Outcast_Keepers of the Stone_Book One

by Andrew Anzur Clement

  Uncannily, when she’d entered her cabin, Antonia was waiting for her on the exterior side of the porthole. Malka had no idea how the cat had found its way back to the ship from the customs area, but she opened the porthole and allowed it in just the same.

  That had been over six hours ago. Now, Malka heard the small clock on the desk chime softly twelve times.

  That should be late enough, she decided.

  The Thag got up from the bed. Taking the chair, which sat in front of the writing desk, she moved to the door. The girl opened it a crack. As Malka had surmised, nobody was around this late at night.

  Taking the chair with her, she moved a couple of doors down the hall to the sconce where she had hidden the diamond earlier that day. Positioning the chair under it, she climbed on top of its seat.

  Malka felt a pang of apprehension. Would the powerful object still be where she had left it? She looked over the top of the sconce and was relieved to see that it was. Quickly she reached into the fixture and extracted the gem. Unseen, she returned with the chair to her cabin, where she wrapped the object again in blue cloth and returned it to the bottom of her satchel.

  As she prepared for bed, Malka reflected that she had been lucky. Her plan had worked. For now, that was enough. The blue-eyed thief settled in for the long journey across the Pacific.

  Eight

  The tastefully decorated Christmas tree stood in a corner of the living room in the Tarkowskis’ Madras home. As he looked at it, Stas realized that he had no idea where his father had gotten one in the tropical climate of India, but decided not to question it further. He and Nell were seated on opposite sides of a long couch with an intricately carved, lacquered wooden frame and textured forest-green fabric. They were the only two in the room, their fathers having retired to the patio for port and cigars. It was already dark out. The room was dimly lit, mostly by the host of candles on the tree and coffee table.

  Yesterday afternoon, he and Nell had met each other for the first time since shortly after the events at the Invisible Circus; they had both been busy with school. Upon seeing each other, they had run toward each other and hugged excitedly. The rest of the preceding day and a half had been passed in a pleasant enough manner: a sumptuous twelve-dish Christmas dinner and a midnight vigil Mass, with the following day spent opening presents and enjoying each other’s company.

  Now, with the festivities finally winding down and with their fathers out of the room, the two had the opportunity to discuss the one thing that had been on both of their minds since they had seen each other the day before.

  “Has your father told you?” Stas began by asking.

  Directing her eyes to the floor, Nell nodded a couple of times. The simplicity of her response showed that she knew exactly what Stas was talking about, without his having to say it.

  She looked up at him, then asked, “Do you want to go, Stas?”

  “No. Do you?”

  Nell sighed. “Not really.” The room fell into silence. Stas decided to change the subject.

  “How’s school? You haven’t said much about it, beyond how you’re catching up in your studies.”

  “It’s all right, I guess…,” she paused, evidently deciding whether or not to continue. From the manner in which she had spoken her last sentence, it was clear that there was a ‘but’ connected to it.

  “Okay…,” Stas prompted her.

  Nell sighed again. Then, she began talking.

  “Stas, in Port Said, you know that I took my lessons from Miss Oliver.”

  “Of course,” Stas confirmed. It was self-evident to him that she had not attended the same school he had in Egypt, instead being taught by the governess who had not come with her to Madras.

  “At first, I thought it was because it was my first time attending a school. But then I realized it had less to do with the teachers or my scholastics and more to do with the other people there. Just because I didn’t go to a school before doesn’t mean I haven’t been around people…,” Nell trailed off. It had sounded as if she were thinking out loud, organizing thoughts that she was still puzzling in her mind.

  “What’s wrong?” Stas asked, protective of her as usual.

  “It’s nothing. I’m older now. I can take care of myself.”

  “Hmm,” Stas joked. “I happen to know of some events only a few months ago that could say otherwise.” Nell smiled at the subject of the banter that had become customary between them. Then she turned serious again, looking down at her shoes.

