I unlocked the opposite gate. The cat came up and rubbed its head on my hand. Its fur was surprisingly soft. I ventured a stroke of its coat, and to my amazement, it rolled onto its back in a submissive posture. From this angle I could tell the gender.
“I’m just going to leave you alone now, boy.”
I slipped out of the gate. The cat sat on his haunches, licking his chops and regarding me with curiosity. He must have been recently fed to behave so tamely. Maybe I was just plain lucky. I felt rather sorry for him all caged up like that. I passed the torch around the next chamber. My pity was short lived. The light of the torch revealed a circle of three more cats closing in on me.
I drew my knife and willed myself not to panic. Overhead, a rusty chain hung from a network of pipes running along the ceiling, probably used to hang meat to feed the animals. Since I found myself on the menu, I decided to take my chances with it.
The first cat to reach me, a massive orange one, crouched and sprang. I leapt up to grasp the chain and kicked the animal hard between the eyes. It roared and fell backward, body twisting to right itself. The others snarled and jumped, batting their paws at my legs, trying to reach the Cedric piñata. A claw raked down my calf, tearing open denim and skin. I yelped and pulled up my legs to shimmy out of harm’s way.
The pipes hanging below the ceiling ran through an opening high on the wall above the bars. Narrow—but I wasn’t so wide that I couldn’t squeeze through like a snake if I tried. Pulling myself upward, I straddled the pipes and inched along on my belly toward the conduit. Below, the tigers paced and growled in frustration.
The opening proved too tight to wedge my shoulders through. Pulling back, I assessed the situation. I drew the larger of the knives I carried and chipped at the mortar around the hole. Chunks came loose. Encouraged, I dug more, until the passage was wide enough to allow my torso.
A corridor continued fifty paces to a staircase carved into the stone. Dropping down, I trudged on to the steps and climbed. The smell of fresh air and the squawking of birds drifted to me. I pressed onward, heart pounding, thirsting for Raj’s blood. At the top, another barred gate led out into the central courtyard gardens.
I pressed my weight against the bars. The gate swung open easily. This one must have been oiled. I concealed myself in the thick shrubs growing along the path, creeping along until I crouched across from the passageway leading to the masters’ quarters. A wee figure hurried along with a bottle of spirits clutched in his hands, his face stained with tears. Naveen had obviously heard the news about Sandhya. She’d always been kind, knowing what disgusting things had been done to him. In his early days, he’d looked upon her as a mother figure, and she in turn tried to make his life in the household as bearable as possible.
I liked the serious little chap who was in fact old enough to be my great grandfather and hated to frighten him, but I couldn’t risk his shouting out. Reaching out, I clapped my hand round his mouth and dragged him, struggling, into the brush. “Naveen, don’t say anything. I need your help, please.” I released him, and he burst into silent sobs. I gathered him to me. “Hush…I know…I know.”
“I loved her so.”
“I’m going to kill Raj and avenge her.”
Naveen shook his head, wiping his swollen eyes. “He’s with the Exalted Father, surrounded by guards. You’ll never get close to him.”
I leaned back against the wall. Despair flooded my veins. The realization that my chance wouldn’t come that night robbed me of momentum. My legs and arms ached with fatigue. The wounds on my shoulder and leg had stopped bleeding but still throbbed. I crumpled into a heap on the ground.
Naveen tugged at my arm. “You must get away…into the jungle to hide. If I help you to run away, can I come with you? We’ll go to the rats. They hide in caves. You’ll need an interpreter. Your Bengali is awful.”
The plan might work if rats didn’t hate adepts so much, and Naveen’s small body would slow me down a lot. “I’m going to Calcutta and then all the way to America. You don’t have papers to travel.”
“Leave me in Calcutta with the rats there. I’ll manage. I can’t stay here another minute.”
His little face was so pitiful. I couldn’t leave him behind with these sick bastards. “Okay, you can go, but I’ll need my passport and some clothes.”
“Raj said you were locked in the dungeons.”
