“Ummm?... Hey! I can hear you two up there.”
Both Malka and her aggrieved protector turned in the direction they had been traveling, recognizing Henry’s voice.
“Oh, crap,” Liza grated.
Slowly both of them moved their horses forward up a slight rise, then came to an abrupt halt. Less than a yard in front of them, a cliff dropped off.
Dismounting, Malka moved towards the edge and bent down. Roughly fifteen feet down, a fast-moving stream of murky water moved slowly through a narrow stone canyon. Henry was standing knee-deep in the water, his hands still tied together. Boulders in both directions of the stream rose about halfway up the sheer canyon walls, making it nearly impossible for him to climb out.
Sighing, Malka walked back to her horse and extracted a length of rope from one of the saddlebags. Moving back to the edge of the ravine, she dangled it over the edge. Henry took the opposite end.
The Thag turned her head back in Liza’s direction.
“Help me.”
Liza got down from her horse. She approached Malka from behind and put her arms around the Indian’s midsection.
“One, two, three…,” the felinoid counted. Then, both pulled in unison. After a dozen or so heaves, Henry’s arms appeared over the ledge. Dropping the rope, Malka grabbed onto them, hauling the waterlogged boy the rest of the way onto the ground.
Within seconds, Liza was upon him.
“What in the name of hell were you thinking?” she said, smacking his face.
“Liza…,” Malka started toward the felinoid, but stopped when Henry interrupted.
“What was I thinking?” Henry incredulously asked as he rousted himself from where he lay on the fine dirt soil. “You kidnapped me. I tried to escape. Why doesn’t that make sense to you people?”
“We tracked you,” Malka cut in. “At first, you moved back in the way that we had come. But, then you changed direction. Then again. And again.”
“We’re now further east than where we camped last evening,” the felinoid finished.
The youth with light brown hair and blue eyes stared at his soaked boots. They’re probably right, he realized.
“I lost my way, didn’t know where I was going. Look. Before we were moving to Reno, my parents were miners. I hated what they did; I spent most of my time around the books I convinced them to buy me when they went into town. I’m not cut out for this stuff,” he admitted. Then he looked up at them. “But what did you expect me to do? Just go along with whatever illicit business you’re up to?”
“It is not ‘illicit,’” Malka snapped.
“Then I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you’re up to?”
The Thag remained silent.
Henry sighed and then moved to the third horse, which was tethered behind the one that Liza had been using. “It’s not that I’m unhappy that you saved my life, or anything. But it doesn’t exactly sound like your reasons for keeping me around withstand too much scrutiny,” Henry finished as he climbed on to the steed.
Malka glared at the erstwhile irate felinoid, who simply hunched her shoulders.
“Maybe you’d care to tell me what I’m really doing here?”
“He has a point, Malka,” Liza chimed in.
“Just...Shut up!” Malka barked. Afterwards, she continued as she remounted her horse. “We should keep going. If we do, we can travel for at least an hour before the sun sets completely.”
“And, where, exactly, are we going, Malka?”
The Thag kept her eyes fixed ahead of her as she responded.
“Away.”
“‘Away’? Amazing. Great plan.” Liza threw up her hands.
Malka ignored the felinoid as she turned her horse northward, looking for a place where the ravine could be forded.
***
The three of them sat around the campfire later that night. They had made camp over an hour ago. But silence had ruled since leaving the canyon.
“Why am I here? Why won’t you let me go?” The question cut over the crackling of the wood, which Malka had been listening to.
The Indian looked up, staring at her captive.
“Look,” he said. “I heard everything your friend said back there.”
“Then, couldn’t you tell? We are not friends,” Liza cut him off.
“All right. Fine. But, I know there’s no superstition about my eyes or my hair or skin. And that there’s nothing to this myth you tried to sell me about my owing a debt to you,” he continued, looking at Malka.
“What difference does it make?” Malka responded, still staring at the fire. There was little escaping that the second of her two contentions had been completely false; she had gotten the idea from the stories she had read while in the camp of the Thags.
“Difference? Oh, no difference, of course. Well, other than the fact that we now have a liability we wouldn’t otherwise?” Liza’s question followed in response to the blue-eyed girl’s own.
“Malka. I really think we should kill him.”
“No!” Malka yelled. She got up, turning away from the fire.
“What is it, Malka?” Liza called after her. “Why are you keeping him around?”
The Thag didn’t respond. Neither did her captive.
After a second, she heard motion behind her. Malka whirled to find Liza approaching. Behind the felinoid, she could see Henry watching the exchange.
“Could it be that he reminds you, just a bit, of your arrival in Husain’s camp? Of the way you were treated even years after you had been living there?”
Malka glared at her questioningly.
“And yes, I know about that too.”
“He is nothing like me.”
“Then why did you spare him? Why the lies?”
“Because I did not wish to kill again!” Malka blurted the words as if the admission caused her physical pain. They were proof, she thought, that she had never been a worthy member of a now extinct Sect.
