The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  At last, at long last, Maya was finished; about eight o'clock, with two hours yet to full dark. She had done all she could for people who would either get better or die on their own. She had secretly imparted a breath of healing strength to each of the ones that seemed to be faltering, and it had taken everything she had left to finish the rounds of the wards afterwards. She was so tired, in fact, that she didn't even have the strength to catch a 'bus; fortunately there was an empty cab right at the foot of the steps, and despite the expense, she fell into it, giving her address to the driver.

  "Take your time; don't force your horse," she told him through the hatch above, grateful that this was a hansom and not a motor cab. She didn't think she could bear the clattering and fumes of an engine so close to her right now.

  The cabby's sweating, red face broke into a smile of gratitude. "Thenkee, Miss," he told her. "It's cruel hard on a beast today."

  "It's cruel hard on a man," she replied, "Let's not make it any worse for both of you than it already is."

  She wanted to lean back, but the horsehair upholstery was prickly and unbearable in this heat, so she put her bag at her feet and leaned forward instead. She watched the horse's swaying posterior in front of her as it ambled along at the same speed as the rest of the traffic, and had to fight to keep from falling into a dull, half-trance. The street was mostly in shadow, with hot, golden bars of sun streaked across the tops of the buildings or passing between them. The sky, an eye-watering blue overlaid with a golden haze of dust, promised nothing but more of the same for tomorrow.

  This was death weather; heat and cold were equally punishing for the poor. Babies gasped in the heat and died; cholera and typhoid took off their elder siblings and their parents. If this heat kept on for much longer, there would be more bodies carried out of the hospital than there were patients coming in. The brassy-blue sky glared down on them with no pity and no help.

  It has to break. Everyone says so. It has to break, it can't keep on like this. She took her handkerchief from her bag and wiped her face; it came away filthy with dust and sweat. I'm one of the fortunate, and I don't know how much longer I can bear this. She could afford ice, she had servants to do all the hard work of cleaning and cooking and looking after her. The poor had no ice, not a breath of breeze, their food spoiled before they could eat it, and they had to eat it anyway and sickened and died of food poisoning along with all the other forms of death that stalked them. They had no cooler clothes, it was wear what they had or strip half-naked and bear the consequences. She knew very well how much better her life was than that of her poorest patients, but it was hard to reflect on one's blessings when one felt so miserable.

  The heat meant that there were fewer of her "ladies" about to add to the family coffers with their fees. Most of them weren't even here in London, for a good many of them were holidaying within reach of their wealthy clients, who were also on holiday—at the sea, in the country, even across the sea at resorts in Italy, France, anyplace cooler than here.

  The rest, the actresses, the dancers, the music-hall singers—they were making do, just as she was, with iced drinks, walks in the dusk, open windows. The only difference between Maya's circumstances and those of the actresses was that they did most of their work at night—but the theaters were stifling, the limelights and gaslights hot, and the one advantage they had was that they could work half-naked.

  Sometimes rather more than half, she thought wryly. She'd been called to theaters for girls who had collapsed in the heat during rehearsals at the beginning of this weather, but that hadn't happened in a couple of days. The dancers and actresses were good at following her advice, better than more respectable folk.

  Traffic thinned as they neared her neighborhood, both because there were fewer people about this close to suppertime, and because there were fewer calls for wheeled vehicles around here. On the road itself, there was little but the occasional cart and hand-barrow, and along the pavement, there were mostly children playing now that the heat of the day was over.

  There it was—her own front door at last; she heaved a sigh of relief and mopped her brow once again, then tucked her handkerchief back in her bag and prepared to,get out as the cab stopped in front of her door.

  Gupta had been out scouring the steps again; they looked as if you could eat off them. She couldn't imagine how he'd done it.

  She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and heaved it out of the cab. The horse ambled off immediately. There was not much prospect for a fare around here, and the cabby was anxious to get back to a spot with better prospects. It was almost too much effort to pull open her door, and she thanked God that there were no patients waiting for her in the dark, shadowed hallway as she stepped inside.

  She left her bag just inside the door of her office, gathered up her skirts in both hands, and climbed the stairs, one slow, panting step at a time. But when she got to her room, she saw that her people had already anticipated her wishes; there was one of her saris laid out on the bed waiting for her, an everyday sari of cool blue silk with a darker blue border woven into the ends, and the short-sleeved top to match.

  With a cry of joy, she flung off her English clothes, unwilling to bear the clinging weight a moment more.

  Wrapping the intricate folds was a matter of habit; in less time than it took to put on one of her European gowns and all its accouterments, she was comfortable at last, barefoot, with her hair down and tied back in a single tail, the silk swishing softly around her bare legs and creating its own little breeze as she moved.

  And when she came downstairs, there was another surprise.

  Hanging in the ceiling of the conservatory was a punkah-fan, a huge slab of muslin stretched on a hinged frame so that it looked very like a door, meant to be swung back and forth by a rope attached to its bottom edge. In this case, the frame of the fan was tied to the decorative ironwork supporting the glass ceiling, and the rope ran to a pulley on the wall, and was attached to a wicker rocking chair. She could rock and fan herself with very little effort.