“I killed Beeshom and escaped. We don’t have much time. Raj is bound to call for him soon. You know where he put my things?”
“He took out the jewelry and sent it to Giulietta, but locked the passport up in the safe. He gave me the knapsack of clothes to get rid of. I hid it under my bed, just in case.”
“The combination is twenty-five, thirty-seven, twelve. I’ve watched him use it plenty of times. Good lad—go now—hurry.”
He sped off on bare feet. Minutes later he returned with my knapsack and a sack stuffed with his own meager belongings. I reached in and took out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “Right, it’s maybe five miles to the first village. Hopefully we can get a ride there to the city. I’ve still got my cobra ring and this dagger to sell or trade.”
Naveen held out his hand, stuffed with rupees. “I took all the cash Raj had on hand.”
Raj usually used plastic, so it wasn’t much, but perhaps enough to get us a ride to Calcutta where I could sell my things. “Good. Let’s go.” I started off.
Naveen tugged at my hand. “We can’t go out that way—too many dogs—I know another. There’s a passage under the garden that leads out into the jungle. The dogs use it to dump bones the tigers leave behind. Hurry, this way!”
He pulled me down a winding path to an ironbound door in the courtyard wall. I tried Beeshom’s keys until I found the proper one. We pushed out into the jungle. The air buzzed with biting things. City lad that I was, I slapped at mosquitoes and worried about snakes, knowing that due to our quicker metabolism, they’d kill us faster than any mortal. Naveen, on the other hand, marched down the path with confidence.
“This way—come along!”
I scanned the area. The sharp smell of cat filled my nostrils. “What about the tigers?”
“The electric fences keep them in, and the enclosure doesn’t reach around this side of the compound. You’ll see why.”
We came upon a clearing. The hillside dropped off sharply to a cliff with a vast open pit below. Moonlight revealed gnawed human bones and skulls in haphazard piles as far as the eye could see. It had never occurred to me how many human beings had fed our masters over the millennia. “Christ…how did you know about this place?”
“Beeshom took me out here and showed me where I’d end up if I told Raj he was using me.”
I was doubly glad I’d killed the bastard.
“The road is coming up soon,” Naveen said.
“We should stay off of it in case they come after us.”
A steep trail wound down the hillside through the trees, skirting the road. Could Naveen’s short legs manage it? I shouldn’t have worried. The mite was after all Immortyl and agile as a mountain goat. He skipped down the terrain like he was on an outing to the zoo. Evidently, he took to freedom. But the path ahead petrified me. I’d dealt with rats before. Adepts represented their oppressors. Even if we made it to Calcutta, they might well try to murder me
At the foot of the mountain lay the sleeping village. Broken down hovels passed for houses. We cast around for a vehicle, finding a rusty motorcycle parked out front of a more prosperous-looking dwelling that had a gas generator supplying electricity. I banged on the door. A wizened mortal came to the door. His eyes blinked at this redheaded westerner standing on his doorstep with an Indian child in the middle of the night. Did he know what went on in the compound on the mountainside or reckon that we came from there?
Naveen interpreted. He learned the mortal was headman of the village. I pulled the rupees from my pocket and held them up in front of the old man.
“Tell him we’ll buy
the bike and some petrol. How much does he want?”
Naveen told the man what we wanted. The elder scratched his grey-fringed dome and named a sum. My friend protested in a shrill voice and snatched half the rupees from me, pressing them into the bike owner’s hand. The old man relented and went to fetch the key and petrol.
I winced when I saw the can, but pushed the image out of my mind. The man filled the tank and pumped air into the tires. He motioned for me to get on.
I climbed astride the bike. I’d learned to ride a Vespa in London and figured it couldn’t be much different. “Hop up, Naveen.” He jumped onto the back and clung to my waist. I revved up the bike. It hiccupped to life. Not ideal, but it would have to do. We sped off in a spray of gravel, down the darkened road.
“I hope it holds together,” I shouted.
“It’s fantastic,” he cried. “Like flying!”
The heavy air felt much cooler as it whipped our faces. My hair came loose and blew out behind me.
