For a moment, the two of them ate in silence.
Then the old man’s thoughts rose again.
You should have seen your face, he sent humorously. Did you think I would poison you, red eye? Or were you hoping I would?
She gave him a look. Seeing that humor in his dark eyes, she looked back at the food, scooping out another chunk with the flatbread.
Most human food is swill, she sent back. I didn’t expect poison. I only expected it to taste like excrement.
Breaking out in a grin, he cackled, shaking his head as he scooped up more of the beans and meat, shoving a big bite into his mouth and chewing vigorously.
You don’t like my people very much, do you? he thought next. Why not?
Chandre grunted.
Giving him another flat look, she scooped up more of the chili with the bread.
Your people haven’t liked me all that much, cousin, she sent, chewing. They didn’t like my family. Or my friends’ families. Sometimes they liked us too much… and when we didn’t like them back, they decided they didn’t like us all over again.
The old man didn’t seem offended. He shrugged, his thoughts matter of fact.
That may be true. But your problems now aren’t because of my people.
Chandre chewed more of the bread and chili. Turning over his words, she nodded.
True, she sent, still chewing.
There was a silence between them.
In it, Chandre continued to eat. She looked up every few seconds, gazing up at the stars. It was a clear night. Even with the fire, there were more stars than she’d remembered seeing in at least a hundred years––except maybe for those few months she spent with Allie in the Pamir.
The thought brought a pain to her heart.
It was sharp enough to make her eyes sting.
She didn’t realize her light was still open to the old man’s until he aimed another thought at her. It didn’t occur to her in part because his mind was more silent than any human she’d ever encountered––apart from maybe monks from the high Asian plateaus. He had that kind of mind, one that rested easily when he wasn’t using it, one he wasn’t slave to.
You should let me take you into the kiva, he thought at her. It might be good for you. Let you work through a few things.
It took a few seconds for his words to sink in.
Then she gave him a dismissive scowl, unable to help herself.
Sure, old man, she grumbled at his mind. Because seeing your spirit animals while I sweat off a third of my weight and hallucinate for a few hours will fix everything. She gave him a direct look, her thoughts shifting colder. Your gods have no love for me either, cousin. And I don’t see them convincing Declan not to cut out my heart one of these nights, when your Luriaal and her friends aren’t looking.
Nodding towards where silver-eyed seer sat on the log with Torek, smiling at him as he spoke, she grunted.
Like maybe tonight, if Torek is successful in his endeavor to get her into his bed.
The old man chuckled, again unfazed by her anger.
What else do you have to do? he thought back. It’s that or the collar again. Why not come with me? Keep the wolves away for one more night. Then tomorrow, maybe, this brother of yours can cut out your heart.
Exhaling in frustration, Chandre ate a few more bites of the chili, washing it down with a cup of water the old man handed her. After she drained the cup, she returned to the chili, chewing vigorously on the bread and chunks of meat.
He’d fed her. He’d fed her well. The venison and black bean chili was the best food she’d had in months. Even the bread was good––home made, crispy on the outside and soft within, with a good, smoky flavor. It was even better with her light freed from the collar.
More than even the food, he was the first of these people to even try to talk to her outside of an interrogation.
And, as he said, she had nothing better to do.
Nothing but lay in her cabin and stare up at the ceiling, hoping Declan didn’t come for her on that night.
Okay, old man, she sent, giving him a sideways look. I’ll do your voodoo for one night. If your gods decide to kill me, so be it.
Chuckling, the old man smacked her affectionately on the knee.
“Good,” he said aloud, smiling at her.
THE OLD MAN’S name was Max.
When she frowned, asking him about others of his people calling him “Bear,” he admitted that was a name of his, too. When he was a child, he said, they called him Angry Bear, in part because he always got in fights.
He chuckled, adding, “Too old to fight now. Now just Bear.”
Chandre grunted, but hadn’t bothered to reply.
She sat across from him now, her legs stretched out in front of her on the dirt since she couldn’t sit cross-legged like the others. She wore the same combat pants and tank top she’d worn upstairs, but without her jacket, her boots, her socks, or the heavy flannel shirt she’d taken to wearing at night for the desert cold. Luriaal gave the shirt to her, but it looked like a man’s shirt, so Chandre suspected it belonged to one of the humans.
It was hot in the underground structure already.
The walls were wood logs covered in adobe clay.
The doorway and stairs leading to the lower levels of the octagonal structure were made of sun-dried mud bricks. A hole had been built in the ceiling directly above the open fire, a square through which she could still see the barest glimpse of stars, although they were now blurred by smoke from the hot fire coals below.
Heated stones stood around the fire, glowing nearly white.
Chandre watched a human, even older than Max, ladle water onto one of those hot stones, sending up a hiss of steam.
Another human next to her nudged her arm, handing her a dented metal cup.
“Drink,” he said. Unlike Max, he didn’t have much of an accent. Even so, he seemed to assume she didn’t know English. He motioned with his hand, simulating the act of drinking from the tin cup. “Drink it all, glow-eye.”
