by Maggie Hall
I got ready to say my thank-yous and good nights. Besides the fact that Jack and I had somewhere to be, I actually liked Dev—I’d want to be friends with him. But I didn’t want to marry him, and because I did like him, I didn’t want to lead him on more than I already had just by being here.
But before I could excuse myself, Mr. Rajesh stood up and clapped his hands. “Now it is time for the party.”
I set down my cup with the last dregs of chai. “Party?”
“Dinner’s only the beginning.” Dev offered a hand, which I took tentatively.
“I didn’t realize.” I met Lydia’s eyes, and my father’s. Neither seemed surprised by the party news. Jack, however, met my eyes briefly and frowned.
Everyone rose from the table, chatting, and I glanced at my watch. “Can you tell me where the restroom is?” I asked Indra Rajesh quietly, and she called a servant to walk me down the hall.
I locked the door and pulled my phone from my little beaded clutch. We’ll be later than we thought, I texted, and adjusted the jeweled hairpiece over my forehead before the servant girl escorted me back out to the dining room, which had cleared out except for Dev.
“We’re to make a grand entrance,” he said, and with no other choice, I took his arm once more.
• • •
I should have known there would be a ballroom in the Rajesh home. Two men in white opened the tall, carved doors, and a hush fell over the room as Dev and I walked inside.
I stopped still. There were hundreds of people here under a ceiling dripping with jewels and flowers. From the bottom of the steps, Arjun Rajesh raised his arms, a distinctively Indian dance beat came from the speakers, and a cheer swelled from the crowd, so loud it reverberated from my chest down through my toes.
“Are they all Circle?” I asked Dev over the commotion.
“At least distantly,” he yelled. “They all want to see you.” He laughed as a dozen men ran up the stairs and, without so much as a hint of warning, swept me and Dev onto their shoulders. Dev grinned, and I yelped and held up my precariously pinned sari as the men bounced us into the crowd.
We were moving so fast, I could only catch flashes of the beaming faces staring up at me, but I could tell their expressions were magnified versions of what Mr. and Mrs. Rajesh’s had been all night. This shining, open look of . . . what? Admiration? Yes, but that wasn’t all. Optimism. Trust.
Hope.
I’d known what I was signing up for when I agreed to my father’s plan. But it was only there, on the shoulders of two men I didn’t know, being twirled to the rhythm of a Bollywood dance track, confetti being thrown at me from every side, catching like snowflakes in my hair, that I realized what I was really doing. I’d been viewing it as politics. But until this moment, I hadn’t realized that I’d also agreed to be the symbol of the hopes and dreams of the most powerful people in the world.
Women surrounded us, wearing every color I could imagine, gleaming with strings of sequins and waving white scarves around their heads. When the men finally set Dev and me down, I clung to his arm, dizzy, and the women draped garlands of white, yellow, and orange marigolds around our necks until the pile threatened to suffocate me.
Dev took my hand, spinning me into the center of the dance floor again before I had a chance to catch my breath. The music and laughter pulled me in, and, even though I knew I could never really be what they wanted, right now there was no way I could do anything but go along with it. Soon, I was laughing too, and I dragged Lydia into a dance with me. Even Cole wasn’t scowling.
After a time, though, my feet ached from dancing and my cheeks from smiling, both real smiles and the ones I knew I should give. I was nearly too tired to stand, anyway, and Jack and I had somewhere to be, so I caught Lydia’s eye and ran my pinky across my eyebrow.
She nodded, and minutes later, my father was next to me, thanking Dev and his parents for the evening, begging off the rest of the party because of jet lag.
They looked disappointed—it was still early—but Dev kissed my hand, I smiled and waved from the top of the steps, and we finally emerged into the quiet of the hallway.
My father walked me back to my room. The silk of my sari swishing was the only sound in the residential wing of the mansion, but my head still echoed with the drums and flutes and cheers of the ballroom. I pulled off the top few flower garlands until my shoulders felt lighter.
My father cleared his throat. I hadn’t spoken with him much since dinner last night, and even though Lydia seemed to accept and even understand my grudging compliance with their terms, I wasn’t sure he did. I was expecting a lecture on following the customs of these families, and how I couldn’t just leave when I was tired, so I was surprised when he said, “You’re doing a good job.”
I looked up. My father was wearing a tunic similar to Mr. Rajesh’s, and it was charmingly askew after a night of dancing.
“I know this isn’t easy for you,” he said. “Your mother—Claire always hated Circle politics.”
Claire. I kept forgetting that Carol wasn’t my mother’s real name. Neither was West. She must have made both up after she found out she was pregnant with me and ran away from the Circle.
My father—I still couldn’t think of him as Dad, a word that conjured up images of plaid shirts and summer barbecues—must have taken my silence as agreement, because he said, “It means a lot to us, and to the Circle, that you’re willing to work with us on this. They adored you tonight.”
Guilt flashed through me again. I wasn’t cooperating quite as much as he thought.
A heavy velvet curtain led to the hall of bedrooms, and my father held it aside for me to walk through. “I’m not sure if it would help you to know this, but what you’re doing here—being courted by these young men and their families—is very traditional. All our marriages are arranged.”