Naveen protested, “Mind the hair!”
“Sorry mate!”
I kept looking over my shoulder, worrying they’d sent the dogs after me. The bike would be easy to pull off the road and hide until they passed. But no one pursued. Raj must have assumed Beeshom had subdued me. Perhaps Kalidasa occupied my former master, and he’d had no reason to call for the dog. But I kept my senses sharp, just in case.
* * * *
We rode on for some hours. At the outskirts of the city, I slowed to a stop. We looked down the road ahead. “Any idea where they might be?”
“Probably in the worst part of town,” Naveen answered. “I suppose they’ll find us.”
“Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
We pushed on into the city, through the slow crawl of vehicles and people. Naveen made some inquiries. A teenaged boy selling fruit from an unraveling basket pointed the way. My wee friend jumped up onto the bike again, and we pressed on. Streets narrowed. Buildings became more dilapidated. Swarms of mortals surrounded us. The bike coughed and then died. We abandoned it and set out on foot.
We found ourselves in a place where men crowded around alleyways between rows of dwellings stacked like so many makeshift crates atop one another. Girls and women wearing seedy costumes lounged outside. Smells of liquor, hashish, curry, and bodily fluids permeated the air. We’d stumbled into the city’s red-light district.
A girl, no more than fifteen, rubbed up against me and took my arm. Her velvet brown eyes ripped at my heart. They were so like my Sandhya’s.
“Get off,” I told her.
“Pretty boy go upstairs?”
I pushed her away. “Not interested.”
She looked at Naveen. A smirk came over her face. “Wrong street.” The girl screeched something in Bengali. Naveen shook his head, laughing.
“What did she say?”
“She called you an English pansy.”
Despite all that happened, I had to smile. “English? Now that’s uncalled for.”
We pushed through the drunken, sweating mass to a less populated area. The buildings were boarded up and crumbling. They looked promising. My fingers grasped my knife. Now we took care with our footsteps and listened for the rats. A scent drifted to me. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end.
Silvery voices whispered on the wind. Bare feet brushed the road. Instinct told me to freeze, just like with the tiger. Show no fear. Immortyls fanned out all around us, still concealed in the shadows.
“You can come out,” I said. “We aren’t going to bite.” Naveen repeated my words in Bengali.
One by one, stick figures of boys slipped into the moonlight. The tallest stood about Avijit’s size and looked about my age. He stepped forward. “What do you want here?”
“We’ve run away from Kalidasa’s court.”
The leader pointed out the henna marks around my neck and hands to his comrades. Then he spit at my feet. “We want nothing to do with your kind, adept.”
I placed my hand on Naveen’s shoulder. “My friend here is looking for shelter. I’ll be moving on.”
“How do I know you aren’t going to tell them where we are?”
“I’m on my way to America, to Kurt in New York.”
“He has no need for your kind either.”
I stripped off my cobra ring and held it out to him. “I don’t want trouble. Here, take this.”
He sneered at me. “I can’t be bought with shiny baubles like you.”
Now I was getting a wee bit impatient. “Fine, don’t take it. Just point me to someone who will buy it, and I’ll be on my way.”
Naveen snarled out something in Bengali to the leader. The others laughed. The leader cursed.
I leaned over to my friend. “What did you say?”
“I said, I remembered when he failed adept training, and his master cast him out into the streets.” Naveen shouted at him again. This time they all fell silent. “I told them you killed a dog to rescue me.” I held out the ring to Naveen. He yelled something else and pressed it in the leader’s hand. “I told him you’re one of us, and he’s bound to help a brother in need.”
The leader spit on the ground again, but nodded in assent. I kneeled down to embrace Naveen’s bird-boned body. “Be careful now. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”
“You too.”
Naveen barked something else to the leader, who called to one of his little soldiers. This small one beckoned for me to follow. Naveen’s stretching of the truth bought me not only safe passage, but also a guide to a buyer of precious goods of dubious origin. I was able to sell my dagger for enough money for a disguise and a plane ticket.