Sighing a bit, Chandre only looked at the liquid for a moment, pausing to sniff it out of habit. It smelled foul, whatever it was, like mold dipped in horse manure.
The man nudged her again.
“Drink it.” He simulated the act again. “All of it. It is time.”
Saying a short prayer in Prexci under her breath, Chandre sighed, then pounded the whole cup down, tilting back her head.
She’d expected nothing at first but the bad smell and taste, but when she lowered her chin, she got hit by a wave of dizziness. When the man next to her held out a hand, she gave him the cup. Smiling at her, he nodded, then poured himself a cup of the substance from a cow skin bag, drinking it down in one shot as well.
Chandre watched, blinking against the smoke and steam as he handed the skin filled with the foul-smelling liquid to the next human in the circle.
It occurred to her she was the only female in there.
She was also the only seer.
Brushing that aside, she settled down to wait.
Her mind toyed with the possibility of these humans turning on her, though, maybe out of habit. She wished she’d made more of an effort to fashion a knife or other weapon to wear on her person. They’d of course stripped her of all weapons when Luriaal and the others first came across her in the desert.
Declan would have demanded it, anyway, even if Luriaal hadn’t already done so.
Wiping sweat from her forehead, she stared into the white and red coals of the fire.
She didn’t expect much to happen.
Human constitutions were weak. Whatever they’d given her, it likely wasn’t in a large enough dose to do anything to her.
The kiva was hot, though, and humid.
She’d already been sitting there for too long. The old man next to her wouldn’t look at her at all now, but stared directly at the fire, his brown eyes reflecting gold and red flames. Something about his stillness unnerved her.
Th
e steam began to make her feel claustrophobic.
Her shirt was soaked with sweat. Every inhaled breath was hot and wet on her lungs, making her feel like she was drowning. She tugged her shirt off her wet skin, trying to get some movement, some air, but there was nothing in here.
Maybe they were going to kill her like this.
Drug her. Then suffocate her in wet air and the smell of their bodies.
They’d wanted her dead since she was a child.
She couldn’t leave, though. She couldn’t run out of there. Her leg wouldn’t let her, even if she wanted. They’d helped her down the stairs, taken her cane.
Anyway, she suspected that’s what they wanted.
If she left, that would be more proof.
Proof that she was evil. Proof that she carried the “dark spirit” Luriaal spoke of when they found her. That same spirit was why the elder worms made the evil eye sign against her when they saw her. Like she was a disease. Like something about her was contagious.
She looked up at the smoke, and briefly, her eyes played tricks on her. She saw dancing spirits in the billowing white steam––a man holding feathers, arms covered in feathers, shuffling in a circle around a bonfire, a giant, bird-like mask over his head.
She blinked sweat out of her eyes, and the bird man vanished.
Now she could see very little.
Some part of her wanted to scream.
A hard knot was choking her, heavy in her chest. She wanted to scream it out, to scream and sob up at that hole in the roof. The scream felt older than Langley, older than whatever happened in those buildings that she couldn’t remember, that she didn’t want to remember. It felt older than her conscious memory lived, primal in its rage, bottomless in its grief.
She wanted to die.
Steam billowed up, blinding her, confusing her sight.
All around her, it was light. Gold light, glowing with the embers at the bottom of the fire. She saw the lights of the humans with her around the fire. She imagined she heard them chanting along with the man in the eagle mask, but the underground room was silent apart from the hiss of steam and crackling fire.
An old hand picked up the ladle, pouring more water from a wooden bucket, sending up more clouds of steam, making her choke on the hot, wet air. Her arms stuck to her sides, her legs, her bare feet sweating on the dirt.
She would die here.
She would die.
Perhaps that was the favor the old man was granting her.
She closed her eyes…
Surrendering to the gift.
41
TIGER
“SHE IS TOO dark,” the heavyset man said, fingering her jaw, turning her face one way and the other. “Her eyes are too strange. She is too foreign.”
Frowning, he looked to the man who stood next to him, under the shade of a thick-trunked tree covered in green vines.
The second man had a neatly-trimmed black beard and large, beautiful brown eyes and light gold skin. He wore a gold turban that matched that skin, and the turban had a jewel with a feather pinned to the spot above his eyes.
He wore the most beautiful kurta the girl had ever seen. The color of peacock feathers and gold leaf, it shone even in the shade of the garden where they stood.
He smelled good. He smelled like flowers––gardenias, roses and lemon ices––unlike the man who touched her now, who smelled primarily of sweat, his breath a sickeningly sweet mixture of coffee, cakes, and sugar.
“Could you not find another?” the sweaty man said in Hindi, still fingering her face. “She will not draw sympathy from the English. She is too exotic. They will not let her near enough to be effective. She is as dark as an African!”
Her owner, the man who had brought her with him to the rich man’s garden, smiled.
He had gray hair, a long gray and brown beard, and dark eyes that could appear to be kindly, even compassionate when he wanted. He wore a nut-brown kurta over red pants, plain compared to the man with the peacock-colored silk, but woven of the finest cotton, decorated with elaborate green and gold stitching over the front.
He was not royalty, but he was not a poor man, either.