  And Gupta was waiting with—at last!—a glorious pitcher of iced lemonade and a bowl of fresh fruit and cheese, and a broad smile on his face.

  "You—are—a magician!" she exclaimed, embracing him as he put down the pitcher and plate on a little table beside the chair.

  "Not I," he protested, a broad smile on his brown face. "How difficult is it to make a punkah-ian for one who has had such all his life? A little cloth, a bit of wood—nothing! I only wish I had known that this cold country could become so very warm three or four weeks ago, so that all would have been in place for you before this."

  "Gupta, thank you; your protests don't fool me a bit. I have no idea how you got that thing up there." She waved at the fan overhead.

  "You may thank little Charan for that. He managed to take the first ropes over the iron. After that, it was nothing, we merely hauled the punkah up and tied it in place. When it is cooler, if you like, we can bring it down again."

  Charan tugged at her sari, chattering; she bent and he leaped into her arms to put his arms around her neck. Now she saw how the ropes that held the fan up were tied off to stanchions, one at either side of the conservatory. "You clever man!" she told the langur, who put his cheek against hers, and chuckled.

  "The ice man has come, and I have obtained an extra block," Gupta told her. "Since it will melt so fast in this heat. And it seemed to me that it would be better to have cold, fresh things to eat than some pie from a strange baker with I know-not-what in it."

  "Wise choice, and thank you." She settled into her rocking chair and looked up with delight as the fan moved, creating a stirring in the air. "Oh, Gupta, thank you so much!"

  Gupta bowed, smiling, and left her alone to enjoy the first cold drink of the day.

  As the chair moved, so did the fan, creating a delicious breeze. After the first glass of lemonade, her appetite returned and she was able to enjoy Gupta's selections.

  Very clever of him not to have
any meats, she thought. It wouldn't be wise to trust to anything like meat or fish to stay unspoiled in this weather, even stored in an ice box.

  When the meal was gone, she remained where she was, rocking slowly to keep the air moving, as dusk descended and darkness filled the conservatory.

  But as her discomfort eased and she was able to relax, emotions that she had purposely bottled up came flooding up unexpectedly, and she began to shiver with suppressed rage that had been pent up for too long.

  I am going to burn that dress, she thought, her head throbbing in time with her pulse, and her face flooding with heat. Or give it away. She scrubbed at her lips with a napkin, as the memory of Parkening's mouth on hers made her feel nauseous. She shook with the desire to strike him all over again. Oh, that beast, I would like to break his hands so he can never touch me again! I want to black both his eyes! I want—oh, I want—if only I could clip his manhood for him!

  That was the thing that made her want to run up to her room and never come out again. He would surely try to molest her again, and she was sickeningly sure he hadn't any intention of stopping at a kiss.

  The animals must have sensed her disturbed emotions and wisely left her alone to deal with them herself. Right at the moment, she didn't want anything touching her; she couldn't be sure that she wouldn't strike at it.

  She shook with conflicting emotions, wanting to kin him, wanting to run away, afraid of him, white-hot with anger at him. She heard the doorbell, but ignored it; if it was a patient, Gupta would come and get her. She hoped it wasn't a patient, that it was just some tradesman that Gupta could deal with or send away. Right now she didn't want to have to face a patient, not when she was so uncertain of her own control over herself. For at the moment, all of her emotions had given way before a terrible, black despair, and the certainty that she could never go back to the hospital again, nor out on the street, nor anywhere that Parkening might find her.

  "Maya?" There had been no footsteps to warn her of Peter Scott's approach, but he was normally soft-footed. His voice startled her; she rose swiftly and turned to face him, the light from the hall lamp falling on her face, and her wide and dilated eyes. His face was in shadow, but there was no mistaking the gasp he uttered. Nor the words he blurted out. "Maya, my God—you are beautiful—" His honest, clean reaction undid her. With a sob, she flung herself into his astonished arms.

  ". . . and the bitch hit me," Simon Parkening whined, for the tenth time. Shivani was heartily tired of his complaining. So far as she could make out, he had tried to seduce some hospital servant and been repulsed; why should she care? If he could not carry out a successful conquest on his own, how was she supposed to help him? He could use magic if he chose; he had the modicum of power needed to overcome a woman's reluctance, and the knowledge of how to apply it. If he failed to use what he had, what was she supposed to do about it?

  Punkah-fans operated by ropes going through holes in the wall to two of her servants in the next room kept the air stirring, but the fact that there was no breeze outside meant that the room was stiflingly hot, the air heavy with the incense she burned to keep away the stench of the street outside. It was no worse than the stink of Delhi, but it was not a familiar stink, and therefore she hated it. She did not want Parkening here; he had come of his own, straight, it seemed, from the hospital and he stank of disease and despair. Why he had come here and not to his club where he might have a better reception for his complaints among his fellow sahibs, she was not certain.