“You didn’t want to. Okay. Let’s analyze this logic. You didn’t want to do something that resulted from actions that you initiated. So, now we have an extra mouth to feed. One who will go running off again at his earliest convenience as we go bumbling around in the middle of the desert. I think even you can discern that this isn’t the most tactically ironclad line of decision-making ever devised in the greater history of special operations. The need of which, considering what you’ve been tasked with protecting, would seem to be indicated.”
Malka took a few steps towards the felinoid, her face a frown of angst.
“You think I have no plan. Maybe I do not. But what difference does it make? All I can do is attempt to keep the object I carry away from the Urumi for as long as I can. I am the most decorated of my Sect in its generations, but I have no idea how I might thwart them. What purpose would having a plan – a destination – serve? It is not as if I see you coming up with any ideas of your own.
“Um...excuse me. I think I heard you talking about that before. What object?” Henry asked.
Both women ignored him.
“Would you listen to me if I did? Because judging from your track record, I’m guessing the answer is ‘no’.”
“Fine. What do you think we should do?”
Liza pointed to Henry.
“Eliminate him. Head east, as ordered. Find a secluded location. Wait for further instructions.”
“We are not killing him!” Malka yelled.
“Case. And point.”
“Um...thanks? But...you know I’m right here and I can hear…,” Henry again tried to interject.
“Damnit, Malka! We can’t trust him!”
“I say we can. As I said, we are nothing alike. But I know what it is to be captured, with no place to turn.” She looked at Henry. “Tell me, if you were to leave here, where would you go?”
“I…,” Henry began. “I don’t know. To Reno, I guess. We were moving there after leaving the mining camp. I thought I’d fit in better outside of it. But
I wasn’t like anyone else my age out here either; I don’t really know anyone. I don’t have any other family…,” he trailed off, turning to look morosely into the fire.
“If I unbind your limbs, will you attempt to escape again?” the Thag questioned.
Henry hesitated, lost in thought.
“I guess not,” he said at length, his tone resigned.
Malka moved to where he sat. She undid the ropes around his arms and legs. The brown-haired boy rubbed his wrists as she did so.
“That’s it? He tried to escape not twenty hours ago and you’re just going to take his word for it?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Just great.” Liza, as she was prone to do in such situations, threw her hands up in exasperation.
Malka reseated herself by the campfire; Liza reluctantly followed. After they had made themselves comfortable, Henry decided to ask another question, which he directed to Malka.
“So, I’ve read a lot about the native myths. Do you mind if I ask which tribe you’re from?”
Malka cocked her head to the side, not understanding the strange question. The light from the fire illuminated only one half of her face as she looked at him.
Leaning forward a bit, Liza explained.
“He thinks you’re from one of the groupings of the indigenous peoples here.” Then, turning to Henry, she clarified. “Malka’s Indian, Henry. You know, as in Indian? British Raj?”
“Really? Where? From which part?” Henry asked, interested.
“Yes, really,” Liza replied wryly. Malka, on the other hand, kept her focus on Liza.
“‘Indigenous peoples here’? How do you know all of this?”
“Part because I work for the Society. Part because, as you so stubbornly refuse to acknowledge, I’ve obviously been around just a bit more than you.”
“What do you mean? You’re hardly older than I am!”
“Sparing you the cliché about looks and deception, I am exactly ninety-six years old, Gregorian calendar of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a mighty long day. I’m going to bed.” She looked at Henry. “You. Don’t do anything stupid this time.”
Suddenly, in front of them stood a black-furred cat. It turned and padded off in search of an appropriate place to rest.
“Wha...what the devil!” Henry screamed. He looked up at his rescuer-turned captor, an expression of shocked confusion on his features. “People don’t…. Did...did she just…?”
Indifferently, Malka shrugged.
Eighteen
A gust of wind bit at the face of Sir Lord Major John Pluckett as he emerged from one of the many entrances to Her Majesty’s palace at Hampton Court. Pausing to take in how the wind rustled the grassy fields that surrounded the gray-stoned palace, he was pleased to see that his carriage was waiting, ready to take him back to the small residence he maintained in a nearby town since being named to his new position.
He entered the carriage and sat, staring at the slate-colored sky, which seemed to grow darker as one looked toward the horizon. Despite the gloom, it was still midday. It appears as if it’s going to rain. Again, Pluckett mused.
Having spent decades in what was often called the crown jewel of the British Empire, the army officer had grown accustomed to warmer climes and more hospitable weather. Of course, in India there was a monsoon season. He possessed clear memories of his youth in England. However, upon his return to the British Isles, the middle-aged man had found himself unprepared for what, in the first couple of months since his return, had seemed to be a relentless procession of cold, dampness, and gray.
Yet, what a couple of months they had been.
