*
Jaki and Kota suffered, strapped to wagon wheels in the plaza before the palace and tilted on posts to face the sun. Kota called words of encouragement to the sorcerer, but Jaki drifted, only half conscious and did not respond. Soon the heat silenced Kota, and the thought of death shut him behind his glared eyes.
When Jaki came to, the sun had climbed down the sky, and he shivered. Kota called for him, and he turned his head but could not find his companion. Nausea pulled his eyes shut, and he nearly tore himself apart in a fit of vomiting.
The seizure spun him into a trance, and he thought he beheld Pieter Gefjon's broad body gliding toward him among blue shafts of fire. He came straight for him, hatless yet dressed in ruff and knee breeches. Vibrations of strength ushered about him like heat waves.
Jaki fought the great weariness of the poison to reach for him, and the thongs binding his wrists gnashed flesh. "Father!" he called, and the effort broke the vision. He confronted William Quarles standing before him in the gloaming.
"Father?" Quarles echoed, derisively. "You think I am your father because my daughter has taken you for her demon lover?" He spat and stepped closer to gaze more keenly into the face of the creature that had ruined his life. His hands lusted to attack his throat and squeeze the life from him. He restrained himself. He wanted to see this face alive, to remember it clearly so he would know it when he met it again in the face of his grandchild. He put his hands to the sides of the pirate's face and peered into those blackly dilated eyes. "You are going to die. You shall be blessed when I am done with you, for you will be dead — while I must live in the corruption you have made of my life. And so I am killing you slowly, that you may taste some of the suffering you inflicted on me."
From under his doublet, he removed the Bible cover that he had carried since Selangor and held it before the pirate's eyes. "You remember this. Your father's tree is here." Quarles smiled coldly to see the recognition in the monster's eyes. "Yes, you do remember. You recall what is inscribed here. You must then know that I am the lion of your final moment, Jaki Gefjon. I guard my name, my honor, as hotly as any good man. Only death, and death alone, can guard the treasure of my reputation. And that is why I have chased you across the earth, plunderer."
Jaki‘s breath jumped from him in a grunt, and Quarles pushed the Bible cover against the pirate's face with such force that the lad's skull hit the spoke behind him hard, and he passed out.
Quarles spat again and tucked the Bible's cover under his doublet.
Hanging beside Jaki, Kota watched, and his blood moldered at the hate in Quarles' face. He shut his eyes softly and from far back in his mind began a death chant.
*
Deep in Mandu, within the maze of cobbled streets and gaunt stone houses of the city's most populous quarter, Dhup meandered. He decided that Mandu ended this leg of his journey. To continue any farther with Jaki and his party would take him south into the Deccan, away from the great plains of the north, the palm of the Buddha.
As he moved through the streets, happy with his decision, he noticed someone sinister followed. A black-robed figure with a veiled face drew closer, and the monk stepped up his pace. He hurried along terraced avenues that led away from the palace. In the merchants' quarter, among frantic mongers, Dhup tripped over a vendor's stool, slammed into a rickety stand piled too high with winter melons, and ducked under a wagon to escape the avalanche of fruit. He scurried on his belly beneath packed carts in the jammed market square, startling monkeys and doves, and tumbled into the street amidst the bustling crowd.
Dhup, certain that the Subahdar had ordered him followed, made inquiries in the marketplace. Immediately he learned that the crucified men had not rebelled against the Moghul Shah Jahan, as the Subahdar had claimed. They had defied the pretenders, Prince Dawar Bakhsh and Shahryar. Dhup assumed Hadi had lied to deceive the foreign travelers, and the monk decided he must return to the palace.
