Chapter 39
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Thirty-Nine
Dizzy with shock and horror from within the circle of Adam’s arms, Ellie watched Jacobs walk away.
Singh Rao was the first to recover. The subedar whipped his sidearm from its holster as he rose to his feet. “Halt!”
His men followed his lead, scrambling upright and leveling their rifles.
Jacobs paused, glancing back at them over his shoulder.
The terrible wound showed through the tear in his shirt. He showed no fear as he stared at the weapons ranged against him—only a cold, unflinching contempt. “I could have killed all of you. I won’t say I didn’t consider it.”
He turned away and kept walking.
Singh Rao’s expression flickered with uncertainty—and then firmed. He stepped forward, the pistol steady. “You will need to come with me.”
Jacobs didn’t stop.
The subedar’s lips thinned with frustration, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Wild instinct pushed Ellie free of Adam’s arms. Her wounded calf made a hot protest as she stumbled toward them.
A plea burst from her mouth. “Don’t shoot!”
Jacobs hesitated at the foot of the stairs—where Singh Rao clearly intended to stop him, whatever that required.
The Sikh officer kept his eyes on Jacobs as he responded to her. “Why?”
The question echoed through Ellie’s mind. Why indeed?
Jacobs was a ruthless, vicious killer. He had tried to throttle her only a few hours before. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was leaving now to go hunt down and slaughter a peer of the realm—one that Ellie felt uncomfortably certain was also a murderer.
Jacobs was dangerous. He would always be dangerous… and he had more or less promised to kill both her and Adam the next chance he got.
The idea of seeing him shot down like a rabid dog still filled her with horror.
Singh Rao waited for her answer with an air of exasperated impatience. The subedar simply wanted to do his job—which obviously included not allowing the man who had just obliterated his commanding officer to walk away.
Adam stared at Ellie with worried surprise. Constance’s eyes were wide as she stepped out from the shelter of the temple, Neil at her back.
Ellie had no idea what to say—except that no one deserved to be gunned down like that, not even a killer.
And that she was oddly, uncomfortably certain that her and Adam’s story with Jacobs didn’t end here.
Singh Rao wouldn’t accept either of those explanations.
This could not go well for Ellie and her companions, either.
They had been caught red-handed trying to interfere with an official government expedition.
That very likely qualified as treason. At the least, a man like Singh Rao would feel obligated to put all four of them under arrest and return them to the colonial authorities in Madras.
Where the Order of Albion was sure to have far more influence than a bunch of disreputable scholars.
They were outgunned and trapped in a hole in the ground. Ellie was consumed by the awareness that they were completely and utterly at Singh Rao’s mercy.
He was still waiting for her to speak. So was Jacobs, balanced on the threshold of the stairs.
Ellie had no idea what she could possibly say to either of them.
She opened her mouth to try anyway—and was interrupted by the clatter of arms from above.
Singh Rao jerked his head up… where the circular mouth of the sinkhole was framed by the crouched, ready figures of the Adrija.
Bows and muskets fixed on the soldiers below.
Instinct snapped Ellie’s eyes back to the ground—just in time to meet Jacobs’ gaze across the meadow.
Dark amusement flickered through his expression… along with a hint of unpleasant promise.
He darted into the passage.
Singh Rao whirled at the movement, barking out an order—and then froze at the crack of a shot from above, dirt exploding from the ground beside his boots.
Subhas Kōnja stood at the edge of the drop, smoke curling from the antique Enfield in his hands.
The army detachment had greater numbers and better weaponry.
They would solidly outgun the Adrija in a fair fight—but Subhas’s men had the clear advantage in position.
Singh Rao had no cover save the temple, where his soldiers would be trapped.
They could only escape the sinkhole one at a time through the narrow stairwell.
No matter how the conflict played out, people were going to die.
Singh Rao was quietly calculating. Subhas’s white shirt glowed like a banner as golden sunlight burst from beneath the clouds, his men arrayed around him with dangerous anticipation.
Helplessness twisted through Ellie as she realized how little she could do to stop what was about to happen.
Bare-chested, filthy, and weaponless, Adam stepped into the middle of the field.
Several of the sepoys shifted their rifles to aim at the new threat. Overhead, the Adrija shot questioning looks at their leader.
Adam ignored them, focused on the elegant Sikh officer who stood before him. “You don’t want to do this.”
Singh Rao’s jaw tensed. “My last orders were to take you prisoner.”
“Can’t do that if I’m dead,” Adam pointed out helpfully.
