marry, and that you want to give me the ruby. What should we do with it?”

“Well, fly away from all these tigers and . . . things.”

“Yes. And?”