  “It’s just...some of the other girls. They’re so….”

  “Unaccepting?” Stas finished for her.

  “Yes, exactly. When I asked my father, he said that sometimes girls my age can be mean that way. But you’ve noticed the same thing at St. Thomas’s, haven’t you?”

  “What have they been doing to you?”

  “They...look down on me. Like I’m not one of them.” Nell started thinking out loud again. “I look the same as them. I try to be nice, but to them it’s like I’m some Egyptian girl from an obscure corner of the Empire.” She paused, thinking. “You’d think the stories of our adventures would make the whole school want to be friends with me….”

  “But all they do is make you enemies before you’ve even walked in the door.” He nodded. “It’s the same with me. Sometimes I think even my friends treat me as if I’m just some kind of charity case. But you, Nell? I always thought they treated me like that because I wasn’t British. But you? You’re English! Like them!”

  Nell looked up at him. Her eyes made direct contact with his.

  “Am I, Stas?” Since their kidnapping in Africa, Nell had mastered the correct pronunciation of his name. “When I think of the other girls at school, what I see doesn’t remind me of myself at all. I’m not that...you know….”

  “Pretentious and closed-minded?” he suggested.

  She nodded. “They treat me...like I’m some sort of inferior because of our travels. Everywhere I go, I hear talk about how I spend time with a bunch of thieves and dark-skins.” Her voice grew increasingly desperate. “I don’t like it when they talk that way about Malka, or Kali or Mea. Those people are our friends! Why should I be treated badly because I know them?”

  “Neither do I, and they shouldn’t,” Stas answered.

  “What can we do about it, Stas?”

  Stas pursed his lips before replying, not sure how to explain this to his younger friend. He knew that she often looked to him as a source of strength, for answers. Yet, now, he found he had none to give her.

  “I’m not sure there is anything, Nell,” he replied finally.

  She sighed, sadly.

  At length, almost wistfully, Stas asked “You know, a couple of weeks from now it will have been two years since…,” he trailed off, thinking about their kidnapping in Egypt.

  She nodded.

  “Do you ever miss it?”

  Nell stared at him for some time. There was a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “Yes.” A sad smile briefly passed over her features, as if it were something she had just realized for the first time. “It’s odd. Stas, you’d think that after all those dangerous experiences we’ve had in Africa or India that I would have hated them. But, now, looking back, even through all the bad things that happened, it seems as though...”

  “Those were the best times of our lives.” Stas finished for her a fourth time.

  “Exactly.” Nell smiled at her friend. She said the word as though Stas’s comment had just confirmed something she’d thought no one else would understand.

  Stas reminisced back to his adventures with Nell. There had been a certain simplicity to those times. It had been as though it was just the two of them, even though they’d often had a few traveling companions. As an upstanding Pole, he’d had one clear purpose: to protect Nell and fight on the side of morality.

  A thought occurred to Stas, one he’d never had before:

  “It was almost as if…,” he said slowly, “as
if we had our own world. As if they were the only times...the only times….”

  This time, it was Nell who finished for him, “The only times we felt as if we truly belonged.”

  In that moment, Stas felt as if he were seated on the couch with the only other person on the planet who could truly understand him.

  There was another silence; Nell turned away from Stas’s gaze, staring into the light of the candles on the Christmas tree. Their light played across her face, making it appear almost ethereal.

  “Stas, how will things be when we leave here?” she asked eventually, still staring into space. The beginnings of anxiety crept into her voice.

  “I…,” Stas paused. It pained him to see Nell like this. He could not deny that he felt something for her that went far beyond simple friendship. It was something, he thought, that could only have come from facing life and death together – of having each other’s backs – time and time again. He wanted desperately to help Nell quell her fears – fears he shared – about how they would be received once sent away from India. Yet, as he watched her staring into the candlelight, it occurred to him that this was one thing from which he may be powerless to protect her.

  “I don’t know, Nell,” he finished with resignation.

