Chapter 26
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Twenty-Six
Sheltered under a rock outcropping, Neil watched the drizzle patter steadily against the leaves as Subhas’s men dozed around him.
They had camped a short distance from the top of the ridge in a shallow cavern framed by close-growing trees.
A pair of men sat at the edge of the overhang, talking softly to each other as they kept watch by a small, smoldering fire.
Sleep evaded him. It wasn’t because of the rustic conditions.
Neil had camped in rougher spots over the years at various excavations.
He had learned that if he worked hard enough during the day, his body didn’t much mind where he put it down for the night.
He worried about the girl, Vanika. He worried about what it might mean for that horrible man, Borthwick, to acquire the power of the most powerful weapon in India’s history.
He worried about Ellie and Adam. Were they safe? What had they thought of his supernatural revelations earlier that afternoon?
And he worried over his argument with Subhas by the Shiva lingam. If Neil followed his passion to learn and discover, would he inevitably end up harming people?
I am one giant knot of worry, he thought absently as the rain shimmered down through the night.
Constance slept deeply on her bedroll beside him. Her features were soft, her dark hair curling against her neck. She was the one person Neil wasn’t worried about—even though he was sure she would do something reckless before this adventure was through.
She would be reckless, but she’d find a way to pull it off. Neil was oddly certain of that.
Tomorrow, they would reach the ruins. Would Neil be expected to magic his way into knowing what that place had been and where to find what they were looking for in it?
He had no idea how to do that, which left him already feeling the weight of how he would end up disappointing everyone.
It seemed like Neil had been doing a lot of that lately.
He pictured Sayyid’s warm eyes drawn with pain as his friend revealed how Neil had hurt him, over and over again, by failing to acknowledge the differences between the two worlds they lived in—English and Egyptian.
How do I fix it? Neil had pleaded.
Join the revolution? Sayyid had wryly returned.
Neil wasn’t sure what use he’d be in a revolution, but he had to find some way to work against the terrible old patterns that shaped the field that he loved. Labeling himself hopeless and giving up was the coward’s way out—no better, really, than ignoring that the injustice existed.
Subhas’s words from the ridge echoed through his mind. It is not enough to steal our present and our future. You steal our past, too.
All of that had stung… because it was true.
The Adrija leader was also awake, firelight flickering over his skin on the far side of the cavern. Subhas’s shoulders were bowed with the weight of all the troubles he carried.
With an uncomfortable determination, Neil picked his way through the sleeping bodies to join him. He frowned at the rain as he struggled to figure out what he wanted to say.
Subhas spoke without looking at him. “I apologize for this afternoon.”
Neil startled. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Just because you’re English doesn’t mean you’re one of them. If I paint you with that brush before I’ve given you a chance to show me who you are, I’m no better than they are.”
Neil rested his arms on his knees, gazing back out at the forest. “I came over here to apologize to you.”
Rain glittered beyond the overhang, tapping out a steady rhythm against the trees. Subhas shrugged.
“How bad is it?” Neil carefully pressed.
“All the hill tribes have ever wanted is to be left alone—but we’re a problem.
This forest…” Subhas nodded at the shadowy wilderness that lay beyond the low red firelight.
“It’s full of wealth. Lumber. Minerals. We’re in the way of that.
The Raj will either move us or lean their weight against us until there’s no other option but war.
And that would give them the excuse to kill us. ”
Neil tried to imagine what it would feel like to know that the most powerful empire in the world wanted you and the people you loved out of its way.
He couldn’t.
There were scars on Subhas’s chest. The man was built like a warrior and held his rifle in a way that made it very clear that he knew how to use it. Yet Neil had no doubt he would be a pure terror in a university classroom as well—or a courtroom. “Is that why you’re studying law?”
Subhas scowled. “That’s what His Highness Vijayrama Devi would tell you. But I haven’t found a law yet that the English can be bound by.”
“Would it be better if India were governed by Indians?”
Subhas’s fierce expression fell into uncertainty and exhaustion.
“I honestly don’t know. Most of the nationalists think India’s future depends on industrialization—joining the rest of the great economies of the world.
That means resources, and as they’re almost all higher-caste Hindus or wealthy Muslims, I cannot hold out much faith that they will put the welfare of a few hundred poor hill folk over the needs of a new nation. ”
“Then what’s the answer?” Neil demanded.
“So far?” Subhas’s eyes glinted in the near darkness. “Making ourselves hard to kill.”