Karma accompanied him. His previous actions scattered consequences across the path of his intent. Supporters of the new Moghul, determined to oust the rebellious prince, had watched the monk inquire about their dead comrades. When they learned that he had arrived with the Subahdar, a renowned advocate of the prince, they had marked him as a spy for their enemies. They leaped at him from out of the alleys in the lane beside the palace, and he collapsed before them like windblown paper. The rebels and monk crashed into the shanty of a tapestry stall and a weaver bent over his loom. Tumbling bodies toppled a cane stand supporting the weaver's oil lamp, and spilled oil flashed into flame across a pile of raffia. Instantly, fire sheeted into overhanging tapestries with the jubilant sigh of a loosed genie.
The screaming merchant struck at the rebels with his cording comb, and Dhup kicked over burning raffia baskets, as if to smother the flames. Instead he scattered them in a fuming arc. Within minutes the brisk mountain winds had quickened the fire to a conflagration.
Across Mandu, the partisans who had been waiting for Shah Jahan's army to sweep into the city and depose the unfaithful prince mistook the firestorm for the beginning of that assault. Green fireworks splashed in the night, the signal to the Moghul's supporters to rise up and bring down the evil prince. Across the sprawling city, insurgents stoned soldiers on battlements, strangled gatekeepers and shot arrows at the palace guard. Orchestrated mobs swarmed armories in every quarter and distributed matchlocks to the partisans who knew how to shoot. Brandishing the weapons, the partisans rallied the mob to storm the palace. At the court, Shah Jahan's agents exploded the prince's arsenal, and the blast collapsed battlements along the north wall and rocked the granite pedestals of the building.
The spasm of earthquake shook Lucinda loose from her torpor. She rose and drifted through a drizzle of crushed sandstone to the veiled doorway of her chamber. Screams resounded from farther down the corridor, and gongs and shouts of alarm folded through each other across the palace. She stuck her head out, expecting to face the guard posted at her door. The corridor stood empty.
Lucinda stepped across the marble hall to Maud's chamber as more explosions boomed from inside the palace. Bellowed orders and the clangor of steel resounded amidst the dull rumbling of caving walls.
"Come away," Lucinda called. "We must escape."
"Escape?" Maud pulled on her leather slippers and scampered to the door. She looked down the empty corridor. "Which way shall we go?"
Lucinda took Maud's arm and they headed away from the commotion into the garden. Beyond the first lotus doorway, they found their guard lying on his back, his blouse black with blood from his slashed throat. Maud stifled a scream, and Lucinda crouched over the dead man and unsheathed his curved dagger.
"That is where we entered," she whispered, pointing the blade at a dark portal beyond the persimmon tree. They paused in the doorway, listening to the screams and the cracking of musketfire. Lucinda edged into the blackness, feeling along the wall until she caught the gray shine of night in the shape of an oval window. Through it she could see black-robed figures flitting across the plaza, sprinting to the stairs that mounted to the palace. The battle clashed in the front chamber just below where they stood.
"Lucinda," Maud whimpered, and pointed to the far end of the plaza — at Jaki and Kota bound to torture wheels.
Lucinda turned back into the darkness, toward the sound of the clashing swords behind them. A curved stairway dropped deeper into the gloom at their feet, and they hurried down toward the reception garden where they had been taken prisoner. Warriors whirled like shadows among potted trees, scimitars flashing in the dark. Three guards lay dead on the steps of the gazebo. Gunfire flared from balcony rooms, and in the glare they spotted the open bronze doors that led to the portico above the plaza.
Lucinda squeezed Maud's hand reassuringly, and whispered, "Stay with me." Then she bolted. At the open doors, they slowed to step over fallen bodies. A panel shattered beside their heads, and the explosion sent them flying down the broad steps toward the torchlit plaz
a. Flames lapped from palace rooms and red shadows scuttered through the plaza. Saddled, riderless horses galloped in a panic across the courtyard, and musketfire flashed from garrets. Everywhere musketballs and arrows swatted men to the ground, many trampled under hoof, their cries stabbing from the clamor.
When the women finally reached the captives, Kota glared, alert, and he grunted with surprise at the sight of Maud clawing at the knot beside his wrist. Jaki stirred, awake yet stupefied. A screaming man careened past like a wraith and was gone. Bitter smoke tumbled around them in a windshift, and Lucinda bent over her dagger and began sawing at the leather binding Jaki's ankle.