  “Stas?” she said in a small voice. “I’m afraid.”

  He moved across the couch and hugged his friend. She returned the gesture in a display of sympathy and solidarity. Then, staring past her, Stas admitted something to her that he never had during any of their adventures.

  “So am I, Nell.” He whispered. “So am I.”

  Nine

  “Full name.”

  “Malka Pluckett.”

  “Nationality?”

  The Thag hesitated.

  “Crown Colony of India?” she replied, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Date of birth?”

  “August 15, 1871,” she lied. The Thags did not have much use for birth dates; she did not remember her real one from the short childhood before her arrival in their camp. Still, she had memorized what the man who had sold her maritime passage had written on her ticket.

  After another month on the Deliverance, she had finally disembarked at the passenger port of San Francisco. Like in Hong Kong, Antonia had inconspicuously disappeared shortly after the Thag had gone above deck, intending to depart the ship for the final time.

  “Do you, to your knowledge, suffer from any diseases or ailments?” the border official asked her. To Malka, this seemed a pointless question. After the emphasis she had seen placed on her good health since her departure for America, it was not as if she would have told him if she did.

  “No,” she replied.

  The guard handed her a piece of paper with her information on it and nodded to the armed man to the right of the kiosk behind which he was sitting. The rifle-toting officer raised a metal bar and beckoned her forward.

  “Welcome to the United States of America,” he said with a bored expression, as if having said that exact phrase a thousand times before.

  Malka walked through the checkpoint.

  She passed through the crowded wooden terminal of San Francisco’s passenger port, turning left, on to the broad street that ran along the bay. A row of wooden warehouses ran along the water. Their docks bustled with activity as workers loaded and unloaded the ships next to their quays. In the opposite direction, steep hills rose above her. Wooden stairs lined the dirt streets on both sides. Buildings made mostly of lumber lined the thoroughfares.

  Dressed in simple black pants and a white shirt, her sash tied around her waist, the feeling that she was again being observed returned to Malka’s gut. She heard a soft meow, turned, and spied Antonia emerging from the side of one of the warehouses by the water. The black feline’s fur was soaked; it looked as if it had disembarked the Deliverance by swimming to shore.

  The Thag continued onward. She now knew that Antonia was following her. Yet, the sinking feeling in her gut – one which Husain had taught her not to ignore – refused to go away.

  Her blue eyes saw a busy street leading inland from the water, where an ornate wooden terminal appeared to serve a large number of local vessels. She turned right onto that street, threading her way through the thick crowd. The girl turned her thoughts to planning what was to come next. She could not effectively protect her charge here. There were simply too many prying eyes and hands. She had to get away. Out into the countryside. Where exactly she would go after that, she was not yet sure. But, she knew that to do so she would need provisions and at least one horse.

  Fortunately, Malka seemed to be in the right place for gathering supplies. On either side of the street, shopkeepers touted a wide variety of wares.

  One of them appeared to be selling preserved foodstuffs; the girl headed toward it. Entering, she gathered up as many smoked foodstuffs and canned preserves as she could hold. She noticed a pile of large canvas satchels and grabbed hold of one as well, dumping her haul into it as she did so. The girl took the bag to the shopkeeper who sat behind the cash desk.

  An older man with graying hair, a close-cropped gray mustache and half-rimmed glasses, he rummaged through the bag before coming to a figure: “That’ll be 19 dollars and 24 cents.”

  Some of the words he had used were unfamiliar to Malka. She heard Antonia mew, as if annoyed, behind her. The Thag rummaged through her remaining pile of banknotes and coins, but couldn’t seem to locate the proper amounts. Finally she threw a bill, whose stated value was twenty – slightly higher than the first number he had quoted – and looked at him expectantly.

  The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed.

  “Well,” he drawled. “What do we have here? I’m afraid I can’t accept this.”

  “Why not?” Malka sounded befuddled.

  “Do you have dollars?” he responded to her question in kind.