I studied my hands, covered in bracelets and rings, delicate chains connecting them. “Lydia told me.”
I felt my father watching me. “You can learn to love someone.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “So you and my mother—”
“Could never have had a future.” It was gentle, but final. “Now it’s obvious. But we were young then. Idealistic.”
We passed beneath a gilded archway, where two lanterns flickered against the gold-threaded tapestries on the walls. Yes, tonight had been fine—more than fine—and all the dinners and parties and traveling to come might be fun in their own way. And I was glad I could help my family—it made me feel like I was actually one of them, for however long it lasted. But how was any of this different from that almost-wedding to Luc Dauphin? Different families, different countries, different cages.
At least the door to this cage was still propped open.
“Have your people made any headway with the clues or my mom?” I asked, my voice squeaking. My throat was parched and raw from talking over the music all night.
My father shook his head. “We’re working on it.”
We stopped at an ornately carved door off the long tile hallway. Overhead, a ceiling fan spun lazily, stirring my curls.
“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” my father said. “We have a farewell tea with the Rajesh family at ten, and we leave for Germany at noon.”
“I’ll be ready,” I said. There was an awkward pause where I thought he might hug me, but he just patted me on the shoulder and headed back down the hall.
I pushed into the bedroom and slumped against the door. Alone in the dark, I wanted nothing more than to curl up and close my eyes and decompress.
I didn’t have time to rest, though. We were supposed to be out of here by nine, and it was already ten. I undid my sari and folded it on a dressing table. I replaced it with my jeans and a flowing top from the closet, and draped a scarf around my head.
There was a set of double doors leading from my room to a wi
de balcony, and while I was downstairs, someone had opened them and turned on low flute music that blended with the sound of the tinkling fountain in the courtyard below. The courtyard was lush and overgrown and perfect for hiding, and luckily, as much security as there was outside the palace, there weren’t many guards patrolling inside. I switched off the overhead light and peered over the balcony’s edge, hoping to catch a glimpse of the one guard I knew was there.
The air in India, at least as I’d experienced it so far, was heavy and oppressively hot and fragrant. Right now it still smelled like dinner—butter and spices and meat cooking. The streetlights in the distance were hazy.
I heard a crunch of gravel below me. The guard was passing beneath my room. He moved at a slow stroll—nothing here seemed to move faster than that. I wiped a bead of sweat that trickled down my neck. It had topped a hundred degrees today, and even after sunset, the air had barely cooled. I had to wear this scarf, though—Western faces attracted attention here, and attention was something we didn’t need.
The guard was humming to himself as he rounded a corner. I hesitated for only a second before climbing over the carved marble balcony.
CHAPTER 5
I had mostly gotten rid of my fear of heights—maybe too many other fears had crowded it out. Still, I held my breath as I inched along the balcony to a trellis that ran down into the courtyard. Jack had scouted earlier and told me this was the best way to get out of my room. The trellis was splintered but sturdy, and I was on the ground and ducking behind a fern as the flute music from above changed to string instruments.
I picked a sliver of wood from my palm and watched the guard’s shadow cross the exit from the courtyard, which led to a delivery entrance off the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, I skirted the edge of the courtyard and stuck to the shadows as I snuck by the brightly lit kitchen door.
I was so keyed up, I almost screamed when I felt a hand on my elbow.
“Shh.”
I wondered briefly when I’d come to recognize Jack from just this tiny noise. He looked as handsome and serious as he had all day, but when I met his eyes, his face broke into a smile and he squeezed my arm. I could tell he was as glad to see me as I was to see him—we’d gotten so used to being together all the time that today had felt wrong. I almost threw my arms around him but stopped myself, and we stole off the property onto a bustling Kolkata street.
Jack pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt to hide his face. “Did you have any trouble getting out?”
I shook my head and glanced behind me. I didn’t think I’d been followed by anyone from the palace, but I couldn’t be sure. Plus, I had to assume the Order knew I was in India. I still didn’t think they’d come after me, but my father’s paranoia—and Jack’s—were rubbing off.
I touched the little knife in the side pocket of my purse. I’d kept it in there since Elodie, the Dauphins’ maid-slash-assistant-slash-secret-assassin, had given it to me at the failed wedding. I still wondered why she’d done it. Whatever her reason, the knife now felt like a good-luck charm in addition to being a weapon, and I kept it on me all the time, even though I’d never had to actually use it.
No one seemed to be following us, though, and I wasn’t sure they’d have been able to keep us in their sights if they had. There were just so many people. People lounging in doorways of closed shops, watching us walk by. A group of men bathing at a faucet off the side of the road, soaping up and using a bucket to pour water over their heads, the cloths wrapped around their waists getting wet along with the rest of them.
Jack flagged down a bright yellow three-wheeled rickshaw with a fringe of tinsel around its canopy, and we squeezed inside.
I collapsed back into the seat, finally letting myself relax, and rubbed at my face before realizing that the black eyeliner was coming off on my hands. I’d had time to change back into my brown contacts, but not to wash off the heavy kohl.