Soon after his ship had docked at the port of Southampton, Pluckett had headed directly for the officers’ guest quarters of the local army barracks. There, the enlisted man on duty at the front desk told the captain that there was a telegram waiting for him from the family estate in Yorkshire. Apparently, it had been sent in anticipation of his arrival. Dated a couple of weeks prior, the dispatch contained what should have been distressing news. John had needed to contain his excitement as he read the short message sent by his elder brother’s wife:
John, with greatest regret:
I inform you of your brother’s passing.
Thomas suddenly took ill.
There was nothing the doctors could do.
- Eunice.
Having first read the message in the front entrance to the barracks, Pluckett did not allow himself even to smile until he found himself situated in private guest quarters. On the way, his mind whirred with the implications of what had transpired while he had been en route to Great Britain.
While John’s elder brother and his wife had succeeded in having a daughter, they had produced no male heir. Though the army captain found it difficult to believe – even as the realization hit him – that made him the next Lord of Yorkshire. The birthright that should always have been his had come to pass.
He supposed that he would be required to travel to the family manor near Rawcliffe in order to take over for his now deceased sibling. He would need to go through the formalities of seeing his brother’s remains laid to rest. And then, arrangements would have to be made for Thomas’s now-widowed wife and her daughter, he figured.
But that would have to wait. His audience with the Queen was less than a week away. In the immediate term, priority dictated that he make haste toward London. It was there, he was certain, that his knightship awaited.
As he knelt before Her Majesty, feeling the light touch of the sword on each of his shoulders, John knew it was the culmination of all his previous experience. After all he had endured – all he had been denied – he finally was receiving the reward that Pluckett knew all along he deserved. And yet, in that same instant, he could not quell a pang of resentment directed toward the monarch who bestowed it: the newly minted knight could not help but view her as the embodiment of a society that had denied him his rightful place since childhood and afterward, had attempted to rob him even of that, for what he now viewed only as a senseless assignation of his youth.
Still, the boon was better to have come late than not at all; after departing Her Majesty’s presence, Sir Pluckett had taken a short leave of absence from the army, during which time he had traveled northward to the manor near his native town of York, where he had dealt with the obligation of his brother’s funeral.
The new Lord of Yorkshire then delegated most of the day-to-day matters of the lordship to his brother’s adjutants. Beyond the station in life that it assured him, John had little interest in the mundane obligations that assuming his brother’s former mantle entailed. His life had been spent in the army. Pluckett had no intention of abandoning what were sure to become the brighter prospects of that career, in light of his new status.
Still wishing to use the manor whenever on leave, he had sent his brother’s wife and daughter – along with her annoyingly noisy lapdog – to the family hunting lodge in northern Scotland, where they would not bother him. Afterwards, he reported back to the army’s head personnel office in London to request reassignment.
John had been practically sure that he would not be going back to British India. He had been right. But nothing could have prepared him for the illustrious nature of his new posting. Upon giving his name to one of the department’s adjutants, the knighted lord had been ushered into a general’s office. The younger of the two Pluckett brothers could scarcely believe what he was hearing as the four-starred, gray-haired officer had read out the orders that described his new position. He was to become senior army attaché regarding imperial affairs to the court of Her Majesty the Queen itself. Further, as part of his new posting, he would receive a promotion to Major.
Back in the carriage, Pluckett reflected that despite the weather, his first couple months had indeed been everything that could have been hoped for. He had finally claimed a position worthy of his rightful status.
The black carriage turned left and headed down a lane t
o a small, but very well-kept, two-story country house, which the major had retained for his use while on assignment at Court. The vehicle stopped directly in front of the building’s wooden door. The Lord of Yorkshire hurried the short distance towards it through the cold, wind-driven rain that had begun to fall.
Just before he had reached it, the door opened, unlocked by one of the house’s servants, an older woman of stout build. Pluckett moved inside, handing her his hat and coat.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace, are you all right?”
“Never better,” Pluckett replied as a matter of course before moving into his study.
The army attaché to the royal court settled into the chair behind a dark mahogany desk and reached into his brown leather valise, which held troop deployment reports he had yet to catalogue for tomorrow’s audience. Pluckett removed them and had been about to set them on the desk, when he noticed that a single small piece of paper already rested there.
Putting aside the reports, the major picked it up. On it, there was the familiar emblem of a black serpent, rearing its head as if to strike. Below, a short missive commanded:
The time is come. Your debt is to be paid.
We meet at sundown under the bridge at Church Grove.
No servants. Else, your success shall end.
Sir Pluckett raised his eyebrows as he read the message. Then, he hunched over it, sighing. John well remembered his mysterious meeting with the dark shadow that claimed to be one of the mythical Urumi. He had tried to force himself to believe that it had all been some elaborate hoax – that his recent turn of fortune had nothing to do with the bargain he had made on what had turned out to be his last day in Lahore.
Staring at the message, the fact that the Urumi had indeed played a part in his recent rise seemed increasingly inescapable to Pluckett. He supposed he would have to attend the meeting. Yet, John still somehow hoped that it would turn out to be unconnected to his recent knightship, lordship, and promotion.
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