  The darker skinned girl simply stared at him.

  “Go to a bank. Maybe they can help you change this.”

  Her brow furrowed in thought as if trying to understand what the shopkeeper meant by his suggestion.

  “You mean...a bank can give me these dollars?” Malka now noticed how different her accent sounded compared with the man’s.

  The shopkeeper snorted and smiled briefly, shaking his head as if in amazement.

  “Yes. I mean they can give you ‘these dollars.’”

  Without another word, Malka turned right toward the shop’s entrance and exited. Antonia followed her. Again steeling herself against the feeling that she was being observed covertly, the thief set out in search of a bank.

  ***

  Shrouded invisibly in her cloak, Bozhena waited outside the exit of San Francisco’s maritime travel terminal. While she couldn’t know the exact location of the girl she strongly suspected of having the Fragment, the Urumi knew that the ship she had been on had docked a few minutes ago. If all went according to plan, her quarry would soon emerge from the wide doors that she now watched.

  Bozhena’s mind wandered back to the events of the past few weeks. They had passed uneventfully for the Urumi. Mostly, at the orders of the Chosen, she had shadowed the three in Madras who had been involved in the events at the Invisible Circus. This had served only to cement her conviction that the Fragment did not lie with them. When not doing so, she had taken action to reverse the fortunes of Captain Pluckett. When the ship he had taken from Karachi finally docked in Southampton, he would find that his prospects would have indeed taken a turn for the better.

  In return, she would take his tan-skinned, blue-eyed daughter into the service of the Urumi, incidentally claiming the Fragment for the Order in the process. Briefly, her mind wandered back to her younger days spent at the family manor in Podole. She relished the simple certainty of those times, spent often in the company of her younger sister. But, her own father had taken all of that away from her in pursuit of his own ambition. She hated him and Captain Pluckett just as much.

  The Urumi’s keen blue eyes spotted her
quarry emerging from the terminal and turning to walk down the street. Obviously, it would not do for Bozhena to attack her on a busy street in broad daylight. She would have to wait until the girl found herself in a more secluded location. The warrioress turned and pursued. Using her lightning-fast abilities of movement, she threaded her way through the crowded thoroughfare without even clipping a single shoulder.

  Noticing that a miserable-looking wet cat now appeared to be following the Indian youth, Bozhena waited for the opportunity to strike.

  ***

  Malka lay crouched in the shadows of one of the buildings on the right side of the large avenue on which she had spent most of the afternoon. It was now evening; dusk cast a dark hue over most of the area where she had positioned herself.

  Her visit to the bank had not produced the desired result. She had asked for dollars in return for the currency she carried, but had been told at three separate branches that they would only change ‘hard currency.’ The Thag had no idea what the bank representatives had been talking about. She had considered briefly attempting to take money by force. However, she quickly came to the conclusion that such a course would only lead to failure in the crowded bank. The techniques of the Thags, she knew, worked only when one had the element of surprise, and when the targets had no significant advantage in numbers. She may have had the first, but most definitely not the second.

  Facing a seemingly insurmountable obstacle against attempting to achieve her goals in the manner that this modern civilization dictated, Malka had decided to accept that and adapt the skill set she had mastered. Her mind wandered back to the first time she had learned that lesson. The one that had again changed the course of her life with her adoptive family.

  ***

  It had been five years since Malka had arrived in the camp. She had grown used to most of the rhythms of life in this place. Like the other orphaned children – the others being children of Thags who had died in service to the Goddess – she was raised in a communal manner by Mira and one of the older families in the camp. Having learned fluent Tamil, she was made, along with her peers, to attend classes in the Thag’s processes of robbery. Zaima, the class’s best and most eager pupil, was their leader; the others had ostracized her. The blue-eyed girl was not one of them; unlike the young Thags, she did not actually want to learn the dark art, which they so readily accepted. Even though she possessed only dim recollections of her early life, Malka still thought of escape.