Maud cried out and grabbed Lucinda by her shoulder. She glanced up at the riot of beasts and men. From the midst of the mêlée strode William Quarles, cutlass in hand.
*
From his window, Quarles had seen the first swarm of rioters ascend the stairs to the tree-flanked boulevard of the palace. Immediately, he had recognized the coordination of the attack and expected internal subversion. He had snatched his saber and charged from the room to get his daughter. By the time he had reached Lucinda's chamber, she had crossed the plaza.
Now she lunged upright at the sight of him. He advanced on her, shouting. "Lucinda! Put the knife aside!"
She stood hard, breathing fast through her mouth. Her knife jerked before the thundering command of her father, and she did not relent. She braced herself, face bent with wrath, and raised her dagger.
Dhup witnessed this as he ascended the last of the terrace steps and staggered onto the chaotic boulevard. He had been carried east with the rioters to the palace steps, and he acted at once to avert murder. The monk weaved among the wandering animals and came up behind Quarles, a sash from his robe looped in his hand. Shrieking, he pounced on the Englishman's back, snagged his knife hand with the sash, and jerked it behind him.
Quarles clawed at his back with his free hand, and Dhup hooked that, too, in the sash, pulling it tight about Quarles' wrists and dropping him to his knees. The monk unclasped a cloth belt from under his robe and swiftly lashed together Quarles' ankles.
*
Lucinda stepped back in amazement before her bellowing father. While Dhup grabbed for the reins of riderless horses prancing aimlessly on the boulevard, Lucinda cut loose Kota, and he helped her unbind Jaki. Together they secured him belly down on a horse's saddle and mounted the other horses Dhup had steadied. Dhup trotted to the lead, holding the reins of Jaki's horse. Lucinda turned in her saddle and looked back at her father, her face triumphant but not gloating. Quarles' enraged screams pursued them to the south gates at the end of the boulevard. The captain fell abruptly silent along with the rest of the rioters when the gates lurched open and Shah Jahan's army appeared nowhere in sight.
Horses budged through the confused crowd and into the night. They followed the road by which they had come the day before, descending with the trail into deeper darkness. When Mandu dwindled to a slim glow in the sky behind them, they paused and unstrapped Jaki. He lay stunned, yet cogent enough to recognize the valley they had traversed the night before. He pulled Kota close and instructed him to retrieve Wyvern and the diamonds at the pyramid marker in the willow flats.
"We have lost everything because I did not heed you." Lucinda wept, stroking the hair from Jaki's eyes and leaning her forehead against his temple. "Do not die, true child."
"He will not die," Dhup promised. "I feel the breath in his breath."
"Lah." Kota stepped from the darkness and handed the folded Wyvern to Jaki.
With bruised hands, he opened it to expose the diamond chunks. "Mountains' tears," he muttered in a smoky voice, and offered them to Lucinda.
She accepted the diamonds with wet eyes. "Yes, these belong to us now." She clutched Wyvern and the diamonds to her heart. "These tears are shed for us."
*
Rain met them in the pass through the mountains, and they sheltered under granite eaves with the horses. The next morning they found their way to a sunny meadow where their steeds grazed and Maud and Dhup gathered vegetables and stream water for soup. Dhup found a hive; Kota smoked it, and they ate honeycombs and dandelion soup. They bathed in the stream and dried themselves in the warm grass.
Food revived Jaki, and Lucinda sat with him, fretting like a mother. She cradled his head in her arms, trying to let go of the fright of their escape.
"You saw the truth all along," she said, needing to atone for her misplaced trust in the Subahdar. "You predicted our grief, though I would not listen. Only when I lost you, true child — only then did I recognize my greed."
"You are not to blame." Jaki said. "All would be well if your father would let us be."
"I was too like him in my willfulness. He thinks me mad! I believe he would rather kill me than leave me with you."