He also did not seem bothered by the heavyset man’s words.
“She is special,” the gray-haired man assured both men, laying a hand heavily on her shoulder. When she looked up and back, she saw him touch beneath his eye with one finger, smiling with white teeth as he opened it wider than the other. “She has the sight.”
The girl saw the eyebrows go up on both of the other two men as they exchanged looks.
The gray-haired man smiled wider, his most ingratiating smile.
“…She can get into places none of us can go. She can persuade. She can charm. They will let her near enough. Trust me when I say they will. You can do no better than my little brown warrior, my friends. She is a tiger cub. She will get the job done.”
The other two men frowned a second time, exchanging looks.
Their surprise at her master’s words had been replaced by skepticism.
The girl could feel that skepticism whisper around her like being touched with dozens of tiny feathers. Talk of “the sight” was all well and fine for yogis and mystics from the ashrams and temples. It was not fine for black-faced little girls with animal eyes.
Even so, they were desperate, she could feel.
They wanted to do this today.
They needed someone who could not be traced back to them.
That meant they could use none of the servants in this part of Bengal with any ties to the palace. In truth, they wanted a foreigner, which she obviously was; they simply wanted a foreigner the English might feel more sympathy towards.
The fat one did not like the look of the girl’s eyes.
He thought she looked like a demon.
“We only have one of these Chinese toys,” the fat one muttered, glancing at his master in the peacock tunic. “We cannot afford to make a mistake of this, not if we want to get the English’s attention. It will take weeks to make or obtain another.”
The gray haired human smiled.
“She will not disappoint you,” he assured them. “I have used her for many delicate things. She is a good girl. Obedient. She will do as she is told. She knows what will happen to her if she does not… and she enjoys pleasing me.”
There was another silence.
The man in the peacock tunic made a subtle gesture to the fat one with one hand, tilting his head in concession. The heavyset one––the man who smelled of sweat and cake and who clearly worked for the man in the jewel-like tunic––sighed, but not at his master. Bowing obediently to the man in the blue tunic, he seemed to resign himself to the inevitable.
Turning back to her owner and his gray beard, he frowned.
“She had better do as well as you say,” he warned, scowling down at her reddish-black eyes. “Or we will feed her alive to the royal tigers. We will make you watch, old man.”
The girl’s owner only smiled, bowing his head in understanding.
THE BOX THE girl carried was beautiful.
Pink silk wrapped around the square corners, wrapped in different-colored ribbons, sprayed with perfume. A pale cream bow sat on top, and sprigs of small blue and pink flowers were woven in with the ribbons and silk cloth. It smelled of flowers and cinnamon, and the girl carried it carefully, unwilling to disturb its perfect appearance in any way.
The old man showed the girl who she was to give this perfect present to.
He did this by imagining the person exactly as she looked. He was good at this. The girl found it easy to pluck the image directly out of his mind when he commanded her.
They dressed her in new clothes.
Still servant’s clothes, but richer than anything the girl had ever worn. She even wore a jeweled headband over her thick, curly, dark hair, mainly to keep a silk head covering on her, and flowing down her back. She wore silver bracelets on her arms and a silver necklace over the bright, jade-green sa
ri and new sandals.
She walked carefully in the new clothes, holding the box out in front of her like it was made of the finest glass.
She found the other little girl, for whom the present was meant, sitting in a carved wooden chair on the lawn. She looked like a princess. With her reddish-blond hair and creamy white skin and reddish-blond freckles, she looked like a drawing from a book of fairy tales and magical beings the servant girl leafed through once.
Her clothes were strange.
They were also so beautiful they made the servant girl want to cry.
White fluffy skirts flared out under a wide pink sash around her waist. Her neckline was made up of lace white flowers woven in with threads of green and pink. She wore a wide-brimmed hat covered in real roses over that reddish-gold hair set in perfect ringlets. She had the brightest, darkest blue eyes the servant girl had seen since she’d come to this part of the world.
The servant girl could only stare at them, lost in those deep blue depths.
She hadn’t seen eyes that color since she’d been taken from her parents near the mountain towns of Leh and Ladakh.
They were the color of lapis lazuli.
Around the girl in the beautiful white dress––not girl, princess, the servant girl whispered in her mind––a few dozen other children sat in a wide ring, watching while she opened presents. The other girls sitting in chairs on the lawn wore frilly dresses as well, but none so nice or as fancy as the girl in the center seat.
The boys wore short pants and caps and vests over cotton shirts. They all looked so clean, despite the heat. The servant girl found that cleanliness shocking, as well as the plumpness of their arms and legs, their muscular, light-skinned bodies.
None looked as beautiful as the girl with the reddish-blond hair and the flowers on her hat, but they all belonged to her world.
In the background, the thunder of hooves ripped up grass and mud, broken by the occasional swing and smack of a club on the lawn, a shout or cheer from spectators as they watched the match. Adults sat in lawn chairs, being fanned by young girls in servant’s saris, still sweating lightly in the Indian heat. The servant girl saw them accepting iced drinks from male servants wearing all white kurtas and big white turbans.
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