I hailed a taxi and told the driver to take me to the airport. We sat in traffic, inching our way along. Nothing ever seemed to move fast in this city, even at the late hour. When we finally reached the terminal, I paid the driver and shouldered my knapsack, pushing through the doors.
Passengers waited, dozing, some reading magazines or books. I searched for an airline with the earliest possible flight to New York. After purchasing my ticket, I bought some food from a stall and stuffed myself. I gathered the coat I’d bought on the street close to me and pulled the cap over my eyes, huddling in a corner seat, watching, terrified that I’d been missed and Raj would come after me again. At last the boarding call sounded.
I brushed by the mortals, glad I’d fed well on Beeshom, and found my seat next to an old woman wearing a traditional sari. She nodded. I put my hands into a steeple and bowed, out of habit. “Namaste.”
A smile came over her. I didn’t feel up to returning it and threw myself into my seat. The grey head turned to look out of the window. How was I going to make it twenty-one hours without breaking down? I closed my eyes. All I could see was the horror of Sandhya’s last minutes. The flight crew went through the usual routines. The woman nattered on about going home to New Jersey after visiting her sister in Calcutta for a nephew’s wedding, but I barely heard a word. Engines whined, blotting out her voice and the screams in my head.
I sat there, clutching the arms of my seat. The old lady patted my hand. “Are you nervous?” she asked. I shook my head and she went on, “I always get a little nervous on take-off. It does not seem possible that this big thing can get off the ground.” She tossed off a little giggle. The plane taxied down the runway. I turned my face away from the window. No fond farewells for me. The engines wound into a roar. My seatmate settled back into the upholstery. “Here we go,” she said.
The metal bird hurtled forward and then in a stomach dropping moment, lifted into the air and began climbing into the sky. The woman next to me sighed. “Ah…it looks so pretty up here. Look—look!”
I turned toward the window. The plane banked. The smear of light below was the last I wanted to see of India. All that was beautiful and precious of her had died for me. As soon as I could, I reclined my seat and drew a blanket over my face, so that no one would see tears, but I couldn’t hide my sorrow fr
om the old woman.
She didn’t say anything for a while, but once my shaking subsided, she laid a wrinkled brown hand on my arm. “A young man does not cry like this unless something very bad has happened.” She didn’t ask any questions. Her bony fingers just wrapped around mine and hung on tight. If she only knew the things I had done, she wouldn’t have done so. But she kept on squeezing with surprising strength for an aged mortal.
“I lost someone I loved,” I said.
“Ah…” she said, nodding.
“Murdered…”
“Terrible…I am very sorry for you. You are not American?”
“No.”
“Then you are not going home?”
“No home to go to.”
She released my hand and patted my arm again. “I see.” And that was all she said for a very long time.
I didn’t sleep even though I was near exhaustion. With the horror of Sandhya’s death ingrained in my mind, I feared I’d never sleep again. The old woman snored through the various offerings of beverages and snacks. Beeshom’s blood and the junk food I’d ingested sustained me. Every time the hostesses came by, I shook my head and turned away. Their velvety eyes just reminded me of Sandhya’s.
Night turned into day and then into night again. The jet wafted downward through the cloud cover, over a glittering sea of light. A chime alerted the passengers to make their seats upright. The old woman sat alert, craning her neck to see the sights out of the window. “Look! Look, there she is! The Goddess of Liberty. Come, you must see her.”
I humored the woman and leaned over her to look out the window. From my angle, all I could see was blackness.
The crone took my hand again. “She holds her beacon to light the way to freedom. Isn’t she beautiful? So majestic.”
Then the plane banked and Liberty came into view, ghostly green amidst the dark water. Others may have seen her as a beacon of hope, but I was far too jaded to dare. I sat there gazing on the Goddess’ face, not like countless others who had come seeking peace and prosperity. To my eyes, she held not a torch lighting the way to freedom, but a sword of vengeance. I wouldn’t rest until each and every one of those who had caused my pain felt its edge.
My Fearful Symmetry Page 28