  Unless it was that he could not rail freely about what had made him so angry anywhere else. Perhaps his conduct was not acceptable even to similar arrogant English males, and he knew it.

  She was far more interested in what he could tell her about the hospital, but from the moment he had walked in the door, all he had done was to whine about his problems. It was too hot. He couldn't leave London because his firm wouldn't allow him to take a holiday. He was tired of his current mistress, but the woman he wanted was the property of another and he didn't dare challenge the man for her. And the girl he had tried to seduce in the hospital that afternoon in his boredom and frustration had turned against him and struck him.

  She yawned under the cover of her veil—and stopped with her mouth open, struck numb by his next words as his anger increased, as he uttered the first original thing he had said since he first began to whine.

  "—that damned half-breed bitch, acting like a white woman, aping her betters, pretending to be a doctor—"

  Shivani throttled her own impulse to interrupt his raving. She did not want him to know she was interested in what he had said. He would use it to try to manipulate her. He had done this before, and this time she was in no mood to fence with him, placate him, or give in to his demands. He was coming to the end of his usefulness, and was no longer worth the time it took to work with him. She would listen to him rant, and wait him out.

  She had patience, more patience than he. And to make him more loquacious, she surreptitiously added a handful of drugs to the single block of charcoal in the incense brazier below her. Could it be? Could it possibly be that she had found her sister's child?

  Carefully, surreptitiously, she opened her Third Eye, and practically snorted her contempt for his blindness aloud. How could he possibly have thought the girl had struck him physically, when he practically reeked of the power that had been used to render him unconscious? How could he have missed something so blindingly obvious? Perhaps only because he himself was so stubbornly blind. It would never have occurred to him that the girl could have as much or more power than he, therefore he had never looked for the signs of it. Stupid swine.

  She couldn't tell much from the residue, but in a way, she felt a grudging admiration for the girl that had done this, even if it did prove to be the traitor she sought. The girl had, after all, managed to knock him unconscious without actually damaging him in any way.

  But that might simply be a matter of accident rather than control. Admittedly, striking a man dead in the midst of a crowded building would leave one with a corpse that could prove very difficult to explain—but the man was a sahib, and arrogant sahibs were prone to do foolish things that caused them to die with great suddenness. There would be no marks on the body to explain, and heat did kill. And with every moment that passed, Shivani considered that if it had been her and not the unknown who had been molested, Parkening would be in his coffin at this very moment.

  As the drugs filled the air, she armored herself against their effect, while waiting for them to loosen Parkening's tongue further.

  She did not have long to wait.

  Before long, Parkening embarked on a long, rambling condemnation of two of the doctors in the hospital, the one that Shivani was interested in, and a second, an Irishman, that Shivani could not have cared less about.

  Unfortunately, this was the one that Parkening blamed for all his misfortune, so this was the one he expounded at length upon.

  Great length. Shivani was getting ready to strike him down herself if he didn't get to the girl soon. How on earth could this fool be so obsessed with a man who probably didn't even think about him unless Parkening did something to interfere with him? If the Irish doctor was not his enemy yet, Parkening seemed determined to make an enemy of him. Was his life so very empty that he had to go out of his way to create enemies to enliven it?

  Finally, he got around to the woman in the case.

  "—O'Reilly's mistress," he growled. "She must be, I'm sure of it. Why no one but me has spotted it— she'd be thrown out of the hospital in a moment, if I could get the proof. Fornication; can't have that in my hospital. Very deep, that one. Must be her. Couldn't be O'Reilly, he hasn't the brains. But that half-breed—mongrel vigor, that's what it is. Cunning. Not brains, but cunning. Should have guessed it. Bloody wogs. Hindoos—can't trust 'em, too cunning by half."

  He seemed to have forgotten that Shivani, upon whom he depended for his further magical instruction and before whom he sat, was Indian;
she did snort with contempt at that faux pas, but the drugs had taken him far enough that he didn't even notice.

  "Says her father was a doctor. Ha! Probably some ranker. Probably some Cockney Tommy. And if he married her mother I'd be surprised. Half-Hindoo wog bitch. Hit me! Me!" There was a fleck of foam on his mustache, and his eyes had begun to glaze. He would probably pass out shortly; she would have to have her servants revive him. Or—perhaps not. Perhaps she would simply have them bundle him into a cab and leave him to deal with cab and cabby when he arrived on his own doorstep. If he was lucky, the cabby would summon his servants. If he wasn't, he wouldn't wake up again, a body would be found in the Thames, and the cabby would be much, much richer. There was no telling which sort he'd get in this neighborhood.

  It was of no great matter to Shivani; she had decided now that he was a risk and a nuisance, and she was going to be rid of him. She did not wish draw attention to herself and her dacoits and thugee by murdering him herself, but she would banish him from this place from now on.

  "Witherspoon." He snorted. "A concocted name if ever I heard one! Doctor-my-ass Maya Witherspoon! Not bloody likely! Bastard bitch half-wog—b—b— b—"