"He will never again harm you," Jaki vowed.
"From hence, we strive together, always." She pressed her face to his chest. "I will heed your subtle senses."
"And I your reason." He smiled and touched her frown. "Our first wedding was in water. Now we have been married in fire. And though that fire consumed all we earned on our trek, that price is small."
"You have your diamonds," she said, "and I have these." From her dress pocket, she produced a wad of paper bills. "The flying money. Father never knew I had it."
"Diamonds and money." Jaki laughed, opening his arms to the wild peaks. "And a whole world to spend them in!"
*
They resumed their flight from Mandu refreshed, exhilarated to be alive. Spurred by fear of pursuers, they traveled quickly and did not stop again until they made camp late that afternoon on a high pasture overlooking a broad, slow river.
"The Narbada," Dhup said. He squatted on a sedgy hillock a thousand feet above the dense forest of the riverbank. Behind him, the horses browsed, Lucinda and Maud foraged edible grasses, and Kota built a fire. Jaki sat nearby wrapped in a horse blanket. The scene flushed him with communal warmth he had not felt since his days aboard Silenos. "Tomorrow we will part there." Dhup cracked two wild walnuts together in his palm and threw the shells over the edge. "You will follow the river to your destiny. It is a holy river, second only to the sacred Ganges. You will see many shrines and pilgrims, and they will help if you need them. The Narbada flows west and empties into the sea two hundred and more miles from here."
"And you?" Jaki asked, accepting two wings of walnut meat.
Dhup nodded solemnly. "I must return to Mandu. I participated in setting the city afire. I must see what I can do to ease that suffering."
Jaki nodded, though he did not understand. "Who are you — really?"
Dhup's smile drew tight over his crooked teeth. "I am what you see: a monk who minds the noble truths."
Jaki scrutinized the bald, bronze-skinned man beside him. Nothing extraordinary offered itself. The thin limbed monk looked barely strong enough to take care of himself. "In Mandu you saved our lives. How did you know that we —"
Dhup interrupted with a little wave. "You were in my care. You have been in my care since Burma."
"Then, in the jungle river when I dove in to save you from drowning …"
"I was not drowning, only offering you a chance to drown."
Jaki's eyebrows flinched. "Why?"
"So you would not drown."
Jaki's perplexed squint relented. “You gave me a chance to save myself.” He huffed a laugh and took the monk's hand. "How can we repay you?"
Dhup's smile showed his jammed teeth. "Do secret good."
*
On the switchback trail down into the river gorge, a woman's corpse lay in the middle of the road. As the horses approached, crows swirled from the dead woman and sailed into the shadows of a cinnamon grove. The woman stared with empty sockets at the riders, her stiff arms outstretched beseechingly in the dirt. Shriveled flesh clung to her bones like seaweed. Dhup immediately dismounted and left his reins to trail while he knelt beside the corpse and began chanting.
Kota believed the corpse a grim portent. He would not eat the tuber Jaki found while digging the grave, and then, irritable from hunger, he sulked when no one would heed his pleas to return to the meadows and search out another path down to the river. Dhup wagged a finger at him. "The world is a corpse. There is no getting around it."
Late in the afternoon, with the sun a fiery crown in the trees, they reached the river. Powder-blue cranes stalked among water lettuce on spidery legs, and farther out in the brown current white plovers glinted. Reed and mud shanties littered a rocky spit a half mile away. Their cooking fires smudged the wind. Kota, his stomach brambly with hunger, spurred his steed to a gallop, and the others followed with laughing shouts.
The villagers marveled at their blond visitors, and the travelers slept that night on reed pallets in the best hut. In the hour before the sun rose, they convened with the village leaders and bargained their way onto the river. In exchange for the five horses, the fishing village gave their largest raft — a square, thatch-roofed float of vine-lashed timber and bamboo — and agreed to stock it with a basketful of green mangoes, three sacks of rice, and twine and hooks for fishing.
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