Ellie’s gut lurched into her throat.
He was insane—her Adam Bates.
And he was glorious.
Adam looked up at Subhas, squinting against the light. “Did you come all the way back here just to rescue us?”
Subhas’s relaxed posture still carried a whiff of danger. “Maybe. Or maybe I wanted to make sure that the Indian Army isn’t going after my village.”
“He’s not interested in doing that.” Adam glanced over at the subedar. “Are you?”
The sepoys watched the exchange, sensing the tension in it even though they didn’t speak the language.
Singh Rao’s hands tightened on his pistol. Frustration seethed off of him. Ellie could almost sympathize. The man was trying to do his job—one that he took very seriously—and nothing about this had gone remotely the way he had expected.
The officer met Adam’s gaze as he bit out an answer. “That would not be part of my duties, in the absence of an official order… or clear evidence of revolutionary activity.”
“Hey, Ellie,” Adam called over casually. “You see any revolutionary activity here?”
The question was audacious. Adam delivered it with an air of complete, unflinching confidence.
Ellie’s heart burst with pride.
“None at all,” she replied with a perfectly straight face as a ring of arrows pointed down from above.
Singh Rao muttered a prayer under his breath in strained tones of exasperation—then waved his hand.
With an uneven, tentative series of clicks, his men lowered their weapons.
Adam turned to Subhas, waiting.
“Ittadu,” Subhas ordered, and the Adrija relaxed.
Vanika popped into view at her cousin’s side, beaming with smug triumph. “I told you that I would free them!” she called down.
Adam’s lip tugged with the urge to smile. “And I thought I said to keep safe.”
Vanika rolled her eyes. “Why do you think I did not come to the edge while you were all trying to shoot each other?”
A new voice cut in, distinctly cultured and ringing with mischief. “Tell me that I haven’t missed all the fun!”
Constance darted out to join Adam under the opening of the sinkhole. “Uncle Vijay?!”
Her royal relative strode into view, beaming down at her. Vijay was a sight. He wore an elegant white sherwani with a gold-embroidered purple sash around his waist, his head wrapped in a turban secured with a jeweled pin. A curved sword hung from his belt alongside a wicked-looking dagger.
“There you are, you mad thing!” he exclaimed happily.
“What on earth are you doing here?” Constance demanded.
“Looking for you, of course,” Vijay returned.
“But how could you possibly have found us?” she pushed back.
“I just followed the dog.”
“The dog?” Ellie echoed with a lurch of surprise.
Kalb skidded to a stop at the edge of the drop, his tail wagging furiously.
“He found me in the forest and insisted on leading me back here.” Vijay gave the happily panting animal a rub on his head.
Adam tossed Ellie a smirk. “Told you he was lucky.”
Kalb replied with a happy bark.
Singh Rao studied the glittering figure of Constance’s uncle. “You’re the lord of Nandapur.”
“Heard of me, have you?” Vijay’s words were deceptively light.
“My commanding officer might have mentioned you,” Singh Rao returned dryly.
Vijay’s eyes twinkled with dark amusement. “Did he? And where is your colonel now?”
Ellie instinctively looked to a pile of pale ash in a charred circle of grass.
“No idea,” Adam replied with a suspiciously straight face.
Understanding flickered through Vijay’s expression. He seemed to grow taller, wrapping an air of glittering authority around himself like a well-tailored coat. “But why such stiff faces? After all, we are here for the same reason.”
“And what reason is that?” Singh Rao demanded skeptically.
Vijay’s expression was uncharacteristically serious. “The good of India.”
“I think we might have different notions of what that means,” Singh Rao returned.
“I disagree,” Vijay countered, his eyes glittering significantly. “We may have looked for it in unlike places—but I doubt that what we ultimately seek is all that far apart, Subedar.”
Singh Rao’s face softened as the maharaja’s words struck him.
Vijay’s posture relaxed as he returned to his usual bright insouciance. “But that’s all beside the point. We’re just travelers bumping into each other by pure fortune—my niece and her friends, Mr. Kōnja and his companions, and me with a modest little personal guard.”
“Personal guard?” Singh Rao echoed tiredly.
Vijay’s features schooled into an expression of sober innocence. “One really can’t be too careful these days.”
A bizarrely unexpected sound trumpeted through the cliffs.
Neil’s face drained. “Why did that sound like an elephant?”
“Because it was an elephant,” Vijay replied with a blinding white grin. “How else do you think we got here?”
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