Neil thought of how easily the men around him had snatched up their weapons to come out here. How silently they could move through the forest.
Was that the answer? Would it always come down to war?
“I’m no good at fighting,” Neil confessed uncomfortably. “Connie’s better at it than I am.”
Subhas nodded at Constance’s sleeping figure. “Your wife?”
Neil realized that they had never bothered to clarify the nature of their relationship to Subhas. It hadn’t seemed important. It wasn’t, really.
There were so many answers he could give—that they were engaged. That they were friends.
That Constance was the girl who had tormented him for fun as a child.
The woman who haunted his heated, guilty dreams.
“I don’t know what we are,” Neil admitted.
Subhas’s mouth quirked with a hint of mirth. “Don’t you?”
Neil blinked, thrown by his response.
Across the cavern, one of the sentries hissed for Subhas’s attention. Subhas rose to his feet in a breath, drawing his Enfield up with him, his eyes locked on the slowly shifting shadows under the trees through the shimmering rain.
Instinct lowered Neil’s words to a whisper. “What is it?”
Subhas held the musket steady. “Tiger.”
A silent message moved swiftly through the cavern. Men woke, gathering weapons and shifting to their feet.
Constance sat up, her hair tumbling loose around her shoulders. She frowned across the cavern at Neil and Subhas.
“Might it just go on its way?” Neil suggested hopefully.
“It might.”
Subhas’s tone did not inspire confidence.
Out in the forest, a glimmering shadow darted between a pair of thick-trunked trees.
Jignesh was poised on the far side of the cavern with his bow in his hand. He clicked his tongue warningly, gesturing at Subhas’s Enfield.
Subhas muttered a curse and lowered the weapon.
“What’s wrong?” Neil pressed in a whisper.
“We can’t use the guns,” Subhas bit out. “We don’t know where Borthwick is. The sound could lead him right to us.”
Constance watched their exchange from her bedroll with furious curiosity. She stood, clearly intending to cross the camp to Neil and Subhas.
Jignesh stopped her, dropping his hand from the bow just long enough to tug her back against the wall of the cavern behind the row of focused archers.
Constance’s eyes flashed with irritation, but she stayed in place. Neil felt a pang of fervent relief.
He pulled his attention back to Subhas. “What about the fire? Aren’t tigers supposed to be afraid of flames?”
“It isn’t big enough.”
“Could we build it up?”
“The wind is blowing the wrong way. We’d smoke ourselves out.”
The implication sank in. “You mean that if it comes for us, you have to try to kill it.”
“Yes,” Subhas replied shortly.
Neil’s throat tightened. “Can someone do that with a single arrow?”
Subhas’s jaw flexed with tension. “It will likely take more than one.”
Neil pictured an infuriated tiger with an arrow in its flank tearing into the camp—or stuck full of darts like a pin cushion, falling down to bleed out on the rain-soaked ground.
One image filled him with fear—the other with a terrible sense of grief.
The tiger emerged from the shadowy trees with a shiver of silent movement.
Muscle rippled under striped fur turned pale with contrast in the gloom of the night and the low, smoldering flicker of the campfire.
Power gleamed in every sleek, graceful movement.
The step of a massive paw. The shift of a shaggy head, golden eyes glinting through the darkness. The careless flick of a sinuous tail.
The animal was beautiful… and Neil had absolutely no doubt that it was fully capable of slaughtering him.
The tiger shook itself, raindrops flying from its coat in a sparkling shower—then stared into the cavern.
The air around Neil went taut, pulled between the men with their arrows and the elegant beast in the rain-glittering night.
Across the cavern, Jignesh held his bow in wiry, weathered arms. His eyes flicked to Subhas, the question in them clear without speaking a word.
Should we shoot?
Constance saw it as well. Her face twisted with dismay at the idea of all that graceful strength falling into the mud in a mess of torn fur and blood.
Neil’s own sense of helplessness choked him—until it abruptly shattered.
Afraid of flames…
The solution burst across his mind like a blow to the head, as obvious as it was patently lunatic.
Neil fought the urge to burst into hysterics.
The tiger shifted, coiling with readiness. Subhas’s mouth drew down with worry and determination. Jignesh’s bowstring tightened.
Constance’s expression hollowed with grief.
“Don’t,” Neil burst out lowly, the word as fierce as a prayer.
Subhas shot him a furious glare.