Jack pushed his hood back. We were pressed close in the tiny rickshaw. “Did Lydia do your makeup?”
I told him about getting ready.
Jack smiled. “I think Lydia rather likes having a sister.”
So did I. I wondered if there’d ever be a time when it would be me and Lydia sneaking out, hiding it from our dad like normal people.
“You don’t think they’re suspicious, do you?” I said.
Jack shook his head. “You’re playing your part perfectly. As long as we don’t get caught out here, we should be fine.”
The rickshaw was stuck in a chaotic snarl of traffic alongside a motorbike with an entire family piled on top, and a cart being pulled by what I could swear were water buffalo, horns painted orange and blue and jingling bells on their collars.
Streetlights showed that there were almost as many colors on these streets as there were people. A salmon doorway in a turquoise wall. Blue buses with a yellow stripe, matching the yellow taxis. One bus had a display of birds painted across its side, and the words Please honk were scrawled across the backs of any large automobiles. The drivers behind them took the request to heart.
“I feel like I’m hallucinating,” I whispered.
“This country can do that.” Jack was staring out his side, too, where a wizened old man cooked up chunks of potato by flashlight in a metal wok as wide as the sidewalk, then handed them out to customers in makeshift newspaper bowls.
We were already late and the traffic was bad, so Jack asked the driver to stop. Just like at the palace, the air here had a scent, but this one wasn’t so nice. We rounded a corner and found three goats eating from a pile of garbage, one wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt around its scrawny rib cage. It butted its head against my bag gently as we walked by, and I shrank against the opposite wall, but they let us pass, and we hurried on. Stellan would be wondering where we were.
The square where we were meeting him was wide and open, and we had to dodge a nighttime flower market to get there. Sari-clad ladies with gold hoops sparkling in their ears squatted on their haunches and strung heaps of bright orange and yellow marigolds into garlands like the ones I’d worn earlier, calling to us as we passed and holding up their wares. Behind them, toddlers climbed on a pile of abandoned cardboard boxes. One little boy looked up at us, and I did a double take. “Is that baby wearing makeup?” I said. He couldn’t have been more than two, and he had kohl liner thicker than mine rimming his eyes.
“It’s common here,” Jack said. “Superstition.”
I took a deep breath. “Where are we meeting Stellan?”
Jack pointed across the square, and I saw him immediately. Unlike us, Stellan was making no effort to disguise himself.
He was leaning against a light post and studying his phone, his worn leather jacket open to expose a black T-shirt, his blond hair glowing in the streetlight above. If pale skin drew looks here, blond hair caused downright gawking. Sure enough, a crowd had gathered a few yards from Stellan, but he appeared unconcerned. When he saw us, he stashed the phone in a pocket. “You didn’t leave me to fend for myself after all.”
“Couldn’t you have put on a hat?” Jack said. The men were now staring at all three of us, whispering to one another. Great.
Stellan smirked and waved to the crowd. “You mean I’m not allowed to enjoy the hundred-percent humidity in my own clothes?”
“No.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the circle of admirers and toward the street.
“If you’ll remember, some of us don’t have the luxury of traipsing about without a care,” Jack said shortly.
“No, some of us have to invent excuses to follow you two around the world.” After the Circle learned about the Saxons’ plan to marry me off to any family but the Dauphins, Stellan told his employers that he would follow us and report back. “Monsieur Dauphin was happy to let me go if it meant spying on you, but it’s not going to be easy to lie to Elodie and Luc.”
Luc and Stellan and Elodie had a strange relationship—it was as if they were a combination of siblings and best friends. Not what you’d expect to see between Circle family and staff. “You’ll figure something out,” I said.
We made our way across the street to the Indian Museum. It was dark and quiet, with a few stray dogs sleeping on its front stoop.
“So you think the other bracelet could be here?” Stellan said, looking up at the looming facade.
“This museum was built in 1814,” I said. “The right time for Napoleon to slip something into their collection. Plus, it’s in a Circle city, and it looks like there are Alexander artifacts in this collection.”
Stellan lit a cigarette. “Have either of you been to this museum?”
Jack shook his head, and obviously I hadn’t.
“I have been here. This collection is curated, but it’s a very haphazard job. If the bracelet was ever here, it might be in the same spot as it was in the eighteen hundreds, or it might have gotten tossed in a cardboard box in the basement, or walked right out of the museum on someone’s arm . . .”
I frowned at him. “Well, it’s the best chance we’ve had for a long time, and I had to trick a very nice family into thinking I might marry their son to get here,” I said, “so I’m going to give it my best shot. Now what’s the plan? Is there an unlocked door?”
The group of Indian men had followed us across the street and were edging closer. Stellan grinned at them. He called out something in what must be Bengali, and a few of them responded, then did those side-to-side head shakes I’d seen everyone here doing. Stellan pulled a wad of money from his pocket, peeled off some bills, and pressed them into the hand of one man, who counted it and hurried off, while the rest of them continued to gawk at us.
I raised my eyebrows.
“He’s letting us in,” Stellan said simply.